The Last Battle Quotes

“TO PUT IT SIMPLY, SS-Captain Sebastian “Wastl” Wimmer was a nasty piece of work. A native Bavarian, he was born in 1902 in Dingolfing—a small town some fifty miles northeast of Munich. In 1923 Wimmer joined the latter city’s police department as a patrolman and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant in spite of, or perhaps because of, a reputation for securing quick confessions by beating suspects nearly to death during interrogation. Barely literate, unkempt, and given to violent drunken rages, he”
― Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

“its requisitioning. Plans for the conversion were apparently overseen by no less a personage than architect Albert Speer, Hitler’s minister of armaments and war production,25 with the actual construction supervised by SS-Second Lieutenant Ludwig Petz.26 A member of Dachau’s facilities branch, he arrived at Itter on February 8 with twenty-seven prisoners—twelve from Dachau and fifteen from Flossenbürg27—all of whom had before their arrests been carpenters, plumbers, and the like.28 Petz also took along some ten members of Dachau’s SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) unit29 to act as a security detail during the conversion work; they would be replaced by”
― Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

“Himmler intended to convert Schloss Itter into a detention facility for ehrenhäftlinge, “honor prisoners” whom the Germans considered famous enough, powerful enough, or potentially valuable enough to be kept alive and in relatively decent conditions.”
― Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

“That depression ultimately helped bring about Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, of course, which in turn led in March 1938 to the Anschluss—Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. And that sad event ultimately led directly to Schloss Itter’s transformation from fairytale castle and hotel into something decidedly more sinister.”
― Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

“Though ostensibly men of both God and peace, the bishops of Regensburg were also princes of the Holy Roman Empire. As temporal rulers the bishops were often heavy-handed and needlessly severe, and Schloss Itter saw frequent service as a base from which the bishops launched punitive expeditions against their sorely oppressed subjects. Though Tyrol came under Hapsburg rule in 1363, Schloss”
― Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

“Though he didn’t yet know it, Lee was about to be thrust into an unlikely battle involving the alpine castle whose icon was obscured by a fold in his map, a group of combative French VIPs, an uneasy alliance with the enemy, a fight to the death against overwhelming odds, and the last—and arguably the strangest—ground combat action of World War II in Europe.”
― Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe