Travel back in time with us as we unravel the real stories behind the legendary photo of Hitler and the officers who captured Fort Eben-Emael! Meet the men, discover their fates, and get a peek into the secret lives of WWII paratroopers. Love history? You won’t want to miss this deep dive! Hit subscribe for more epic stories and tell us in the comments what surprised you most! #history #WWII #military #documentary #biography
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0:35 - Awarding the Knight's Cross After Eben-Emael
4:07 - Lt. Egon Delika: Career and Postwar Life
8:21 - Captain Walter Koch: From Assault to Controversy
16:16 - Meissner, Altmann, and the Assault Groups
19:38 - Rudolf Witzig: Assault on Eben-Emael and Bundeswehr
26:43 - Otto Zierach and Fellow Officers
31:00 - Summary and Preview of Part Two
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@zeitgeschichteinbildundton
0:35 - Awarding the Knight's Cross After Eben-Emael
4:07 - Lt. Egon Delika: Career and Postwar Life
8:21 - Captain Walter Koch: From Assault to Controversy
16:16 - Meissner, Altmann, and the Assault Groups
19:38 - Rudolf Witzig: Assault on Eben-Emael and Bundeswehr
26:43 - Otto Zierach and Fellow Officers
31:00 - Summary and Preview of Part Two
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LearningTranscript
04:13DeLica, who served as the deputy leader of the assault group Granite during the airborne
04:19operation that directly targeted the plateau of Fort Eben-Emiel. Granite had six killed
04:26and 20 wounded. Egon DeLica was born on January 4, 1915, in Stetten, Pomerania, and on the
04:351st. April 1933, he joined the 2nd Battery of the Artillery Regiment, 2 in Schwerin, as
04:44a gunner. After he was transferred to the Air Force on May 1, 1935, he was on the 1st. On
04:52June 1, 1936, he joined Bomber Wing 152 Hindenburg in Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg, where DeLica
05:02was on the 1st. In April 1937, he was promoted to Unterbizir, and on April 1, 1938, to Unterfeldwebel.
05:11After completing his training as an observer, which ended on April 1, 1939, DeLica was on
05:19the 28th. December 1939, promoted to lieutenant and assigned to the 2nd. Group of Training
05:26Wing 1 under Major Carl Edward Wilke. For the Eben-Emiel operation, he was transferred
05:34to Assault Detachment Koch in April, and after the successful conclusion on the 12th, he was
05:40awarded the Knight's Cross in May 1940. Four days later, he was promoted to first lieutenant. From
05:48October 1940 to July 1941, DeLica was the captain of the 6th Squadron of Training Wing 1, with which
05:57he also took part in the airborne operation to capture the Greek Mediterranean island of Crete,
06:05Operation Mercury. During the Eastern Campaign, which began in 1941, he was wounded in April 1942.
06:13After his recovery, he was promoted to captain on July 1, 1942. And then, until May 1943, he led the
06:242nd Group of Airborne Wing 2. On November 21, 1943, he was awarded the Paratrooper Badge. On December 26,
06:35he received the German Cross in gold. In the fall of 1944, Captain Egon DeLica became the
06:43commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 19th Paratrooper Regiment, with which he was deployed on the
06:49Western Front. On the 1st, February 1945, according to another source on the 12th, he was taken prisoner
06:59of war by the British during the battle in the Reichswald near Kleeve, from which he was released
07:04after almost two and a half years. On the 27th, August 1947. Seven years later, on May 1, 1956,
07:15he was taken on by the newly established West German Air Force as a squadron leader and logistics officer
07:22in the Uettersen Air Base Group and was promoted to captain on September 22, on the 1st.
