Post by James G on Jan 22, 2017 17:16:47 GMT
Chapter Twelve – Honour
February 14th 1990
Outside Münster, West Germany
When he was accused by one of the interrogators of committing acts of perfidy, which he was assured was a war crime, Leutnant Haas broke his previous silence and couldn't help but laugh briefly in the face of the man. As he did so there was a flash of rage in the face of the British officer and Haas was concerned that physical violence would ensue. Thankfully, that brigadier turned away and went back over to the other side of the room to allow the West German colonel present to step forward and ask why Haas had laughed in such a manner.
Did he not understand the consequences of committing a war crime?
Haas said nothing in response. He suspected that this might have been a deliberate ploy to have him defend his actions and therefore get him talking but that wasn't going to work. He had to grant them a bit of respect for that play but they weren't respecting him either to understand that his training for a situation like this was to stay silent for as long as possible.
He had laughed because such an allegation was wholly false. He had not committed perfidy at all. He knew what the term meant and could tell them examples of such actions in the past by others while making it clear that he had not done anything like that. He had worn the uniform of his country's enemies to commit espionage: a perfectly allowable act of war, a recognised ruse de guerre. In doing so he had not used the cover of that uniform and the identity of someone else he assumed with it to commit and overt hostile act such as giving false orders to gain tactical advantage for his own side nor taken up arms to assassinate anyone either. Even if he had been caught with the Luxembourg military documents which NATO now had hold of in addition to his pretence to be a Territoralheer officer he still hadn't done anything wrong. That was perfidy, but all he had done was spy upon his opponents. He was therefore entitled to be held as a prisoner of war and not be subject to questioning such as this with threats against his life.
When he didn't answer that question directed at him, those previous ones that had come all through yesterday were repeatedly asked of him.
What role did he play in the attempt to eliminate the NORTHAG command group when it was ambushed near Krefeld five days ago? Did he bring those commandoes to the site and how did he do that? Was he responsible for the deaths of any of the posted sentries before the main attack begun?
Did he have any part to play in the chemical weapon strikes at the beginning of the conflict which broke international law? Was he involved in the targeting of those which not only killed military personnel but nearby innocent civilians of multiple nations too?
What other spies did he know about operating as he was behind the frontlines in NATO uniforms? What were the identities being used by others like him with the NORTHAG headquarters, the US III Corps and elsewhere too?
Apart from calling in the commando strike against NORTHAG headquarters – and taking part in it too when wearing a West German uniform – what else did he do when at with that mobile command column? How did he contact his controllers to inform them of the information which he found out? What radio equipment did he use or who were his contacts with those who had access to such equipment and were willing to relay information for him?
Where were the two men who he had assumed the identities of – the officers from the West German and Luxembourg Army's? Had he killed them himself or had someone else done so at his behest? Had they been spies too who were no longer useful or just innocents killed because they were in the way?
There were answers to all of these questions that were demanded of Haas.
What wasn't asked of Haas were the questions his long training had prepared him to give false answers if he was caught in peacetime and the intelligence services of the West decided to interrogate him a bit more forcefully than just shouting at him. If it had come to simulated drowning, the use of electric shocks or even the fingernail-pulling stage then he was still to remember his duty and give false answers to those questions. This would be to allow those who had been supporting his activities the time to cover their tracks and escape detention themselves.
Yet he was still in the hands of NATO military intelligence and this was wartime. They weren't asking him about his contacts inside West Germany and across the Low Countries with domestic terrorist groups and the names of key people within those groups. No questions were forthcoming about his own organisation the HVA: what he knew of it's internal structure and personalities as well as his own training. With such questions he could give the West a whole load of false information that would lead them down wrong paths in their investigations so him comrades could escape their grasp.
