Gerhard Franzky was a member of the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. Franzky was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1925. He was already in school when Hitler came to power in 1933. In school there was a photo on the wall behind the teacher. After Hitler came to power the picture was changed to Adolf Hitler. The customary greeting the students gave the teacher was replaced by a chorus of Heil Hitler. Franzky left school at the age of 13 in 1939 and started an apprenticeship with a mechanical engineering firm. While there, he manufactured printing presses and office supplies. Once war broke out they had to begin manufacturing undercarriages for airplanes. When he finished his apprenticeship in late 1942 he worked on tail wheel shock absorbers for Junkers Ju 87 Stukas. By October 1942 he entered the armed forces and was sent to a military base in Southern Poland. There, he received his basic training with the Waffen SS. They were trained to be a part of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division but were shipped off as replacements to other locations once training had ended. Franzky was sent to the south of Leningrad. He served there for a short time as a machine gunner then he and his machine gun team were ordered to go to Berlin. They were attached to another unit and ordered to go to Yugoslavia in order to get Marshall Tito but the attempt, in May 1943, ended in failure. While in Yugoslavia, Franzky was stabbed in the right thigh by a bayonet and was sent back to Germany. After his hospital stay, Franzky ended up in Nuremberg. There was an SS communications station there and Franzky desperately wanted to work there. He knew Morse code and had gotten his ham license when he was 15 years old. Franzky’s injury allowed him to so annoy the station chief that he managed to get transferred to communications. Franzky worked as a teacher in Morse code for a short time while attending NCO [Annotator's Note: non-commissioned officer] school in Nuremberg. Franzky was then transferred to Biarritz, France where he became the personal radioman to an SD [Annotator's Note: SD is the acronym for sicherheitsdienst, the German security service] officer. There was a lot of small arms smuggling there between France and Spain. His stay in Biarritz did not last long. One day his CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] was driving the staff car with Franzky and the original driver in the backseat. The car drove over a mine. The officer was killed. The driver was wounded but Franzky escaped without injury. He was then sent to Gardonne.

Gerhard Franzky was attached as a radioman to the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg". From then on, Franzky stayed with the 10th SS Division. During his time in the 10th SS, the Italians changed sides and a lot of German soldiers took their former allies captive. Some of the Italians did not mind as it kept them out of the rest of the war. After the Italians changed sides, Franzky saw a Ju-52 [Annotator's Note: German Junkers Ju-52 transport aircraft] that flew over their position every day. It was recognizable by the lack of a swastika on its tail. One day it did not appear and they knew that something had happened. It was the invasion of Sicily. Franzky remembers the division painting their vehicles and getting Mediterranean gear but they never used it. They were transferred to the Normandy coast in October 1943. They settled in the vicinity of Notre Dame d'Estrees, just outside Lisieux. Franzky was sent to officer school in Metz just before Christmas. He stayed there until March 1944. He was promoted to officer cadet. The unit was sent to the Eastern Front. The 9th and 10th Divisions [Annotator's Note: 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions] were sent to the Ukraine and first saw action at Tarnopol. Some Germans were surrounded by the Red Army and the two divisions drove into the kessel [Annotator's Note: kessel, German for kettle or cauldron, was the term used by the German military to describe a position that was encircled] and relieved the battered German soldiers who had been trapped at Tarnopol since the previous fall. From there, Franzky was given ten days leave and traveled to Leipzig. Since the last time he had been there, Leipzig had become a bombing target. Franzky saw a lot of damage to the city. While there, an air raid took place. Franzky did not go to a shelter. From his window he could see fighter planes shooting at anything that moved. It shocked Franzky and it convinced him to go into the shelter. From there, Franzky had to return to his unit in Ukraine. He got as far as the border crossing station at Premysl, Poland. There, the border police caught him and sent him back to Berlin. From Berlin, Franzky was sent to Stendal where there was a paratrooper base. Franzky was one of many SS men being trained in a crash course to jump out of a plane. He was attached to a unit commanded by Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny was promoted to captain on Hitler's birthday. Franzky was in the second wave of the paratrooper attack. He was hit while in the air by flak that went right through his helmet and knocked him unconscious. He hit the ground but does not remember it and when he came to a medic was attending to him. He was then shipped back to Germany. Franzky spent some time in a hospital in Giesen. He was still there went D-Day began. The 10th Division was being sent back to the Western Front. Franzky was ordered to rejoin them in France. He was sent back to officer school in Metz to wait for his unit's arrival. After rejoining his unit they traveled on the roads all the way to Normandy. At the end of June they made their first enemy contact on the Western Front. By this point, Franzky was part of 22nd Regiment’s regimental HQ [Annotator's Note: headquarters]. Around Caen they replaced the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend which had suffered about 80 percent casualties. Then they went south to the river Orne for rest.

