Hal Jespersen's V-E Day Tour in Germany, May 2025 [Part 2]
This is my report on a trip to Germany to commemorate the end of World War II in Europe (V-E Day), hosted by Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours. This is my fifth outing with SAHT and the third led by historian Chris Anderson. The most recent one was here. Last fall I did a different tour of WWII Germany, described here, so there will be a little bit of overlap. The report is long with a lot of photos, so I have divided it into three parts:
- Part 1: Touring Frankfurt and Heidelberg before the Ambrose tour started
- Part 2: Remagen, Dortmund/Ruhr, Paderborn, Mittelbau-Dora, Leipzig, Dresden (this page)
- Part 3: Colditz, Torgau, Potsdam, Wannsee, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Küstrin, Seelow, Berlin
Monday, April 28 — Joining the Tour
After returning from Heidelberg, I met the Ambrose group at a cocktail/heavy hors d’oeuvres reception and dinner in one of the restaurants in the hotel, the Steigenberger Icon Frankfurter Hof. It was an excellent meal. There are 17 guests, our tour manager Connie Kennedy, historian Chris Anderson, and his colleague/bus driver Klaas. (Chris and Klaas stick together on these tours like the Green Hornet and Kato.) Connie talked about a few logistical issues, and Chris gave a very high-level overview of the tour to come, emphasizing that the timeframe from the end of the Battle of the Bulge to the surrender of the Germans was not a process of ending the war with a whimper or a bang, but of a bloodbath.
Tuesday, April 29 — Remagen
An early start for a two-hour drive northwest to Remagen. Once again, the weather is beautiful, sunny with temps 55–75°F. Chris narrated a brief overview of the events of February–March 1945, and then showed two episodes of the BBC show from the 70s, World at War. At Remagen (which the locals pronounce RAYmoggen), we visited the famous Ludendorff bridge that was captured by US troops from the 9th Armored Division on March 7, 1945, our first crossing of the Rhine. The steel span of the bridge is gone, having collapsed on March 17. It was a railroad bridge built during WWI to transport German troops to the Western Front (and one of the reasons it was not rebuilt is that the Germans wanted to reassure the French that no more such movements would happen again). The northern bank of the river is dominated by the Erpeler Ley, a mighty cliff, which required the bridge to lead immediately into a tunnel.
We were hosted by the president of the local group that runs the Friedensmuseum (Peace Museum) Brücke von Remagen, which is housed in the two five-story buildings used as the southern supports for the bridge. The museum is nicely done with lots of maps and photos and a few artifacts. There are a few memorial plaques outside, including one for the 9th Infantry Division, in which I served for three years. In 1945, Eisenhower was running short of infantrymen, so he collected volunteer Black quartermaster troops from the rear and gave them rifles. At least a platoon of these men, in the 9th ID, defended the perimeter at the crest of Erpeler Ley, one of the first such combat assignments.
We drove to downtown Remagen, a beautiful little town right on the Rhine. Lunch was at the Wacht am Rhein restaurant, serving traditional German food with a bit of a Yugoslav flair. Its name was reminiscent of the Battle of the Bulge. I passed by this town on my Christmas Market river cruise last December, described here. Right outside of town was the location of the “Golden Mile,” a temporary POW holding area that seems reminiscent of Civil War Andersonville, where as many as 250,000 Germans—POWs and other suspicious men—were held in late 1945 without shelter and with minimal food and medical support. About 1,200 died. There is a small monument called Friedenskapelle “Schwarze Madonna” that commemorates this forgotten episode.
Then another two hours to Dortmund, in the Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr industrial area), and the Radisson Blu Hotel. On the way, we watched the 1969 movie Bridge at Remagen, extremely loosely based on the real events. The hotel, away from the downtown area, is very nice, and we had an excellent dinner served to our group in a conference room.
Wednesday, April 30 — The Ruhr and Paderborn
Today is the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s suicide. Good riddance. (But also his wedding anniversary.) Another beautiful day. We drove for an hour to the area south of Paderborn to examine the advance of the 3rd Armored Division. It had crossed at Remagen, then as part of Operation Lumberjack, headed east to Marburg, and then turned north toward Paderborn to help close the Army Group B escape route from the Ruhr. Paderborn was also a target in its own right, with an officer school and a Panzer replacement center, sort of the Fort Knox of Germany. (This is now NATO Forward Holding Base Sennelager, aka Normandy Barracks, which we visited later.)
We stopped briefly at an open field near Borchen to discuss the advance of Task Force Richardson and the ad hoc German forces trying to stop it. At this particular spot on March 30, a Sherman and a half-track were killed by Panzerfausts. Chris also gave us a brief bio of MG Maurice Rose, hard-charging CG of the 3rd AD, who had pushed his division in a 75-mile race northeast. In the town of Gallihöhe, we followed Task Force Richardson as it was ambushed by dozens of Panzerfausts, an action nicknamed the Battle for Bazookatown. In Borchen, we stood on a narrow village street where five Shermans were bottled up and destroyed, an action they called the Vale of Sorrow.