Haas was yet to answer these questions not because he was protecting anyone with his organisation or the HVA at this stage due to a different reason: that being his honour. As far as he was concerned he was still fighting for his country. He had been taken prisoner against his will rather than surrendering. In addition, these interrogators believed that he was a fool who could be tricked by them with their accusations that he was a war criminal and by asking about things that they knew he had no knowledge of with the intention that he would reveal what he had done.
He was not prepared to play by their rules there and give them anything. In his opinion the war was soon going to be won and he'd be handed back over to his own side along with all other prisoners taken; that wouldn't be long in coming either. He had always been sure of ultimate victory yet had this confirmed (in his opinion anyway) late yesterday when he was moved from where he had first been held in the Osnabrück area down to where he was now near Münster. Those who had him in their custody had pretended to him that the movement of him between the two locations was of no great importance though what he had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears during the transfer had told him everything. There had been panic among NATO forces throughout the rear as they withdrew their forces west and southwest. Right before he had been detained he had been with the Americans who were at that point moving their forces towards the Weser expecting to destroy the Soviet bridgeheads over that river.
Now they were joining the rest of NATO forces in the western part of Lower Saxony in pulling back with the haste that they were. It was clear that there had been a breakout from those bridgeheads with Soviet tanks charging forwards and NATO was on the run.
He would wait it out and keep his mouth shut.
February 14th 1990
East Berlin, East Germany
Generalmajor Fritsch told them no, he didn't want the blindfold: he wouldn't want to miss the last of today's sunshine before he was shot.
He was polite enough about it to his executioners because it wasn't the fault of these men that they had orders to shoot him this morning. Instead it was those who had betrayed him, men who he thought were more than just comrades but friends who he saved all of his anger for. It was them he would silently curse as he stood with his hands tied behind his back against this wall already pockmarked with the ricochets of other bullets from previous firing squads.
In the final moments of his life he said nothing and just stared straight ahead at the party of men who were lined up ahead of him getting ready to take his life. His mind was elsewhere on those who had turned against him and blamed him for all that wasn't his fault.
Following the assassination of Strauss in Kiel and the subsequent loss of control over that occupied city, blame had fallen upon Fritsch for those events. He had been pushed aside as the general from the KGB Anisimov then took charge and ordered to centre of Kiel to be bombarded with artillery; some of the fired shells contained non-persistent nerve gas. He couldn't protest at that decision even if he had wanted to for Anisimov had sent him back to Neumünster just before giving that order and only once he reached his headquarters did he understand that those members of his staff left behind in Kiel had been purged with arrests made of them for apparent failure to do their duty.
Fritsch had contacted his friends back in East Berlin high up in the PHV and the Luftstreitkrafte explaining how what had happened hadn't been his fault yet those conversations hadn't gone as planned. No one had wanted to listen and the calls were brief and one-sided. There had come news afterwards that the Danes had made an attack in the area around Husum before sweeping down the coast beside the North Sea and then following the course of the Eider River inland before almost getting as far as Rendsburg before they were stopped and Fritsch had done some real hands-on work there from his headquarters making sure that whatever rear-area troops in the immediate region were on-hand to support the effort to stop that NATO offensive. Moreover when there had come a report that simultaneous to the Husum attack Americans marines had landed in strength near Copenhagen as part of a major NATO effort to break the siege of that city he had used his contacts with the Baltic Front staff to show an interest in what was occurring there and seeing if all of those marines were there rather than some being held back to strike against East German-held territory.
What he had done here was to pretend to show an interest in his duties that he hoped some people might take notice of yet that hadn't been the case. It appeared that Strauss' death had changed everything and blame was firmly being directed against him for that. He had started to understand that on its own he possibly could have deflected for the blame for the loss of control over Kiel onto others but those negative reports being delivered about his personal conduct and then the killing of the favoured Strauss had been the end of him.
Security for the Strauss Group – especially it's head administrator – had been his primary duty and he had failed in that. No one now wanted to understand that he had been given other tasks to do with far too men as well added-on afterwards, all they cared about back in East Berlin was that their man responsible for the political integration of the Schleswig and Holstein regions into the German Democratic Republic was dead.
