Hitlers Meereskämpfer: Kampfschwimmer und Torpedomänner im Zweiten Weltkrieg | Doku

Goods were Hitler's secret weapon in the war, the darkest and most real, we chose their order to sabotage ships, bridges and port facilities. Now it is up to us who are ready for a suicide mission in a senseless war. I think about it Then I think I've seen bad movies that followed in Blind Obedience until the end, an elite force that I could trust one hundred percent. They were willing to sacrifice themselves and almost no one knew who they were until today. In the summer of 1942, the famous marine explorer Hans Hass began an underwater expedition like never before.

Hass tested a completely new diving device. For the first time you can move freely underwater for up to an hour. His diving device barely produces air bubbles. He floats almost silently in the water. Also on board is Alfred von Wurzeln, a friend from his time as students in Vienna, from the Wehrmacht and from the expedition. He is especially fascinated by the military possibilities of the new diving device. Ideal for secret acts of underwater sabotage. Full of enthusiasm for the war, he noted in his diary in 1942, when he was diving in the underwater wreckage of the harbor or swimming at dusk in the harbor, the idea of ​​military use of swimmers.

It never rests. What chance would there be of reaching a foreign ship or port without being seen? Some nights I couldn't sleep. Every minute he had an idea, one more daring than the other, the idea of ​​combat. swimmers and Alfred von In the ocean your teacher will guide you somehow, he did this expedition and was totally safe underwater in the dark so it doesn't matter at all and he was a great support for us if we knew. he was with us and nothing could happen to us, so he practically brought us into this matter, which raged underwater at the end of 1942.

Immediately after his return from the Aegean, he presented to the military his idea of ​​​​a combat swimmer, initially in vain. , and in the end I joined the navy and I explained to him how one sends a business at the end he says sorry, they see three or four people from the missing English fleet and of course I'm not interested, then we were introduced to the general. And when people found out that we were already free outside for those wanted. To conduct more open water exercises there, generals should not send bearded young men to rest, but send combat swimmers to the front.

Hitler still thinks in larger dimensions, gigantic battleships, the Turks help the Nazis to their final victory, the Tirpitz, the largest German battleship at that time, a myth that Hitler did not see useful for a small special unit like the Kampfschwimmer, but this would suddenly change in late 1943. English saboteurs placed mines under the stairs and put the battleship out of action for months. A shock for the naval leadership, which had to reconsider the idea of ​​combat swimmers as a new weapon in maritime warfare, but now the Kriegsmarine must look for recruits for a secret commando in Kiel.

The best sports swimmers of the Third Reich train here. The so-called swimming competition group is actually a show group that becomes Kriegsmarine volunteers through demonstrations. They are record swimmers, even world record holders, none of them know what their new task will be. The young swimmer Rolf Commissar is only ordered to leave for a special unit for swimmers. They would all be selected people, practically all competitive swimmers. of the Kiel Navy, because the condition was to receive the beautiful counterattack zone at the beginning of January 1944. In Kiel, the first 20 swimmers, many of whom hoped to survive the war as members of the group, were ordered to march towards Italy. of swimming competitions without They are being deployed to the front, but now they have been ordered to the small town of Valdano, at the foot of the Dolomites.

Instructor Alfred von Lucerne feels his wrath in the Wadan pool. He wants Alfred von Lucerne to turn them into an elite force. for Hitler's war. Sport swimmers must become combat swimmers. With training and military exercises he made them submissive. He lets them swim and dive for hours. Italian combat swimmers serve as role models. They also train in Valdano and are ahead of them in their training. We are forced to walk hundreds of kilometers. The training was hard. First of all, we taught the Germans that a person who does this job must one day be someone with water.

He feels just as comfortable in water as he does on land. He shouldn't feel any difference at all. He has to have a water element. Each of us could even sleep in the water. We were so used to it that it didn't matter. Additionally, swimmers are trained as solo fighters. The Nazis call it a marine sport of destruction. Hand-to-hand combat training is vital for planned missions behind enemy lines. His objective is to increase his chances of returning from the human material mission, Nazi propaganda will then formulate it like this, young volunteers together like him, the toughness compared to the audacity of the soldiers and the skill, resistance and tenacity of the athlete in a stop in the forest, the swimmers. for the first time also his combat suit made of rubber under a comfortable suit for the heat.

A combination of gray fabric is placed on it to protect the rubber suit and a new oxygen cycle diving device like the one used by marine researcher Hans Hass yes We are used to swimming in a swimsuit, yes, that makes you think of 2 for bricklayers in Cyprus. You have to be very careful because you get colossal buoyancy from the suit because there is air in it because you have nothing else. except the shoes a little heavier and you have to be careful to balance exactly, that means we have each other. We put on a sheet that was balanced so that we floated exactly in the water.

