April 14, 1945: Old City, Herdecke Germany

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At the little town of Herdecke Germany, the burgomeister formally declared: “I surrender the town of Herdecke to the Allied Military forces at 1000 April 14, 1945. It is understood that from this time forward, control of Herdecke will be by the Allied forces.”

The surrender was to L-Company of the 289th Infantry Division.

Within several days, First Army units to the south of Herdecke had closed in to the other side of the Ruhr River. The battle was over.

Albert Vögler, a prominent industrialist and Nazi supporter, committed suicide while being led away by American soldiers from his luxurious Hause Ende Ville in north Herdecke. He bit down on a hidden cyanide pill, dying instantly. Despite his death, he was still identified as one of the defendants in the Nuremberg trials of prominent industrialists, which prosecuted the group of businessmen who helped Hitler. The industrialists were tried at Nuremberg, for using slave labor, plundering occupied territories, and aiding the Nazi war machine. Most received prison sentences ranging from 2 to 12 years, though many were released early in the 1950s.

The Nazis initiated a conscious policy of “annihilation through work,” under which certain categories of prisoners were literally worked to death. Camp prisoners were forced to work under conditions that would directly and deliberately lead to illness, injury, and death.

Vögler an important executive in the munitions industry during World War II was an industrialist who financed the Nazis, Vögler was a member of the Circle of Friends of the Economy, which was a of German industrialists whose aim was to strengthen the ties between the Nazi Party and business and industry. As a business man, Vögler feared the rise of communism in Germany. Records of donations from Vögler to the Nazi Party from as early as 1931 exist. Vögler met Adolf Hitler on September 11, 1931. Beginning in 1932, Vögler openly funded the Nazi Party.

Vögler invited Hitler several times to his Haus Ended estate. Hitler did not feel safe at the estate at the beginning of the war, so Vögler spared no expense and effort to develop a huge bunker system and to install extensive security measures for the protection of his villa.

After 1940, Vögler was heavily involved with the manufacture of munitions. The armaments industry used much forced labor as well as slave labor so the costs of manufacturing were minimal. Albert had his fingers in many industrial pies, he was involved with United Steel Works in Düsseldorf as Chairman of the Board,. He was also associated with the German-Luxembourg Mining and Smelting Company and Rhein-Westphalian Coal Syndicate in Essen Germany. In the end his guilt over the blood money he had made resulted in his suicide by cyanide.

Dorney Germany: The Woe of the Vanquished

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I went for a walk in the Dorney Wald Nature Preserve. It was raining all day. I parked in a ball park parking lot and waited for the worst of the rain to stop. Then I ventured out in search of a statue of two German soldiers. I walked for miles and could not fin them. I finally gave up and when I got back to the car. I started searching for a place to eat. The place I found was right on the opposite sided of the forest within walking distance. I decided to walk over to get a gyro to eat. On that walk I ended up stumbling upon the statue I ad been searching for.

The memorial was erected in 1935-1935 by the Nazi Party. Though masked as an attempt to honor the losses of WWI, it was instead used to glorify the revenge felt for the loss and was used to recruit new youth for the battle to come. Every war brings unimaginable pain misery, displacement and death. The plaque next to the sculpture reminds any viewer to remember the costs of war.

Too many Germans were dying while trying to defuse unexploded Allied bombs. To remedy the situation, Himmler wrote a memo insisting that POWs and Forced Laborers should defuse the bombs. 40 prisoners from the Cologne-based SS-Baubrigade III were sent to Dortmund- Dorstfeld, Stalag VI-D  to work with the Luftwaffe‘s bomb disposal squad. There is little data, and only a few prisoner names are known, about the Dortmund POW bomb disposal squad. Thousands of tons of unexploded Allied bombs remain in Germany to this day, and 11 German bomb technicians have been killed since 2000. It is unknown if any POWs or forced laborers died defusing bombs. It would be a job that you would have to learn quickly and never do wrong.

“The Nazi regime of forced labor was a crime that made people throughout Europe slaves of the German war and business interests,” emphasized Günter Saathoff. “In contrast to the extermination camps in the east, the German population could not claim that they did not know anything about it because the wrongs were committed before their very eyes. Nevertheless, it was later denied or played down as a concomitant of war and the occupiers’ rule.

Every German man had to decide how to behave towards forced laborers: with the last bit of humanity or with the allegedly imperative coldness and relentlessness of a supposed higher race. There was scope of action and how such was made use of tells us something not only about the individual but also about the influence and attractiveness of National Socialist ideology and practice. While many Germans wanted to sweep the past under the rug, some wanted to learn from the past and build memorials to educate people of the future so that they might not repeat the horrors committed.