It had been the Stasi which had come for him with a trio of armed men on behalf of the military reliability arm of that organisation (known as 'Administration 2000') turning up at Neumünster. Fritsch had had no intention of putting up a fight and allowing them to shoot him for resisting arrest and had planned to carry on fighting when back in East Berlin arguing his case there that what had happened hadn't been his fault. He had expected an official inquiry, maybe even a court martial where he could defend himself and eventually his friends would see the error of their ways and come to speak up on his behalf.
That hadn't happened and instead he had been taken out into this courtyard this morning.
The firing squad was of six young men all in Stasi uniform and carrying rifles. To the side was a junior officer who seemed to be in-charge of them and who had a pistol that Fritsch knew would be to finish him off if the rifle bullets didn't do the job. Furthermore, there were four other officers – more senior men – also here to witness his execution. Two were Stasi figures who he didn't recognise, the third was the deputy head of the PHV and the fourth the chief-of-staff of the Luftstreitkrafte.
Those latter two were among the men he had previously counted as friends who would assist him but now they were here to witness his death. He controlled the urge to call out to them accusing them of betrayal and cowardice and telling everyone else of their own failings that he knew of in their duty as well as on a personal level.
Fritsch told himself that questioning their own honour would lower his. He stared right at them though with all the hatred in his ace that he could muster.
And then the officer leading the firing party ordered the men to raise their rifles.
Shamefully, in his last few moments of life Fritsch lost control of his bladder and fouled himself. Then the bullets came and his life was snuffed out.
February 14th 1990
The Brandenburg Gate
Feldwebel Weiss was getting fed up of the show being put on now. He and his men were all standing to attention fixed in-place as the ceremony went on all around them and their role was to be present yet not involved. No movement was to be made and he like the others was to stand firm and erect for the benefit of the dignitaries and media crews. He couldn't scratch the itch on the back of his leg nor readjust his beret and also had to hold his rifle firmly pointed upwards. Parade ground rules were in effect without regard to the fact that today was the first day's rest after ten days of near-constant fighting.
All Weiss wanted to do was to sit down in the sunshine for a few moments!
That was not to be though for he was here to play an important propaganda role for his nation as one of the man victorious troops from across the Nationale Volksarmee who had played a part in uniting Berlin.
There were three parts to the ceremony.
To begin with, an overblown official surrender was taking place when senior NATO troops commanders from their beaten forces assigned to West Berlin were being publicly humiliated in defeat. Organised NATO resistance had come to an end the day before yesterday with final mopping-up operations taking place the day afterwards. Weiss knew that surviving senior NATO officers had already surrendered yet now they were doing so again for the benefit of those who had come to see them do so in person and the cameras too. A West German military officer was present alongside his American, British and French counterparts during this yet Weiss was certain that the West German military didn't officially have a presence in West Berlin before the war. He wondered what that was all about…
When the time came for those to be made he listened to the announcements concerning that individual officers who had their names and units called aiming to hear what was said about the addition of the West German. Unfortunately, two of that men behind him chose that moment to briefly make comment upon the 'Irish Guards' when the British officer was mention and speculate as to the quality of the troops in such a formation. Because he was a sergeant Weiss turned around and hissed at them to cease their useless conversation and the result was that he missed what was said about that West German. It was only out of curiosity that he wished to know but it was still frustrating!
Pens were put to paper and the surrender came with promises of good treatment of those captured and repatriation home after the war had ended; Weiss scoffed at the notion of the first promise because he had seen such treatment first hand though did wonder about the second promise as the end of the war was mentioned in such a manner by the Soviet Army and Nationale Volksarmee representatives.