[Annotator's Note: Gerhard Franzky served in the Waffen SS as a communications officer in Headquarters, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg."] While there [Annotator's Note: at the Orne River], they discovered that General Patton [Annotator's Note: General George S. Patton] had landed at Avranches and the R & R was canceled. In August [Annotator's Note: August 1944], the 10th SS Panzer Division was trapped in the Falaise-Argentan pocket. The division lost everything there. They lost their equipment, their leaders, and their men. The last day before the pocket closed, Franzky escaped on a Panzer Mark IV [Annotator's Note: German Mark IV main battle tank]. After the Falaise pocket the French Resistance was emboldened. The Resistance was present everywhere. Franzky headed for the Seine River and crossed it at Nantes. Constant air attacks made it difficult but Franzky made it across and was ordered to get another radio truck and report to the town of Albert, France. Franzky received a message from division HQ [Annotator's Note: headquarters]. The last message he received was an order for a breakout in the Belgian city of Mons scheduled for 2200 hours [Annotator's Note: ten at night]. That same night, Franzky's group got trapped in a ravine and the lead armored vehicle was knocked out by a Sherman tank. In order to get out of there they had to blow up many of their own vehicles. They suffered heavy casualties there. Franzky managed to escape unscathed. They headed for Amiens, France near the end of August. Franzky was captured around this time. After three days of long marches, Franzky and six others had hidden during the day in order to rest so they could march at night. They had posted a guard for only one half hour. The guard fell asleep and was captured by the FFI [Annotator's Note: Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur, or French Forces of the Interior, the official name of the French Resistance]. The French stripped them of their rank and decorations. That night they managed to slip away and made contact with a truck driven by a guy from the Hohenstaufen [Annotator's Note: 9th SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen"]. The driver told Franzky that the 9th SS was now located at Arnhem and the 10th SS was at a location south of there [Annotator's Note: at Nijmegen]. The driver dropped them off in Arnhem and when he got there, Franzky found out his promotion had come through while he was missing in action. They celebrated by getting drunk.

A few days later, Gerhard Franzky was caught by surprise as the allies launched Operation Market Garden. On 17 September [Annotator's Note: 17 September 1944] the attack on Arnhem began. The 82nd Airborne Division landed in the 10th SS's [Annotator's Note: German 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg"] area and took the first bridge before the SS even woke up. The fighting around Arnhem lasted for nine days. Franzky was wounded again at Arnhem. He had no radio truck there, only a 30 watt backpack radio that was carried by one of his men. The radio was shot and destroyed, most likely by a sniper. Franzky had to take over leadership of a squad due to his officer rank. Eventually he was relieved and sent to HQ [Annotator's Note: headquarters]. While on the way back to the HQ, Franzky's group had a run in with a British patrol. Both sides opened fire and Franzky took cover behind a low wall. The British tossed grenades and Franzky caught five pieces of shrapnel from a grenade. A doctor bandaged him up. In Arnhem the need for doctors meant that a lot of men went untreated. Franzky was sent to pick up some trucks that had been abandoned. On the way there, outside Liege, Belgium, they were ambushed. Allies had placed caltrops in the road. When they ran over them, the tires were punctured. When they got out of the trucks they were ambushed by about 25 men. They surrendered on 4 October 1944. Franzky was marched into a cellar with steel bars. The next morning they were led into a field and it was clear to Franzky that they were going to be shot. Before they could be executed, an army jeep and truck drove by. Franzky thought that he was saved, but they did not stop. Despair took over again but further up the road the jeep turned around and came back. The jeep contained a driver, an enlisted man, and a captain. The captain was curious about what was happening. He asked Franzky and the others, in German, what was happening but they were speechless. The captain asked if anyone had already been killed and was told no. The captain then spoke to the natives in French. An Alsatian member of Franzky's squad told him later what was said. The captain told the natives that these were regular soldiers and must be treated as such and that if the French had any problems with that he would order his men to take care of them. The truck, with about eight GIs [Annotator's Note: American soldiers] had returned and they marched them onto the truck. The French allowed them to leave. The GIs offered them coffee and cigarettes. After a short drive they were handed back to regular French troops. Franzky asked the captain why he spoke such good German and he told Franzky that his parents left Breslau when he was two years old. The captain had never left the United States after arriving and he hoped to see his place of birth on Uncle Sam's dime. Franzky told them that he better hurry because the Russians were likely to get there first. Franzky told the captain that there was a coal mine in Breslau funded by American capital and asked if the captain's parents were still alive. He said that his mother was still alive. He wanted to be able to tell his mother that he had been there and Franzky repeated his warning that he better hurry up.

[Annotator's Note: Gerhard Franzky served in the Waffen SS as a communications officer in Headquarters, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg." He was captured by French partisans on 4 October 1944 and eventually ended up as a prisoner of war of the Free French Army.] The French regulars then marched them about 18 miles to a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp. Later, they were put on a train to Dieppe, France. There was just a large field there with a tall fence around it but no buildings there. Twice a day they were supplied with water and fed canned corned beef. Eight men had to share a can and some crackers. Franzky then used an empty can as a canteen and also as a shovel. It helped to keep him warm from the October wind. The corned beef was not refrigerated so cutting it into even eighths was nearly impossible. Arguments occurred frequently over the food. Every day a different man would go to get the food to ensure that he was not being cheated. Franzky spent about three weeks there. Franzky believes that his youth saved him. Some of the older men could not take it and ran for the fences in order to be shot. The only defining feature of the camp was one large hole which served as the communal toilet for the thousands of men imprisoned in this camp. The edge of the hole was as slippery as ice. Men attempting to get as close as they could to the edge would occasionally fall in and if that occurred they were gone. Everyone would turn around and no one would attempt to help them. There was not much they could do as there were so many prisoners. Still, Franzky thinks that it is important to recognize that such treatment did occur in allied POW camps. Later Franzky's name was called for shipment to England. He was sent across the channel on a landing boat and put ashore at Portsmouth. After the previous few weeks, Portsmouth was paradise. The Salvation Army was there and offered them hot tea and hot soup. Their treatment of Franzky has inspired him to give to them every time he sees them asking for donations. From there they were sent to several different POW camps in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He was released from POW status in January 1949. He was given 40 marks from the new German government and was formally discharged at the training area Munsterlager.

