12 pnz Div HJ - nominative plane 2 smock m42 with full history

[viva_giulio]

I was asked by pm and mail to write also here the story about one of my best items.

The story of this camouflage is incredible and speaks a lot about our collecting world made up of passion, study, humility, euphoria, research and I think it may please everyone to know it.

Several months ago i get a 1942 model smock a type 1 plane, a rare and objectively appealing piece that in addition had the charm of the surname and division of belonging.

The surname I had in hand was Rit tner, the division of the LSSAH and the role of kradmelder; As we all know the stories do not have to be bought though, I felt a particular attraction for this subject so I decided to try to find the veteran.

Armed with so much patience and enjoying that marvelous tool (if well used) that is internet I've started cross-searches with keywords such as Rit.tner, Kradmelder, LSSAH, Waffen SS building a database of images, articles to be crossed with other searches.

The best hint was to look for a list of death advertisers on a Rit tner because among the variables there was the hypothesis of a recent death and the sale of the family of things: making it short the ads of the family came out and also of him life. My intuition was absolutely correct.

These ads were not only in the seller's area but a few miles from his office so I set them apart by focusing on this Ge rt Rit tner of which I had given birth and death: a boy of 1925 had to be passed for a few months in the LSSAH and ended up in the Hitlerjugend so ... i could found the right way.

Shortly, I began to find his short interviews where the unit was not mentioned unlike the places: Normandy, Caen, Falaise, Bastogne, Balaton ... in a word 12th SS Panzerdivision Hitlerjugend ... other than LSSAH.

The rest was and is a consequence... the story is not fully written and here i will post only some pics, cause with family i agreeded the right privacy.

I will not tell more than what i will write cause this is the word given to parents; i have the pleasure to write often building a friendship still going.

[viva_giulio]

his memoirs from the book Ein Leben in Kamerdadschaft (a life in camaraderie).


(...) 18.11.1925 I was born in Potsdam in the Russian colony no. 1. The old German Imperial House and the Tsar's House were connected. In 1826, the Tsar gave the emperor a choir of singing soldiers, twenty or thirty Russians. For this chorus was built a Russian-style wooden settlement on the Kapellenberg behind the Castle of Sanssouci the "Colony of Alexandrowka". I was born in that beautiful house with number 1. Today a Russian teahouse.

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Like Pimpf (a little boy, Hitlerjugend boy) since 1936 I was regularly in Berlin, among other things, in the Poststadion, Olymiastadion and parades.

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My father had a job at Arado-Flugzeugwerke (a German aeronautical company active in the production of civil and military aircraft).
images.jpg
That is why we moved to Babelsberg in 1938. From 1938 to 1943 I lived in Babelsberg I was Jungvolk Jungstammfuehrer (young Germans). 1943 volunteered me at the age of 17 in the Waffen-SS and in the autumn of 1943 went to study in Tournhout, Belgium, as Kradmelder (motorcycle bartender) at the 12th SS HJ division seat under Commander Fritz Witt, who was respectfully named "Dad Witt."

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(As reported also in him video interview (3 hours) he was trained with BMW but also Italian Guzzi.)

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My first impressive experiences were my participation in a shooting command for a "175" - a homosexual. This is what has remained to my mind so far, I see how different the conceptions are and how values and morals have changed. Even the case of a divisional staff Untersturmfuehrer has moved me. She could commit suicide because she had raped a Belgian girl. A judge came from the Reich. He was judged for an hour, then put the gun on him. So he could avoid an official shooting.


At the end of May 1944 they moved us to France, to the south. On May 27, 1944, SS Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, our commanding officer, celebrated his 37th birthday at Acon at Nonancourt. Here is also the famous photo with the helpers of the Division and Ritterkreuztraeger, Sturmbannfuehrer Hein Springer and Dad Witt, on the occasion of the delivery of the gift, a model of an 8-wheeler exploration.



We were authorized on this day as service men to serve, wash. With Hein Springer I had a friendly relationship until his death

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Four or five days before the invasion of Anglo-Americans, on June 6, 1944, we conducted an exercise in the direction of the Canal of the Sleeve, which corresponded to the target of the our "Omaha Beach" opponents.

