The last days of the Second World War between Traunstein and Laufen

In the spring of 1945, war and Nazi crimes reached the region around Lake Waging. Strafing attacks, death marches, and SS retreats brought death and chaos. While some Nazi officials prepared for final battles, courageous civilians and clergy advocated for peaceful surrenders. On May 4th, American troops marched in, mostly without fighting. Days of uncertainty, looting, but also liberation followed. This is a chronicle of the final days of the war in the region between Traunstein and Laufen. This is the AI generated english translation of this original text.

The Second World War reaches our region shortly before its end. In April, the Americans move closer and closer to Chiemgau and Rupertiwinkel from the north and west, while the Russians approach in the east. The part of the population that secretly listens to enemy radio stations at the risk of their lives is always well informed about the progress of the front. The rest continue to believe that Hitler's German Reich is on the verge of final victory.

Towards the end of April, direct combat operations take place in the area around Lake Waginger See. On April 18, the Traunstein train station is bombed. More than 100 people die in the attack. Two days earlier, the shooting down of a US bomber is reported from Freilassing. One of the bomber pilots, the American Chester Elmer Coggeshall Jr. initially survives. Word soon spread that Freilassing's mayor August Kobus had personally shot the prisoner of war.

Freilassing is bombed on April 25. Contemporary witnesses later report that even in Kirchanschöring, 25 kilometers away, they could feel the earth tremble as US and British air units dropped their bombs. At night, the sky glows blood-red, while the train station is also attacked after the army supply office. More than 70 people are killed. Low-flying air raids and regular air raid alerts have long been part of everyday life in the countryside too. On April 27, one of these attacks near Schign near Schönram ends fatally. The Seehaus landlord from Petting and his daughter were killed in an attack by six low-flying aircraft. An eight-year-old child's leg was also shot off.

At the end of April, these columns reach the districts of Mühldorf and Altötting and approach the Rupertiwinkel. On April 30, they pass through Tittmoning. The next day, May 1st, the events in the Salzach Valley come thick and fast. What was once a column of more than a thousand men has dwindled to 200 survivors. Between Fridolfing and Lebenau, the guards suddenly disband. Word spreads that Adolf Hitler has committed suicide in faraway Berlin. As the war is still in full swing and there are countless retreating SS troops on the streets, the concentration camp prisoners are free - without really being free. They have to go into hiding.

One of the concentration camp prisoners is Tadeusz Sobolewicz, who is hidden with some of his comrades by a farmer's wife in Muttering. He survived and later described his struggle for survival in the book "Back from Hell". Some of the prisoners fled to nearby Kirchanschöring, where they received help from various quarters. One Pole was hidden for several days by Sebastian Straßer, who later became an SPD politician. His brother Hans takes in four concentration camp prisoners.

At the same time, nervousness rises in Traunstein. Four Nazi generals are in the town and plan the defense. Anton Miller is arrested after announcing on posters that Traunstein will become an open town and therefore not be defended. On the May Day holiday, hundreds of women demand the surrender without a fight in front of the town hall. Miller is only not executed because the traveling SS field court has already fled the town. In the villages, too, the local group leaders try to mobilize the Volkssturm and Hitler Youth for a possible house-to-house battle. But the population is tired of the war and prepares to hoist white sheets.

In Laufen, the SS and civilians struggle to blow up the Salzach bridge. In Waging, people pray quietly in the parish church in anxious anticipation of the coming days.

On the same day, a second column of almost 100 prisoners approached, coming from Freutsmoos. The next day, now May 2nd, they are seen on the western shore of Lake Waginger See. Their arrival is reported in Petting. Numerous children rush to Petting to see the concentration camp prisoners. Among them was young Ludwig Haas, who was living under the same roof as Magda Schneider, who had fled to Kühnhausen, and her daughter Romy. Ludwig Haas observes the emaciated, exhausted people and their strict guards - until he stumbles across a dead body in a wooded area and becomes afraid. Although the Americans are closing in, the SS guards shoot at least five of the remaining survivors, who move into the Schnellinger farmer's quarters in Watzing that evening.

Another column has arrived not far away in Traunstein. Almost 70 prisoners spend the night in the Brunnerbräukeller near Hallabruck. Prisoner Kurt Messerschmidt manages to escape. He was one of only two survivors.

The region around Lake Waginger See has long been in chaos. In addition to the concentration camp prisoners, some liberated, some still under SS guard, army units flooding back through the villages. Scattered Wehrmacht soldiers try to get rid of their clothes. In her book about this time, the writer Luise Rinser describes how she provides medical care to a very young SS soldier who has cut out his tattoo. On the one hand, the population waited hopefully for the Americans to move in. On the other hand, they feared the resistance of the remaining Nazi officials and the arbitrariness of the SS soldiers who kept turning up in the villages.

The next morning, May 3rd, it has snowed several centimetres and the columns march on. The remaining 42 concentration camp prisoners from Watzing move on to the prison camp in Lebenau, where they will arrive safely on the same day.