We had no more buoyancy but we also had no under. buoyancy. When we exhale we dive into the depths alone. In Walda New, no one knows who the Germans are who do so much sport in the pool. Well camouflaged, they live under the roof of the covered pool. They pretend There are wounded soldiers who are here to recover. Also on the other side of the Alps is a secret from the city at the SS Juncker school in Bad Tölz. At the same time, a second student combat group is being formed. The pool, trained during the day, belongs to the young SS cadre, who after sunset there are marine soldiers in their covered pool next to the SS Juncker, at night they did not swim.

No one knew except him, Otto Skorzeny, SS Sturmbannführer. In postwar trials, he was later called the most dangerous man in Europe. Hitler's man by special orders. In September '43, Dios Seni freed the Italian fascist leader Mussolini and brought him into his leadership, but I think this was rejected, even by the highest level from the Haier cover band to his layman, because our top boss He then said that that is out of the question, Marine is still Marine, he is still SS and we say so. We were lucky not to join the SS. He retained command of the combat swimmers under Rear Admiral Helmut Hey.

The new small combat unit of the Kriegsmarine was officially created on April 20, 1944. It was Hitler's birthday. Combat swimmers celebrated the day with a parade in the woods. In the summer of 1944, German troops in northern Italy hunt partisans. Bloody fighting is also taking place in the Valdano area. Around 200 resistance fighters are hiding in the mountains. The more brutal the German occupiers are against them, the stronger their resistance will be for the German combat swimmers. It is increasingly dangerous to move freely. One Sunday afternoon, four of them return from a hike in the mountains. They are walking through the town of Bongha, very close. to Valdano, it is June 11, 1944.

We were having lunch when we saw the Germans coming. Right from the mountains and taking photos for 22-year-old SS combat swimmer Hermann Georges, the mountain hike ends abruptly. The four German soldiers ran down this path. The partisans were at a high point. Some of them ran up the mountain when they saw the Germans. They hid behind this house when the Germans came there, shot and killed one of them, Hermann Georges. The other Germans fled to Valdano to report to their command. The fighter command left Valdano to retaliate against the German soldiers. When they reached the village, they called the 80 residents and separated the women and children from the men.

The men were tied up and led to this embankment. The German soldiers stood here, shot and killed the 17 men an hour later. All the houses burned. They destroyed everything that was here. The Germans came and expelled us from the houses and We began to bring our men. My husband had half of his skull torn off. I was 13 years old when I saw the dead people lying on the ground, although I... When I saw all the murdered men, I expected to see my My father and my brother were alive again, but they were also dead. The entire male population of Borger was wiped out.

A bloodthirsty massacre committed by German soldiers was the shameful chapter in the history of combat swimmers because, according to witness statements, they also participated in the executions, some more, some less, we participated in the reprisals, we wanted them to participate , but they didn't let us go up with them and there were agreements but we felt very sorry. because the Wehrmacht did what we did because I retaliated My was our comrade I as if of course he had been something to us no but we were not allowed to live under the spectators it was a pity we wanted to leave the premises I needed I had married for fourth time and on June 11 they killed my husband I was pregnant my son only survived three days the combat swimmers are leaving their new headquarters is the island of Alga in front of Venice after basic training in the pool they now begin their training in the sea Their barracks are an old Benedictine monastery that first has to be converted for their purposes.

The island of Alga is also a rest for the soldiers at home. The saboteurs must not be discovered under any circumstances. They swear absolute secrecy. Many of them still feel linked to the experience shared to this day, combat swimmers train for the first time in somewhat realistic conditions off Al Ghad, in the open sea, every day they swim ten kilometers in the Venice lagoon in August 1944, 170 men live and In the small island not far from the train is the wreck of the Tampico, here the combat swimmers practice their attacks, so our steamer Tampico laughs, our bombs are placed, we practice diving from port to starboard to take away the fear of the sensation to be.

Under water under steam. We did it repeatedly at night, often after training under the Tampico, the effort of the combat swimmers written on their faces. Most of them dive into murky sea waters for the first time. They develop special swimming. technique. They move in the water almost standing up, so that only their head sticks out. They move forward with small fin movements. A net over their head serves as camouflage behind them they throw a torpedo mane towards the ship first on the side of the ship. use your diving device silently slip under the ship with the bomb a moment when the closest fighters are still having panic attacks they didn't know if they were on the ship 50 now forward and More beautiful on the left or right just got Better until you saw the light on the other side again.

It also happened that you came back to life on the same side. Fear is your biggest opponent during diving under the Tampico, as soon as swimmers feel the hull of the boat above. they, begin to convulsively organize their breath, the lime in the diving device becomes moist until it becomes deadly, danger of carbon dioxide poisoning, then a man appears through the windows and practically falls asleep and if he did so very slowly, that and realized that Peter the If your partner doesn't You don't react immediately, then it was nice. Several times a day you plunge into the dark depths.

