Full Movie: The Wereth Eleven

may it please the court in order that the court may better understand the presentation of the evidence in this case we will briefly outline the evidence and what we expect it to show hitler held a meeting of his army commanders at bad nawhim on the 11th or 12th of december 1944 where he spoke for some three hours in this speech hitler stated that the decisive hour for the german people had arrived this fight will be conducted stubbornly with no regard for allied prisoners of war who will have to be shot if the situation makes it necessary all troops were warned that in the event of capture the existence of these orders must not be made known to the enemy that night the troops gathered around their campfires waiting zero hours by mid-december 1944 the extreme western front in the belgian ardennes had grown eerily and quiet many allied commanders called it the ghost front supply problems in the wake of operation market garden had left this weakly defended sector virtually on its own in a last desperate attempt to strike back at the allies hitler against the advice of many of his senior commanders initiated his ultra-secret ardennes offensive the operation would employ half a million men and over 2 000 pieces of artillery spearheading the offensive were hitler's hand-chosen and fanatical waffen ss which were ordered to spread a wave of terror and fright unrestricted by human inhibitions squarely in the path of hitler's most experienced storm troopers just six kilometers from the border were men of the african-american 333rd field artillery battalion fighting on the front lines since late june they were about to come face to face with soldiers from the third reich the most ruthless regime the world has ever known the ss troopers were the cream of the crop they hated our guts inferior they call you monkeys whatever well you weren't as good as a monkey most of them were blonde haired blue eyes they were the pure pure people so called i've seen ss troopers shoot their own people down they didn't want to fight that's the way they were fanatics americana just before dawn the morning of 16 december 1944 adolf hitler's ardennes offensive swung the full might of the german war machine against unsuspecting british and american troops in those pre-dawn hours of the 16th observers from the 333rd field artillery battalion were the first to report german artillery engagement king this is king charlie 3. got heavy artillery to our front repeat heavy concentrated enemy artillery through our front and a hell of a lot of it the germans were throwing everything they had at the lightly defended american lines five tube neville warfare batteries blasted high explosive rockets 8 500 yards across the border soldiers called the terrorizing sound they made screaming mimi's but their most devastating weapon was the 88 gun with a range of well over 16 000 yards the 88 that was the baddest weapon in germany you have to see it you heard it and felt it they used it for anti-personnel anti-tank anti-everything they didn't miss much with it americans trapped by thousands of falling 88 shells had almost no chance [Music] today four men including descendants of the 333rd have come to the ardennes to honor the americans who fought in this place they are led by executive producer joseph small the 333rd i've read several accounts were considered one of the best field attorney battalions in the army in europe during the war the 333rd field artillery battalion was one of nine all african-american field artillery battalions deployed to the european theater of operations in world war ii their wartime service began at camp gruber oklahoma in march 1943 under the command of colonel harmon s kelsey first time i saw kelsey was in cam group oklahoma and he made his little speech and the only way you get out of this outfit is die out of it there's no transfers you had one street where you were allowed to walk on and that was it as a black soldier in the united states army you weren't as good as a dog especially in the south i was sitting on the back step reading a comic book and a stateside officer come by told me to cut the grass i stood up saluted him and told him that as a non-commissioned officer i'm not required to do manual labor you can put me in charge of detail but i'm not going to cut that grass he hollered jail that [ __ ] there i go man them piece dropped out of the sky from somewhere serving under kelsey was captain william macleod who established a special relationship with the men shortly after we got to camp gruber there was a lot of grumbling about you know guys wanting to kick his butt he called the company together says anybody that wants to fight me i'll take off my shirt you take off yours and we'll have a go at it man the man if you beat me i'll shake your hand if i beat you i expect you to shake my hand and it's off the record nobody made another sound and that's when i get i fell in love with my captain the 333rd were issued the 155 millimeter howard sir m1 one of the most accurate pieces of artillery made during the second world war they do things with them guns that other outfits couldn't with the same gun once the 333rd arrived in france they quickly gained a reputation for their deadly accuracy during the battle of laje dupuis the 82nd airborne struggling with a tiger tank called on the 333rd to take it out battery c fired four rounds from four guns two of the shells were direct hits on the tank the distance from battery seized guns to the tiger tank was nine miles they uh used to write things on the shells detrimental to mr hitler but you know that's the way you get at the wild once you hit them beaches and get out of the cold water of the english channel you're a different person is kill or be killed you know this accompanying executive producer joseph small at the 333rd former battery sea location in schoenberg belgium is robert hudson whose father fought in the 333rd your dad was here probably having his morning coffee his breakfast and uh why don't you tell me what your dad shared with you about that that fateful morning my dad was 24 years old from st louis missouri i