Der Hauptmann (4½ Stars)

True Stories #34

Name: Willi Herold

Lived: 11 September 1925 – 14 November 1946

Film dates: April to May 1945

Film made in 2017

I was lucky to see the German premiere of this film, attended by the Stuttgart director Robert Schwentke. It tells the story of a 19-year-old chimney sweep who impersonated a German officer and killed 200 people in the last two weeks of the Second World War. As Schwentke himself said, it's a story so absurd that it's difficult to believe that it's true.

Willi Herold was a deserter. In April 1945 he was alone and scared, trying to find his way home. By chance, he found a car abandoned by an air force captain. Documents were being burnt close to the vehicle, and the captain's uniform was in the back of the car, tidily folded, complete with his medals. The captain had obviously fled recently, but he was nowhere in sight.

Note: The German military rank "Hauptmann" is usually translated as "Captain", but due to the difference in ranks in German speaking countries it's only an approximate translation.

Willi put on the uniform and began a new life. At first it was an act of desperation, but it turned into courage. He met other deserters nearby, and he recruited them as members of his Kampfgruppe Herold. He told them that he had an important mission, directly from Adolf Hitler himself, and he'd lost his men, so he needed replacements.

So Willi and his band of deserters headed to a prison camp where German deserters were awaiting trial. His claims that he'd been sent to speed up the execution of the prisoners were received with joy by the camp's commander, Karl Schütte, who was angry that the deserters were receiving warm meals every day while faithful German soldiers were dying on the front line. Willi performed mass executions, dumping the bodies in a mass grave. Those who survived being shot were buried alive.

After the camp was destroyed in an air raid, Willi and his Kampfgruppe arrived in Aurich, a town that was preparing to welcome the British troops. He executed the mayor as a traitor, and he set up his headquarters in a hotel, where he tried and executed civilians every day, when he wasn't involved in drunken revelry.

How was it possible for an uneducated young man to achieve such power and carry out such destruction in a period of only two weeks? I have no idea. When his deception was uncovered (only days before the German surrender) and he was put on trial for impersonating an officer, the court found him innocent. The judge said that he'd done nothing to harm the German war effort. He was released, so that he could return to fight for Germany. But the war ended abruptly. His next trial was by the British armed forces, and he was executed as a war criminal.

The film is overwhelming. Too absurd to be true.

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