You rehearse the gravity of the situation and push yourself to your limits. Your coach Alfred von Oceana pushes you relentlessly. Without a doubt, there is something inside you that makes you believe that nothing can happen. We didn't have any stupid thoughts for the introduction, then we tried to dissuade them: you don't have to be afraid, you will emerge on your own. One of them won. He no longer appears. This is the well-known German freestyle swimmer Werner Berlin, who did not submerge until nine days after the accident in his empire in the Venice lagoon to bury his partner on the nearby island of the dead.

It should not be the only death during training losses threaten the morale of the troops there is no room for feelings we are full of movement we returned from the island after two more he immediately put on the suit and dove immediately so don't leave it If any fear arises and you think about what What happened to him or something like that, we did it immediately.Their exercises also include secret missions in Venice. They are supposed to test their camouflage and prove that they are saboteurs. They secretly untie gondolas from their anchors. They steal food from the market and take the loot unnoticed to their training camp.

This ghostly occurrence on the canals soon becomes the talk of the town. No one can explain who is behind these strange events. Combat swimmers feel this confirms this. His pranks are also funny to them, but to one of them he becomes a shooting cop and since he keeps moving and does nothing, he didn't get shot in the chest without missing a pinprick. the lung and he still talks about war, he actually had to pull the knife out of him and then they took it out and we took him to the hospital June 1944 the war is coming.

Now the combat swimmers are no longer safe in their island hideouts. The allies are bombing the trade fair before your eyes. Oil refineries are burning in the same month. In the same month the allies landed in Normandy. The invasion progresses faster than Hitler's Germany expected it to succeed. The Allied advance triggers the first deployment of combat swimmers to the invasion front. On June 21, 1944, Rear Admiral Heyer gave the operational order. The sea fighters immediately receive the order to head to the Atlantic coast. The frogmen must achieve what the Wehrmacht can no longer do with the invasion fleet.

Some combat swimmers are knocked out of action against the Allied navy. When they arrive, the sea is stormy. They fight against high waves and not against enemy ships that are much further from the coast than expected. The combat swimmers' attack on the invasion fleet fails. There was a bow of a ship that we had already taken aerial photos of, which was five kilometers from the coast. We could have gotten there, but since the aerial photos were a week old, the entire ship was taken out of the castle forest and it was impossible for us to get there.

Other missions on the coast also fail due to the superior strength of the invasion fleet. Combat swimmers can't do anything anymore. They are leaving for the moment. They will soon perform swimming missions again, but in a completely different way than can be imagined at this point after their failure in the invasion sound. The Kriegsmarine relies on another supposed miracle weapon of the small battle group, the so-called human torpedoes, a steerable torpedo in which a person has space, including a live-fire torpedo. With them, lone fighters like Walter Gerhold are sent to the invasion front, even though the weapon is technically immature.

The Nazi regime used all the armor it could muster in these days of war without any consideration. In the cabin it was up to the thighs or up to the hips because there was always some water outside and above the belt line were the goods and through the body heat. He also decided the dome and then had to carry a cloth with him. He had to clean the dome again and again with this book to be able to see ahead on the afternoon of July 5, 1944. Gerhold continues to stab the one with his one-man torpedo Atlantic Coast into the sea around 3 o'clock He and 23 other torpedo bombers arrived in their area of ​​operation a suicide mission because each of them only had one shot after the effortless shot there was a big bang with bells ringing in the area around which they said Yes, the fact that the cross with the letter always be waiting for destruction means throwing something out there, they illuminated it with spotlights and wanted to get more shots in the media.

Meanwhile, I was so close to the ships that I was able to reach the destroyer. The people walking around the oven saw the cigarettes shining like a dog and ran back and forth, but I was lying in the blind spot and then he was born and I was. Then I headed home after the North Star pointed around 4:30, the sun is also shining, it was after an hour after I shot at the sun that I was able to build myself according to the sun in the east and I had to where There is the sun because it is to the east and to the west it is home small intelligent points become visible in the transformation then there are more heroes again a British frigate has sunk Nazi propaganda mercilessly exploits the blind will of young people to sacrifice what they know They have dared to do and what they have experienced is written on their faces - the type of new German soldier to whom unconditionality gives them strength - they all show themselves as self-sacrificing soldiers who are willing to sacrifice themselves according to the pleasure of the Commander in Chief.