Next came the awarding of medals to certain individuals. Weiss already had been given his just as almost everyone else with the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment had though in not a public forum like this. He wore the medal that recognised his part in the fighting here 'Für Verdienste um Volk und Vaterland' (For Meritorious Service to the People and the Fatherland) attached to his uniform as it was a combat decoration. Others had been awarded to mid-level officers and also men like Leutnant Platz who had lost their lives doing their duty. His former platoon leader had been posthumously issued with the Blücher Orden (Blücher Order) as had so many others who had died – whatever the circumstances – in the fighting for control of the city.
However, more higher ranking medals were now being presented in this public fashion… given only to senior men who hadn't fought like Weiss and the others had. The commanding officers from the Grenztruppen and the VPB units attached to the Berlingruppe, as well as the Landstreitkrafte head in charge of that combat group that had overall control of the mission to take West Berlin were all to be awarded their top-tier medals. In addition, a senior Stasi man who had never heard of was getting a medal alongside the commander of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment and the Soviet Army man who had led their combat brigade into battle.
These senior men who had been in the rear all during the slaughter in West Berlin were to be issued with the Held der DDR (Hero of the German Democratic Republic) and the Karl Marx Orden (Karl Marx Order). Weiss had to ask himself where was the honour in such men? He had earned his medal, so had the deceased Platz – Weiss was sure that with her husband's medal denoting such service to the state she wouldn't endure too much financial hardship after the war – but these men hadn't!
Finally, they got around to the demolition.
Within sight of the Brandenburg Gate there was a stretch of the Berlin Wall that would often be the focus of the media during times of international tension as it lay in the centre of divided Berlin. Today that was going to be brought down with some explosive charges to apparently symbolise the end of such previous division of this city and thus, by extension, Germany.
Weiss knew that the rest of the Berlin Wall wasn't to share this fate and soon enough a fence of maybe another form of barricade would be risen here as the reuniting of the city was only for propaganda effects.
Regardless, the dignitaries and the cameras were here to watch a small, dramatic explosion of part of that famous barrier. Weiss turned to look at that section like everyone else did and waited for the blasts that would come. Germany was being reunited here and he wondered how long that it would be before the same happened elsewhere too.
February 14th 1990
Outside Münster, West Germany
When he was accused by one of the interrogators of committing acts of perfidy, which he was assured was a war crime, Leutnant Haas broke his previous silence and couldn't help but laugh briefly in the face of the man. As he did so there was a flash of rage in the face of the British officer and Haas was concerned that physical violence would ensue. Thankfully, that brigadier turned away and went back over to the other side of the room to allow the West German colonel present to step forward and ask why Haas had laughed in such a manner.
Did he not understand the consequences of committing a war crime?
Haas said nothing in response. He suspected that this might have been a deliberate ploy to have him defend his actions and therefore get him talking but that wasn't going to work. He had to grant them a bit of respect for that play but they weren't respecting him either to understand that his training for a situation like this was to stay silent for as long as possible.
He had laughed because such an allegation was wholly false. He had not committed perfidy at all. He knew what the term meant and could tell them examples of such actions in the past by others while making it clear that he had not done anything like that. He had worn the uniform of his country's enemies to commit espionage: a perfectly allowable act of war, a recognised ruse de guerre. In doing so he had not used the cover of that uniform and the identity of someone else he assumed with it to commit and overt hostile act such as giving false orders to gain tactical advantage for his own side nor taken up arms to assassinate anyone either. Even if he had been caught with the Luxembourg military documents which NATO now had hold of in addition to his pretence to be a Territoralheer officer he still hadn't done anything wrong. That was perfidy, but all he had done was spy upon his opponents. He was therefore entitled to be held as a prisoner of war and not be subject to questioning such as this with threats against his life.
When he didn't answer that question directed at him, those previous ones that had come all through yesterday were repeatedly asked of him.
What role did he play in the attempt to eliminate the NORTHAG command group when it was ambushed near Krefeld five days ago? Did he bring those commandoes to the site and how did he do that? Was he responsible for the deaths of any of the posted sentries before the main attack begun?
