Wilhelm Schmidt

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NSDAP
Membership of Wilhelm Schmidt or his parents could not be established. According to information from his sister, neither Wilhelm nor his father were politically active.

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Education
According to his father’s wishes, Willi, as Wilhelm was known, was to become a painter and decorator. His father was a carpenter by trade. Willi Schmidt must have completed his training by straightforward calculation. He is likely to have been conscripted into the Wehrmacht shortly after completing his training.

His still living sister can no longer remember these details. The age difference is too great.

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Only one entry was recorded at the Deutsche Dienststelle:
According to a report of 31.05.1941, 20th (Replacement) Company Air District Signals Regiment 12.

According to his own statement (First Army PWI Report No. 17 19-20 Dec.) Wilhelm Schmidt was with the 5th Company of the 223rd Luftwaffe Signals Regiment before he became a member of the Commando Company (Unit Stielau).

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There is no information whatsoever regarding hospital stays for Wilhelm Schmidt.

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The family history

The only surviving sister of Wilhelm Schmidt was only able to report that her brother had been stationed in the Netherlands.

As a young man Wilhelm Schmidt worked at a golf course as a caddy and thereby came into contact with English people. Here he had the opportunity to acquire the English language. Later he was stationed in the Netherlands and there expanded his language skills through training courses.

Wilhelm Schmidt was regarded as very intelligent. This was also learned from Wiesbaden. His mother had been informed in December 1944 by the local party leader that Wilhelm was listed as missing. When the Americans occupied Wiesbaden at the end of the war, the family learned from American soldiers what had happened. A sister of Wilhelm Schmidt, since deceased, brought the newspaper „Stars and Stripes” home. It must have been shortly before that a missing persons report from the family was sent to the Red Cross in Geneva.

According to the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, an official notification to the family did not take place until 2001. The Deutsche Dienststelle is said to have conveyed this message. Whether the missing death certificate at the International Red Cross played a role in this, or the field postal number of the 10th Panzer Regiment which the family knew at the time, will always remain in the dark. What is certain is that Wilhelm Schmidt, through the provision of the field postal number (32397) at the Red Cross in Geneva, can still be found today in the missing persons picture list. Wilhelm Schmidt is registered there (without photograph) as missing with the 10th Panzer Regiment Headquarters and Workshop Company.

The Military History Research Office (MGFA) was able to shed some light on the field postal number.
The number in question belongs to the headquarters of Panzer Brigade 10. Panzer Brigade 10 had emerged on 27.6.1943 from the headquarters of Panzer Regiment 10, which had been at the disposal of the Army High Command since 16.9.1942. Only the headquarters was established. During Operation “Citadel” in Russia the headquarters was divided and tasked with the command of troops. From autumn 1943 it was deployed as Panzer Training Staff 2; in May 1944 as training staff in Reims. From late summer 1944 parts of the staff directed the formation of armoured units at the Grafenwöhr training ground.
(Source: Lexikon der Wehrmacht)

The documentary situation in this case is rather confused, and the knowledge within the family does not really help either.

Did anyone within the family actually know that Wilhelm was no longer in the Dutch area but in Grafenwöhr at the end of 1944? Had he only communicated the field postal number (32397) without mentioning his whereabouts?

The only thing that originates from two completely different sources is the field postal number; the rest remains in the dark.

The family found Wilhelm Schmidt’s grave through their own research at the German Military Cemetery in Lommel, Belgium.

His sister rules out a political motive on the part of her brother as a reason for participating in Operation “Greif”. She reports: “My brother was not a fanatic! Perhaps he hoped for a promotion. He may also have received orders to do so… within the family this subject was almost never discussed.”

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Willi Schmidt (centre) playing cards. Where and when the picture was taken is unknown.
Source: Family collection

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Willi’s brother

Wilhelm Schmidt had a brother, born in 1922. Since the brother died as early as the 1970s, we can with a clear conscience delve a little further into the family history. After a descendant of Wilhelm Schmidt’s brother contacted us, it quickly became clear that here too there can be no question of well-founded knowledge. The brother was, like Wilhelm, in the Luftwaffe, but in a different unit.

After the war the brother of Wilhelm joined the Foreign Legion. The brother expressed within the family that Wilhelm had probably joined Operation Greif in order to receive a promised financial reward, and because he would have been discharged early from the Wehrmacht if the operation had been successfully completed. He (Wilhelm) could then have set himself up in business with the money. This was also expressed by other family members. However, after such a long time it is hardly possible to establish where individual family members obtained this knowledge; it is therefore very possible that the sources have in a sense contaminated one another. We therefore assume that the brother is the original source. That a financial reward was promised to the participants of the commando operation Greif we consider to be no more than a supposition. If it were actually the case that the participants of Operation Greif were promised a reward, it would be the first time we had come across that. An early discharge, had the operation succeeded, we also consider to be a rumour. We do find it remarkable however that both brothers threw themselves into a military adventure. Why the brother joined the Foreign Legion at the time is known within the family.
The father, described as very strict, may have played a role in this, but need not have.
I am only recording this to show that within families there was often a great deal of speculation about the reasons why a family member had participated in Operation Greif.

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Willi Schmidt around 1929. The picture always stood on his brother’s bedside table. Source: Family collection

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Bundesarchiv Dept. PA former Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt)
In order to reconstruct Wilhelm Schmidt’s military service to some extent, different sources had to be found. The Deutsche Dienststelle has very little information on Wilhelm Schmidt.