The head of the Kriegsmarine, Grand Admiral Dönitz, lets the lone fighters of the parish association appear on the news for publicity. From the point of view of the National Socialists, Walter Gerhold is one of the few war heroes in times of decline, but Hitler's madness always requires war More victims, prepared soldiers, the propaganda machine runs at full speed. To the special delight of Hitler's boys, the artillery drivers brought an original man on video. Everyone can enter once and operate the levers and work. The cannon fodder of the future should also be enthusiastic about war, the torpedo bombers tell the Hitler Youth about their exploits what they say almost none of them return from missions this word suicide squad is heard so reluctantly by everyone who is still there today no we were suicide soldiers from the naval war command archives it is clear that there were association missions that have been described with the following terms: winkelried sacrifice kamikaze hunt full deployment and viking storm and behind each of these In general terms, it is about of a form of deployment in which the sacrifice of the lone fighter was basically expected in the lunchtime structure of September 17, the Anglo-Americans end up in the purchasing room, however, alone more than three parachutes and air in the regions with the stalled operation on the western border to return to normal with the large-scale airborne operation Market Garden, the Allied invasion army in the west achieves further advance on September 20, 44, the allies conquer the strategically important bridges from Nijmegen in Holland, the German troops no longer have anything to oppose the English and Americans.

Once again, combat swimmers must make the impossible possible. We had the task of bombing the air to reach the athlon II, but we didn't succeed either and that's why we fought. Swimmers were brought. Now they wanted to jump beyond the clouds from the deck: Twelve volunteers left Allgaier in the direction of Nijmegen to desperately try to stop the advance of the Allied troops. enemy. Combat swimmers have to cross seven kilometers of enemy territory in front and behind two bridges, a road bridge and a railway bridge, it is September 29, 44 to be in their element. It was going to be the most difficult task for Combat Swimmers so far because the river had a strong current and there was hardly any information about the conditions at the location.

It was not known that behind the highway bridge there was a pontoon, the aerial photos we saw before did not show it and So suddenly we found ourselves facing the pandemic. We were lucky for that, what we saw sometimes happened, but there were still some fires in Nijmegen, the bombings had an effect. Then we looked at the security guards under the bridge and then We had to drive the arrow car into the distance and we wanted to reach our destination by moonlight, the railway bridge near Nijmegen, and after a difficult battle with electricity We activate the explosive charge.

We heard the final version was flying, but we didn't do it. I didn't know I would be successful again. The railway bridge would be completely destroyed. The highway bridge would be damaged. From a military point of view, it was a success for the combat swimmers, but it turns out that the combat swimmers will be successful again. try to do it without any importance for the further course of the war after the bridge is blown up. Getting out of enemy territory as quickly as possible is a near-impossible task, as the morning slowly dawns while some combat swimmers hide, two of them drifting downstream. "They are discovered by the Dutch in a shipyard.

They pull the German frogmen out of the water. Rolf Wanderwerk was on the shore and watched the arrest. My father always got up very early and one morning at half past six in the morning he was on the balcony. He lives in the company premises and in the distance he saw two heads sticking out of the water. For them the time of day was not normal, especially not with these monsters, they wanted to run away, but it wasn't that easy, after everyone else in the rowboat was faster and my brother was standing with the shotgun and threatening, boy, if you don't come with me, you'll soon be treading water. "We were lucky that the English suddenly noticed us and essentially free us from the Dutch.

Not because we were rescued, but because otherwise the Dutch would have quickly wiped us out and that's why we were captured. Only two of the twelve original combatants The swimmers came Through propaganda, the lone fighters of one of the combat swimmers immediately after their return from them say that our opponents carried out an operation that belongs to the most audacious of all war, a war that can no longer be won by a For a long time, the German Reich is at the end, Berlin leaves at the beginning of 1945. Under the hail of bombs under Hitler, in his madness, he does not even think about surrendering to Big Off as his men use all their strength to escape. "Tönis increasingly sends combat swimmers on missions that are nothing more than blind action.

Often the water in the rivers is too cold for the combat swimmers' equipment and the allies are now above. Their attacks were well prepared. Almost every act of sabotage in the last months of the war failed So we asked, then we sank, that was not crucial for the war if we then sailed, we sank in the port of Zara and Split, what had to do What to do with the outcome of the war? They could have defeated the Greeks, but Hitler still relentlessly gives orders from the Führer's headquarters and there are still people who follow him.

Shortly before the end of the war, a message is received from radio at the Führer headquarters of a small combat-related company. Kriegsmarine. 1,000 lone fighters prepare for the battle for Berlin. The sender is Hitler's faithful follower, Dönitz. Two days later, another radio message from Dönitz , announces his resignation. For the personal protection of the leader, another 30 lone fighters from the parish association left for Berlin. Satisfied, it is not clear whether the men actually reached Berlin. Almost all files on combat swimmers and torpedo boats were destroyed. Barely anything remains of his myth. The lone fighters of the small association are with them.

The missions were sacrificed many times in a senseless sacrifice because the results were so poor that today one has to critically ask: was it still a militarily useful mission? On April 30, 1945, the last attack by combat swimmers took place on a bridge. on the Elbe. It was that day when Adolf Hitler committed suicide.