Author: Xie Chenghui
Image/Typography/Proofreading: Follow the Trail
The full text is about 4,000 words and takes about 10 minutes.
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We often say: the environment can affect a person, the environment changes a person. In fact, changing people does not necessarily have to be the surrounding environment, sometimes even if it is just a piece of clothing, it can change a person. Today, I would like to share this story with you.
The story takes place in Germany in 1945.
On April 11, 1945, several German soldiers arrived at the Aschendorfermoor Prison (Absen Prison) in Germany, led by a soldier in the uniform of an Air Force captain.
The picture is derived from the stills of the movie "Fake Captain"
He called himself Herold, Hitler's secret agent, who had come to the front to inspect the situation, and now that the war situation was tense, the Fuehrer asked him to go to the front to see if there were any greedy and fearful of death, and if so, shot on the spot. There were many German deserters in The Prison of Assen, after all, at this time, the German army was in a rout, and many soldiers had to choose to flee in order to save their lives.
At that time, the German army generally treated deserters as they were caught and punished on the spot, even if someone said that "Germany is going to fail", both soldiers and civilians were executed. This plot has been mentioned in many film and television works, remembering the "anti-German drama" "Fury" in previous years, there was a plot of civilians being hanged on the side of the road.
The picture is derived from the stills of the movie "Rage", and the sign reads "I am a coward who does not want to fight for the German people"
However, frederick Hansen, the warden of Assen Prison, did not kill these deserters, first, he did not receive a clear order— the German chain of command had collapsed at that time, and no one cared about the situation in a small prison; second, he knew that the killing of these deserters was likely to lead to a future Allied trial.
Now that a man who called himself Hitler's secret agent had arrived, the warden was relieved that someone had finally taken responsibility, so he did not verify the identity of this person, so he let this person take over the prison work.
After Herold accepted the prison, he did not give a crap and directly carried out a bloody massacre of the deserters held here. The methods are cruel and insulting. He tied the men together with ropes to let them escape, and then directed his soldiers to shoot with him and kill the fleeing people like hunting. One down is a row of people falling down.
What's more, the butchers let their prey dig a large pit for themselves, and then let the unarmed soldiers stand in front of the pit and shoot them flat with anti-aircraft machine guns, or use grenades, bayonets, pistols, etc. to slaughter them. The massacre was accompanied by the screams of the fleeing soldiers and the laughter of the "hunters", and more than 100 people died at the muzzle of the guns of Herold and his men (some parties recalled that they killed at least 200 people, but in the end the military court determined that they killed a total of 125 people in and outside the prison, so this number was taken).
It wasn't until April 19, when the Allied Air Force inadvertently raided the prison, that Herold fled with his men, and the massacre stopped.
Who is this Herold? Was he really a secret agent sent by Hitler? The answer is no.
On September 11, 1925, the protagonist was born into an ordinary family in Saxony, Germany, and his parents named him "Willie Herold". Originally, the family lived a peaceful life, but in that era, Germany was destined to commit the Nazis. With the rise of the Nazi Party, Hitler began his rule.
Herold
In order to facilitate The German Foreign War, in 1922, Hitler established the "Hitler Youth", recruiting boys aged 13-18 throughout the country for militarized training, and was a paramilitary organization that provided reserve forces for the Nazi Party.
By 1936, the Nazi Party began to relax the recruitment period, so the 11-year-old Herold was recruited for military training in advance. However, when training, he was very cowardly and did not want to touch the gun. The Youth League was not a family, and it did not treat such people softly, and directly expelled Herold.
Herold returned home, studied as a bricklayer, and became a qualified roof repairman, but fate seemed to have played a joke on him. In 1943, the Soviet-German battlefield experienced the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Battle of Kursk, and Nazi Germany changed from an all-out offensive to a defensive, and the numerical disadvantage became increasingly obvious.
In order to expand the army, new recruits had to be recruited throughout the country. Originally, Herold, who had been expelled, should not be in the list, but at this time, the Nazi Party could not care about picky eaters, and was recruited into the army, even as cannon fodder. Herold was forced to join the army.
However, because he was always reluctant to use a gun, he could only be a handyman in the army, responsible for cleaning the chimney of the barracks, which was a professional counterpart, and he continued to shine in a different place. However, the situation of the Germans on the battlefield was getting worse and worse, and Herold was forced to turn into a regular army, failing to defend his moral bottom line. As for how he changed, I can only say that the German's iron fist is too hard.
In the blink of an eye, the time came to 1945, and Herold was no longer the cowardly man who did not dare to take a gun, he was smashed by the iron fist into a qualified warrior, and as a paratrooper, he participated in the defense of the homeland. Surprisingly, Herold excelled in battle, single-handedly destroying two Allied tanks using iron fist anti-tank bazookas — Herold was worthy of the Iron Fist lesson — for which he was awarded the Iron Cross Of the Second Class.
Iron Fist anti-tank bazooka
At this time, although Herold was not good at words, he was brave, and because of his bravery, he was respected by other comrades-in-arms and was regarded as a "hero". As the saying goes, "Fall to death a hero immediately, drown a person who can drown in the water" "often walk by the river, where there are shoes that are not wet", Herold is no exception.
During a battle, he broke up with the troops. But the surrounding comrades did not know it, believing that he had escaped. At that time, the German army hated deserters and those who spread the word of failure, otherwise they would not have "hanged civilians" as stated at the beginning. So the gendarmes began to hunt down Herold. Herold himself knew that he had not reported to the company for several days, and he could not say clearly when he returned, and even so, run.
