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作者信息 | 主题: Luftwaffe Nachrichten Veteran6141 | ||||
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发表时间:
2009-1-22 23:10:00
http://www.kampfgruppe.us/showthread.php?t=3380 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com The following was written by Hans Thielemann, a frequent visitor to the online forum of this site. Hans served during World War Two in the Luftwaffe signals branch, in a Nachtrichten unit. His story is an amazing one, and one straight from the heart. In this brief overview of his life Hans recounts a variety of emotions and recollections, and provides a valuable glimpse into the experiences of many men during the period. Hans ended WWII in the Kurland Pocket and was one of the lucky few to make it home alive from Soviet captivity. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com My name is Hans Thielemann. I was born in 1923 in Berlin, Germany. My birth year, 1923, was an exceptionally bad one for the life expectancy of baby boy's. Only 30% of us lived past the age of 22. The rest vanished in World War II. I have written a book with the title "Luck Alone is not Enough", based on my personal experiences during the first 30 years of my life. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com All the problems in my life started on January 30, 1933 when Hitler was named chancellor by President von Hindenburg. I was 9 years old and I didn't understand or care about politics. I could see that my family was distressed about the political developments. Family gatherings had developed into angry fights about political convictions and loud arguments continued to spoil most family events and everybody came away angry. My cousin Wolfgang and I however took advantage of these heated discussions and disappeared quickly to more enjoyable endeavors. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com In the following years the family scenes would gradually change because the "new order" had penetrated to the family level. The many discriminatory rules brought upon by the Nazi government made open discussion more dangerous and difficult. In school anti-Semitic propaganda began also to permeate the teacher's rhetoric. In one of the next school years the teacher gave us the assignment to produce a family tree. Every pupil had to come up with documents to prove their "Aryan" ancestry at least back to their grandparents. I don't recall if any students admitted not being true "Aryans". 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com A Saturday sports program was mandated in school for those kids who were not members of the Hitler Youth. Many Berliners were opposed to the Nazis and in my school class 90% of the students were not members of the Hitler Youth. I hated these Saturdays because it kept me away from playing together with friends, or visiting my grandparents. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com My father had problems too. He was employed by International Harvester Company as a sales manager and they were laying their employees off, because most foreign companies were taken over by the Nazi government. He finally got a new job with the Royal Dutch Shell Company which was a foreign company too, but was allowed to continue its operation in Germany. Maybe that was because the CEO, Sir Henry Deterding, was an admirer of Adolf Hitler. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com My father got his own sales district in the eastern part of the Province of Brandenburg and we moved to a town called Landsberg, 80 miles east of Berlin. Landsberg had a population of 45,000 and was the center of agriculture and forest industry. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com Changing schools is always a difficult problem for kids and here I had an especially nasty political difficulty. In this small town apparently everybody was for Hitler and I was the only student in a school of 400 who was not a member of the Hitler Youth. That brought on constant pressure from the teachers and the other pupils. The teacher wanted to know why I wasn't a member and made it quiet clear that it was "scandalous" not to belong. My excuse was a leg injury that I had suffered in my first school year that had left me with a permanent disability. In that Landsberg school I had to avoid all political discussions and had to talk "politically correct" to avoid being sent to a concentration camp. I was however able to finish school at the top of the class and without joining the Hitler Youth. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com I was 16 years old when World War II started, and was in the second year of an apprenticeship in ophthalmic optics. I was soon called up for a physical to determine my military draft status. Of course the military doctors didn't care about my leg injuries as long as I could stand up and hold a rifle. They needed fresh cannon fodder and declared me fit to serve. That upset my parents. They had experienced World War I and knew what was coming. If I had to serve, I wanted to be in a technical field and I signed up as an Air Force Technician which required a 4 year duty. Since I was under 18 years old, my father had to sign my papers and he refused to do so. Only after much discussion did he finally give his ok. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com My family's private life was of course severely influenced by the war. My father lost his sales job because during the war the government distributed all petroleum products . We had to move to a much smaller house to save money. From food rationing to the constant barrage by the Nazi propaganda we were reminded daily that Germany was once more in a nonsensical war. My parent's radio had a short wave capability so we were able to listen to theo ther side, primarily the BBC. This listening to the enemy was a felony and if one spread such information, one would for sure go to a concentration camp or even face the death penalty. As a teenager I tried to ignore these restrictions, but extreme caution always had to be on my mind. If I didn't think before I opened my mouth, it might have been too late to avoid severe punishment. I couldn't even trust other teenagers, because they might report a slip of the tongue to the police or the Nazi party. Some kids even turned their parents in. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com After I had just finished my apprenticeship and passed all the required tests, I got a registered letter which ordered me to report to the National Labor Service or Reichsarbeitdienst - RAD as it was called, on October 15, 1941. Not quite 18 years old, I reported to the indicated unit, about 60 miles from where my parents lived. This was a 6 month service prior to the military draft. After basic training in para-military fashion, we were shipped to an ammunition factory north of the city of Berlin. Here we manned an assembly line for 3" artillery shells under the supervision of military personnel. I was assigned to the final inspection position, where I measured and corrected the position of the primer with respect to the fuse of the shell. The primer was the highly explosive nitro-penta material that triggered the shell's explosive material. It was a very dangerous job, because if I dropped the primer, or hit it too hard it could explode. The RAD also built roads and airstrips, often right behind the front lines. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com When I came home from my RAD service my military draft order arrived and I was off to the Air Force Boot Camp near Berlin in April of 1942. The unit was the 15. (Funk Ersatz) Luftnachrichten Regiment d. Oberbefehlshabers der Luftwaffe (Herman Göring). 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com After 4 month of training I was sent to Airfleet 1 stationed in Riga, Latvia which gave aerial support to the northern Russian Front sector. They passed me on to 3.Komp.(Ln.Verb.) Luftnachrichten Regiment 31 - a Liaison Communications Group in Siverskaja, about 40 miles south of Leningrad. This company had liaison officers with communication vans at various Army Command Posts to keep the Army and Airforce in constant communication. I got stationed at the 170th Infantry Division about 30 miles east of Leningrad, which was involved in eliminating a first Russian attempt to re-establish land access to the besieged city of Leningrad. This attempt failed with heavy losses to the Russian Army. 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com 浪漫烛光 www.langmanzg.com
Returning to my base unit, I was transferred to temporarily serve as an airborne radio operator with an aerial reconnaissance squadron. On my sixth flight the aircraft, a Focke Wulf 189, was shot down and we crash landed behind the German lines. I was the only survivor and after recovering fr |
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