大象传媒

This is a true story.

My grandfather was the commander of a battery of 8-inch guns. When the Germans surrendered in 1945, his battery was assigned a patrol area 16 x 16km across. He was to supervise the disarming of military forces and to search for fugitives and hidden weapons.

Not a Nazi

One day he knocked on the door of a farmhouse. The woman who answered was small and thin. Upon seeing several American soldiers on her doorstep, she let out a scream. She got down on her knees and began to sob.

My grandfather and his men took her into the house and calmed her down. After several minutes, she was able to speak. Out of her mouth came perfect English, with an American accent. She said she had met and fallen in love with a German scientist before the war. She furiously denied supporting Hitler.

She reassured my grandfather time and time again that she and her husband hated the Nazis and that they had been forced to stay when the war broke out. She told them how relieved she was that the war was over and that Americans were in her kitchen.

Smelling a rat

My grandfather, 22 at the time, felt that something was amiss. He ordered his men to search the house and the surrounding area. After an exhaustive search, one helped in every way by the woman, they found nothing.

My grandfather, having one last look around the house, came upon a door on the top floor. The woman said it led to the attic, but that there was nothing up there. My grandfather did not believe her. She would not open it, so his men knocked it down.

Seeing red

As my grandfather walked up the stairs to the attic, everything in his sight became red. The room was filled by enormous scarlet flags with swastikas in the middle and guns, ammunition and pamphlets extolling the Nazi party.

Eventually, the army found out that this woman had voluntarily moved to Germany in the 1930s. Her husband was a leading German scientist, specialising in physics and rocket propulsion. She had the belief that Hitler was going to bring a new world order.

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