"I have never been anywhere near at ease with hearing the Germans did not know about the atrocities going on with the Jews, for one very simple reason . . . Near Munich . . .and I can picture it to this day so well . . . You could actually walk up along the barbed wire and look down into the concentration camp . . . and this is in 1952. And I swear to this day, there was an odor coming from there. And you could not live there, being a German, and not know what was going on in this concentration camp . . ."
Harry Thies was born in Arkwright, New York in 1930. Harry tells of the extreme poverty his family and farming community faced during the Depression and long after. He describes the dramatic impact World War II had on his life and community including rationing, labor shortages, and the German prisoner of war camp in town. He shares his memories of writing to his uncles overseas and tells of how changed they were when they came home. After the war, Harry attended high school and was offered several football scholarships to top schools. Because of his family's dire financial situation, he turned them down. In 1951, Harry volunteered for the draft and was selected to serve in the Army Security Agency. Stationed in Germany, he copied Russian code. Harry provides detailed insight as to how the Germans received the American soldiers and the friction between the all white Army Security agency and the all Black trucking company that shared a compound. In this segment, he tells of the denial that gripped the German people in regards to World War II and describes post war life in Germany.
I finished school and I went over on a troop ship, which was an experience, to Austria, and was stationed very, very near Hitler's lair in Bergesgarten . . . I was transferred to a place near Stuttgart, Munich Germany called Heilbron . . . Our compound was on a hillside and there was a mass grave with over, I don't know, 15,000 Germans buried in it. And, for example we were never allowed to blow the horns on the trucks. . . out of respect . . . cause there was a mass grave right there.
Heilbron was down in the valley and we were up on one of the slopes . . . One of the interesting things by the way is that all the time I was in Germany I never came across a German who fought the Americans, they all fought the Russians. That was their way . . We copied the Russian code . . . radio code . . . One night we were sitting at a place called Hof, Germany [laughs] and all at once, it looked like [the Russians] were heading in our direction, and we though "Oh God, we've had it!" We didnt, but boy there was some dirty underwear there that night, I got to tell you . . .
We were at this Heilbron and they absolutely hated us, the people in town . . . One night one of our guys got drunk and went over the border and we went over there and got him back. God, coming back from the border one night, and I got some pictures of the wreck there, we were going down this hill, now it was two Jimmys, the big Army trucks. One had a radio hut on the back of it, and in the radio hut was a dog. The other one had another code hut on it. Going down this long steep hill, going back from Hof to Heilbron, we had to go through Nuremberg to get there. We were going down this hill in a snowstorm and there's a guy with a flashlight waving. So the first driver going down thought he was to go another way. He made a left turn, went right over this hill, and you see the picture of the truck. The only one that got hurt was the dog. Our truck got wrecked. Anyhow, down the bottom of the hill, what happened the Germans drove tandem trucks . . . and he had jackknifed also. Down the bottom of this hill was a little cluster of homes maybe, I don't remember, it was just a small village. So we went down the next day for food and warmth, and they wouldn't have anything to do with us. We were out there for three days and two nights, and it got so bad, that we were actually firing at people in the night because they were trying to . . . get at us. That's how they felt about us. They didn't want us there, they hated us. We did some stupid things too. To this day, the German language, the German words that I remember are not words I would use in polite conversation, but that's what we used there.
Were you still carrying the image of the Nazi with you?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. We were not well liked. I think you could understand why if you saw the destruction. Now this is like six years after the war. But whole, I mean block after block of Nuremberg, there was nothing but piles of rubbish like you see in the photos . . . They had no military service then . . . Back then because they were still trying to rebuild the infrastructure, and the sewers, a lot of the sewage was still out. Honey wagons were tanks on wagons, they came along and collected the people's human sewage. I'm talking in big towns now. Munich, Stuttgart, Heilbron. . . We had machine guns set up. Now this was in peacetime . . . Fifty caliber machine guns set up around the house to protect ourselves. That's how we lived out there. Again, I'm not sure if it was all the Germans because we were copying the Russian code, it was no secret . . .
Going through post-war Germany, did you see any of the concentration camps?
Yeah. Yeah, its-- I have never been at ease with this thing, speaking from a personal viewpoint. I have never been anywhere near at ease with hearing the Germans did not know about the atrocities going on with the Jews, for one very simple reason . . . Near Munich you could, and we did it, you could actually walk, and I can picture it to this day so well, its on a street with, its a long street with an incline, and you, and this is in 1952. You could actually walk up along the barbed wire and look down into the concentration camp. And I swear to this day, there was an odor coming from there. And you could not live there, being a German, and not know what was going on in this concentration camp. No, I have never forgiven then for that, to be honest . . .
Did the German people try to make it clear that they weren't Nazis?
Oh of course. Oh yeah, they never were. There were some good people we came across, but for the most part, they absolutely hated us. I remember one night, we did go into town, about five of us and this is when we had just come up form Austria into Heilbron, and like I said, we knew a little of German. We saw something that had to do with dance. This is only to prove the point out, it wasn't all Germany, it was some of us, and it was like six of these young GIs in their uniforms, 21, 22 years old. And we went in to this place and we thought there was a dance going on. You know, it was a dance recital for 10, 12 year old girls. And you know, here comes there American storm troopers . . . They were not good times. You didnt dare go to town, you just didn't dare go into town. Of course, we were not angels, I'll tell you quite frankly. I would go down to the motor pool. I'd have to get approval, and get a truck and we would go up to another Army base to play basketball cause we had a pretty good basketball team. I'm sure you can visualize these old German towns, and a lot of them had got the glass store fronts back up. So, if you take one of these big army trucks and you are going pretty fast, and you put it into second gear and back off on the gas, and it starts backfiring and you're going through these German towns with the widows, it does a job rattling those windows, I'll tell you. [laughs] . . .
The Germans were, they just didnt like us . . . They used us. . . I
dont think Germany would be the vibrant country it is today if it wasnt
for the help the Americans poured in there. I dont mean myself . . . the
Marshall Plan . .
Harry Thies' Full Narrative