When the invasion arrived, we were forbidden to attack - reasoning was a planned pocket training. This tactic was in any case failed, my suspicion was the betrayal of the Wehrmacht officers in Paris. A rumor of betrayal felt at my front was that ammunition boxes from Paris for tanks were full of stones, missing ammunition.

(note: on diaries memories is written he departed from Witt HQ room very few minutes before naval shell injuried and killed the commander)

Earlier in July, after Anglo-American bombers had transformed large parts of Caen into a ruin desert, we retreated behind the Orne River, south to Falaise.

"Panzermeyer," Standartenführer Kurt Meyer had given me an order to go back to Caen and pick up a pillar of mobile cargoes from the airport north of Caen. Except for one, all Caen bridges were destroyed.
Army soldiers had already wired this bridge and prepared for demolition. I told the lieutenant in charge "I have to go and take an entire column I need about an hour and I'll definitely be back!"

The column rescue went well and I was rewarded with the Second Class Iron Cross.

here I interrupt him memories by adding an episode from an interview: Meyer gave Ger.t a dispatch to be delivered to Wittmann whose wagon was likely to remain isolated and exposed to the sides, Rittner found the cart 007 and delivered, climbing on it , the deployment to the German Axis, which in reverse reversed

In August I was also in the Falaise area, where at the end of the month Canadians and Americans joined the famous Falaise bag around us. As I learned later, SS Hauptsturmführer, corresponding to that of Hauptmann (captain) of the army) Michael Wittmann, the most successful World War II warship master, was killed 2 km from us.

[viva_giulio]

on August 12, 1944, I was from the commander of the regiment, SS Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche, to the command north of Falaise Chateau when I was injured in a naval artillery attack and was brought to the post of Falaise dressing service.


Panzermeyer, after the death of Fritz Witt, 33 years youngest division commander in World War II, had a white bandage on my head like me and asked if I could still walk or drive.

The exit from the Falaise bag was designed. Unfortunately I had to leave my bike in the bag because we could not get out with the vehicles. I had to destroy my faithful vehicle that had accompanied me through the war with a hand grenade in the tank.

Panzermeyer then took us out of his pocket in small groups. We crossed the Seine up to Belgium and then to the south of Namur.

We went to Spontin, a small nest in the Eifel ravine.

On September 6, Panzermeyer took us here and was stopped by a Sherman in a 100-meter roadblock to us.

We like Kradmelder have often been too slow for him. However, he has often put himself in one of our sidecar carriers to get us carried.

In the narrow streets there was no way to retire, we turned and we managed to escape. In the evening, once again we walked to look for him, but Panzermeyer had already been taken and taken away as a prisoner. We had a lot to do with the Belgian partisans. At night, on the paths and on the streets, hanging steel head ropes hanged. Stormman Waldmueller died in one of these attacks.

Partisans massacred him and then threw him into a subway. Even before the invasion we had already to do with the partisans who had fired our rail transport from Belgium to France. In the village of Ascq there was also an explosion attack on one of our troop transports.


In Lower Saxony, between Sulingen and Diepholz. I returned in October 1944 to upgrade the troops of the Divisions Begleitkompanie. I became the leader of a platoon of armored vehicles. In addition to the brand new cars, we also have the Ofenrohn® Counter-top rocket rifle known as Panzerschreck hafthohlladung and panzerfaust for which we have been trained.

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At the beginning of December we were transferred to Koeln-Brauweiler. (west of Cologne)


On 16 December began the offensive of the Ardennes. I still remember how we were lying in the high snow at night and flying over us v1.


One meter of snow made the fighting more difficult. Gasoline problems prevented our mobility.
On Christmas Eve at 24 o'clock I only stayed with my thoughts as Ustuf.

Up to 3.5 km before Bastogne, we arrived as Divisionsbegleitkompanie. But we could not keep this city against the Americans. In the attack on Bastogne, we ended up in a valley crushed by American snipers. Of our platoon of about 15 men. eight have fallen. We were immobile in the high snow for hours pretending to be dead. Anyone who has moved has been killed. In the evening we returned to the starting position and then with another assault group we recovered another 4 injured.