Did he have any part to play in the chemical weapon strikes at the beginning of the conflict which broke international law? Was he involved in the targeting of those which not only killed military personnel but nearby innocent civilians of multiple nations too?
What other spies did he know about operating as he was behind the frontlines in NATO uniforms? What were the identities being used by others like him with the NORTHAG headquarters, the US III Corps and elsewhere too?
Apart from calling in the commando strike against NORTHAG headquarters – and taking part in it too when wearing a West German uniform – what else did he do when at with that mobile command column? How did he contact his controllers to inform them of the information which he found out? What radio equipment did he use or who were his contacts with those who had access to such equipment and were willing to relay information for him?
Where were the two men who he had assumed the identities of – the officers from the West German and Luxembourg Army's? Had he killed them himself or had someone else done so at his behest? Had they been spies too who were no longer useful or just innocents killed because they were in the way?
There were answers to all of these questions that were demanded of Haas.
What wasn't asked of Haas were the questions his long training had prepared him to give false answers if he was caught in peacetime and the intelligence services of the West decided to interrogate him a bit more forcefully than just shouting at him. If it had come to simulated drowning, the use of electric shocks or even the fingernail-pulling stage then he was still to remember his duty and give false answers to those questions. This would be to allow those who had been supporting his activities the time to cover their tracks and escape detention themselves.
Yet he was still in the hands of NATO military intelligence and this was wartime. They weren't asking him about his contacts inside West Germany and across the Low Countries with domestic terrorist groups and the names of key people within those groups. No questions were forthcoming about his own organisation the HVA: what he knew of it's internal structure and personalities as well as his own training. With such questions he could give the West a whole load of false information that would lead them down wrong paths in their investigations so him comrades could escape their grasp.
Haas was yet to answer these questions not because he was protecting anyone with his organisation or the HVA at this stage due to a different reason: that being his honour. As far as he was concerned he was still fighting for his country. He had been taken prisoner against his will rather than surrendering. In addition, these interrogators believed that he was a fool who could be tricked by them with their accusations that he was a war criminal and by asking about things that they knew he had no knowledge of with the intention that he would reveal what he had done.
He was not prepared to play by their rules there and give them anything. In his opinion the war was soon going to be won and he'd be handed back over to his own side along with all other prisoners taken; that wouldn't be long in coming either. He had always been sure of ultimate victory yet had this confirmed (in his opinion anyway) late yesterday when he was moved from where he had first been held in the Osnabrück area down to where he was now near Münster. Those who had him in their custody had pretended to him that the movement of him between the two locations was of no great importance though what he had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears during the transfer had told him everything. There had been panic among NATO forces throughout the rear as they withdrew their forces west and southwest. Right before he had been detained he had been with the Americans who were at that point moving their forces towards the Weser expecting to destroy the Soviet bridgeheads over that river.
Now they were joining the rest of NATO forces in the western part of Lower Saxony in pulling back with the haste that they were. It was clear that there had been a breakout from those bridgeheads with Soviet tanks charging forwards and NATO was on the run.
He would wait it out and keep his mouth shut.
February 14th 1990
East Berlin, East Germany
Generalmajor Fritsch told them no, he didn't want the blindfold: he wouldn't want to miss the last of today's sunshine before he was shot.
He was polite enough about it to his executioners because it wasn't the fault of these men that they had orders to shoot him this morning. Instead it was those who had betrayed him, men who he thought were more than just comrades but friends who he saved all of his anger for. It was them he would silently curse as he stood with his hands tied behind his back against this wall already pockmarked with the ricochets of other bullets from previous firing squads.
In the final moments of his life he said nothing and just stared straight ahead at the party of men who were lined up ahead of him getting ready to take his life. His mind was elsewhere on those who had turned against him and blamed him for all that wasn't his fault.