On April 12, 1945 Franklin Delano Roosivelt was having his portrait painted by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs Georgia. He suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed after telling the artist that he felt dizzy. The portrait she was working on was a watercolor and she left it unfinished. She ultimately completed the commission by doing a painting from photo reference and memory. The uncompleted portrait became a historical relic.

A eulogy for FDR said that he had “given his life” through intense, unrelenting labor as Commander-in-Chief during World War II. Though not killed in combat, he died “in harness” or “in battle harness,” as described by Winston Churchill, having led the nation to the brink of victory but not living to see the final surrender of the Axis nations.

Oestrich Germany: Row Houses

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My father 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was approaching Dortmund with his C-Company in the 75th Infantry Division. They were clearing the approaches to Dortmund which was being heavily defended. Casualties were high.

Besides a hatred for Jews, the factory and mine owners of Dortmund liked the industrialized principles of the Nazi Party and they profited from the forced labor used to fuel the German war machine. Dortmund and the surrounding communities (like Oestrich Germany) worked at full to keep Hitler’s war machine running.

During WWII, Dortmund-Oestrich, like much of industrial Germany, relied heavily on forced laborers (Zwangsarbeiter) from occupied territories for its war effort, especially in its mines and factories. Forced laborers faced horrific conditions, malnutrition, and mistreatment, with many dying from abuse or bombings. Forced laborers made up a significant portion of Germany’s workforce by war’s end, a vast human tragedy involving millions across Europe.

Despite the Allied bombing campaign which leveled 66% of Dortmund’s homes and 98% of the inner city. Workers kept rebuilding the factories. It therefore made perfect sense that Dortmund would not surrender easily. Even after a heavy bombing raid on March 6, 1945, it become clear that the soldiers in Dortmund was determined to fight to the bitter end. Dortmund and the surrounding towns suffered immense destruction from Allied bombing. Unexploded bomb ordnance, especially near sites like the stadium, remain to this day.

Some of the Soldiers of C-Company who died on the approach to Dortmund Germany.
Edward H. Cockrell (Pvt.), Died April 1945, Dortmund Area Germany
Walter A. Jarosz (Pfc.), Died near Dortmund Germany
James A. Kukalis (Sgt.), Died near Dortmund Germany
Noah L. Laswell (Pfc.), From Perry County, Indiana died near Dortmund Germany

Bodelschwingh Germany: Zeche Westhausen

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Bodelschwingh is just a 7 minute drive south of Mengede, on the North West outskirts of Dortmund Germany. My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was leading C-Company in the 1st Platoon of the 75th Infantry Division. Their goal was to secure and cut off the western approaches to the city of Dortmund.

Dortmund has been bombed to the point of being a pile of rubble, but it became clear that the Germans were determined to hold on to this industrial stronghold with absolute radical determination. Dortmund was considered the Pittsburgh of Germany. Dortmund had been early supporters of the Nazi party. The large industries profited from forced labor and producing the fuel and armaments that fed the German war machine.

In 1933 the Jewish population in Dortmund was about 4,000. In 1935 local citizens boycotted Jewish businesses. By August 1938, the Jewish population dropped to 2,600. In October 1938, the government dismantled the synagogue. In November 1938, riots collectively known as Kristallnacht took place, as mobs destroyed Jewish businesses and homes in Dortmund’s city center. Within days, 600 Jews were arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen, near Frankfurt Germany, where 17 died and the survivors paid fines before the Nazi’s released them.

By May 1939, only 1.444 Jews remained in Dortmund. Some escaped Germany shortly after the start of WWII, leaving only 1,222 Jewish Dortmund residents by June 1940. They were not allowed to use public facilities such as bomb shelters or use radios or televisions. Eventually the Jews were confined to “Jewish Houses”. This made it easy for the Nazis when they began the Final Solution.

Between 1940 and 1945 Dortmund was a rally point for the deportation of Jews to death and forced labor camps. The Nazis gathered eight separate groups of 500 or more Jews in Dortmund and sent then to the camps. The larges group between 700 and 800 were removed in April 1942. They were sent to Belzec death camp in Poland where they all were killed.

Zeche Westhausen was a coal mine in Dortmund, Germany. During WWII it was active and utilized forced labor, particularly from the Soviet Union. Germans considered Soviets to be subhuman, and they would literally starve them and work them to death. German miners between the ages of 18 to 35 were drafted into the army and thus slave laborers took their places in the mines. By 1944, over 40% of the Ruhr mining workforce consisted of forced laborers, totaling around 163,000 people.