think coming over here might have been his first time out of town let alone out of the country he said that all the armor cover had been moved and they were awakened by trees falling the earth rumbling and they knew they were in trouble hundreds of thousands of german troops along with tanks half tracks and artillery streamed across the border leading the main effort was the sixth panzer army commanded by one of germany's most decorated soldiers world war one and russian front veteran general sepp dietrich hitler's former bodyguard dietrich was despised by most of the higher officer class who thought he had no great intelligence but he had a hard-won reputation for bravery and was known as a brutal commander his arduous assignment was to move his divisions across the mountainous schnee-eifel region once through they would do battle in the towns of schoenberg and saint b supporting the six panzer army was the fearsome first ss division which included colonel max hansen's panzer grenadier regiment followed by major gustav nidal's reconnaissance battalion they followed the path cut by colonel joaquin piper who was greatly admired by hitler for his fanaticism he was a charismatic leader who inspired fierce loyalty in his men his orders were simple move as rapidly as possible to the muse river and take no prisoners by daybreak on the 17th general sepp dietrich's sixth panzer army reached the 333rd position at schoenberg belgium they had been shelled for the better part of two days so they had no sleep no food and they were just basically told to make a stand here no better place to die battery c forward most exposed had entered its second day of continuous combat counter battery fire shell h e charge five fuse quick face deflection right two niner five x i three zero two number two one round elevation three seven one round ready sir 900 meters to their left the volks grenadiers still undetected by battery c had the americans in their sights they planned a flanking move with their armor mortars and machine guns to encircle the battery and take out the guns oh battery c which had been ordered to stay behind and provide covering fire for the advancing 106th infantry had no choice but to stand and fight battalion commander harman kelsey returned from hq to battery c to evacuate as many men as he could onto three trucks leaving behind captain mcleod and just a few men the rest of the alpha try to pull out the safety when we had to stay behind [Music] we fired until we ran out of ammunition you can't kill but just so many with trench knives and they had i'd say the germans had to walk over piles of their dead to get to us hitler's strategy for success in the offensive hinged on two main assumptions first that the poor weather would ground allied fighter planes and allow his troops to penetrate the allied line quickly and second that american defenses would crumble under the weight of his more than 25 divisions it would be his last gamble of the war [Music] mortars were coming in they're right back here was their ammunition depot and a mortar came in and landed right in the middle of it it didn't blow for some reason and when i spoke with sergeant willie alfonso down in alabama he said that's the reason he's alive today the 333rd battery c was located here bring him don't leave him and instead of flying keep your head low they man their guns and then whatever rifles they had and took them on and made a heroic stand on this very spot keep your head low oh got him oh that's a hard thing to do when a man's got a rifle at coming at you and you go all you've got is a trench knife but i got a couple and some of the other guys got a couple of them that was the least of my thoughts being captured killed yes captured no i think the real reason why mccloud surrendered was to save lives because what nothing else he could do we could all die you know just fought with what we had hand-to-hand combat until every man was killed but he didn't want that he wanted to try to save as many lives as he could and that's what he did by surrendering captain mcleod and the men who could walk were taken prisoner the wounded were not on the spot where the 333rd made their heroic stand descendant robert deshay recalls the anguish his father carried throughout his lifetime i think our father passed thinking of himself as a failure regardless of the heroic stand that he made here that day i think because of the the men the friends the connectedness he was very people-oriented person it was very important for him to stand together with his comrades and arms in the face of the german onslaught these guys put their country first at a time when perhaps the country then put them first [Music] all these guys were friends they mostly came from the south many of them knew each other for some time they fought for their country they fought bravely they delayed the germans to help us turn the tide of the war [Music] i heard that most of the outfit we were supporting the 106th infantry division surrendered without firing a shot i can't believe it because there were none but cooks clerks and they knew nothing about combat when we first saw some of them the shoes shine pants with creases in them neckties on you don't fight a war like this you aren't a ss trooper that's that's true because they're the ones that dressed all up in fancy uniforms and everything when i first saw him we thought the war was over hey we passed the word we're going home it's all over it was all over all right all of us that was left alive they moved us out on the road and started walking [Music] [Music] in this german propaganda footage american pows of the 333rd field artillery battalion are herded east towards an uncertain fate many could only imagine the horrors that awaited them among those prisoners was a stubborn staff sergeant george shomo i saw when they were taking the pictures and that was papa again especially when they captured black troops they prayed joe all through these little towns and like i said the die-hard germans are beating you and you couldn't do nothing about it you just keep walking and look straight ahead that's all the residents of schoenberg