In the spring I was sent to the Junkerschule in Neweklau Beneschau in the Czech Republic, then in April at the Junkerschule in Klagenfurt.

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- my research on Nara archive. Unfortunately only this microfilm was saved

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At the beginning of May the Kampfgruppe Gille was rebuilt. With new weapons and vehicles we arrived in Hungary to the south of Lake Balaton. There were no more battles, the only firing that still exists. It was only possible to go and see how to get to the river Enns in Austria, the demarcation line between the Americans and the Russians.

Once there, we had to throw our weapons into the river. Here the Americans have freed us from everything we had with us.


They brought us to different fields. One example was Traunstein in Bavaria.
Here we camped in a meadow where we dug holes. Among other things, we ate dandelion, since we did not give anything to eat from the Americans

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at Traunstein in Bavaria we were about 30 men of the Waffen-SS, selected due to the tattoo of the blood group. With 3 Sherman tanks we were surrounded and monitored. There were thousands of prisoners in the camp.
One of the tormentors of the guards was that if we were sitting at the wooden latrine beam at night, they were shooting near us (some were scared, others died in the septic tank).

Maltreatments, like Guantanamo today, were then "on the agenda". Afterwards it was also delivered the best food in the form of breakfast packages and lunch packages, open cigarettes.
At that time, he spoke, that we could contact the Americans voluntarily to fight together against the Russians. Then we came to Norinberga on the former land of the Reichsparteitag (Reich Party Congress) where before the winter we had built barracks.

Our accommodation was located in the Langwasser camp in south-east Norinberga, which over time had become a pure camp for members of the Waffen-SS with thousands and thousands of inmates.

[In addition: In 1946, the Jewish organization "Nakam" ("revenge") attempted to poison with the contaminated bread of arsenic, the German soldiers of that prison camp)
(Sidebar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakam)

Nevertheless, I was lucky not to be delivered to the Russians. In the summer of 1946 I was released. Only in the spring I had had contact with my parents, who fearfully advised me to avoid the area occupied by the Soviets. Agriculture urgently sought labor force, so they released me as a farmer and moved to my family's place where I was staying in 1944 coming from Nicholas.
As a top Junker I ended the war.

[viva_giulio]

Here The belt engraved with all places of ww2 and pow.

Bottom the war of Rit tner

[viva_giulio]

G.ert's post-war life was a manifest of labor and wit, a man of exceptional abundance: he did the farmer, the staller, founded an evening school in 1949 after attending one, then worked as a bricklayer who recalls shattering shifts 7:00 / 17:30 and 17/30: 21: 30 for five years. Every month he could go home to spend half a day with Inge the woman who, in 1952, would become his wife.
In 1952 he moved to Hamburg and in 1957 he passed his master's degree, obtaining the job of building manager in 1961 at Barmstedt where he moved.

Barmstedt

A country of 9,000 souls, located northwest of Hamburg, G.ert Rittner has been in charge of building construction from May 1961 to January 1986. He played an essential role in building the country with many new buildings, roads, sewers (with his project of implementation still valid and ready for implementation) and works that still define the country's appearance.

Rit.tner also continued to build private homes - for example, for those who lived in the barracks in the forestry field.
During his assignment he built the tangenziale, a former school and an amplitude of two existing schools, a sports hall, the Scholl school was built and expanded. "The Schulstraße Sports Hall cost a million marks." I will not go further with the works but the good Rit.tner set up, for example, the custom of putting roses on the walls of the old town houses, initially giving them to each family with a custom that still goes on independently.

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still active association that provides men and means for emergencies such as civil protection.
The section was opened by Gert Rit.tner and his friends Erwin Gans, Uwe Lüneburg and Karl-Heinz Andreesen.
The country was hit by a disastrous flood at the end of the 1970s, which revealed some gaps in the equipment that was then repaired and implemented by Rit.tner.