GERMANY’S DUNKIRK
On 1 April 1945, an 18-year-old German soldier named Guy Sajer boarded the troop ship Pretoria, an elegant former passenger liner which had been taken over by the German navy, the Kriegsmarine, in 1939. The ship was packed with refugees and wounded soldiers and Sajer was jammed into a corner of the bridge, the only space available. Pretoria steamed west from Hela (in modern Poland) for two days, under constant threat of air or submarine attack, until it finally dropped its anchor in Copenhagen, and the exhausted Sajer struggled ashore. “We saw things we had almost forgotten,” he recalled, “like pastry shops, which we devoured with enormous eyes, forgetting our filthy faces ravaged with misery.”
LIKE HITLER, AND LIKE CHURCHILL IN 1940, DÖNITZ WANTED THE ARMY BACK SO THAT IT COULD CONTINUE TO FIGHT
Sajer, from Alsace, had enlisted at the age of 16 and fought for years on the eastern front with the division, an elite armoured infantry formation that had by now ceased to exist. Sajer’s last few months had been characterised by desperate fighting as part of various scratch units formed of stragglers. He had been subjected to a succession of retreats and evacuations, first by sea from Memel to Pillau, then a nightmare trek across a frozen lagoon to Danzig, a long walk to Gotenhafen, and another perilous sea passage to Hela. Sajer owed his