including joseph bach just a boy at the time witnessed the american surrender yes up there there is an old heavy fir tree standing that has lived through the whole war they came all down from there and when they came out of that forest up there in front was one with a white flag they took off the steel helmets and you can see it goes down a hill up there from that street so the helmets came rolling down the hill one after the other came down that hill i would say 500 to 600 americans were standing on the meadow that was a long line along the street we were always running through that line they were laughing and when they began to take out those chocolate bars out of their bags that's what we were excited about as children and then midday at around 1pm the whole line was going up there to mandelfeld to germany probably going into confinement or captivity not far from where we were positioned on top of the hill there were americans on one side and behind us and at that time we saw an american soldier who had fallen down the hill he was wounded he was lying down at the bottom of the hill where the brook was he was lying half in the water there was a woman who was kneeling next to the american soldier and she said the soldier was badly wounded and dying she was wiping his face with water from the stream the german ss troops over there started to shout at the woman that she shouldn't be touching the soldier the woman got mailed and started to scream at the ss troops that they should be ashamed of themselves that she had to take care of the soldier although combat was over for captain mcleod and the men left behind to hold battery c's position colonel kelsey still had hope as he raced his rescued men back towards saint bith he did not realize however that the germans had already pushed past him the convoy was surrounded on the schoenberg road and the men were forced to surrender kelsey's men were turned around and pointed in the direction of other american prisoner columns headed back towards germany [Music] then the planes came again nearby one of them took out a carbine and shot at the american plane one of the colonels saw that and went to him and told him 10 minutes and you will be ready to travel and you can come with us and the germans were at chromebook behind san diego you come along i want to see you here in 10 minutes you can shoot down there to your heart's content and he came back he had to go into the car with them and they took off with him then the american p-47s continued to pound the german columns which included american pows one plane came upon the column with kelsey's men [Music] in the chaos and confusion several of the prisoners escaped before long they met up with other american escapees and the group headed northward straight into the path of a rapidly advancing patrol from gustav nidal's first ss reconnaissance battalion these soldiers would become known as the wherewith eleven i came through this area a couple years ago following in the footsteps of my uncle bill mcherry who fought here with the 5th infantry division and i literally stumbled across the story of the worth 11th really turned my life upside down and fascinated me so i started doing all the research i could i could do on it and find out everything that i could the wereth 11 included private curtis adams of south carolina technical sergeant james aubry stewart of piedmont west virginia and private first class george davis of bessemer alabama davis was drafted in 1942 at the age of 24 and only son he was known as little georgie around town due to his five foot five inch stature he attended a julius rosenwald black school set up by northern philanthropist to help educate african americans during the great depression and was popular amongst his peers especially the women james aubry stewart one of the oldest of the wereth 11 at 38 shared the same birthplace as harvard professor henry lewis gates jr piedmont west virginia steward was the first black employee of west vaco paper mill where he worked as a bricklayer and a carpenter he also excelled in athletics as a pitcher for the all-black piedmont giants baseball team around town he was regarded as kind and gentle private curtis adams was an eight-month newlywed when he was drafted and sent to fort jackson in columbia south carolina moving on to camp gruber oklahoma curtis was surprised shortly before he shipped out to see his wife catherine arrive on a greyhound bus to show him his new son jesse i had the extreme pleasure of meeting jesse adams the son of curtis adams about two weeks ago he was only two years old when his dad died here's a man 68 years old knew virtually nothing about his dad and to be able to talk to him about how his dad was a hero and talk to him about the recognition that he was going to get really created a bond with this gentleman that i'll have the rest of my life and just to see him smile my dad made it he was a prisoner of war he was shot twice but he came back he put me through college he put me through grad school these guys made the ultimate sacrifice and they provided a better life for all of us and we've got to do everything we can to make sure they get the recognition that they deserve the other men comprising the wherewith 11 mainly held from the rural south including mississippi arkansas and texas troops to the left joseph small along with robert hudson and robert deshay have made the trip to belgium to retrace the 10-mile journey the wherewith-11 took in their flight to freedom as the men made their way northwest american pows were beginning to be brutalized i found out one thing about the human body you can take just so much then everything blacks out mother nature takes over and they can beat you to the earth health froze over and you wouldn't feel it i spent the night in nuremberg stadium underneath the great big schwatzger that you seen the pictures that's where we slept in the snow on the ground they used to call us [ __ ] and you know stuff like that but this is stuff that i'd heard in the south when i you way before i went overseas my shoulders messed up right now from an ss trooper's rifle he asked me questions