According to the sister, the family had Wilhelm Schmidt declared dead at the time.

Extract from the letter of the Deutsche Dienststelle in Berlin of 18.05.2009: “In 1976 it became known: Shot on 23.12.1944 on the orders of the US Military Commission. Thereupon the notification of the wartime death was filed with the registry office in Wiesbaden, which was recorded on 26.10.1976 in Wiesbaden-Dotzheim”.
The personnel index card* now consulted by me (March 2021) confirms in broad outline the chaos of the time. According to a report of 20.03.1945, Wilhelm Schmidt had been listed as missing since 23.12.1944 in the Malmedy area. In 1946 there was contact with the Red Cross tracing service, but that must have remained without result, since no further reports regarding this are recorded on the card. It is not until October 1976 that anything happens again on the card. The parents cannot be traced at that point; the sister asks among other things about the grave location. Interesting is a report of 02.08.1976; unfortunately a comprehensible source reference is missing here. It is the following report that was communicated to me on 18.05.2009 in a letter: Wilhelm Schmidt was shot on the orders of a military commission.

Noteworthy is that the card states the grave location at the cemetery in Henri-Chapelle (Pl.W, Rh. 8 Grave 150). This is followed by the current grave location at the German military cemetery in Lommel. The date of reinterment is not given. On the Report of Burial of Manfred Pernass, his grave location (Grave 152, Rh. 8 Pl. W.) in Henri-Chapelle is stated, along with the soldiers lying beside him. Billing lay in Grave 151. It is now established that the three lay buried in Henri-Chapelle in the same arrangement as they are now in Lommel. On the card the matter thereafter concerns essentially only the registration of the death. A death certificate therefore did not exist.
_{*Reference see Sources}

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Schmidt, Billing and Pernass.
The photograph was taken shortly after the capture of the three.
It may be coincidence, but the three stand in the photograph just as they did on the day of the execution.

Source: The National WWII Museum New Orleans / Signal Corps US-Army.

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The Tribune Scranton Pennsylvania 27 Dec 1944

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_{(Translation)}

WATCHING THREE NAZI SPIES DIE

_{(Richard D. McMillan)}

WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES IN BELGIUM, DECEMBER 23 (delayed) (U.P.)
-I watched three German spies die on that ice-cold morning before an American Military Police firing squad, after they had stood trial for several hours for having penetrated our front line in American uniforms.
(The execution of the spies had been announced for Saturday. They had driven through the front lines in an American Army truck*, armed with American weapons, they carried explosives for sabotage purposes and were equipped with a radio set.)
In the distance the American guns thundered. We shivered in the grey haze as we watched the three Germans, escorted by an armed guard, being brought out to die. They wore American work uniforms.
The first to be brought to a post was officer candidate Günther Billing, 24. He was slightly built and wore glasses, but the officer in charge of the execution said: “He is tough. He is a real Nazi.”
Next came Sergeant Manfred Pernass. He was shivering from the cold, not from fear.
Pernass was also 24 years old. As he marched out of the barracks, he looked around each time he heard a command, and then looked at the feet of the guards to make sure he did not make a false step on the right and left turns towards the posts.
The last was Corporal Wilhelm Schmidt, 24, deathly pale but emotionless.
An American chaplain approached each man and asked if he had a message for his parents.
_{(Three lines censored).}
As Pernass approached the post, he put his hands behind him so that he could be bound. The three men were tied to the posts at their feet and around their bodies. A medical officer pinned a white disc over each man’s heart as a target for the firing squad.
It took 10 minutes for the preparations to be completed.
(Eighteen and a half lines censored.)
When he heard the first two words of the firing order, he (presumably Billing) called out in a shrill voice in German: “Long live our Führer Adolf Hitler.” The rifles fired. The three men were hurled forward as if by an electric shock.
(Eight lines censored.) I learned that before the three men left the barracks, six interned German women had sung songs to them.

_{* Army Truck does not necessarily mean a lorry; lighter vehicles (1/4 tonners) are also called trucks.}

The translation remained as close as possible to the original text.

Edited by W. Stienes.
Consulting, Steve Anderson.

Information from the International Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva

(International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC)

The death certificate is missing at the International Red Cross in Geneva.

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Search request by the family to the Red Cross Geneva. Source: Archive Red Cross Geneva

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In the archive of the Red Cross in Geneva one of the few documents relating to Wilhelm Schmidt was found. It concerns a card sent by the family to the Red Cross in November 1945. Although this card is intended for sending short messages to prisoners of war, this card contains only the sender and the addressee, Corporal Wilhelm Schmidt. The date of birth was also given. All of this does not however make this card interesting. As military unit only a number is given, 32397 Holland – Belgium. According to the postmark the card was stamped on 20.11.1945 in Wiesbaden-Dotzheim.

The field postal number stated on the card belonged, according to the missing persons picture list, to the headquarters of the 10th Panzer Regiment. From March 1943 however the field postal number belonged to the headquarters of Panzer Brigade 10.
As can be gathered from PWI Report No. 17 (19/20 Dec.), the field postal number was assigned to Unit Stielau for Christmas mail.
The American report also names the unit from which Wilhelm Schmidt came when he transferred to Unit Stielau. It was the 5th Company of Luftwaffe Signals Regiment 223, in the Netherlands.

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US Report. Source: NARA, 498:245:box1283:folder December 12-31 1944

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German Military Cemetery Lommel, Belgium. Photo: © Stichting Oorlogsslachtoffers.