Dive into the world before and after of WW II. Feel, how it was. Get a better understanding while enjoying Maria's adventure. 17y old Maria del Carmen Gonzales from Mexico, wants to make something out of her life, rather than only being someone in t...
After our arrival in Le-Bourget, I was right back in my daily routine of flying reconnaissance with the A-29.
For Johanna and Mathilde it looked quite different. Nobody knew what to do with them. Or rather nobody wanted them, because nobody trusted them. They were Germans, they were the enemy.
Eventually I managed to get Johanna a job in the US Army laundry service. She could not really do any harm there. For Mathilde I found a German school in Paris. With all the Nazis gone, they were very much out of children. Even though, they gave me a big discount, it was still bloody expensive. I just had to close my eyes. What should she do in a French school? She would be the outcast. Unfortunately, she had to stay there during the week and could only come to see her mom on the weekends.
During the course of March 1945, the Allies were pushing the German army on the entire Western frontier behind the river Rhine. The Wehrmacht was falling apart, not enough ammunition, not enough cloths, not enough food, not enough fuel, still they offered fierce resistance with the little means they had left. End of March, it was obvious to everyone, that the 3rd Reich would collapse any time soon. Yet, the Germans refused to see the facts and kept on fighting.
29th of March 1945, the area around Frankfurt including Weilrod was taken by the US Army.
On 21st of April, the Heeresgruppe B got encircled by US troops and surrendered. This marked the collapse of the Western frontier. From that point on resistance really was only local suicide missions. Sadly enough, those suicide missions were mostly carried out by boys, who got sent into battle with inferior material and training by radical and coward adults. Their impact was negligible to none, but they paid for it with their lives.
On 26th of April, I received the Distinguished Flying Cross for having captured the most modern aircraft of the world. We were 22 pilots altogether who received medals. We were lined up on a dais on the runway. The rest of the Air Station's personnel had gathered in front of the dais. The story of each of the pilots got summarized and then we were awarded a number of different medals by Major General Doolittle himself. I was so proud and so shaken, I had to cry.
On April 30th 1945, Berlin was finally seized by the Red Army after two weeks of relentless, bloody ground battles (it had gotten entirely bombed to rubble already) and Hitler and Goebbels (including wives and children) had committed suicide that day. The Russians lost about 80 000 men and the Germans 92 000 in these two weeks.
With the Führer dead, we all believed the war would be over now, but the Germans still kept on fighting.
A bit more than six weeks after our escape from Germany, on the 8th of May 1945, the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht signed the capitulation. This only, because they had nothing left to fight with. Whatever few soldiers and little material was left, was spread out, distributed across the land and unusable for any meaningful military operation. Apart from that, there was no ammunition and no fuel available to the Wehrmacht anymore to pull off anything. I'm not sure, though if that alone would have really stopped those Nazi maniacs. Till the end they were continuously trying to make all those splintered parts of the Wehrmacht enter a partisan war. What might have truly stopped them, was the collapse of communication. They were simply not able to coordinate anything anymore. The telephone system, which was left, was controlled by the Allies, whatever was still operational of the German post was controlled by the Allies and all working long range radio stations as well were controlled by the Allies.
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