07:29On February 1, 1957, he became squadron commander and ground service officer in the Air Base Group of
07:37the Air Force Weapons School 50 in Furstenfeldbruck, then from the 1st. February 1958, he was assigned
07:46to Military District Command 6 in Munich in the S-1 personnel section. On September 20, 1960, he was
07:56promoted to major and on November 8, 1966, to lieutenant colonel with the awarding of the Federal Cross of
08:05Merit on Ribbon on the 31st. On March 31, 1971, Lieutenant Colonel Egon Delica retired. He passed away on the
08:1426th. April 1999 in Pulleck, near Munich. In the picture next to him stood the leader of the operation,
08:23the commander of the Koch Assault Detachment, Captain Walter Koch. He was born on September 10,
08:301910 in Bonn and at the age of 19 on the 3rd. April 1929. He joined the Prussian Protective Police
08:39in
08:39Berlin as an officer cadet. After his promotion to lieutenant, Koch joined a police unit established by
08:47order of the new Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Göring, to protect the Reich government,
08:54which, after its commander, Lieutenant Colonel of the Protective Police, Walter Wecke, was known as the
09:00Wecke Detachment for special purposes, or was referred to as the Göring Staff Guard. Here you can see the
09:07Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Göring, in 1935, with his newlywed wife, Emmy Sonneman. After the
09:15Staff Guard had grown into a regiment with six battalions, it was transferred to the Air Force
09:21in 1935 by Hermann Göring as the Regiment General Göring. Here, Walter Koch was promoted to captain on
09:29April 20, 1938. After he, pictured on the far left, had successfully led the Eben Emael Operati on May 10,
09:381940. 1940, he was on the 10th, awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Shortly afterwards,
09:45he was promoted to major and took command of the 1st Battalion in the Airborne Assault Regiment,
09:52Auridu. His battalion was part of the first wave during the Battle of Crete, on May 20, 1941.
10:00The target of Koch's 53 transport gliders had been the village of Malem, which was defended by New
10:07Zealanders. But hardly had Koch landed when he suffered a severe head injury in close combat at
10:13Hill 107, and had to be taken to a field hospital in Greece. After months of recovery, he took command
10:21of
10:21his battalion again, which had then been transferred to the Eastern Front. Here, in March, he was awarded the
10:28German Cross in gold. From February 19, 1942 to March 11, 1943, he commanded the Jaeger Regiment,
10:37Hermann Göring. Then, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on April 20, he first took over as acting commander,
10:45starting from the 1st. April 1943, as commander of the Paratrooper Regiment. 5, which from the 10th
10:53November had been transferred to Tunisia to be deployed against the Allied landing in Algeria that
11:00took place on November 7. There, his unit had captured a number of British paratroopers during
11:07the fighting near Depienne. Here, you can see him interrogating them, and then handing these
11:14prisoners over to an army unit. But when he learned about the so-called commando order issued by Hitler on
11:22October 18, 1942, which ordered the immediate execution of sabotage teams, or commandos, he spoke out
11:32sharply against it and ensured the proper transfer of the captured British soldiers. This commando order
11:40was a clear violation of the Hague regulations and the 1929 Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners
11:48prisoners of war, was the German response to discovered English instructions, which recommended allowing
11:55German prisoners of war to survive only to a reasonable extent. Another reason was an incident
12:03that occurred during the British commando operation Basalt, which was carried out to capture prisoners,
12:10led by Major Geoffrey George, on the night of the 3rd to the 4th, October 1942, on the Channel Island
12:19of Sark,
12:20which was occupied by around 300 German soldiers. While they were searching for the German garrison,
12:27the 40-year-old resident of the island, Francis Noel Pittard, gave the commandos precise details about the
12:35Germans' accommodations. As a result, the commando Anders Lassen, a Dane, killed the unsuspecting
12:43sentry in front of the quarters, which housed five sleeping soldiers from an engineer unit with his combat
12:50knife. Then the five German soldiers were initially handcuffed, and four of them were killed during the
12:58British retreat. On their retreat to England, the commandos took the engineer-corporal Hermann Weinreich
13:05with them, where he was taken to the notorious London Cage, the so-called London Cage, the British
13:13Interrogation Centre under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland, where everything was extracted from the
13:21prisoners through torture, whipping, mock executions, beatings, sleep, and food deprivation. In a trial
13:30brought against the torturers in London in 1948, all those involved were acquitted. Lieutenant Colonel
13:38Walter Koch, who had led the Paratrooper Regiment 5 until April 21, 1943, had returned to Germany for
13:47treatment and recovery from a wound, where in August 1943 he was assigned to the staff of the Luftwaffe's
13:56General Luftzeugmeister. There he suffered severe injuries in a car accident and on the 27th,
14:05October 1943. At the age of 33, he died in Berlin. He was buried at the Nordfriedhof Cemetery in his
14:15hometown of Bonn. However, soon after, a rumor spread in his regiment that Koch had been killed in a staged
14:23accident by the Security Service, SD, because of his harsh criticism of Hitler's so-called Commando Order.
