(EDITOR’S NOTE: Former Citizen Editor Gary W. Meyer returned Oct. 16 from a 15-day tour to World War II war sites in Europe, visiting the countries of Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium  and France. The tour was organized by Ed-Ventures, Inc. of Rochester, MN. Following is the first of two stories of that experience)

The Bridge at Remagen

It was March,1945. The American war effort, coupled with the service of our Allied countries, had gone well. We had broken through the German defenses at Normandy, had liberated Paris and Caen, France, in July, 1944 - and had progressed eastward into Germany.

The Germans occasionally put up stout defenses and waited at the Rhine River. The Remagen Bridge was an arterial piece of the German war effort in each the First and Second World Wars, for it transported troops from that country to the west - and back to the east, as war strategies required. It was doing just that in the spring of 1945. Recoiling German armies were looking for refuge - for protection - from the mounting Allied effort.

The Germans first wanted to protect the bridge so they could escape across it to the east. When their soldiers were across, it was decided to blow the thing up. The date was March 7.

Raymond Brandl, a Nebraska soldier enlisted since 1941, was part of the action. He was a member of the 104th Field Artillery Unit 409.Their effort was to save the bridge so American troops, vehicles and supplies could transport eastward.

And that they did. Over the next several days, the Americans were able to transport 18,000 Allied forces across the bridge before it went down. Among the forces going East? Gen. George Patton’s tank division. And British General Montgomery was next in line. 

The Remagen bridge, located on the Rhine,15 miles south of Bonn, was not the only bridge used by the Allies to access eastern locales in Germany. But it was the one most fought-over, and the one most coveted for its strategic location.

Young Brandl was on the bridge when it was captured. The capture of the Remagen Bridge and the strategic part it played in Americans further east into Germany led to one of Germany’s biggest troop losses of the war. The Americans’ mission was to corral the Germans on the east side of the river and combine them with German prisoners from the Ruhr industrial area to the north. The Americans were able to take 300,000 out of service to the Fuhrer. 

The large number of prisoners put too much of a strain on Allied supplies, and many Germans died of disease and starvation before the Americans could recruit the French to take over those responsibilities.

Dachau Concentration Camp

It was almost a year later before the service of Raymond’s older brother, John Brandl, came into focus. Sergeant John Brandl, was serving with Company B, 524th Military Police Battalion when his unit was dispatched to the Munich region of south central Germany. Their focus? The Dachau Concentration Camp, which had the distinction of having served as the only concentration camp in all of Adolph Hitler’s 13 years of power.

Dachau was designed to hold some of Hitler’s most-hated enemies, the mental and physically-defected - and his political enemies. But not long after its opening, Dachau began to serve a more ominous purpose - elimination of prisoners of war.

In 1941, Germany had been at war with its neighbors to the east for two years. And that included the Russians. So, what happens to Russian prisoners of war? They get transported by train to Dachau, where their days are numbered. They are executed by firing squad shortly after stepping off the train. That is, 4,000 of them.

Dachau was designed as a holding facility for prisoners of The Reich. Not so much as a killing institution. But the guides told our group that of its design for 44,000 inmates, likely 20 percent did not survive it.

Annette Brandl, daughter of the American military policeman, recounts his stories about war against the Germans in Europe.

“People are meaner than animals,” he said of the German occupiers at Dachau. “He told of the lampshades being made out of Jews’ skin, with tattoos on the shade. Gold being taken out of Jews’ mouths by the Germans, as well as cutting off the fingers of the men for jewelry.”

When Brandl’s MP unit charged Dachau to liberate it in April,1945, there were just two dozen or so Germans onsite. A quick fire fight dissolved the defense and then was the MP’s job to gain order and assure the prisoners their lives were no longer in jeopardy. 

Brandl later noted many prisoners had no place to go, or were afraid for their safety outside the walls. He was transferred away from Dachau in December,1945.

Brandl told of earlier times, during his unit’s march across Europe - and of the fighting in fields and pastures. Farmers would give soldiers their bedsheets to the GIS for camouflage cover. They used coffee grounds and egg to make coffee. They would also shoot cows for meat out in the field. 

John’s wife, Dorothea, recounted her memory of John, crying as he told a story about action in Normandy. He had shot a 16-year-old German out of a tree.

John and Raymond Brandl returned home to Humphrey, Nebraska after the war and lived out their lives at the farm, marrying and raising children in the peace and quiet of the Midwestern prairie. Raymond died in 1999; John in 2010.

The Eagles Nest

There is a most-beautiful area of Germany called Berchtesgaden, where the Alps form above the lakes and communities in the far southeast. Hitler recognized it as his favorite playground in 1932 and dispatched his business people to purchase properties up in the mountains from 700 residents, many of them against their will.

But, the Fuhrer persisted and was soon at work with his architects, designing Eagles Nest, which he visited only 14 times during his 14-year reign. The work on his venture, which included an elevator capable of transporting 50 people, took only a year and a half to complete.

The October day on which our group visited the Eagles Nest started as a slightly rainy day down in the valley. But by the time our tour bus was halfway up its ascent, the rains turned into slushy snow. It was a typical Minnesota wind-driven snow storm with temperatures at or below freezing by the time we reached the top. A picture of oneself in front of Hitler’s fireplace and bowl of chili added to the scene.

NOTE: The petroleum-fueled buses were required to stop and turn over their passengers midway up the ascent to electric-powered vehicles because of environmental rules. But the venue was indeed worth seeing, if only to appreciate the wonderful engineering of the time. An average 2,000 to 3,000 people each day visit the site in the summer months.