Gerhard Franzky's home in Leipzig was occupied by the Russians. Having already been to Russia once before, Franzky had no desire to live under their rule so was released to his sister's address in Bavaria. In Bavaria, there was a major job shortage so he went to Dusseldorf. There, he met another POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] from the camp in Scotland. They decided to go back to the United Kingdom. They went to Scotland. The British told them that if they wished to return to the United Kingdom the British would pay their fare but that the German immigrants would be assigned to an agricultural job until they paid back the money that the British had given them. Franzky went to work milking cows. While there he met other POWS. Franzky received a newspaper saying that the city of Perth, Scotland had received sixty German girls for housework. Franzky told his friend that he was going to get one. Every other weekend they did not have to work. The first time he was unlucky. The second time he met a girl from East Prussia on a blind date who became his wife in 1951. She was on a contract but Franzky was not. Franzky got a job at the John Brown shipyard in Glasgow. From there, Franzky was hired on to an oil tanker attached to the fleet auxiliary supplying oil to British warships. Franzky was offered the job of 3rd Engineer. He had no experience on ships but his work in the shipyards gave him apprentice status. From Aberdeen, Scotland they sailed to Iran. After six months he returned to Glasgow. His wife did not want him to go to sea and told him that if he kept staying out at sea for so long she would return home to East Prussia. Franzky explained that he was trying to make enough money to move them to the United States. He had a friend in New York and did not wish to spend the rest of his life in Scotland. The Franzky's arrived in the United States in 1956. Franzky went to the Brooklyn Shipyard for work. He arrived in New York on a Friday, went to the shipyard on Monday, and started working on Tuesday. He was laid off once as a political move and then quickly rehired. Franzky retired in 1990 but has remained active in his retirement.

Gerhard Franzky remembers Leipzig before the war as being a very historical city with very old opera houses and restaurants. Martin Luther and many other intellectuals lived in Leipzig. Schiller called it a little Paris. Faust was written in a restaurant in a basement in Leipzig. The old city hall in Leipzig is over 600 years old. The new city hall is older than the United States. Near the city hall there is a monument commemorating the battle of Leipzig where the Germans and the Russians defeated Napoleon and the Swiss. The monument is enormous and it opened to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the battle. When the Russians took Leipzig they destroyed much of the city but they left the monument alone because it also commemorates their victory. Books are a big industry in Leipzig and that is why Franzky's first job was involved in making printing presses. Leipzig was a trading center for about 600 years. In 1938 the Leipzig Trade Fair was opened by Adolf Hitler and that was the first time that Franzky saw Hitler. Franzky was in the Hitler Youth and he and the other boys made a barrier. Hitler drove by Franzky's position in his car. The fair stopped in 1940 and the Soviet Union started it up again after the war but only for Eastern Bloc countries. In the 1980s it was opened to the West. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the trade fair grounds have modernized. About ten years ago the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig opened again. There are three universities in Leipzig. It has the largest railroad station in Europe with 28 platforms. Trains do not go through Leipzig. They come and they leave.

Gerhard Franzky remembers the most important thing after Hitler came to power was that the school schedule changed. Franzky was only eight when Hitler came to power. His father had lost his job in 1932 but got another job shortly thereafter and never lost his job again. Franzky had three sisters, all older than him. The youngest of the three died young and Franzky does not remember her. The other two were five and six years older than Franzky and he went to school with them. Franzky's mother died when he was five and Franzky was sent to live with his aunt. Franzky's father eventually remarried but his second wife took all of his money and then left him. Franzky's father remarried again and Franzky did not get along with her and was never close with her. His father built up a business building medical equipment. He wanted Franzky to take over the business but Franzky volunteered to join the Waffen SS. His father was very disappointed. Franzky's uncle eventually helped his father with the business and took over the business after Franzky's father died. By that time, however, Leipzig was in East Germany. Franzky's father managed to keep the business independent but when he died the Soviets approached the uncle who became the general director of the company. Franzky went to Germany to see the factory but they would not let him inside. Franzky was judged to be an imperialist from America and thus was not allowed in. Franzky saw his uncle's large house and two cars and railed against him for profiting while so many people could not afford a bicycle. The uncle knew that things were bad but there were advantages to the new regime. If he was short some supplies all he had to do was get some communist official on the phone and it was taken care of. The uncle defended the Soviets as making his life easier. Franzky did not question that but he was upset about the rampant corruption that had ruined Germany. In 1935 Franzky's grandmother died.