Following the assassination of Strauss in Kiel and the subsequent loss of control over that occupied city, blame had fallen upon Fritsch for those events. He had been pushed aside as the general from the KGB Anisimov then took charge and ordered to centre of Kiel to be bombarded with artillery; some of the fired shells contained non-persistent nerve gas. He couldn't protest at that decision even if he had wanted to for Anisimov had sent him back to Neumünster just before giving that order and only once he reached his headquarters did he understand that those members of his staff left behind in Kiel had been purged with arrests made of them for apparent failure to do their duty.
Fritsch had contacted his friends back in East Berlin high up in the PHV and the Luftstreitkrafte explaining how what had happened hadn't been his fault yet those conversations hadn't gone as planned. No one had wanted to listen and the calls were brief and one-sided. There had come news afterwards that the Danes had made an attack in the area around Husum before sweeping down the coast beside the North Sea and then following the course of the Eider River inland before almost getting as far as Rendsburg before they were stopped and Fritsch had done some real hands-on work there from his headquarters making sure that whatever rear-area troops in the immediate region were on-hand to support the effort to stop that NATO offensive. Moreover when there had come a report that simultaneous to the Husum attack Americans marines had landed in strength near Copenhagen as part of a major NATO effort to break the siege of that city he had used his contacts with the Baltic Front staff to show an interest in what was occurring there and seeing if all of those marines were there rather than some being held back to strike against East German-held territory.
What he had done here was to pretend to show an interest in his duties that he hoped some people might take notice of yet that hadn't been the case. It appeared that Strauss' death had changed everything and blame was firmly being directed against him for that. He had started to understand that on its own he possibly could have deflected for the blame for the loss of control over Kiel onto others but those negative reports being delivered about his personal conduct and then the killing of the favoured Strauss had been the end of him.
Security for the Strauss Group – especially it's head administrator – had been his primary duty and he had failed in that. No one now wanted to understand that he had been given other tasks to do with far too men as well added-on afterwards, all they cared about back in East Berlin was that their man responsible for the political integration of the Schleswig and Holstein regions into the German Democratic Republic was dead.
It had been the Stasi which had come for him with a trio of armed men on behalf of the military reliability arm of that organisation (known as 'Administration 2000') turning up at Neumünster. Fritsch had had no intention of putting up a fight and allowing them to shoot him for resisting arrest and had planned to carry on fighting when back in East Berlin arguing his case there that what had happened hadn't been his fault. He had expected an official inquiry, maybe even a court martial where he could defend himself and eventually his friends would see the error of their ways and come to speak up on his behalf.
That hadn't happened and instead he had been taken out into this courtyard this morning.
The firing squad was of six young men all in Stasi uniform and carrying rifles. To the side was a junior officer who seemed to be in-charge of them and who had a pistol that Fritsch knew would be to finish him off if the rifle bullets didn't do the job. Furthermore, there were four other officers – more senior men – also here to witness his execution. Two were Stasi figures who he didn't recognise, the third was the deputy head of the PHV and the fourth the chief-of-staff of the Luftstreitkrafte.
Those latter two were among the men he had previously counted as friends who would assist him but now they were here to witness his death. He controlled the urge to call out to them accusing them of betrayal and cowardice and telling everyone else of their own failings that he knew of in their duty as well as on a personal level.
Fritsch told himself that questioning their own honour would lower his. He stared right at them though with all the hatred in his ace that he could muster.
And then the officer leading the firing party ordered the men to raise their rifles.
Shamefully, in his last few moments of life Fritsch lost control of his bladder and fouled himself. Then the bullets came and his life was snuffed out.
February 14th 1990
The Brandenburg Gate
Feldwebel Weiss was getting fed up of the show being put on now. He and his men were all standing to attention fixed in-place as the ceremony went on all around them and their role was to be present yet not involved. No movement was to be made and he like the others was to stand firm and erect for the benefit of the dignitaries and media crews. He couldn't scratch the itch on the back of his leg nor readjust his beret and also had to hold his rifle firmly pointed upwards. Parade ground rules were in effect without regard to the fact that today was the first day's rest after ten days of near-constant fighting.