14:32However, this is more than doubtful, since open criticism and rejection of the Commando Order had
14:39also been expressed within the high command of the Wehrmacht. For example, by the head of German military
14:45intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was the direct superior of the German Commando Unit Brandenburg,
14:52which also operated in so-called half or full disguise, for example, either with an enemy's overcoat thrown
15:00over or in complete enemy uniform, had been deployed since the beginning of the war. Later, after the SS,
15:08under Otto Skorzeny had taken over the Commando operations in 1944, the Germans captured in U.S.
15:17uniforms during their Operation Greif in the Ardennes Offensive were shot as spies by the U.S. forces,
15:26in accordance with the German so-called Commando Order. However, it can also be stated that on the
15:33German side, the Order was carried out only to a very limited extent, especially since Point 5 of the
15:40Order gave the frontline troops options to circumvent the Order, which was in violation of the Geneva
15:46Convention. This Order does not apply to the treatment of those enemy soldiers who are captured or
15:53surrendered during normal combat operations, major offensives, large-scale landing operations,
16:00or large airborne operations in open combat. This order also does not apply to those who fall into
16:07our hands after naval battles or to enemy soldiers who try to save their lives by parachuting after air
16:14battles. To the right of the grim-looking German Reich Chancellor in a brown uniform stood Reserve Lieutenant
16:22Joachim Meissner, the deputy leader of Assault Group Iron, which was tasked with capturing the
16:29Belgian Albert Canal Bridge at Cana. Their losses, out of a deployment strength of 115 men, amounted to 22
16:38killed, 26 wounded, and one missing. Meissner had to replace the wounded leader of Group Eisen shortly
16:45after the operation began. He was born on October 15, 1911, in the Lower Silesian Free State, and on the
16:551st,
16:55he joined the Reichswehr on October 1, 1929. On March 31, 1934, he left to take up the position of
17:05advisor in the
17:06foreign department of the Reich sports leader Hans von Chamer und Austen. On August 26, 1939, shortly before
17:15the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, September, Meissner was serving as a reserve
17:20sergeant in Pioneer Battalion 8 in Upper Silesian Nice. He had been drafted, but then he transferred to
17:28the Air Force to the Air Force. On January 1, 1940, he was transferred to the 1st Company of Parachute
17:35Regiment, one which on the 1st, March 1940, was subordinated to the Cocosalt Detachment. Meissner
17:42was appointed as a reserve lieutenant on March 20, 1940. After the capture of Fort Eben-Mail, Meissner
17:49received on the 12th Arbees, Chamin-fi-san-en-sur-deer-er-ter. On May 12, he received the Knight's
17:53Cross of the
17:54Iron Cross, and one day later, his appointment as a reserve first lieutenant. In August 1940,
18:01he was transferred to Parachute Regiment II with which he first took part in Operation Mercury in
18:07Crete, and later in the fighting near Leningrad in the East. From the 6th, from December 6, 1941,
18:16to June 10, 1942, Meissner was an adjutant in Parachute Regiment II. Then, after his promotion
18:25to captain of the reserve on the 30th, September 1942, he was deployed in North Africa in the
18:32Ramka Paratrooper Brigade. At the beginning of 1943, he was assigned to the staff of the 11th Air Corps,
18:40starting from the 1st, in April, as the commander of the 6th Company in the 2nd Paratrooper Regiment.