In 1936, many of Gerhard Franzky's friends joined the Hitler Youth. For them it was like the scouts [Annotator's Note: Boy Scouts of America]. While in the Hitler Youth he learned Morse code. Franzky had a great time in the Hitler Youth. He wanted to be an electrician but his father made sure he got into engineering. In 1937 his sisters bought him the uniform. His father did not like it but he could not raise an objection. They would often go on camping trips, sometimes for as long as a week. It was based on the regular military. There were several divisions within the Hitler Youth. There was a regular infantry section, a communications section, and even an air force section that piloted gliders. They would put a glider on the edge of a cliff and push it off and it would give the pilot a few minutes of flying time. Anyone who wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle or a horse could learn while there. No one needed their own horse or motorbike. Once Franzky discovered how much he liked girls he quit the Hitler Youth. Franzky is very insistent about dispelling allied propaganda about the nature of the Hitler Youth because, at least for him, no one forced him to join and no one forced him to stay. Franzky's future wife was in the BDM [Annotator's Note: Bund Deutscher Madel or League of German Girls] and says similar things about her time there. The girls spent time knitting. Franzky supports conscription and calls out Nixon [Annotator's Note: President Richard M. Nixon] for going to an all volunteer army as he sees the younger generations lacking in the discipline that the army instills in its soldiers. Franzky always looked forward to the trips that they took. The troops of Hitler Youth were often led by an older boy. Franzky believed that this helped instill obedience because there was more respect given to someone who had been where they were. In 1939 the war began. In April Franzky began his apprenticeship though he was still in the Hitler Youth. The British and French started bombing Germany. Many German planes were shot down by radar. In order to mess up radar, the planes would throw strips of aluminum foil out to break up the radar waves. After the air raids, Franzky and other members of the Hitler Youth would search the fields and pick up all the pieces of aluminum foil that they could find in order for it to be recycled. They also used to go around and pick up anything that could be reused like aluminum toothpaste containers or iron fences that were knocked down. They made a song about their collecting habits. Franzky was assigned to communications. If the communications failed, Franzky was assigned as a runner to deliver message. Franzky was then assigned to Civil Defense. In those early days of the war he was working several distinct jobs. Then he met a girl. The girl, who was French, got Franzky in trouble. An officer gave Franzky, who had already volunteered for the Waffen SS at this time, a talk. Franzky did not listen and decided to quit the Hitler Youth.

Gerhard Franzky could quit the Hitler Youth but he was not allowed to quit the civil defense. Soon it was 1942. Many of Franzky's friends had already joined the Wehrmacht [Annotator's Note: the German military under the Nazi regime]. Franzky's friend who had flown gliders while in the Hitler Youth joined the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: the German Air Force]. This is the friend that Franzky later joined in New York. The friend later moved to North Carolina where he died. Franzky does not dispute that the Hitler Youth were taught the ideals of National Socialism. They would come together once or twice a week to learn these things and they would have to practice them. The post office taught the boys various things. Franzky believed that many of the boys listened but did not care. While in a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp in Northern Ireland, a Red Cross commission toured the camp. Franzky was a quartermaster in the camp and was considered an important person. They went to the kitchen. There was a German cook who fed the British soldiers. Franzky overheard a girl asking the cook how it was having modern conveniences that he never had back in Germany. The cook corrected her and told her that he had worked in a hotel in Germany whose facilities were far more impressive than the camp's kitchen. Franzky noticed that people in the camps often made similar assumptions about German life that were frequently off base. Franzky does not understand why as Germany is usually ahead of the curve on technological advances. While in grammar school they were taught the 48 states and their capitals. Franzky's daughter once asked him where the English Channel was. Franzky was amazed that she did not know that. Franzky believes that the eight years of German schooling is more than equal to the 12 years of schooling in the United States. That four year gap gives the graduates time for an apprenticeship that will set them up better earlier in life. Franzky was a trained engineer and an officer when he left the military and yet he was only 24 years old. He thinks the German system is better suited at allowing people to succeed early. The second time Franzky saw Hitler was when they were training to go back into Yugoslavia. There was a parade to celebrate Hitler's birthday and Franzky and the rest of his unit were allowed to watch the parade. When Franzky was promoted to Sturmmann [Annotator's Note: a rank roughly equivalent to a PFC in the US Army], he watched the parade and saw Hitler pass by. In 1939 when he joined the work force, he celebrated May Day by marching in a parade. He tried to behave like an adult but he could not dance and was not allowed to drink but he did anyway.

