Chaos reigned in Germany during the dying days of the Third Reich.
A state that had held its people in an iron grip for years was crumbling, and military discipline
was breaking down. Enter Willi Herold, a deserter. He acquired a captain’s uniform, pulled together a
group of soldiers, then went on a booze-fuelled rampage through Elmsland. This is his story.
Willi Herold was born on September 11th 1925 in Lunzenau,
a small village in Saxony, Germany. He was a very ambitious child and
prone to taking unnecessary risks—an attitude he retained his whole life.
In 1935, he joined the Deutsches Jungvolk, the gateway organisation for the Hitler
Youth. The program was very similar to other scouting organisations of the time,
except it also included rigorous political indoctrination.
Willi wasn’t interested in Nazism, and instead conscripted the other boys into games of Cowboys
and Indians. This was explicitly forbidden, and Willi’s refusal to stop got him expelled.
After leaving school in 1940, 15-year-old Herold completed a three-year chimney sweeper’s
apprenticeship. But he only worked for three months before being conscripted into the Reich
Labour Service and sent to France to help build the Atlantic Wall.
At 18, he was conscripted into the 1st Parachute Division as a Fallschirmjager—or
paratrooper—and his cohort was one of the last to receive complete jump training.
Herold got his first taste of action in 1944, in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Atop the mountain
was a great abbey founded in 529 CE by Saint Benedict of Nursia. The Allies believed the
Germans were using it as an artillery observation post and called in the US Air Force to blow it up.
They did, and the Germans, who had not occupied the building due to an agreement with the Vatican,
emplaced themselves in the ruins. Herold was one of these men, and his unit became known as the
“Green Devils of Monte Cassino” after inflicting horrendous casualties on the advancing Allies.
Herold was promoted to Gefreiter during the battle and was later evacuated after taking
a bullet through the lung. He recovered and took leave at home in the summer of 1944.
Back in Lunzenau, he was never seen out of uniform and sported
an impressive set of war medals for one so young. Abusing the medals’ authority,
he took charge of a local Hitler Youth group and ordered them around like his own little platoon.
Many speculated Herold hadn’t earned his decorations, and the villagers eventually proved
it. He was laughed at rather than punished, and with his reputation in ruins, he left.
Chaos reigned in the final months of the Third Reich.
Allied armies encroached from the south and west, while in the east, a Soviet storm of retribution
was thundering toward Germany’s heartland. All Luftwaffe personnel who could hold a rifle, be
they desk-jockey or mechanic, were re-designated as paratroopers and sent to the front.
No German units were at full strength. Most had very little food and even less ammunition. Orders
weren’t getting through, and company-level officers were largely calling the shots.
Desertion was rife as untrained Volkssturmers and experienced veterans alike surrendered
to the Allies in droves. Men were shot in the street for cowardice by trigger-happy officials,
and children were hung from lamposts for stealing food. Everything was falling apart.
This was the world 19-year-old Gefreiter Herold was trying to survive in. He had
been transferred to the 6th Parachute Division and deployed to the western operational theatre,
but in mid-March, after a skirmish with British forces, became separated from his unit.
Getting lost during a battle was common for German forces during this stage of the war,
but it was also deadly. Any soldier found wandering alone was liable to
be shot for desertion, plus there was the ever-present threat of starvation.
While wandering along a road in search of his unit, Herold came across a wrecked car
containing luggage. As he ripped through the suitcases looking for something to eat,
he found a pristine Fallschirmjager captain’s uniform. It was a no-brainer. Herold tore
off his wet, filthy, ragged Gefreiter uniform and donned the captain’s one,
which was complete with campaign ribbons from Narvik and Crete. Once again wearing
decorations he hadn’t earned, Herold set off along the Dutch border towards Bentheim.
On the way, he came across an abandoned farmhouse and searched it for a bicycle. Two senior NCOs
from a different paratroop unit were inside, and Herold accidentally caught them looting the place.
In character, he rebuked them for not greeting a captain properly and ordered them to hurry back to
their unit. When Herold noticed the men followed his orders without question, his ego swelled.
However, a lone captain was just as suspicious as a lone soldier. Herold needed troops to command.
At Bentheim, Herold reported to the highest-ranked officer present, a major,
that his unit had been badly mauled in recent fighting and he needed some replacement
soldiers. The major agreed, signing command of two squads over to “Detachment Herold”
which, the major was told, was on a secret mission for Hitler.