Heading out of town, we heard about a group of 10–20 Tiger IIs that confronted Task Force Welborn, which was advancing in parallel with Richardson's. From 15 to 20 Shermans were destroyed. We stopped at Schloss Hamborn, Welborn’s CP, where Rose dashed in to find out what was happening to his stalled advance. He took two jeeps to find Richardson. In our final stop in this area, we went into a wooded overlook to see where Rose’s party was blocked by a Tiger II and forced to surrender. Rose was killed by a tanker who thought he was reaching for his pistol, the highest-ranking US general killed in direct combat in WWII.
At Sennelager, in the northwest suburbs of Paderborn, we stopped at a German memorial to their war dead from both world wars and discussed closing the Ruhr pocket and Field Marshal Model’s suicide after he dissolved his army group. The unit insignia on the NATO sign are the British Field Army and 21st Army Group (Montgomery’s command).
We visited Kreismuseum Wewelsburg, in an 18th-century castle, where Heinrich Himmler established a school and retreat for very senior-level SS officers, a “spiritual home of the SS,” where the senior leaders would meet like Knights of the Round Table. It was remodeled into this use by prisoners of the nearby Niederhagen concentration camp, which was the smallest of all the major camps in Europe. There are a number of exhibits about the ideology and terror of the SS, which are diminished by 90% of the text being only in German. We had portable listening devices that included about a dozen audio presentations in English, but these were primarily overviews. The main exhibition halls lead to two rooms in the north tower, where photography was not allowed (so I have included a few shots from Wikipedia). Here in the basement, there was a crypt that included a memorial cycle of expressionist paintings by Josef Glahé, describing the horrors of war. Quite creepy, as was the floor above, which was the SS Obergruppenführersaal (Hall of the Supreme SS Leaders), decorated by an ominous symbol called the black sun.
We made a brief stop at Niederhagen, viewing a memorial and the single surviving building of the concentration camp. The camp held about 3,600 prisoners, around 1,200 of whom died or were killed. We finished with a ride of over three hours to Südharz in the former East Germany and the Freiwerk Hotel and Spa. On the way, Chris showed episodes of the British TV series Dad’s War and the movie Kelly’s Heroes. Near the hotel was the town of Stolberg, ultra picturesque, with more half-timber houses than I have ever seen in one place, on a painfully narrow Main Street. Dinner at the bucolic hotel was very good, a wild game Goulash.
Thursday, May 1 — Mittelbau-Dora and Leipzig
Another beautiful day. We drove for an hour on a narrow, winding road through the Harz Mountains. Our stop was near Nordhausen, the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. It was established in 1943 as the Dora subcamp under the Buchenwald system, but when the Allies bombed Peenemünde, V1 and V2 assembly was moved here in massive tunnels. Inmates dug out those tunnels and at least 8,000 perished doing so. In 1943–45, 60,000 mostly French, Polish, and Soviet prisoners passed through here and at least 20,000 died from brutal working conditions; it was not an extermination camp per se, but for the tunnelers, life expectancy was only 4–8 weeks. It was liberated by the 3rd Armored Division and the 9th Infantry Division (Go Old Reliables!) on April 11, 1945.
We had a guided tour that focused on the tunnels. The entrances had been blown up by the Soviets after the war, so we used one drilled out for the memorial in 1995. It is a constant 8°C year-round down under, so we bundled up. There are 15 km of tunnels and we walked through only 8 percent of them. In the picture of a model/map below, the yellow strips were planned tunnels, but not dug. The central gray strips were used for weapons assembly, managed by two civilian companies with slave labor. We were in the small V1 area. The much larger area that we didn’t enter was divided between V2s and jet engines for the Me 262. The tunnels were 9m tall and in some areas were built out with three floors. Everything was pretty dark and the floors next to the modern walkways were strewn with rocks and manufacturing debris. After the guided tour we wandered through the small museum and the camp crematorium.
We drove to nearby Nordhausen for lunch. Unfortunately, on May Day, most places were closed. I found a decent Bockwurst mit Brötschen at the decrepit train station, but a number of us settled for just an ice cream. Then, about 90 minutes later, we arrived in the city of Leipzig, where we stopped at the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations). The Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of the Nations, was fought here October 16–19, 1813. The Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I and Karl von Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The 1913 monument is stupendous, 91 m high, with multiple internal floors and exterior observation levels, adorned with gigantic figures reminiscent of ancient Egypt. Reaching the top manually requires 500 spiral steps, but there are elevators that go up about two-thirds of the way. Although the monument and the attached museum are focused on the 1813 battle with Napoleon, we were here today because the monument itself played a role in World War II.