At the time, Gerhard Franzky thought Hitler was a great man. Franzky's father got another job and was later able to start his own business. Until 1933 the Franzkys still had gas lighting. Then they got electric lighting. Before 1933 they had a communal outhouse but after that they had toilets installed. One of Franzky's friends moved into a house built by the new regime. At the time these new houses were popping up like mushrooms. Everything seemed good until 1938 when Franzky saw an 88mm flak cannon. At the time the kids did not care much but their parents could smell war. Franzky remembers that people smiled more. Everyone had work. It was to build up for the war but Franzky thinks that anyone who had been out of work for two years would jump at the chance to have a job again. Franzky believes that no one in Germany would question what they were building if it meant they could be employed again. He speaks with some disdain about people in the United States who would refuse jobs in any way related to war. Franzky liked to talk to the soldiers who guarded the gun emplacements. Before the war people were always talking about what would happen next after the Nazi's stream of victories leading up to 1 September 1939 [Annotator's Note: the day Germany invaded Poland, officially beginning World War 2 in Europe]. Other people feared for war but Franzky was excited to see what would happen next, until war broke out. There were two six family apartment buildings on Franzky's street. Six of the boys were killed in Russia. They were already dead before Franzky volunteered. When he volunteered, his neighbors called him crazy for volunteering after so many friends had already died. Franzky did not care, he was enthusiastic. The early succession of victories that the Germans had enjoyed on the Eastern Front had made Franzky proud. He wanted to go immediately but he had to wait his turn. As a teenager, he only saw the good things that had come out of Hitler's regime. Franzky claims that he was unaware of the concentration camps. He acknowledges that no one will believe him but he asserts that it is the truth. He does not deny that it happened, he knows that it happened. He also thinks that similar things are done in the United States. He went to give a talk to a school on a Monday. The previous Friday there had been a female, Jewish, Holocaust survivor giving a talk to the school. Franzky did not know about the prior visitor. After being introduced he was asked if he had ever been to a concentration camp. Franzky replied that he had and when pressed for a location said he had been to concentration camps in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. He explained to the children what the term concentration in concentration camp means. He explained to them about his time in his POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp and how, to his mind, it was a concentration camp. They would often ask about the Hitler Youth and he would just compare it the Scouts [Annotator's Note: Boy Scouts of America]. Franzky explains that he always tries to tell that to people but they would not always accept it.

Gerhard Franzky joined the Waffen SS in order to join the best of the best. Franzky believes that anyone who is a big deal in politics has bodyguards. Franzky talks about how back in the 1920s, whenever Hitler had a speech scheduled, he would post guards at the doors. It was out of this simple protection detail that the SS was born as the Saalschutz, or Hall Protection. Later, the name was changed to Schutzstaffel or Protection Guard. There was also the SA [Annotator's Note: Sturmabteilung], the Brownshirts. The SA and SS were often in conflict. Franzky mentions that Hitler and the head of the SA, Ernst Rohm, often argued until Hitler did away with Rohm during the Night of the Long Knives [Annotator's Note: 30 June 1934]. After Hitler came to power, he transformed the SS into a much larger unit. Under the Versailles Treaty, Germany was limited to a 100,000 man army. Hitler expanded the RAD [Annotator's Note: Reichsarbeitsdienst, or Reich Labor Service] to circumvent these limitations. These men ostensibly carried a spade but they could easily arm themselves. From there, Hitler started building an army. The SS had to be trained by the army. Modern Germany does not like to acknowledge their World War 2 armed forces but Franzky has a list of former SS officers who later worked to build up the Bundeswehr, the modern armed forces of Germany. The veterans of the Weimar Republic's Reichswehr acted as trainers for the Waffen SS. The Waffen SS was usually held in reserve. When the war began, the Waffen SS suffered many casualties in Poland. After the invasion of Poland they chose to increase the number of Waffen SS troops. Only the divisions were given names but the 2nd SS Division "Das Reich" named its regiments too. The 3rd SS Division "Totenkopf" often guarded concentration camps, as well as some Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] and foreign volunteers. The 4th SS Division was a police division. The 4th originally had police tabs on their uniforms but these were eventually replaced with tabs like the rest of the Waffen SS. After Falaise-Argentan, Franzky’s division [Annotator's Note: 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg"] was reduced to roughly battalion size due to heavy casualties and never recovered. There were many make believe units of various soldiers from the different forces. The Waffen SS was by no means uniform as they had entire divisions composed of foreigners of somewhat questionable ability. Franzky is not very familiar with the later developing divisions. Franzky had a Bessarabian driver who could speak French and Russian. The driver listened to the Russian lines and whenever they came on the radio asking if they hit the target the driver would lie.

Gerhard Franzky was very proud to be a member of the Waffen SS. He sees the inter-service rivalry to be much the same as the one that exists in the United States. The army and the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] would often try to ignore the Waffen SS so as to avoid starting any fights. Franzky's unit was also called a fire brigade. One time on the Eastern Front, the fighting near the city of Pilawa had devolved into trench warfare. Franzky had just returned from a vacation and was lounging on the edge of the trench with his shirt off and got sunburned while in the trench. The Russians started firing katyusha rockets at them. The 10th SS [Annotator's Note: 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg"] attacked and took the position in 45 minutes. After this they were sent to the West. Other units resented the fact that after the SS left an area the regular soldiers had the awful job of having to hold it. The other branches thought that the SS had better weapons but Franzky asserts that that was not true. Franzky was originally trained as a rifleman with the Kar 98k. When he became a machine gunner he was armed with a Walther P-38 pistol. When he became a communications man he continued carrying a P-38. When he became an officer, he carried a Walther PPK and an MP-40. Franzky was only a machine gunner in Yugoslavia operating an MG-42. His first combat experience was when his commanding officer was killed by a Stalin organ [Annotator's Note: Stalin organ was a common German nickname for the Russian Katyusha rocket launcher]. The CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] heard the noise and yelled to his men to duck. Most of the men emerged unscathed but a few did not. One guy, Banachek [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], was plucking a chicken inside a kubelwagen when the rockets came. Banachek was hit and Franzky saw blood spurting out of the side of his neck. The CO was also hit and was loaded into an ambulance but as the ambulance drove away it was hit and exploded. They suffered several casualties that day and the dead sent shivers down Franzky's spine. He had been playing games with these men earlier in the day.