All Weiss wanted to do was to sit down in the sunshine for a few moments!
That was not to be though for he was here to play an important propaganda role for his nation as one of the man victorious troops from across the Nationale Volksarmee who had played a part in uniting Berlin.
There were three parts to the ceremony.
To begin with, an overblown official surrender was taking place when senior NATO troops commanders from their beaten forces assigned to West Berlin were being publicly humiliated in defeat. Organised NATO resistance had come to an end the day before yesterday with final mopping-up operations taking place the day afterwards. Weiss knew that surviving senior NATO officers had already surrendered yet now they were doing so again for the benefit of those who had come to see them do so in person and the cameras too. A West German military officer was present alongside his American, British and French counterparts during this yet Weiss was certain that the West German military didn't officially have a presence in West Berlin before the war. He wondered what that was all about…
When the time came for those to be made he listened to the announcements concerning that individual officers who had their names and units called aiming to hear what was said about the addition of the West German. Unfortunately, two of that men behind him chose that moment to briefly make comment upon the 'Irish Guards' when the British officer was mention and speculate as to the quality of the troops in such a formation. Because he was a sergeant Weiss turned around and hissed at them to cease their useless conversation and the result was that he missed what was said about that West German. It was only out of curiosity that he wished to know but it was still frustrating!
Pens were put to paper and the surrender came with promises of good treatment of those captured and repatriation home after the war had ended; Weiss scoffed at the notion of the first promise because he had seen such treatment first hand though did wonder about the second promise as the end of the war was mentioned in such a manner by the Soviet Army and Nationale Volksarmee representatives.
Next came the awarding of medals to certain individuals. Weiss already had been given his just as almost everyone else with the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment had though in not a public forum like this. He wore the medal that recognised his part in the fighting here 'Für Verdienste um Volk und Vaterland' (For Meritorious Service to the People and the Fatherland) attached to his uniform as it was a combat decoration. Others had been awarded to mid-level officers and also men like Leutnant Platz who had lost their lives doing their duty. His former platoon leader had been posthumously issued with the Blücher Orden (Blücher Order) as had so many others who had died – whatever the circumstances – in the fighting for control of the city.
However, more higher ranking medals were now being presented in this public fashion… given only to senior men who hadn't fought like Weiss and the others had. The commanding officers from the Grenztruppen and the VPB units attached to the Berlingruppe, as well as the Landstreitkrafte head in charge of that combat group that had overall control of the mission to take West Berlin were all to be awarded their top-tier medals. In addition, a senior Stasi man who had never heard of was getting a medal alongside the commander of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment and the Soviet Army man who had led their combat brigade into battle.
These senior men who had been in the rear all during the slaughter in West Berlin were to be issued with the Held der DDR (Hero of the German Democratic Republic) and the Karl Marx Orden (Karl Marx Order). Weiss had to ask himself where was the honour in such men? He had earned his medal, so had the deceased Platz – Weiss was sure that with her husband's medal denoting such service to the state she wouldn't endure too much financial hardship after the war – but these men hadn't!
Finally, they got around to the demolition.
Within sight of the Brandenburg Gate there was a stretch of the Berlin Wall that would often be the focus of the media during times of international tension as it lay in the centre of divided Berlin. Today that was going to be brought down with some explosive charges to apparently symbolise the end of such previous division of this city and thus, by extension, Germany.
Weiss knew that the rest of the Berlin Wall wasn't to share this fate and soon enough a fence of maybe another form of barricade would be risen here as the reuniting of the city was only for propaganda effects.
Regardless, the dignitaries and the cameras were here to watch a small, dramatic explosion of part of that famous barrier. Weiss turned to look at that section like everyone else did and waited for the blasts that would come. Germany was being reunited here and he wondered how long that it would be before the same happened elsewhere too.
