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My name is Thorsten Wiehe, I am a 26 years old German who has lived and worked in Coventry since 1998. My fiancée of nine years is British, and in the past decade I have come to know and love this country and its people.

With the 60th anniversary of D-Day coming up, I look at the way this momentous event in history is commemorated by the British with great admiration as I believe it is absolutely crucial that what happened that day is will never be forgotten. I also find it fascinating to compare the way our two nations look at the events that occurred:

For understandable reasons Germans tend to commemorate the war in a very sombre fashion. There are documentaries and memorial ceremonies for the dead, but the general approach is very much focused on the facts of what happened and not on the personal experiences and sacrifices of the German soldiers involved. Interestingly Germans seem to identify more with allied soldiers, mainly because 95% of movies and documentaries on the subject are of Anglo-American import and obviously tend to portray the events from their side. The fact that many ordinary German soldiers were fighting every bit as much for survival as the Allied soldiers is often overlooked back home.

I would like to tell a little of the other side of the story: Both of my grandfathers fought in the war, and even though were very reluctant to share their experiences, I have learned a great deal about their part in the war over the years. I hope that those who read this will see that not every German soldier was an evil killing machine, but many were as much a victim of their time as their allied counterparts.

My dad’s father, Johann Wiehe, who sadly died in January 2003, was always very reluctant to talk about the war. He only started opening up when he got to know my British girlfriend, for reasons that will soon become apparent. He was born in 1920 in a small farming village, and got drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1940. He was trained as an anti-tank gunner attached to an infantry division, and took part in the initial assault on Russia and the rush towards the Volga at the time when the Wehrmacht seemed to be unstoppable. In the winter of 1942/1943 his division dug in outside of Stalingrad, where the most memorable of his stories occurred: His unit received orders to move off and meet a Russian counterattack, but my granddad was unable to join his comrades as his toes had to be amputated due to frostbite. The battery which he should have manned received a direct hit and he would most certainly have been killed, so the loss of his toes saved his live. He eventually became one of the last people to be flown out of the ‘Kessel’, and since then he regarded the 6th of December as his second birthday.

He spent most of 1943 recovering from his injuries and was then transferred to the area around Calais as part of a reserve division. I do not know much about his movements during the time of the invasion, but he was eventually captured in Belgium, near the town of Mons, in August 1944. As a POW he was shipped to England and was interned in a camp near Southampton until 1948, when he was released. He always spoke very highly of the British and said that being captured was the best thing that could have happened to him.

He took a particular liking to my British girlfriend and her family, I think that for him it represented some sort of closure seeing two people from countries that went to war when he was young fall in love. I have always had the uttermost respect for my grandfather, even though he fought for the side which was clearly in the wrong he was a good person and absolutely condemned war and violence for the rest of his life.

I asked him once whether he agreed with the Nazi’s political agenda and thought that the war was just. He said that before he was drafted in he had never travelled further than 20 miles from his village, and that Greater Germany’s glory was the very last thing on his mind when he was digging up potatoes and helping his father feed the family. Talking about all this was very painful to him, especially because his younger brother who was 16 at the time was marched off to the Eastern Front in 1945 and never returned. I have recently managed to locate his grave in the Czech Republic, unfortunately by that time my granddad had already passed away.

The story of my mum’s father Helmut Barkowsky is a little more colourful. He was born in Koenigsberg (now Kalinigrad) / East Prussia in 1926 and was drafted into the Waffen SS in 1942. I was quite shocked when he told me that he had been a member of the most infamous branch of the German terror machine, but he made it quite clear that he did not want to be associated with Hitler’s SS in any way. Although guilty of many crimes the Waffen SS in the West had little to do with the black uniformed, skull-and-crossbones toting maniacs, they were more like a better equipped branch of the Wehrmacht fighting alongside regular army units. By the time my granddad joined the ranks of the so-called elite, it had been decimated to such an extend that they were filled up with 16 year old boys like my grandfather, who was stationed in St. Lo a few miles from the Normandy beaches.

Rather than being a front line soldier my granddad was a motorbike messenger for the signals corps and as such spent most of his time travelling between the various regional headquarters and shuttling officers back and forth. He tells vivid stories of having to dodge the ever increasing Allied air attacks, sometimes having to fix his motorcycle up to ten times on a single journey after sustained attacks from the air. He particularly disliked planes with tail gunners, as those used to take pot-shots at him at regular intervals.

He has assured me that when the invasion came it was not as much of a surprise as is often made out, but that it made little difference once the assault took place. One thing he keeps pointing out is the superior quality of Allied equipment and supplies, he says it was very frustrating having to make to with what was available when the British and Americans seemed to have everything they needed.