and i kept saying my name and my serial number which on the geneva convention that's what you're supposed to do name ranking serial number he swore because i was a sergeant that i knew more knew a whole lot of information to take a use i didn't know any more than they did so he hit me with a rifle button knocked me down i got up and i laughed at him i got hit again okay we are here now on the other side of the oral river on the other side of schermberg and this is the way the level man went through well i just got a feel for what the men endured uh i'm wearing this world war ii era gear and uh i'm hot i'm winded and these guys were out here in the elements and to come up that hill and not really have a sense of direction and just going through these woods alone you really start to feel for them the weather conditions the wherewith 11 endured were brutal the temperatures kept dropping and it began to sleet the battle of the bulge itself would be fought during one of the coldest european winters on record hands and feet became frostbitten and everything from the water and canteens to the water-cooled machine guns froze men were lucky if they had a single blanket to share between three men and a foxhole for many staying alive became secondary to staying warm this is the halfway point between the village of schoenberg and where it to the right there's the village of harrisbach and this is also a reason that the soldiers had to take this road because they were convinced that that was already taken by the germans it was the largest battle fort in the history of modern warfare german unit here an american unit here fighting it out with tanks and artillery and it was just so brutal and the 333rd was a big part of it and specifically the 11 men that just walked down this road to worth which is where we're going to go to next herman langer was just 12 years old when the 11 men arrived at his family farm in whereith that was on 17 december in the afternoon at 4 o'clock when the 11 black american soldiers came down from the woods towards our house and they asked if they could possibly have something to eat upon which they came into our house where my mother and my sister put bread and butter on the table for each of them so they could eat something my father tried to explain to them that they should quickly take the path behind the house to look towards saint vic but my father was unable to make some understand and he tried to point them in that direction so that safe would be in safety and she must have told him one tells oneself there are still black people then suddenly the ss vehicle drove up and stopped directly in front of the house come gets the house come to house i cannot see this as a cades a white flag when they had gone out but when they went out they had their hands up and walked out they never wanted to get into a shootout so my father suggested to the chief of css group so they should let the prisoners go in the shed because we had a shed to shelter for wagons and carts and you could have easily put some prisoners in there because it was sleeping and one soldier said that they would get warm again walking in front of the car [ __ ] and then it started to get dark they set off and they had to walk in front of the cars down to here and then to this part this part of belgium before world war one was still part of germany hermann langer's father had taken a great risk sheltering the american soldiers three of the nine homes in the town at the time were still loyal to germany the 11 men were led down a path and told to sit on a wet slope in a pasture to wait [Music] so these were guys out of my outfit they just mutilated them and murdered them [Music] and left them laying out there in the field when the spring thor come they found their bodies uh that's why i'm sweating i believe that we went to church which was i think on second february and we saw the bodies that had been left there [Music] so six weeks after the american soldiers were brutalized and killed word reached command hq that a grisly scene had been discovered at whereith a war crime investigative team including a surgeon an army photographer quickly descended upon the site that man appears to have been allowed to dress his own wounds it was clear that all had been savagely tortured before they died the men's contorted faces exhibited multiple facial and jaw fractures fingers were severed and legs were broken and bayonet wounds were present through the eye sockets war crime does not begin to be a strong enough turn for this by the time the bodies were discovered in mid-february 1945 at whereith the battle of the bulge was over after the rapid german gains in mid-december the enemy offensive bogged down stiff american resistance by various isolated units had given time for the u.s first and ninth armies to shift against the german northern flank the british had sent reserves to secure the muse river and patton's third army shut down the enemy attack in the south the cost of victory was heavy nearly 50 thousand american soldiers were casualties including 19 000 dead no headlines had trumpeted the battles in the allies continued their march into germany and for american prisoners of war their nightmare was finally over mooseburg germany that's where i was finally liberated at in that camp that was the last camp i was in we saw the german guards pulling off their uniforms and this is something the american troops never done that because you could be shot as a spy if you've got civilian clothes underneath your uniform and these cats would pull off them old baggy i was wondering why that german soldier's uniforms were so baggy now i knew because they had civilian clothes underneath them patton come through and said that we were out of the war as soon as the weather permitted we'd be flown back to france [Music] 1961. i now live 65 kilometers from beza when i came up here it always buzzed me that there was nothing to remember what we have seen years before and 50 years later i was retired i had more time and i had the idea to build up a three [Music] [Music] who had died in 1939 and had to be cleared of a in 1994 so i had the stone