My full name is Gert Friedrich Franz Schmitz. And I remember, on September the 1st, 1939, Hitler was on the radio telling that the war
started. "Since 5:00 this morning, our troops marching
into Poland..." ...doing whatever they do best. Six months later, Hitler marched into France. The British came, and Americans came into
the war. And I talked to my grandpa, and he told me,
he said, "If they want to win the war, it don't look
too good." I said, "Don't say that, Grandpa! We cannot lose the war!" That was not even remotely in my mind that
we ever could lose the war. Because we were so conditioned, politically. Hitler controlled the newspapers, he controlled
the radio. And Goebbels, the propaganda minister, he
controlled everything else. And we listen to the news, and they told us
all what's going on in the Western Front and how successful they are and all that. Then we walk outside and we heard the guns. And you say, "Well, that is too close for
what they tell us where they're supposed to be." Following their defeat in the First World
War, Germany was reeling from the harsh conditions
of a peace treaty that left the country shamed and buried in
economic crisis. But in 1933, when a radical new leader rose
to power, promising to restore Germany and place it
at the forefront of world powers, the people were captivated. Adolf Hitler's reign brought swift economic
relief, and the German military was quickly on the rise. But his radical political party enforced totalitarianism
over the government and the public, making Nazism synonymous with the German way
of life. They had everything organized. You get couldn't get lost through the - fall through the cracks. There were no cracks. You were part of it if you liked it or not. I got drafted into the Hitler Youth when I
was ten years old. And they gave us a uniform and all that, you
know. Like thousands of other German boys, Gert
Schmitz was swept up in the Hitler Youth. But the draft was not without its benefits. Upon graduation, Gert was offered the opportunity
to fly with the Luftwaffe. They said, "Do you want to go to a jet pilot
training school? We have one in Fulda, Germany. And you'll go over there and you'll start
training for flying Messerschmitt 262 jets." I said, "Shoot, yeah!" But before he would reach the airfield, the
Allied bombing campaign would reach it first. And when I got up there, the hangars were bombed, the runways were
bombed, the airplanes were bombed. And there was nothing left for us to do. And they said, "Well, we'll temporarily assign
you to a paratrooper outfit and send you to the Western Front." So we got on the train that afternoon. We ended up in Pasewalk. We talked to the people - the local people
there. They heard on the news that the Russians had just come from the east and south and cut off that airbase
where we were. And that was bad news. Gert may have escaped capture by the Russians, but now he was headed to the Western Front where the British and Americans were on the
advance and the German Army was in disarray. That was chaos. The whole German Armed Forces was in total
chaos. We didn't know where they were, I didn't know
where the headquarters were, you didn't know where the real front was or
anything. You were so busy surviving and fighting - We either won here, or we lost over there,
and then go to the next. We don't know the overall picture. We have no idea what happened. And then we finally marched into Holland. The street was open between the town and the
woods- that forest where we're supposed to go into. And it was kinda exposed, you know. And the Allies always flew eight fighter planes,
roaming in the sky. They had total sky superiority. And we had to get across that open space,
and those guys were flying around there, see. If you go in a column over there, they'll
see us and they're gonna mow us down. But if you go one guy every hundred feet,
they may not even pay attention to us. So it came my time to go across, and the guy
paid attention to me. And he came and started shooting at me, and
I ran into that deep ditch. And as soon as he went past me, I got out
and ran down toward the woods. And when he came the other way, I jumped back
in the ditch. And finally he got wise. Instead of going across, he came down alongside the ditch and just
unloaded. Bullets flying behind me and in front of me. I mean, there was bullets flying every which
way. So he got up, and I ran, and I didn't go back
in the ditch - I ran all the way into the woods. Yeah, that was kinda nasty. But I hate Mustangs to this day. We were in Ramsdorf - that was my buddy and I. We were up at one end of town. And we had a bazooka. A tank came down the street, and they started
shooting. And we ran behind those big logs there. And they couldn't hit us there. He pulled that trigger and when it hit, it
said... He got that warhead right between the tracks,
in the body. And he just blew the hell out of the inside. Nothing moved anymore after that. There was another tank that was up the street. And we were standing there, kinda looking
down the street to see what we could do. And he said, "I'm gonna go on the other side
of the street." Because it was curved a little bit - he could
see better. I said, "Don't go over there. That tank is up there." And while he was in the middle, in the street, that tank shot one round right between his
legs. I went over there and got him. The shrapnel went into his uniform and ripped
his chest open. And he was sitting with his butt in the street. And he said... And then he collapsed. When we marched into Ramsdorf first, earlier,
