Avescope HORROR

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Perhaps you’ve seen the German movie Downfall, or you have seen one of those ‘Hitler Reacts’ meme vids? The very thing that Hitler is yelling about in the movie are the positions and the lack of effectiveness of his southern defences. In reality, Hitler believed that General Steiner and the 4th Panzer Corps would be able to hold off the Soviets. What he couldn’t understand was that Steiner, Busse and Heinrici’s men were a fraction of what they had been, and the men they had? Were done. They had little ammunition and fewer men. Hitler had been told that Steiner had an army (100-300 000 men) and what Steiner had was more like a corps (30-50 000 men) Hitler ordered Steiner to plug the gap and defend Berlin, and because Steiner couldn’t and wouldn’t not send his men in as wastage, he did not. This allowed the Red Army to completely encircle Busse and his men at Halbe. Some, including Hitler, called this cowardice. I personally believe that Steiner didn’t want to waste the resources he had in what he knew would be a meat grinder. Better to fight another day than die in a fool’s errand. The result was an absolute slaughter over six days. There were three breakout attempts by the encircled Ninth Army and the last is amazingly somewhat successful. Over 30 000 men were able to escape and join the General Wenck and the Twelth army to the west. The other 120 000? Were killed or captured. Primarily? Killed. The Red Army was in no mood for acquiring more prisoners at this point in the war. Far better military historians than I have discussed the battles for Berlin, and if one would like the in depth, I highly recommend reading Anthony Beevor’s Berlin: the Downfall, 1945 and Le Tissier’s Slaughter at Halbe. Military casualties are a fact of war, but it is what happened after Halbe that is the true horror. There has always been a code amongst combatants that the dead on the field should be allowed an honourable burial. This didn’t happen at Halbe. Marshal Zhukov declared that all the German soldiers killed at Halbe were enemies of the Soviet Union and should rot where they lay. And they did. At least 40 000 soldiers decomposed in the fields and forests around Halbe. Zhukov said that anyone who buried the dead would also be shot as an enemy of the Soviet Union. But a Lutheran minister defied this. He snuck out into the woods at night and attended to the fallen. Eventually the local people joined him. The soldiers were buried where they lay. Some on roadsides. Some in gardens. Some in the forests.To this day around Berlin, the scars of these battles can be found as well as the remains of the men who fought them. <strong>Avescope</strong> | 25
In 1947, Minister Ernst Teichmann came as a visitor to Halbe and saw the state of environs. He got permission from the occupying forces to do something about the state of these corpses. The Soviet need for vengeance had decreased over the intervening years and now an interest in the hearts and minds of the people of Brandenburg had begun. From 1948 to 1950, Teichmann searched for remains and in 1951, was allowed to build an official military cemetery for German war dead. It is the largest in Germany. He also became the official minister in Halbe at that time. 24 000 thousand people are now buried in the Waldfriedhof Halbe, of which 15 000 are labelled “Unbekannt”. Unknown. Men without a name or a face. Men who whose bodies were left to the elements for so long that there was nothing left to identify them. Fathers. Sons. Grandfathers. Grandsons. By the end of the war, boys as young as fourteen and men over sixty who could still fire a gun were being conscripted into the German army. Think what you will of Hitler and his government, the men who were fighting by the end of the war were hardly ideologues. Most of them were desperate conscripts just trying to survive. When I went to Halbe, I visited with a friend who had a deep, personal connection to those haunted forests. Somewhere, resting in one of those unknown graves or sleeping in a tangle of roots in the forest is my friend’s great-uncle. My friend is a born and bred Spandauer, with family ties going back in the Berlin suburb for well over 150 years. His grandfather and his great uncle both went off to war. Only his grandfather came home. The last letter that the family has is from around April 15, 1945, with the uncle was near Cottbus and still alive. The letter says he’s coming back to defend Berlin and hopes to see the family soon. Then silence. The family had years of wondering if he was alive and and a prisoner of war, but no. No notifications of any kind ever came. My friend traced his great-uncle’s unit and they were at Halbe. Somewhere, his great-uncle is still there. <strong>Avescope</strong> | 26
Page 1: AVESCOPE HORROR O C T O B E R 2 0 1
Page 5 and 6: Horror. A feeling of extreme shock
Page 7 and 8: The Shape Justine Oh ME Avescope |
Page 9 and 10: October 13, 54 AD Hong Kong Septemb
Page 11 and 12: Except it wasn’t. Rentzhog had be
Page 13 and 14: the New York Times even joked that
Page 15 and 16: It didn’t come as a shock that no
Page 17 and 18: Catherine Jackson Avescope | 14
Page 19 and 20: Inside, I got kinda cold. Outside?
Page 21: Bela - Joanna Hatton Avescope | 18
Page 24 and 25: On one dreary exercise in September
Page 26 and 27: The Horror of Halbe Photos: Modern:
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Page 34 and 35: To End The Suffering Anike Kirsten
Page 36 and 37: With a nod, Timmy lowered himself i
Page 38 and 39: The Hollows Sleep Guendolen Jacobs
Page 40 and 41: Dela cursed once Gage disappeared i
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Page 44 and 45: Eric Danes was awake, and something
Page 46: Moamar knew that many scholars of t

Avescope HORROR

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