Gerhard Franzky realizes that he messed up the order of events and that when he witnessed his CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] being killed on the Eastern Front it was not his first experience in combat. He had already been a member of the 4th SS Polizei Division. The death of his CO occurred in the Ukraine in early 1944. Shortly thereafter, Franzky was sent to Berlin to train for a raid in Yugoslavia under Otto Skorzeny. When Franzky arrived in Berlin he felt like a green kid because many of the men were hardened fighters. Franzky was promoted to sturmmann [Annotator's Note: a rank roughly equivalent to a PFC in the US Army] and Skorzeny was promoted to captain, both on Adolf Hitler's birthday [Annotator's Note: 20 April 1944]. They set off for Yugoslavia for the raid on Drvar in May 1944. Supporting the raid were the local partisans, the Chetniks. The main thrust of the raid was to take out Tito but the raid failed. The partisans frequently ambushed the Germans. Guys would hide behind fallen trees. One day, the Germans were marching and came across a tree in the path. As Franzky jumped over the tree a wounded partisan stabbed him in the leg. Franzky could feel the blood running down into his boots. He fell to his knees and rammed the butt of his machine gun into the partisan's face. One of the guys running behind Franzky killed the wounded partisan. The Drvar raid was thought up after the Germans had caught wind of Tito's supposed location. The Chetniks were to serve as their guides but the information was not any good. Tito was not where he was supposed to be. There was a railroad station nearby. The next day, a train brought wounded to the hospital at Karlovac. After being wounded, Franzky was put on the train and sent there. After heading some distance, the train was derailed. The partisans had mined the tracks. After the train derailed, the partisans attacked. Franzky and his second gunner were both from Leipzig and were both on the train. The second gunner had been shot in the behind during the ambush that wounded Franzky. They were assigned to man a security MG-42 mounted on the train. They emptied the gun into the ambushers and the attack was repelled. Later, they were transported by truck to a hospital several hours away. After being discharged from Karlovac, Franzky was sent to Nuremberg. Franzky hoped to get a job in Nuremberg but that did not work out. Franzky managed to divert home to Leipzig for a few hours before reporting to Nuremberg. The following year, Franzky was sent to Giesen to recover from his injuries.

Gerhard Franzky bounced around quite a bit in the armed forces. While in Nuremberg, Franzky walked by a radio room and was interested by the sound. He walked into the room, sat down and started writing down what came through the headphones for the class. After the session was over he gave his paper to the officer in charge of the class. The officer laughed when he realized that Franzky was a machine gunner and immediately offered him a job as a radio operator. Franzky eventually received a War Merit Cross for his radio work. He was well ahead of the trainees so during radio school he was also sent to NCO [Annotator's Note: non-commissioned officer] school. Franzky did not finish the training before he was sent to the south of France. Upon arrival, his new CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] was annoyed that his new radioman was not an NCO and promoted him on the spot. Franzky went to Metz for officer school. He did not want a career in the military and objected when his CO tried to send him to officer school. Many of the men in the communications squad had aspirations of being officers. They were typically smarter than the rest of the men in the unit. When an order to send three guys to Metz for officer training came in, one of the three was in the hospital with jaundice. Franzky survived officer school and was promoted to Junker [Annotator's Note: officer cadet]. After Franzky caught up with his unit [Annotator's Note: Headquarters, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg"] at Arnhem he was promoted. Franzky was surprised that it took so long for a promotion because of the massive casualties that the Germans were suffering from June to September [Annotator's Note: June to September 1944]. After leaving Metz, Franzky joined his unit on the Eastern Front. They did not have any roads to travel on so writing radio messages was difficult when their truck was driving off road. They faced heavy resistance in the area. In a short time, 28 of his unit's 32 Panzer Mk. IVs [Annotator's Note: Mark IV tanks] were destroyed. Every night, a light plane would fly over head and shoot flares and drop little bombs on Franzky's unit. The pilot would also cut his engines for a bit and glide in order to confuse the ground troops as to where he was. The men on the ground made figuring out where he was a game. Franzky lost his radio truck to a fire while in the East. One night, the unit received a care package from home but Franzky was stuck on duty until midnight and missed it. Every three days Franzky had to change the radio wavelength. Every day they had to change the call sign. Once, Franzky had a bit too much to drink and fell asleep at his station. He awoke to the sound of screeching static and remembered that he had to change the wavelength. He changed it and wrote down five messages in short order but was afraid that he was going to be punished for falling asleep. After he was done writing, his friend walked in and asked him what had happened. None of the messages were important and that spared Franzky from having to report his mishap. While walking back to his truck he noticed a new crater and discovered that the light plane had returned the previous night.

