<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > father's bequest</h1>
In the summer of 1932, on the streets of Szczecin, the third largest port in the Weimar Republic, a teenager was crying bitterly, and he could not understand why his energetic father had become a bloody corpse after participating in a demonstration. Is it because he is a member of the German Communist Party? Is it because he is against fascism?
The co-workers who traveled with their father could not even provide the names of their enemies, only that the Nazi SA had done it, and the Weimar authorities could not provide any help, and the Communists were no more popular than the Nazis in their eyes. What made the teenager even more angry was that less than a year later, the mustache of the Nazi Party seized power, and the murderer was doomed to not be tried.
Filled with grief and indignation, the 16-year-old finally understood what his father was insisting on, and he inherited his father's political views and joined the German Communist Youth League. Schmenker was convinced that he and his father were right, even as the entire country fell into racist fervor, even if it was constantly monitored by the Nazi Party.
Szczecin is a beautiful port city, but it is now part of Poland
< H1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > alternative artillery</h1>
After his father's death, Schmenker had to take on family responsibilities, going to the brick factory where his father worked, and then moving to work in another factory in Bytom. The not-so-easy life did not allow the man to compromise, and he increasingly believed that the Nazis would only lead the country into the abyss or create a society without justice.
The funny thing is that Schmenker did not provoke the Nazi Party, the guys came to provoke him, and in December 1938, the Wehrmacht sent a paper transfer order to Schmenkel to train as an artilleryman. Schmenker, who had to enlist, was extremely upset, and he used anti-war propaganda and passive training to express his dissatisfaction.
The military's response is also very simple, since you can't train well, then go to prison to work well, anyway, it is not us who suffer losses. In the Torgau military prison, Schmenkel began his 18-month inmate career. But this sentence may not have been complete, and on June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa began, Germany needed more troops, and Schmenker had its own plans.
Interestingly, Torgau, who served a sentence in Schmenker, was also the place where the Sumerians were trained
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > years of flight</h1>
In October 1941, Schmenker told the guards that he was willing to fight on the Eastern Front, and he was soon sent to the 186th Infantry Division, stationed in Smolensk. There he wrote his last letter to his wife, "Now I know what I have to do", and he decided to join the Red Army in fighting against fascism until the liberation of his homeland.
In late November, he left the barracks and hid in a local village, trying to get in touch with the Red Army. Unfortunately, the old man had never learned Russian systematically, and could only use the words "Lenin, Stalin, and Thiermann (the leader of the German Communist Party at that time)" to go back and forth, which helped him get food and shelter from the locals, and in return, Schmänkel would help people with housework.
As he slowly moved eastward, his good fortune ran out one day, and the Wehrmacht captured him as a deserter. But the persistent three-word combination also worked, and a guerrilla group called "Death of Fascism" also heard of his eccentric behavior and rescued him at the moment of a single attack.
The propaganda word for the death of fascists guerrillas
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the legend of Ivan the Elder</h1>
Schmenker made it clear to the guerrillas that he wanted to fight fascism, but the guerrillas did not trust him and refused to give him weapons. Unbeknownst to Schmenker with his binoculars, the guerrillas would shoot him directly if he made the slightest mistake.
Fortunately, Schmenker was indeed not undercover, and he quickly proved himself in battle, and the formally trained marksmanship made the guerrillas envious, and the amazing performance in repeated battles made them like the German more and more, so the "death of the fascists" gave him a vicious Russian name - Ivan Ivanovich.
Ivan the Elder's fame over there grew, so much so that even Berlin heard about it, and the Seven-Tricked Nazi finally offered a nice bounty. When the local residents caught him 8 hectares of land, a cow and a house, and the German soldiers could get 2,000 marks and two months of leave, the old Comrade Ivan said that he was not worth that much money.
Old Ivan, who served on both sides
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > soul breaks Minsk</h1>
On January 23, 1943, the German army launched a large-scale offensive against the "Death of Fascists" guerrillas, and the guerrillas of about 4,000 people lost 1,500 men in just a few weeks. This incident also reminded the Red Army that the use of ivan the elder could not be used too frequently.
In March of that year, Ivan the Elder traveled to Moscow, where he received a Red Banner Medal and, after a short period of training, was sent to western Belarus to work on sabotage behind enemy lines. Fluency in German and Germanic faces became a natural advantage, and the elder Ivan once became the "deputy commander" of the sabotage organization, tossing the stick to death.
But there were also great risks in working behind enemy lines, and in December 1943 Ivan the Elder took a few men on a mission and never returned. The chaotic war and heavy casualties made neither the Red Army nor the Soviet Army pay much attention to him at that time, After all, Belarus was not the Smolensk region, and the Germans who joined the Red Army were gradually forgotten...
Schmenker's widow
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > glory behind him</h1>
Fast forward to 1961, when soviet security services accidentally investigated the destruction of German police in Orsha during the war, which saved many of their predecessors. Apparently, the sabotage was led by Fritz Schmänkel, and the name reappeared more than a decade later.
The KGB spent three years piecing together all his details and ascertaining his final whereabouts, and in December 1943 the mission failed, Ivan the Elder was arrested, and the following year he was taken to Minsk. On 22 February, he was killed by the shooting squad, and the last mercy of the Germans was to let him celebrate his 28th birthday.
The KGB, of course, did things very meticulously, not only digging out all the details, but also finding Schmenker's widow and children, and when all the documents were reported, the authorities posthumously awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" and the Lenin Medal, and an aviation wing in East Germany and a street in Berlin were also given his name.
His monument
History sometimes has a bit of fatalistic black humor, and after a series of posthumous glories, the two Germans were unified, the Soviet bear fell apart, and the name Fritz Shmeker was gradually forgotten for the second time...