The small force then made its way north to Meppen, picking up army stragglers,
desperados, and deserters along the way. By the time it got there, Herold commanded 60 soldiers.
He was greeted warmly by the Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of the town’s defences, and positively
overjoyed the man when he offered to help defend the town with his "entire artillery battery,
including a howitzer.” This was a lie. Herold had no artillery. But the Lieutenant-Colonel
didn’t know. He was so thankful he billeted Herold and his men in the best accommodation
in town, held a dinner for them, and provided them with ammo and gasoline. Herold was also
given command of a specialised scout unit and a platoon of stormtroopers.
It was here Herold was nearly undone. A pioneer captain began arresting members
of so-called Detachment Herold for desertion after finding their papers weren’t in order.
The men protested, and a fight nearly broke out before Herold stepped in. He flashed
his medals and acted terribly offended at the suggestion that his men weren’t loyal.
Embarrassed at being dressed down by a man who looked like a war hero, the officer backed down.
Days later, Meppen was attacked.
On both April 6th and 7th, Herold led his detachment into combat against the British
around Meppen. He had around 150 men under his command at this point but lost 60 of them during
the fight. Without artillery support, his men were easy targets for British tanks. The Allies
took the town on the 8th, and Detachment Herold retreated. In the proceeding days, Herold picked
up yet more desperate soldiers and launched an attack on the Allied-held town of Lathen. His men
had some success but were too few to capitalise on it. Captain Herold needed a larger force.
Continuing north, Herold heard from a Nazi official about a special camp for deserters called
Aschendorfermoor. This seemed like an ideal place for recruitment, so Herold led his men there.
On the way, a naval officer demanded to see his papers, which Herold claimed to have lost. He was
nearly taken into custody when, by sheer chance, the lieutenant colonel from Meppen arrived.
He recognised the man as Captain Herold of the 6th Parachute Division and told the officer about his
defence of the town. The man was convinced, and for a second time, Herold avoided destruction.
Herold was greeted as a saviour when he reached Aschendorfermoor Camp. The commandant, Schütte,
had far too many deserters to control, and escapes were becoming frequent.
He had requested an officer for a court-martial, and now,
standing before him, was a veritable war hero on a secret mission for Hitler.
He begged Herold to do something about the overpopulated camp. Herold obliged.
He obtained permission from the Gestapo to execute recaptured escapees, but this quickly
devolved into an orgy of violence. Like hounds from hell, Herold let his band of desperados
loose on the camp. They robbed the prisoners then went on a three-day torture and murder rampage,
killing 195 men. The surviving prisoners were turned loose and ordered to rejoin the
Wehrmacht in a nearby town, but all chose to surrender to an advancing Polish army instead.
For the next 11 days, Herold and his men went on a booze-fuelled looting spree through the
countryside, killing all who stood in their way. He was arrested by German police on April
30th and sent to a penal battalion, which he immediately deserted. By the war’s end,
Willi Herold, the [4]“Executioner of Elmsland,” was working as a chimney sweep in Wilhelmshaven.
Days later, the British arrested Herold for stealing bread.
He was recognised by a former Aschendorfermoor inmate and put on trial for war crimes. In 1946,
they made him and Detachment Herold dig up all the men they’d murdered. At his trial, Herold said:
“I can't really say why I shot all those people. My only reason was that neither myself nor my men
were enthusiastic about the war, and the shootings allowed us to avoid going back to the front.”
When questioned as to why he’d put on the persona of Captain Herold,
he said, “I wanted to form a combat group and stop the advance of the British troops, [and]
I succeeded. At that time the German troops were fleeing in disorder … I was lucky enough to find
other people who were not afraid of anything. With these people I was able to carry out [missions],
even if they did not influence the course of the war, they still stopped the enemy.”
Herold's British interrogator, Theodore Pantcheff, wrote: “Mentally and morally,
he wasn't quite put together, but in those days that was true of many people. Basically, for him,
it was the biggest and greatest Cowboys and Indians game of his life,
only with live ammunition on real people. A terrible shame.
Under more fortunate circumstances, he would have made a damn good orderly.”
Herold was found guilty and executed at Wolfenbüttel prison on November 14th
1946. He was 21 years old.
THAT was the story of Willi Herold, the opportunistic deserter who pretended to
be a captain at the end of World War Two. But what do YOU think? How do
YOU think he kept up the act so long? Why do YOU think so many chose to follow him?
What would YOU have done if you’d found the uniform? Let us know in the comments!