cross available and i thought the stone lasts longer than wood and so i did this instead ann marie noel simone is in charge of the wherewith memorial in belgium this is a reckon our president for ada it was really a big important thing and overall she talked about the rehab memorial and the u.s memorial where it was her baby in 2002 we have no money to to realize the the memorial and louisiana ada and myself we put money on the table to to buy the ground to to pay the land survivor to pay the nota and to pay all we must he must pay and it was with the help on the other's friends norman lichtenfeld in america and with the the help of the landscale regional medical center in germany and the works incorporation european chapter that finally we we can have 50 000 arrow to to make this small but fine i think [Music] memorial [Music] today we're here in wherewith belgium to honor 11 members of the 333rd field artillery battalion that were brutally massacred on this site december 17 1944 the names of the 11 members are as follows technical sergeant william edward pritchard technical sergeant james a stewart staff sergeant thomas j forte corporal major bradley private first class george davis private first class james leatherwood private first class george w moton private first class dewey w turner private curtis adams private robert greene and private nathaniel moss [Music] i was really moved and saddened by this story i thought that the men's dignity was taken from them and that really bothered me and i set out on a mission to make sure the citizens of america and the citizens of europe they knew what happened to those 11 men and make sure they knew the contribution of the 333rd field artillery battalion during world war ii [Music] [Music] [Music] the sounds [Music] i want [Music] but now [Music] i was blind but now [Music] i i see the murder of the 11 americans at whereith was not the only war crime committed on december 17 1944 just 25 kilometers to the west in mamadi in a more well-known atrocity 90 american soldiers of the 285th filled artillery observation battalion were mowed down by men of the conf group piper part of the first ss division and the very next day december 18 1944 the same ss unit of comp group piper systematically executed 130 belgian civilians in the village of stavalot charged with sheltering american soldiers 67 men 47 women and 23 children were brutally executed well that's your handwriting these war crimes committed by joaquin piper's battle group were prosecuted vigorously at dachau by lead investigator colonel burton ellis the first ss panzer regiment commanded by the accused piper passed on this order to subordinate commands in words and substance to the effect that quote this fight will be conducted stubbornly with no regard for allied prisoners of war who will have to be shot if the situation makes it necessary and compelling in full in what became known as the maumadi massacre trial joaquin piper gustav nidal and sepp dietrich were found guilty of war crimes it is a bloody record indeed that the first ss ponzi regiment set for itself in this one short week these comrades all would have been alive today if it had not been for the first ss sponsor regiment and they must not have died in vain is the mum as president at the time the vote was taken concurring sums of you to life imprisonment sims issued a life imprisonment [Music] present at the time the vote was taken conquering sends as you to death by hanging [Music] all sentences including piper's death sentence were later reduced to shortened prison terms the last nazi war criminal to leave prison was joaquin piper in late december 1956 although an investigation was launched into the massacre at wareth it was closed administratively on february 19 1947. [Music] in the final congressional report on the massacres committed by the first ss division all locations of war crimes committed in belgium during the battle of the bulge along with the approximate number of persons murdered both civilian and military were listed whereith was absent [Music] through the efforts of hermann langer and other private citizens in belgium in the united states the wareth memorial site survives as hollowed ground preserved in lasting remembrance to the final acts of courage of the 11 men of the 333rd filled artillery battalion it is the only memorial in europe dedicated to the service of african-american gis in world war ii [Music] [Music] [Music] promises [Applause] [Music] see i've seen [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i have 21 days at sea on a liberty ship coming home in a storm rivets popping up out of the ship and everything then you get on land you see german german pows dressed in nice uniforms all clean and everything well fed and they're calling us names so we came in at fort devons massachusetts they had to call out national guard and everybody to keep us from killing them p.o german p.o.w.s i came out of the army with nothing but the clothes on my back that's what happened to black troops down there they had me hand me a train ticket my separation papers that was it and i rode in the washroom from alabama to washington d.c and there's a whole empty car in the back of where you know where i was supposed to be sitting at they wouldn't let us go and it was four of us rode in the restroom one of the guys was a lieutenant but i i didn't mind because they had to combat and everything hell that was paradise riding somewhere in the train i just made the best of it you

Channel: Extreme Mysteries

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Keywords: The Wereth Eleven, the were eleven, janson media, janson, ww2, wwii, world war 2, world war, us army, us army sniper school, The Wereth Eleven, the wereth eleven review, the wereth eleven rotten tomatoes, battle of the bulge, military, heroes, german, wereth 11, wereth, army, wereth eleven, air force, germany, tanks, full movie the wereth eleven, the wereth eleven full movie, world war 2 movies, world war ii movies, world war 2 full movie, world war 2 movie

Id: izgpYN_pz0I

Length: 60min 36sec (3636 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021