His division was destroyed trying to hold up the Allied advance, but he managed to remain unharmed until March 1945, by which time the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS units had retreated well into German territory. One event he recalls with particular sadness was the defence of a small town in Western Germany, where he was sent to deliver the order to hold out to the last man to a gun battery on a hill overlooking the valley. When he arrived the American assault had just begun, and he witnessed the gun crews firing salvo after salvo into the ranks of Americans advancing up the hill, killing dozens of them.

To this day he wonders how the American commander could have marched his troops into such an obvious firing zone so recklessly, they just kept coming until the battery ran out of ammunition. My granddad urged the crews to abandon their useless guns and regroup in the town, but they refused to give up their position and he never saw them again.

At this time he says that it was blatantly obvious to everyone that there was no point to carry on fighting, yet many officers would not even contemplate the notion of defeat. At the end of March, after delivering a despatch to a forward observation post, an officer approached him demanding that he took him to the nearest town in his motorbike sidecar. My granddad refused and said that he had just come up that road and that it was already in the hand of the Americans, but the officer pulled his Luger and threatened to shoot him for insubordination if he did not comply.

Having no choice he drove the officer down the road, but after a few miles a hand grenade was flung into the sidecar by American soldiers hiding in a ditch. The grenade killed the officer instantly and tore my granddad’s leg to shreds, as well as knocking him unconscious. He woke up a few minutes later and found his motorbike still in working condition (minus the sidecar), so he drove to the next dressing station and had a cigarette while he watched the remains of his leg being sawn off. For me this sounds like a story from a movie, but he says that he did not feel a thing due to shock and exhaustion. He was eventually captured when the field hospital he was in surrendered to the advancing Allies. He finds the loss of his leg so close to the end of a war that was already lost when it began as utterly frustrating and pointless. When I asked him what he thought of the reasons behind the war he simply pointed to a map and said ‘It had nothing to do with the ordinary people and soldiers, they should have locked the damned politicians in a room and have them fight it out. Anyway, just look at it. And who in their right mind would pick a fight with Russia AND the United States? Utter madness…!’.

One thing my granddad is very proud of is that he only fired his rifle three times in anger during the entire war. ‘First time was an accident, I was fooling around and shot a chicken. The second time I had to shoot a horse which had collapsed onto its rider to save him. The third time I was so hungry I shot a deer in the woods and ate it with my comrades.’ I cannot be one hundred percent sure whether this is the case or if he just doesn’t want to admit to killing people, but I would like to think of it as being the truth.

After the surrender my granddad was interned and interrogated for being a member of the Waffen-SS, but he was released in late 1945 without being charged for any misconduct. By this time the Russians had already closed their sector so he was unable to return to his home in East Prussia. He left a wife and a daughter which he did not see again until the fall of the wall in 1990. He re-married in the 1950’s, my mother and her siblings were quite surprised when granddad told them that they had a half-sister they had known nothing of until then.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live through those times, and I think it is absolutely essential that people remember the suffering and sacrifices our parents and grandparents made and which have allowed us to lead the lives we do now.

I think that even though they were fighting for the wrong cause the stories of my grandfathers are worth remembering, they like so many others got caught up in the events of their time and were forced to do things they have regretted for the rest of their lives.

There’s one last thing I would like to say. Only a few days ago there was a poll on TV asking people whether German representatives should be invited to the memorial celebrations or not. I find it very upsetting when I hear British people say that even after 60 years there is no place for us to honour the thousands who fell. Those people clearly do not realise what effect the war has had on the German people. For two generations we have lived with the evidence of what dictatorship did to the world, and you’ll be hard pushed to find a more pacifistic nation in Europe today. Every school kid, youth and adult is acutely aware of our history, and the lessons to be learned from it. There is a reason why Germany has not gone to war since, even if the British and Americans have scorned us for not getting involved in conflicts like Iraq.

I think that the presence of the German Prime Minister and other representatives at the ceremonies is an important sign of reconciliation, and that people should begin to accept that the Germany that emerged from the war bears no resemblance whatsoever to the one Hitler led into ruin. We continue to repent the mistakes of the past, and would like to help ensuring that what happened will always be remembered to make sure it never happens again. I hope the majority of British and American people realises that the Germans of today are not like those faced by the Allied soldiers landing on June 6th 1944…

As you can probably tell I am very interested in this subject and feel quite strongly about it, so if you have any comments or questions about this article please let me know. Just e-mail me under eltoddi@aol.com, I’d appreciate you opinion.

Thorsten Wiehe
Coventry
June 5th 2004

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