[Music] full name is gert friedrich franz schmitz and i remember on september the 1st 1939 hitler was was on the radio telling that the war started since five o'clock this morning our troops marching into poland doing whatever they do best six months later hitler marched into the friends the british came and the americans came into the ward and i talked to my grandpa and he they told me if they if they want to win the wars they don't look too good they said don't say that but we cannot lose the war that was not even
remotely in my mind that we ever could lose a war you know because we will no condition politically hitler uh controlled the the newspapers they controlled the radio with gerbils the propaganda minister he controlled everything else and we listened to the news and they told us all about going on the western front and how successful they are and all that then we walked outside we heard the guns you say well that is too close from what they tell us where they're supposed to [Applause] be [Applause] following their defeat in the first world war germany was
reeling from the harsh conditions of a peace treaty that left the country shamed and buried in economic crisis but in 1933 when a radical new leader rose to power promising to restore germany and place it at the forefront of world powers the people were captivated adolf hitler's reign brought swift economic relief and the german military was quickly on the rise but his radical political party enforced totalitarianism over the government and the public making nazism synonymous with the german way of life they had everything organized you couldn't get lost or to fall through the crack you
know there were no cracks you were you were part of it if you liked it or not i got drafted into the hitler youth when i was 10 years old they gave us a uniform and all that you know like thousands of other german boys gert schmitz was swept up in the hitler youth but the draft was not without its benefits upon graduation gert was offered the opportunity to fly with the luffwaffa they said do you want to go to a jet pilot training school we have one in fuller germany and you go over there
and you just start training for a flying master schmidt 262 jets he says shoot yeah but before he would reach the airfield the allied bombing campaign would reach it first and when i got up there the hangers were bombed the water was bombed the airplanes were bombed and there was nothing left for us to do in this eight well we are temporarily assign you to a paratrooper outfit and send you to the western front so we got on the train that afternoon we ended up in pasov we talked to the neighborhood people with local people
there they heard on the news that the russians had just come from the south from the east and south and cut off that air base where we were and that was bad news gert may have escaped capture by the russians but now he was headed to the western front where the british and americans were on the advance and the german army was in disarray that was chaos the whole german armed forces was in total chaos they didn't know where they were i don't know where the headquarters were you didn't know where the real fun was
or anything you know you're so busy surviving and fighting we either won here to be lost over there and then go to the next we don't know the overall picture we have no idea what happened and then we finally marched into holland the street was open between the town and the woods were that force where we're supposed to go into and it was kind of exposed you know and and the allies always flew eight fighter planes roaming in the sky they had total sky superiority and we had to get across that open space and those
that guys were flying around there saying if you go in the column over there this year's and they're going to mows down so but if you go 100 one guy every 100 feet they may not even pay attention to us so it came my time to go across and the guy paid attention to me and he came and started shooting at me i went into that deep ditch and as soon as he went past me i got out and run down towards the woods and when i came the other way i jumped back in the
ditch and finally got wise instead going across he came down alongside the ditch and just unloaded put it flying behind me and in front of me i mean there was bullets flying out which way so he got up and i run and i didn't go back in this i went all the way into the woods yeah that was that was kind of nasty but i hate mustaches to this day we were in ramsdorf that was my buddy and i we were up at one end of town and we had a bazooka [Music] the tank came
down the street and they started shooting and we and we went behind those big logs there you know and they couldn't hit us there he pulled the trigger and when he hit it [Music] he got that warhead right between the tracks in the body and he just blew the hell out of the inside nothing moved anymore after that [Music] there was another tank that was up the street and we're standing in there kind of looking down the street see what we could do and they said i'm going to go on the other side of the
street because it was curfew we could see better he said don't go over there that thing is up there and while i was in the middle in the street that tank shot one round right between his legs i went over there and got him the shrapnel went into his uniform and ripped his chest open and he was sitting here sitting with his butt in the street and said ah and then it collapsed [Music] when we marched into amsterdam first earlier the company commanders told us they say you be you go porn to make sure everything
is all right and way later on after we're supposed to move out they said man we probably want to point again you know be the first one another and the company come in and say he said you you're the rear guard though he said now you don't want to be in the rear on a way out do you want to be fun but anyway there was an open field and they wanted to march into the woods and what we were way behind is the rear guard they have walked into a trap the americans they already
wore three sites when they waited till the whole battalion marched in there and they mowed them down so before was we went off to the right and the woods had disappeared in the woods and that's how we ended up behind enemy lines gert and his three comrades were on their own disoriented and desperately searching for every elusive friendly territory and then when we finally got into dillman it was daylight and there was a six-foot fence a chandelier fence they say that must be a park nobody is fighting in the park so we're gonna be pretty
safe so we got over and i climbed over that six foot fence gi's walking all over the place there [Music] and they saw us and they started shooting at us [Music] they had a news and a half talk with machine guards on there they came around and started shooting at nurse with that and then we said we got to get out of this park so we jumped over the fence then there was tanks on the outside they said that they're not safe either let's jump back in the fans we jumped back over that six foot
fence and then that truck came and start shooting it out we went back over the fence again and went in the other direction and we saw a pine forest over there and they said let's get into that forest and get the heck out of here and we we called on our stomach and we finally got into the woods and they came after us and they said well let's hide behind the trees till they go if they don't see you they might go away and they came and i stood behind a tree you know we all
stood behind each one of one of those trees just big enough to hide us and they said what i'm going to do you know so we can't run they're going to start shooting at us and i finally i put my hand on and waved he's going to say hi and he said come on out come on out you know hands up hands up and that's how we got captured now in american custody intended for relocation to a pow camp in the united states gert began the long journey across europe from prison camp to prison camp
he passed the time by drawing pictures to document his experiences but before gert would reach the french coast germany surrendered the war came to an end and the prisoners were sent back to their homes the germany gert returned to was very different than he remembered hitler was gone the nazi party dissolved and gert himself had acquired a fresh perspective i didn't realize how bad it was but then after the war everything came democratic you know in in peaceful and they said wait a minute that's a hell of a lot different than what we went through
all that you know [Music] i didn't know about the full extent of the concentration camp because that was kept so well secret you know that if you heard about it you know what you said that's where murderers go in and and wife beaters you know and then they rehabilitate supposed to be rehabilitated but they didn't do that and i didn't know the full extent until till i came to the united states [Music] following the war gert immigrated to the u.s served with the army and went on to a career in aerospace engineering working alongside werner
von braun [Music] gert served his country honorably in the second world war but like all of those who survived regardless of what side he hopes to one day live in a world free of violent conflict war is the the stupidest thing that man invented if you can't talk it out if you if you cannot communicate you start fighting you have to do away with your problem you have to annihilate your problem but that is not the solution you know that that just created more problems don't fight talk it out there got to be a salute
there is always a solution
