Found, Nazis who fell in last stand
|Published
A visitor views a photo of Adolf Hitler in the former Reichsparteitag building in Nuremberg. The bones of 20 Nazi soldiers who died in the Battle of Seelow Heights - along with their helmets, boots and guns - have been unearthed by archaeologists. A visitor views a photo of Adolf Hitler in the former Reichsparteitag building in Nuremberg. The bones of 20 Nazi soldiers who died in the Battle of Seelow Heights - along with their helmets, boots and guns - have been unearthed by archaeologists.
London - They were among the last German troops to die as the Second World War neared its end.
Killed as Soviet forces pushed towards Berlin in April 1945, their remains lay forgotten for nearly 70 years.
Now the bones of 20 Nazi soldiers who died in the Battle of Seelow Heights – along with their helmets, boots and guns – have been unearthed by archaeologists.
The volunteers, from the Association for the Recovery of the Fallen, marked the site with a simple wooden cross, topped with a soldier’s helmet. The bodies had lain buried in the mud of the battlefield at Klessin, some 50 miles east of Berlin, since mid-April 1945.
The depleted German 9th Army, thought to total 110 000 soldiers, was crushed by Red Army forces which numbered nearly a million. At least 12 000 Nazi troops and about 6 000 Russians died in the three-day battle.
Less than a fortnight later, as the Red Army advanced on Berlin, Hitler killed himself in his bunker, realising his murderous masterplan to conquer Europe had failed.
A week after that, the Third Reich surrendered and the war was over. The Association for the Recovery of the Fallen, which consists of volunteers from Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Holland and Switzerland, searches for the “nameless dead” of battle who have no commemorative stones.
Its website states: “We want to restore people to their name, which was taken from them over 60 years ago. We are not looking for... good or bad.
“We are looking for people: sons, fathers, brothers. Fallen soldiers are also victims – victims of a gruesome war, which they had not caused and had not wanted.” - Daily Mail