The Germans who won the war

By Ray Furlong BBC News, Berlin

The soldier has his arm raised in salute, his back arched and his chest striking proudly forward, as Field Marshal Montgomery strides past.

Werner Knapp's parents had been in the illegal resistance to Hitler (Photo: Burkhard Lange)

Any veteran of World War II might be proud to own such a photograph. But in this case, the veteran is a German.

Werner Knapp was one of thousands of Germans who fought in allied uniform during World War II, driving a tank in a Czechoslovakian unit under British command.

His opposition to the Nazis had started before the war.

"My father and my mother had been in the illegal resistance to Hitler. My father had been condemned to 12 years in jail, so my mother fled with me and my sisters to Prague," he says.

"That means that already as children we were in opposition to the Nazi regime."

When the war broke out, Werner and his family were in France, where they were interned as enemy aliens. But, he volunteered to join the fighting and was to spend the next five years in a foreign army.

Suspicion

He fought in the French campaign of 1940, served in the British pioneer corps, and then landed back in France three weeks after D-Day. He saw action first at the Falaise pocket, then besieging German forces holed up at Dunkirk, where he fought as an infantryman.

Field Marshal Montgomery was commander of all the British and Canadian armies in Europe

He says it was not a problem for him to fire on fellow Germans.

"I followed the trail of blood they left conquering other countries. I didn't hate my German people. But I hated what they were fighting for - the system of Hitler."

When Werner first joined up, the other men in his unit were suspicious. But this changed later.

"When the war ended, they said to me: 'Why do you go back to Germany? It is destroyed. Stay here.'

"But I first wanted to try to find my father, and it was my ideal to help change Germany in a democratic way."

Like Werner, most of the Germans who fought for the Allies had gone into exile before the war. Many of them were Jews, others were communists.

Mixed feelings

Stefan Doernberg was both, a Jewish communist whose family had fled to the Soviet Union in 1935. He was also one of only three Germans to arrive in Berlin with the Red Army.

These people were not seen as Germans, but as the people who had won the war Johannes Tuchel, German Resistance Memorial

"I came home with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I regarded myself as a member of one of the armies that had won the war and liberated Europe from fascism. On the other hand, I still regarded myself as a German. So I had more understanding for the difficult situation the Germans were in at the end of the war."

Stefan was serving on a propaganda unit, encouraging soldiers to desert using loudspeakers and firing leaflets into the German lines. In post-war Berlin, he was invaluable for dealing with the civilian population.

He recalls revisiting the flat that he had last left as an 11-year-old boy. The house porter recognised and greeted him, but the woman living in his old home was afraid she would be punished.

Stefan laughs now as he recalls reassuring her she would not be sent to Siberia.

Later, he was de-mobbed in Moscow before returning to East Germany, where he had a successful career as a historian and diplomat.

In West Germany, life was more difficult for Germans who had fought under Allied colours.

"These people were not seen as Germans, but as the people who had won the war. They were seen as traitors," says Johannes Tuchel, from the German Resistance Memorial in Berlin.

"Even the late Chancellor Willy Brandt, who fought with the Norwegian troops, was seen as a traitor in Germany up until the mid-60s. So these stereotypes had a long life-span in West German society."