Knappe: He is dead. He was fat and untrained. If you are in a battle situation you have to be trained. You need to know what to do when someone is shooting at you. He would not have known what to do when the shooting started. I am sure that he was shot somewhere in the city. There have been several reports from people in that group that he was shot after crossing a bridge. But of course no one in the group checked on him. Everyone was just interested in themselves, and besides, no one had any love for him anyway.

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WWII: You were the one who typed the order from General Weidling directing any German soldiers who were still fighting to stop after the surrender?

Knappe: That’s correct. A Russian writer, Ilya Ehrenburg, incorrectly reported that a blond female secretary typed the order. I was blond at the time, but that was the only similarity. [Ilya Ehrenburg was one of the Soviet Union's top propagandists during the war.]

WWII: After the surrender, you went into a prison camp in Berlin and were transferred to a prison camp in Russia for five years?

Knappe: That’s correct, but that’s another story.

Ed McCaul writes from Granville, Ohio. Further reading: The Last Battle, by Cornelius Ryan; and Battlefield Berlin, by Peter Slowe and Richard Woods.[ TOP ] [ Cover ]

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