Hiding in a tree hole to avoid being hunted down by gendarmes The figure is derived from the stills from the movie "Captain Fake"
The process of escaping is very tragic, it can be said that it is "hungry and thirsty, Xiaoxing stays overnight", eating a meal without eating, and seeing that there is no way out. Herold stumbled upon a bombed-out military jeep whose owner had been killed in a previous attack. Herold hurried over to look for food, and after rummaging around, he found a perfect box, opened it, and inside was a set of Luftwaffe captain's uniforms, apparently belonging to some of the officers who had died.
A bold idea came into Herold's mind— to impersonate an Air Force captain to avoid the trouble of being hunted down.
Found the damaged jeep, get a piece of the captain's uniform The picture is derived from the stills of the movie "Fake Captain"
In fact, it went well, and as he walked down the road in his captain's uniform, no one came to interrogate him about his situation, and Herold passed many levels. Herold meant to run away, but fate pushed him in another direction.
One day, an accident occurred, and Herold met a lonely ordinary soldier on the road. The soldier was startled to see Herold, but reacted immediately, saluted him, and offered to obey Herold's leadership. In order not to expose his false identity, Herold took the man under his command.
In this way, more and more people took the initiative to come to him, and the fake captain slowly had an armed force of more than a dozen people.
Originally a deserter, suddenly there were people under his command, which made his personality change dramatically, and he became fierce and cruel, and the soldiers under his hands were often beaten and scolded, and he became very unfriendly to others. Once, when the group came to a bar, because the owner of the bar said that "the German army has recently lost the battle", Herold came forward to beat the bar owner and seriously injured him. After the incident, he also stole all the money from the bar in the name of a fine.
In 1945, the German army was defeated all the way, the military discipline was loose, and the robbery of soldiers was very serious, and Herold's practice was not excessive at the time. But what happened next was the beginning of his transformation into a demon.
On April 11, 1945, Herold and his party arrived at Assen Prison, and a tragedy was about to begin. This is the scene we talked about at the beginning of the article.
In fact, when he took over the prison, Herold had three paths before him: first, to maintain the status quo ante; second, to release the deserters; and third, to execute them.
We normal people will definitely choose the first two, even if we don't let them go, locking them up here is nothing more than eating two pounds of grain, but because of this captain's uniform, Herold's personality has changed greatly, he has no sympathy for these deserters, in fact, he should have been locked up in prison like these people, waiting for the trial of fate, or died at the hands of the gendarmes, the corpses in the countryside.
Continue with the story that began. After Herold and his party ran out of the prison, they did not idle and came to a small town. Here, they committed a series of massacres of civilians and even organized an interim military tribunal to arrest those who spread defeated statements, shooting men and raping women. Fortunately, the Allies advanced quickly, and they stayed in the town for a few days before they could escape. By this time, however, at least 20 innocent civilians had been killed.
Skynet was restored, and Herold was captured the day after he escaped. Because he met a real officer, this officer recognized his false identity at a glance. His uniform was too big to be custom-made, and the leather shoes on his feet were also worn by ordinary soldiers, not what a captain should wear.
I believe that many people have noticed this detail, but they have not debunked this lie. The warden was happy because someone was responsible for him. Herold's soldiers were cathartic because they could bully others and vent their emotions in that unfortunate era.
However, since Herold was recognized, he could not be allowed to continue, so he was court-martialed.
The most ironic scene took place, in which the military tribunal acquitted Herold on the grounds that his actions were loyalty to his country and a deterrent to cowards. The court-martial restored him to his status as an ordinary soldier and prepared to send him back to his former unit to continue his service. Just then, Hitler committed suicide, Germany was completely paralyzed, and Herold fled.
Germany surrendered, and this time he had no use getting the marshal's uniform, and Herold had to steal for a living. In May 1945, while he was stealing a bakery, he was discovered by British gendarmes and arrested. At first, the British army did not pay much attention to this thief, after all, Germany had just been defeated, and the security basically depended on dogs.
However, as the British investigated, they found that the man who had been arrested was not an ordinary German soldier, but an executioner with blood-stained hands, and his actions were well known, and one of the most wanted orders on the Allied side was his. So the British hurried to interrogate him and soon arrested his other accomplices.
The picture of the person executed by Herold's gang is derived from the stills of the movie "The Counterfeit Captain"
In just 10 days, the men, who had been investigated, had killed at least 125 men, soldiers and unarmed civilians who had laid down their arms. On August 29, 1946, Herold was tried in Oldenburg and sentenced to death for his extremely cruel tactics, and the court finally decided to behead him with the most brutal guillotine. Herold was only 21 years old.
Poster for the movie Captain Fake
The story was later adapted into the movie "Captain Fake", the whole movie is in black and white, very depressing, want to see friends, look for themselves.
It is because of one uniform that the fate of so many people can be changed, and more than 100 people have died tragically under the butcher's knife. But when you think about it, it's not surprising at all.
In the 60s of the last century, Stanford University in the United States made a famous experiment "Stanford Prison Experiment". The experimenters took 24 volunteers, half prisoners and half prison guards, and put them in a real prison for 14 days to observe their changes.
Unexpectedly, the experiment was only 6 days old and was forced to be suspended. Because everyone is deeply involved in their role. Prison guards began to arbitrarily beat and humiliate prisoners, and prisoners also considered themselves guilty, and all kinds of ugly things began to appear. You know, less than a week ago, these 24 volunteers were adults with normal minds and integrity. And their personalities change so quickly that they are beyond everyone's imagination.
The conclusion of the Stanford prison experiment is this: the environment can slowly change people's personality, but the situation can immediately change a person's personality.
Herold was like this, a simple identity transformation that turned an easy-going, upright, and kind man who didn't even want to use a gun into a murderous demon who didn't blink. Human nature is truly one of the most untrustworthy things.