Stories of Improbable Survival and Death from World War II
World War II was the bloodiest and most far-reaching conflict in modern history. Not only did this horrific war involve over 50 countries and 100 million soldiers, it also caused the deaths of around 70 million people.
As a result, World War II has arguably received more attention in scholarly work and popular culture than any other modern historical event.
Despite all the ink that’s been spilled, even World War II buffs are still able to discover facts that they weren’t aware of before. It sometimes seems as if a new headline from this War pops up somewhere every week or other week.
Because of the sheer scale of human suffering and resilience occasioned by this conflict, I wanted to share some interesting, improbable, and relatively unknown cases of survivals and deaths of people involved in the War:
- Stephen King’s novella Apt Pupil, made into a Hollywood movie (1998), features a fictionalized Nazi war criminal living in hiding in the United States, the “blood-fiend of Patin,” Kurt Dussander.
Although the character is fictional, King’s attention to detail, as always, is praiseworthy.
Because of the scale of atrocities committed during World War II, many Nazis acquired similar monikers to King’s “blood-fiend of Patin.” They received these titles from their victims and from historians.
Thus Gestapo interrogator Klaus Barbie got the title “Butcher of Lyon.” S.S. physician Josef Mengele was named the “Angel of Death.” Extermination camp commandant Franz Stangl was “White Death,” and so on and so forth.
Despite the gravity of their crimes, many of these ex-Nazis, like King’s fictional character, lived quite comfortably after the war. In fact, some even gained positions of influence and were employed by many nations including West Germany, East Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Israel, and some Arab and Latin American states.
Some never got caught, while others were eventually tracked down by Nazi hunters, captured, prosecuted, and imprisoned years after their crimes.
2. When the evil Nazi judge and president of the so-called People’s Court, Roland Freisler, was killed during a US air raid over Berlin in February 1945, he was still holding on to the file of anti-Hitler resistance member Fabian von Schlabrendorff.
Had Freisler lived, von Schlabrendorff would have been executed.
Instead, von Schlabrendorff emerged as one of the only major German resistance figures to have survived Hitler’s henchmen.
Not only did von Schlabrendorff live a long life (he died in 1980), but the former resistance member also became a judge on West Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, the country’s most prestigious legal body (for more on Freisler and/or Schlabrendorff, see https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/fabian-von-schlabrendorff/?no_cache=1; William Shirer’s book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; https://allthatsinteresting.com/roland-freisler and https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/roland-freisler).
3. Ana Boros, a Jewish woman, survived the horrors perpetrated against Jews by Nazi Germany with the help of a friend.
A Muslim Egyptian Arab man, Dr. Mohamad Helmy, posthumously received Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among Nations Award. He was the first Arab to receive this award.
Helmy hid Ana from the Nazis in a cabin he owned in Berlin-Buch and among friends of his in Dresden. Helmy also facilitated the concealment of Anna’s grandmother, Cecilie Rudnik, at the home of Frieda Szturmann.
He did all this at great risk, as he himself had been the subject of arrest and interrogation by the Nazis. Anna and Mohamad’s friendship demonstrates how good people can and do help one another in the face of adversity, regardless of their differing ethnic, national or religious backgrounds (for more see https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/helmy-szturmann.html; https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/82838.aspx; and https://www.timesofisrael.com/first-egyptian-righteous-among-the-nations-honored/)
4. SS official and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich once visited St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
During this visit, Heydrich observed the crown of Saint Wencelas, which was made in the 14th century and was last used in 1836.
According to Czech legend, whoever wears this crown unjustly will meet a violent death within a year. Some contend that Heydrich wore the crown for kicks.
Although we don’t know for sure that he did, we do know that he was assassinated by Czech resistance members some months later .
5. When it was clear that the German sixth army would lose the Battle of Stalingrad, Hitler promoted commander Friedrich von Paulus to the rank of Field Marshal.
But not for the reason one might think. Hitler did so to induce Paulus to commit suicide and save the Third Reich from embarrassment.
Not only did Paulus refuse to honor Hitler’s wishes, he acquiesced to Soviet requests to join the National Committee for a Free Germany and called for German surrender.
6. Paulus’ legacy was muddied when he said that German mothers of Stalingrad prisoners shouldn’t be worried because their sons were alive and well.
In actuality, only 5,000–6,000 soldiers from the Fourth and Sixth armies returned out of the 91,000 who surrendered on February 2nd 1943 (for more see https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad; https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/famous-battles-of-world-war-two/the-battle-of-stalingrad/; and https://www.britannica.com/video/180234/Discussion-POWs-German-Soviet-World-War-II).
One of the surviving soldiers was a man by the name of Adelbert Holl. Holl wrote a detailed memoir of his time as a prisoner entitled After Stalingrad: Seven Years as a Soviet Prisoner of War.
Although the book demonstrates a disturbingly pro-Nazi point of view well into his captivity and even after his release, the memoir is still valuable. Holl describes quite well how so many perished in atrocious Soviet camps and how he was very fortunate to have survived.
7. The United States’ most accomplished living fighter pilot, U.S. Air Force Colonel Bud Anderson, recently turned 100.
Anderson was a Triple Ace during World War II demolishing an astonishing 16 and ¼ enemy aircraft.
Despite having seen many of his comrades die or get captured, including half of his original squadron, Anderson had an uncanny ability to survive and succeed. When asked what it means to be “America’s highest-scoring living ace,” Anderson replied, “What it means is I just survived longer than the others.”
Anderson explained how he got to be so good as a flying ace:
“You need good instincts. To be an ace, you have to shoot down five enemy aircraft in aerial combat — in air-to-air, one-versus-one, kill-or-be-killed situations. The difference between a good fighter pilot and a great one, I think, is good eyesight. I had 20–15 in one eye and 20–10 in the other. Even if you have good eyes, there’s a knack to finding airplanes off in the distance. You can maneuver into a position of advantage if you see them first. You also have to have good gunnery skills, have knowledge of enemy airplanes, and know how to dogfight. Situational awareness is a big deal as well. You have to know what is going on all around you, listening to radio calls, looking and doing and maneuvering.”
8. Screenwriters and directors have frequently turned their attention to the remarkable stories of unlikely survivors of WWII.
One such story was depicted in the recent Norwegian film The 12th Man (2017).
The film relays the true story of Jan Baalsrud, the only intelligence officer from a company of 12 Norwegian sabateurs on a boat headed for Troms.
German soldiers identified the boat, killed three of its occupants and arrested eight (all of whom were eventually executed).
Astonishingly, Baalsurd survived and got to Sweden. He did, however, lose some of his toes, having had to endure frostbite. He journeyed for months in cold weather and stayed for as long as three weeks in a “crack in the rock” now called Balsrudshula. His headstone in Manndalen reads: “Thank you to everyone who helped me to freedom in 1943” (see also https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/magazine/the-fugitive.html )
9. During the closing days of World War II, a German sniper shot dead Raymond Bowman, an American soldier with the 23rd Infantry Division.
Bowman was immortalized by a famous picture taken by photographer Robert Capa and subsequently published in Life magazine.
Bowman was one of the last soldiers to die in World War II.
10. Regular soldiers weren’t the only ones killed during the War. Of the 1,100 U.S. Army generals of World War II, close to 40 lost their lives. Two U.S. brigadier generals were tortured and executed by Japanese forces: Guy O. Fort and Vicente Lim.
The stories I have described will continue to be retold. Newer stories and anecdotes will also emerge as more evidence becomes available. They will add a human layer to our understanding of World War II and continue to devastate and surprise us each time they’re told, again and again.
