Wehrmacht Diary:The Story of Siegfried Knappe (1936-1999) by Wolfgang Cooper

Author:Wolfgang Cooper [Cooper, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Xlibris
Published: 2000-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

PART III

DEFEAT—

THE END OF

THE THIRD REICH

1945

18

Siegfried woke with a start, realizing much too quickly where he was. He had fallen asleep in the front seat of his staff-car, which was tied to a railroad flatbed. As he cleared his eyes, he could see that someone was standing on the edge of the flatbed, just outside the drivers side window. It was his aide, Hauptmann Kafurke.

Siegfried was now completely awake. With a sudden wave of depression, the reality of what was going on around him hit like a thunderbolt from the sky. He peered into the blackness that surrounded him. Siegfried could smell the acrid scent of soot and smoke. The sound of mortar shells and gunfire roared in the distance. The nightmare of his reality hit him full-force: Germany was dangerously close to losing World War II. The Allies and the Russians were bearing down on the Germans from all sides, and at this point, there was very little they could do to prevent a total collapse.

Kafurke, who looked like he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months, informed Siegfried that they had just received new orders. Their corps would no longer be joining General Wencks’ 12 th Army in the relative security of the Harz Mountains. Instead, they were being diverted north, back towards Berlin. Siegfried thanked Kafurke for the update, and watched as he trudged back towards the front of the train.

Deep in his heart, Siegfried was crestfallen by this sudden change of plans. He had hoped to visit Lilo and Klaus in nearby Leipzig. It was against the rules, but it would have been a quick stop-over. Now those plans had been dashed.

After the failure of the Ardennes Offensive (The Battle of the Bulge) during the winter of 1944, there was no doubt in Siegfried’s mind that the war was lost in the west. In the east, the situation was just as grim following the collapse of Stalingrad. As long as Germany had to face simultaneous Allied offensives by ground troops and relentless day and night attacks from the air against industry and civilian targets, there was no hope for anything but a quick end to the conflict. Even Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had stopped making speeches about miracle weapons that would turn things around. Some rumors were circulating that a fallout between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union was in the making and that Germany might possibly be called to fight the Red Army together with the western powers. Siegfried did not believe in such a possibility.

Yet, it was hard to imagine that the leaders of the West would let Stalin take Berlin and the entire eastern half of Europe without any interference. At the very least, Siegfried thought the Allies would want to establish their presence in the center of the German territory. It would have been possible to reach Berlin before the end of the fighting with little or no resistance from the German forces. It was a known fact that

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