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[Video, pictures, a podcast, and timeline included in the linked article]
How 'Hitler's last soldier' evaded the FBI, ended up in Colorado
IT WOULD TAKE 40 YEARS FOR WWII'S FINAL ESCAPED GERMAN POW, GEORG GAERTNER, TO SURRENDER ON AMERICAN SOIL.
The moon surprised him, its fullness casting an unexpected gleam over the rows of barracks and barbed wire fences bordering the prison camp.
Ducked down, he looked for the sweeping glow of the watchtower's spotlight.
Just beyond its reach was the wild vastness of the New Mexico desert — if he wasn't shot, maybe even freedom.
Railroad tracks were definitely past the gates, an estimated four- or five-mile trek. He hadn't noticed them until recently, until after the newspapers started to write about the war's end in more imminent terms.
The slender young soldier, described later in the wanted posters as almost 6 feet tall and 171 pounds — "eyes, blue; hair, brown; nationality, German" — clawed himself under the first fence, then the second.
As the other prisoners reveled inside the camp mess hall, throwing spirited jeers at an American Western movie, 24-year-old Georg Gaertner sprinted into the boundless desert that surrounded their small satellite prisoner-of-war camp.
Just as he'd planned, a Southern Pacific freight train roared past within the hour, right as he reached the tracks.
Running alongside it, he hurled himself inside an open car.
The scene was eerily similar to an event a few years earlier, during Officer Preparatory School for the Nazi Army.
After being taught how to evade the Allies if caught behind enemy lines, hundreds of officer candidates were set loose on the edge of a German town called Heidelberg. Their mission was to make it to the other side of town without being noticed by the instructors.
Some of the soldiers tried jumping from rooftop to rooftop, others slogged underground in the town's sewers. A few disguised themselves as women.
Gaertner was the only one who casually hopped onto a streetcar and rode it through town.
It was as daring as it was simple — blending into the monotonous humdrum of everyday life.
It worked.....
(continued within link)
How 'Hitler's last soldier' evaded the FBI, ended up in Colorado
IT WOULD TAKE 40 YEARS FOR WWII'S FINAL ESCAPED GERMAN POW, GEORG GAERTNER, TO SURRENDER ON AMERICAN SOIL.
The moon surprised him, its fullness casting an unexpected gleam over the rows of barracks and barbed wire fences bordering the prison camp.
Ducked down, he looked for the sweeping glow of the watchtower's spotlight.
Just beyond its reach was the wild vastness of the New Mexico desert — if he wasn't shot, maybe even freedom.
Railroad tracks were definitely past the gates, an estimated four- or five-mile trek. He hadn't noticed them until recently, until after the newspapers started to write about the war's end in more imminent terms.
The slender young soldier, described later in the wanted posters as almost 6 feet tall and 171 pounds — "eyes, blue; hair, brown; nationality, German" — clawed himself under the first fence, then the second.
As the other prisoners reveled inside the camp mess hall, throwing spirited jeers at an American Western movie, 24-year-old Georg Gaertner sprinted into the boundless desert that surrounded their small satellite prisoner-of-war camp.
Just as he'd planned, a Southern Pacific freight train roared past within the hour, right as he reached the tracks.
Running alongside it, he hurled himself inside an open car.
The scene was eerily similar to an event a few years earlier, during Officer Preparatory School for the Nazi Army.
After being taught how to evade the Allies if caught behind enemy lines, hundreds of officer candidates were set loose on the edge of a German town called Heidelberg. Their mission was to make it to the other side of town without being noticed by the instructors.
Some of the soldiers tried jumping from rooftop to rooftop, others slogged underground in the town's sewers. A few disguised themselves as women.
Gaertner was the only one who casually hopped onto a streetcar and rode it through town.
It was as daring as it was simple — blending into the monotonous humdrum of everyday life.
It worked.....
(continued within link)