American tanks entered Leipzig on April 17, 1945, and fought mainly skirmishes getting to the center of the city, but 200 German soldiers under a Colonel Poncet holed up in the monument and caused a number of casualties with harassing fire. The colonel seemed to understand the futility of his position, but refused to surrender because he was ordered not to (by Guess Who?). Eventually, troops of the 69th Infantry Division fired a howitzer through a window—all previous fire had been ineffective—and the Germans surrendered on April 20, Hitler’s last birthday. We could see various bullet holes in the monument and surrounding buildings, even though a general restoration was performed in the late 90s. I visited the crypt inside the building, an outside observation gallery, a singers’ gallery, and the Hall of Heroes, the latter of which had a modest exhibit about 1945.
Our hotel in Leipzig is our second Steigenberger of the trip, which seems a bit old, but it has been modernized and is very comfortable. A group of us went out for German food, and we lucked upon an out-of-the-way place called Lutter & Wegner, where we dined al fresco, and all of us had really delicious (and huge) Wiener Schnitzels. No room for anything else. (I later discovered that there is another branch of this restaurant in Berlin.)
Friday, May 2 — Dresden
Early start for yet another beautiful day. We drove to the nearby Robert Capa House. Capa, the famous combat photographer, is especially known for his eleven dramatic still photos of the first wave at Omaha Beach. On April 18, 1945, Capa captured images of a fight to secure a bridge in Leipzig. These pictures included an image of Raymond J. Bowman’s death by sniper fire. This image was published in a spread in Life magazine with the caption “The picture of the last man to die.” The Capa House is the original building at 61 Jahnallee, restored by private donations. The room from the photo is a private apartment upstairs, but we could see the restored balcony outside. We saw an excellent movie about the return of Bowman’s colleague to the scene and a presentation by a young man who created a great website about the liberation of Central Germany.
We drove for an hour to Colditz, where the famous castle served as "Oflag IV-C," a prison for officer POWs and prisoners who had attempted escapes from other camps. Our guide, Cindy, introduced us to the history of the castle and led us around to show areas from which escapes were attempted. The prison was supposedly escape-proof, but quite a number of escapes were attempted, and some succeeded. For example, the British—the most vexing of the groups—attempted 120 escapes, succeeding 12 times. The giant castle is of Renaissance design, although some parts of the buildings date back to 1046. Early prisoners were Polish, French, and British, but Americans arrived starting in 1943, and by the end, only British and Americans were here; all were segregated by nationality.
We saw an escape through a microscopic cellar hole and a few in the adjacent game reserve, where the prisoners exercised and played sports. (They actually managed to hold Olympic Games in captivity. These officers were treated relatively well, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.) There was a Flucht (Escape) Museum with a variety of tools and artifacts, and a model of a makeshift glider that the prisoners hoped to fly two officers to safety; the camp was liberated before they could test it. In 2012, British Channel 4 successfully recreated the attempt with a glider based on the prisoners’ drawings, using remote control and two dummies, and video of their test is shown in the museum.
We ate lunch in a gasthaus right below the castle, Schloss Wächter. Everyone had Schnitzel, which was good, but not an equal of last night’s. On the bus to Dresden, Chris showed The Colditz Story, a 1955 British movie drama about the camp. I was curious: IMDB lists seven (!) movies about Colditz. In Dresden we visited the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr, a museum since 1890, when it was about the Saxon army. It’s now run by the Bundeswehr itself. It’s a really large museum and we saw a tiny fraction. Our guide spent 45 minutes leading us through some eclectic weapons, such as the first German submarine, built as prototype in 1815; a WWII one-man torpedo/submarine (although not a kamikaze vehicle like in Japan); an 800mm railway gun, the Dora (which required 100 soldiers to operate, and had to change its barrel after every shot). Then a depressing session about how all sorts of animals were misused by armies (such as a pigeon with a camera sewn into its stomach, a cat for testing poison gas, a sheep for clearing mine fields, and a dog as an anti-tank weapon). Very creepy.
And then he let us loose in the section on 1914–45. I’m sorry to say it was disappointing. The exhibits were superficial and quite darkly lit, so it was difficult to read the tiny bilingual captions. Outside was a small collection of mostly Cold War era armored vehicles and aircraft, both German and Soviet.
On the ride to our hotel, Chris told us a lot of information about the bombing of Dresden, with some quotes from eyewitnesses. He discussed the controversies surrounding the justification for the raid, based on a request from Stalin, and also told us that the original estimates of 250,000 dead have more recently been analyzed to actually be 25,000. Our hotel is once again the local Steigenberger brand, and it is as nice as the previous two. I walked a couple of blocks to the area called Alt Markt (Old Market), which was practically the epicenter of the firestorm caused by the bombing, and was delighted to find that they had a spring festival underway with all of the kinds of food and merchandise stalls that are used in the famous Christmas markets, with entertainment provided by a big band playing jazzy tunes. So I had a delicious Thüringen Bratwurst and a Radler (a mixture of beer and lemonade) for dinner.