The last survivors of the concentration camp prisoners in Traunstein fared differently: Kurt Messerschmidt, who had escaped from the Brunnerbräukeller the day before, reports in his memoirs that he was able to reach safety in Surberg. On the morning of May 3, he hears machine gun fire from afar. He immediately suspects what has happened. In the worst war crime in the entire region, 66 concentration camp survivors were murdered by SS teams shortly before the Americans liberated them. A few hours later, at 5:10 pm, the first American advance party enters Traunstein without a fight. Mayor Dr. Seuffert officially hands over the town.

Dangerous conflicts also arise in Kirchanschöring over how to proceed. The Lackenbach farmer Josef Hogger openly opposes a Wehrmacht officer. While the remaining Nazis want to prepare the Volkssturm for battle, Hogger, who has already lost three sons in the war, stands his ground. The white flags are hoisted. NSDAP local group leader Fritz Jochum is also disempowered.

On the morning of May 4th, the tanks of the 20th US Armored Division arrive in Waging, but immediately move on towards Laufen. At half past seven they are in Otting, at 9:00 am in Petting. The Americans arrive in Laufen at around 1 pm. Everything happens very quickly and there is no more fighting - at least in the Waginger See region. It remains relatively quiet on this day. Only in Petting is a Wehrmacht soldier on the run careless enough not to surrender in a clearly recognizable manner. He is shot and dies the same day from a bullet to the stomach.

Dicey situations arise during the invasion. In Schönram, the brewery owner is horrified to see that the Americans are parking their heavy tanks exactly above the beer cellar. Using his hands and feet, he tries to gesture to them that the tanks could break in at any moment. At first, the suspicious soldiers don't know what the wildly flailing German wants from them. Only when he leads a soldier down the stairs to the beer cellar and shows him the situation does the peaceful intention become clear.

The war also continues to claim indirect victims. In Höfen near Laufen, the farmer's son finds a bazooka he left behind and dies in an explosion he triggered himself.

On May 7, the occupation of the region by the Americans is largely complete. Countless buildings are occupied, all houses are searched for weapons and party or military insignia. Weapons and swastika flags were buried in the woods. In the meantime, the surviving concentration camp prisoners in Lebenau have been liberated by the US Army. They stay or voluntarily move to the former women's prison, where they remain quartered for the next few months. The female prisoners, some of whom were political prisoners, were also freed and voluntarily remained in the prison camp. Survivors, US soldiers and the female prisoners unite, and the Laufen pastor describes, shaking his head, how Lebenau is transformed into a "huge brothel" in a very short space of time. Melvin J. Lasky, an American reporter who stayed in Lebenau shortly after the end of the war, gave a similar account of the new time in the camp. Later, they would have to contend with a typhus outbreak in Lebenau.

On May 7, three of the remaining SS guards who had been guarding the death train from Flossenbürg were shot by the Americans - presumably an act of mercy, as all three were already half-dead, tortured by the concentration camp prisoners, who took cruel revenge on their former torturers. Tadeusz Sobolewicz, who was able to hide in Muttering and thus survive the death march, describes the gruesome scenes in his book "Back from Hell".

The fighting is over, but there are still more deaths. In Taching, the Austrian SS man Ernst Zinsl is shot dead by US soldiers while fleeing. In Obertaching, the former mayor suffers the same fate.

The German Reich does not officially surrender until May 8. The Second World War is over. In Kirchanschöring, Hans Straßer, who was once arrested for draft evasion, sends his daughter to the village to buy Leberkäs from the store counter to celebrate the day. She comes back empty-handed and asks whether it is really a reason to celebrate that the war is over. In the village, the girl says, the men claimed that the war had been lost.

The war is over for the region. But it also marked the beginning of a new era and many years of meagre hunger. The example of Luise Rinser shows how quickly some people grasp the new political situation and switch from followers to resistance fighters. She had it confirmed in good time that she had been imprisoned by the Nazis for undermining military strength, reinvented herself as a resistance fighter and also took advantage of the new occupiers.

Nevertheless, their stories and letters from that time - alongside the reports from the parishes, which had to report on the end of the war and the American invasion - are the most valuable eyewitness accounts of the days shortly before the end of the Second World War in the region around Lake Waginger See.

The last days of the war in Rupertiwinkel tell not only of destruction and violence, but also of courage, compassion and civil courage. The stories of those days remind us that history is not only made up of big decisions and military operations, but also of individual human destinies - the courage of the farmer who raises white flags, the child who remembers a harrowing picture or the prisoner who survives in a hiding place.

If you walk through the villages on Lake Waginger See today, you will no longer see tanks, hear sirens or hang white sheets in the windows. But the memories remain - in the stories of the survivors, in the files of the parishes, in the houses that were the scenes of those times. They remind us to remain vigilant - for peace, humanity and the responsibility to never forget what once was.