the company commanders told us, They say, "You'll go point to make sure everything
is alright." And way later on after we supposed to move
out, I said, "Man, we're probably on point again." "We'll be the first ones out of there." And the company commander said, "You're the
rear guard." I said, "No!" You don't want to be in the rear on the way
out. You want to be front. But anyway. There was an open field, and they wanted to
march into the woods. And while we were way behind as the rear guard,
they walked into a trap. The Americans, they already were on three
sides. And they waited 'til the whole battalion marched
in there, and they mowed them down. So - the four of us - we went off to the right, into the woods and disappeared into the woods. And that's how we ended up behind enemy lines. Gert and his three comrades were on their
own, disoriented, and desperately searching for
ever elusive friendly territory. And then when we finally got into Dortmund,
it was daylight. And there was a six-foot fence - a chain link
fence. We said, "That must be a park. Nobody is fighting in the park, so we're gonna be pretty safe." So we got over - climbed over that six foot
fence... G.I.'s walking all over the place there! And they saw us and they started shooting
at us. They had a deuce and a half truck with machine
guns one there. They came around and started shooting at us
with that. And then we said, "We got to get out of this
park!" So we jumped over the fence, and there was tanks on the outside. We said, "That is not safe either. Let's jump back in the fence." We jumped back over that six-foot fence, and then that truck came and started shooting
at us. We went back over the fence - again - and
went in the other direction. And we saw a pine forest over there, and I said, "Let's get in to that forest and
get the heck out of here!" And we crawled on our stomachs, and we finally
got into the woods and they came after us. And I said, "Well, let's hide behind the trees
'til they go. If they don't see us they might go away." And they came and I stood behind that tree,
you know. We all stood behind each one of those trees
- just big enough to hide us. And I said, "What am I gonna do?" We can't run - they're gonna start shooting
at us. And I finally - I put my hand out and waved. You know, said, "Hi." And they said, "Come on out! Come on out!" You know. "Hands up! Hands up!" And that's how we got captured. Now in American custody, intended for relocation
to a POW camp in the United States, Gert began the long journey across Europe. From prison camp to prison camp, he passed the time by drawing pictures to
document his experiences. But before Gert would reach the French coast,
Germany surrendered, the war came to an end, and the prisoners
were sent back to their homes. The Germany Gert returned to was very different
than he remembered. Hitler was gone, the Nazi party dissolved,
and Gert himself had acquired a fresh perspective. I didn't realize how bad it was. But then after the war, everything became
democratic, you know, and peaceful. And I said, "Wait a minute. That's a heck of a lot different than what we went through - all that." You know. I didn't know about the full extent of the
concentration camps because that was kept so well secret, you
know. We heard about it, you know. But they said that's where murderers go in, and wife beaters, you know. And they - supposed to be rehabilitated. But they didn't do that. And I didn't know the full extent 'til I came
to the United States. Following the war, Gert immigrated to the
U.S., served with the Army, and went on to a career in Aerospace Engineering,
working alongside Wernher Von Braun. Gert served his country honorably in the Second
World War. But like all of those who survived, regardless
of what side, he hopes to one day live in a world free of
violent conflict. War is the stupidest thing that man invented. If you can't talk it out - if you cannot communicate, you start fighting. You have to do away with your problem. You have to annihilate your problem. But, that is not a solution. That just creates more problems. Don't fight. Talk it out. There's got to be a solution. There is always a solution.
His accent almost sounds a bit like Cajun
He's wearing an interesting pendant on the chain around his neck. Anybody know what it's about?
I'm wondering how he imagined the allies would talk Hitler out of what he was doing. What solution, other than war, was there?
Chamberlain tried to talk it out...
I recommend the MP40. It has little recoil and you can shoot well from the hip.
My grandfather fought in the Pacific, I was so lucky I got to hear some of his tales first hand. I have an imperial Japanese flag from his war box. There aren't many vets left, it's important to record everything we can before they're gone.
Wow!!! Amazing story thank you for posting! My grandfather was founded fighting the Germans in Normandy bear Metz, and after the war back in the US he became best friends with a doctor who was a German infantryman in Stalingrad!
Has anyone else noticed that when a video is linked with a timestamp, it's usually on accident, but videos that should actually be linked with a timestamp never are? It just surprises me because you have to check a box to get the link timestamped to where you are, but it seems to happen all the time.
One of the biggest regrets of my life will probably be that I was never able to talk to a WW2 veteran and ask him about his experiences.
War is hell!