[Annotator's Note: Gerhard Franzky served in the Waffen SS as a communications officer in Headquarters, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg."] In the Ukraine, elements of the LAH [Annotator's Note: 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandatre Adolf Hitler"] and Das Reich [Annotator's Note: 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich"] were cut off and surrounded in a pocket. The 9th and 10th SS Divisions had been trained specifically to defend against Allied air attacks. Both divisions were sent to the Ukraine to drive a wedge through the Russian lines and relieve the troops at Tarnopol. Franzky's division was trained to fight in northern France but when the invasion of Normandy came they were in the Ukraine. They were not gone from France for very long but they still missed the start of the invasion. After Tarnopol, Franzky was given ten days leave and returned to Leipzig. One of Franzky's school friends was paralyzed. Franzky used to take him to school. Franzky and his friends from school vowed to meet up in the September following the end of the war. The paralyzed friend was the base from which all of Franzky's friends stayed in touch with each other. He kept a register of where all of his school friends were posted. From his friend, Franzky discovered that another friend who had entered the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] was also on leave at the same time. A friend in the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf" was also on leave and they went out on the town. He never saw his friend again after that day. Franzky also tried to brave an air raid outside the shelter and was struck by the devastation that ordinary civilians were dealing with.

After leaving Leipzig, Gerhard Franzky was caught at the border crossing at Premysl and sent to Berlin. In Berlin he was given a crash paratrooper course before being sent to Yugoslavia. Franzky didn't see enough of Skorzeny [Annotator's Note: SS-Obersturmbannführer, or Lieutenant Colonel, Otto Skorzeny] to fully form an opinion about him. Franzky missed the start of the Normandy invasion because his unit was still in the east. Franzky entered combat at the end of June [Annotator's Note: June 1944] in order to relieve the Hitlerjugend division [Annotator's Note:12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend"] to defend Caen. Once they were due to be relieved, they moved down the river Orne for a break. In mid-July, Franzky witnessed a rain of bombs ordered by a desperate Montgomery. Franzky was terrified but survived the barrage in a manhole that he had previously put a mattress in. After the bombing stopped they had to deal with an artillery barrage followed by a tank attack. Smoke grenades were used to disguise the movement of the tanks. They could hear the tanks approaching but couldn't see them. All of the men had panzerfausts [Annotator's Note: a single shot, shoulder fired anti-tank weapon] in case the tanks came any closer. Eventually, the smoke cleared and Franzky realized that there was also an infantry unit between them and the tanks. The British soldiers were unaware of the Germans nearby and some of the men had their guns on their shoulders. Once they got close enough, Franzky's unit opened fire and knocked out three of the tanks. The rest of the tanks backed away and the British soldiers retreated immediately. Franzky isn't ashamed to admit that he was terrified. Franzky didn't have any contact with the Americans in Normandy. After being sent down the river Orne for some rest, Franzky's unit found a barrel of calvados [Annotator's Note: Calvados is a French Apple Brandy found in Lower Normandy]. It had been buried by a farmer. They siphoned out the calvados and got drunk when the orders came through for them to report to duty. The officers made them empty all of their canteens. From there the unit marched off to the west with some difficulty in order to meet Patton's [Annotator's Note: General George S. Patton] advance. Before long, Franzky's unit had been surrounded by American, British and Polish troops at Falaise-Argentan.

Gerhard Franzky’s unit [Annotator's Note: Headquarters, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg"] suffered heavy casualties at all levels of the division. They lost many radiomen and were forced to resort to runners. One radio operator was wounded in the back and they were forced to leave him in a basement. This basement was a boon to Franzky because he found an MP-40 [Annotator's Note: MP-40 9mm submachine gun] there and he had been using nothing but a pistol for a while. The fighting was not constant but on 20 August [Annotator's Note: 20 August 1944] the Allies made a counterattack around the SS Divisions. Franzky rode a Panzer Mark IV [Annotator's Note: Mark IV tank] and escaped the pocket before the Allies could close the trap. Franzky still remembers the carnage of dead bodies and destroyed equipment scattered on the ground. Franzky lost his first radio truck early on but received a smaller truck shortly thereafter. This truck was also destroyed. He lost his equipment and burned his maps. Franzky also threw away his gas mask and his helmet. When he made his escape, Franzky kept nothing but his MP-40, his P-38 pistol, a canteen and a bread bag. Franzky was too busy to fully think about his future. He was too busy just focusing on escaping. It was obvious to him by this point that Germany was not going to win the war. Even when he heard about the end of the war while in a British POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp, it was hard for him to accept. After being caught in a ravine they had to transfer all the gasoline to the halftracks because they could get out. All of the other vehicles were to be destroyed. Franzky used to call his driver Mickey. Mickey was left behind to dispose of the vehicles. At dawn they managed to find each other again.

The seven men reached a town that had a substantial German presence and they saw officers sending men to different places. Gerhard Franzky and the men he escaped with [Annotator's Note: who he escaped the Argentan-Falaise Gap with] wanted to stick together. Before reaching the town they had to cross an open field in their halftrack. Franzky and the others were ordered to mount a gun on top of the halftrack for an attack down the hill into the village. Mickey carried the gun's ammo. They were the second armored personal carrier to go down the hill. On the way down the hill, a British 20mm gun opened up on them. The first APC [Annotator's Note: armored personnel carrier] stopped short and Franzky's APC plowed into the back of it. Franzky then jumped out of the side of his vehicle but his MP-40 [Annotator's Note: MP-40 9mm submachine gun] fell out of his tunic. He jumped over a low wall and found Mickey but he had no MP-40 and no ammo for his MG-42 [Annotator's Note: MG-42 machine gun]. The shooting stopped quickly so Franzky and Mickey went to investigate a building that was supposed to have some wounded soldiers in it. They captured a British major and four Canadian soldiers. The rest of the guys in Franzky's group were unharmed. The British major spoke a bit of German. Several people needed medical attention but everyone's first aid kits had already been expended. One SS soldier had had his entire side ripped open and gave Franzky his MP-40. All of the troops identified as being SS were shot by the French Resistance later that day. Only the guy with the messed up side escaped execution as he was part of a different SS unit that the French were unaware of. After the war, Franzky met up with this guy in Scotland and the guy told him what happened. When the Resistance began executing prisoners the British major protested and he was forced to stand against the wall so he could not do anything. Franzky spoke to the British major and told him that the Germans had to go and could not do anything for the wounded but Franzky told him that the Allies would arrive shortly and they could take care of the wounded. They saluted each other and Franzky and the other Germans walked away. Shortly after leaving the town they had to hide under some bushes because the Allies showed up. They spent a day on the ground under a heavy rainfall. Late in the afternoon they could hear some shooting. Franzky received the last message from his divisional commander ordering them to go to Mons, Belgium. They marched for three nights and hid during the daytime. Franzky saw stalks of barley growing high and the men took some to sleep on. Some members of the French Resistance followed the trail and ambushed Franzky and the others during the daytime. Franzky woke up with a gun in his face. They were captured but escaped that night. They hid close by in a slag pile through the night because Franzky realized that if they ran they would be caught. It was better to run the second night because by then their captors would have likely already given up on catching them. They were picked up by a truck from the 9th SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen" and told that Mons was no longer relevant. Instead they were brought to Nijmegen.

The attack on the barn took place between Arras and Amiens. When Gerhard Franzky was caught the second time he was sent to the same area. Franzky was supposed to be on R & R when Market Garden took place. He remembers that the 82nd Airborne Division took one of their target bridges before Franzky's unit [Annotator's Note: Headquarters, 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsburg"] managed to push them back. Franzky spent much of the operation in his radio truck. Later on, Franzky lost this truck as well and was ordered to carry the portable radio. On 22 September [Annotator's Note: 22 September 1944], Franzky's radio was shot and he joined the infantry for the time. The fighting devolved to house to house fighting and people were frequently unable to rescue their wounded because of the vicious fighting. Franzky's unit ran into a British patrol and he caught some grenade shrapnel in his leg. Prior to that, a British machine gun had pinned them down. One soldier had a cluster of grenades and ran out of cover and threw them and managed to silence the machine gun. Another machine gun in an unseen nest opened up and killed the guy. This allowed them to move up and out of harm's way for a time. The 82nd Airborne Division landed near Franzky's unit. They had no idea who they were facing at the time. Franzky believes that such things are only discovered after the war. The 82nd dropped early in the morning and woke Franzky's unit up. Franzky spent the battle on the radio in his truck talking to the division and three other regiments.

Gerhard Franzky received an order from the division CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer], Heinz Harmel, to breakout when they were stuck near Albert. In 1995 Franzky met Harmel and asked him about this event. Franzky then goes off on a tangent after remembering that a book incorrectly stated that a certain regimental commander had been killed at Albert. Franzky then jumps back to when his unit was holed up there and remembers receiving orders from this regimental commander who was still very much alive. Franzky tried to argue that someone other than the radio operator should go on the dangerous mission. The commanding officer would hear none of it. Franzky followed the order because he was somewhat afraid of his CO. Everyone thought the guy was crazy because he wore heavy clothing even in summer. This entire story takes place after the CO was killed according to the book. According to rumor, the CO shot himself the day after giving Franzky his orders. When Franzky met Heinz Harmel and asked him about this, Harmel gave Franzky an odd look. Franzky thinks the book lied to make this officer look better by having him killed in action rather than by his own hand. Franzky also asked Harmel about the film A Bridge Too Far. Harmel refused to be named in the film and Franzky wanted to know why. Harmel did not like the actor portraying him and asked to have the character's name changed. Franzky did not spare much thought for Heinrich Himmler. Everyone thought he was a character and that was not accepted. Once, in southern France, they received a shipment of soda water. It did not have any flavor to it and was quickly renamed Himmler water. Franzky knew some English from his school days and it helped him to communicate with some of the Allied troops he encountered. He learned that all the men that he captured in the town were engineers. When the four Canadians and the British major saw his SS uniform they were stricken with fright. They assumed that they would be summarily executed and were somewhat surprised when they were left alone.

For many years, Gerhard Franzky put the war in the back of his mind. He was more concerned with building a future. He did not think that that was possible in Germany or Scotland and that led him to the United States. His friend from the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] lived just long enough to see the Berlin Wall come down before he died in 1990. Franzky is a Lutheran but does not go to church. He attended another friend’s wedding in 1939 and went to their 50th anniversary in East Germany. His friend died the next year. Several more of his friends died in the 1990s. While visiting Germany in 1989 Franzky donated 50 dollars to a local church. When he was visiting again in 1991 he bumped into that church's priest at a store and they got to talking. The priest then confessed that he had spent the donation money on other things. When Franzky asked if he got drunk on it the priest said that he gave it to another pastor that helped to cause the revolt that tore the Berlin Wall down. Franzky was relieved that he had a very small part to play in tearing the wall down. Franzky never had any interest in reliving his war experiences until he arrived in Phoenix and people in gun shows started asking for his story. [Annotator's Note: The interview ends abruptly.]