18:47His last assignment, since April 16, 1944, was as the battalion commander of the 3rd,
18:56battalion of the 14th Paratrooper Regiment in the 5th. Paratrooper Division, which, after the Allied
19:03landing in Normandy, was deployed in the heavy defensive battles in the city of St. Lowe in
19:10Normandy, which was 95 percent destroyed by the U.S. Air Force during the battle. On July 25, 1944,
19:20west of St. Lowe, Captain Joachim Meissner was killed in action at the age of 33. He rests with
19:26another 11,168 German soldiers who fell on the invasion front at the German military cemetery in
19:36Marigny. To the right of Meissner stood First Lieutenant Gustav Altmann, the leader of the
19:42assault group Steele. He had been tasked with capturing the bridge near Zelt. His group, consisting
19:50of 116 men, had 8 killed in action, as well as 16 seriously and 16 lightly wounded. Gustav Altmann was
19:59born on April 13, 1912 in Britz-Brandenburg in the Angermunde district. On April 9, 1931,
20:09he joined the police as a police cadet and was trained at the police academy in Kiel. On October 1,
20:181935,
20:20Altmann joined the General Goring Regiment as a senior sergeant and completed his officer training
20:27in September 1937 with a promotion to lieutenant. In the Goring Regiment, Altmann initially served as
20:35company commander of the 11th. He was assigned to the 11th Company, and with his promotion to first
20:40lieutenant in September 1939, he became the commander of the first company of the 1st Paratrooper Regiment
20:46on the 1st. On March 1, 1940, he was transferred to the Koch assault detachment, and after capturing
20:54the strategically important bridge at Feldwitzelt for the German advance on May 12, he was awarded the
21:00Knight's Cross on the 16th. On May 16, he was appointed captain and commander of the 2nd Company of the
21:07Paratrooper Assault Regiment. In 1941, during Operation Mercury in Crete, when his company alone suffered a
21:15loss of the loss of 108 soldiers, Altmann was on May 22. On May 22, he was taken prisoner of
21:24war by the
21:25British on the Akrotiri Peninsula in Crete, where he remained until the end of the war. During his
21:32captivity, he was promoted to Major on August 24, 1942. On February 20, 1981, Major, retired Gustav Altmann,
21:44passed away in Reinhardshagen Castle District at the age of 69. In the back row, far left, stood pioneer
21:53Lieutenant Rudolf Witzig, the leader of the assault group Granite, which had been tasked with the direct
21:59capture of the fort just mentioned. In the process, out of the 85 men who landed with gliders, six were
22:07killed and 20 were wounded. Rudolf Witzig was born on August 14, 1916, in Röhringhausen, Westphalia,
22:17Röhringhausen Kreis von Eichel. He joined on the first of the month after graduating high school. On April 1,
22:231935, he joined Pioneer Battalion 16 in Huckster as an officer cadet and ensign, and on the 20th
22:31phone tour. On April 20, 1937, he was promoted to Lieutenant, and in August was assigned as platoon
22:39leader in Pioneer Battalion 31, which was also stationed in Huckster. A year later, on August 1,
22:471938, Lieutenant Witzig had himself transferred to the Paratrooper Infantry Battalion under Major
22:55Richard Heydrich in Stendhal, where he led the Pioneer platoon, and from the 1st of a September 1939,
23:03he took part in the Polish campaign. In the meantime, having been promoted to First Lieutenant,
23:10he was then assigned with his Pioneer platoon to the Assault Detachment Koch in Friedrichshafen.
23:16After Eben Emael on May 10, 1940, he was awarded the Knight's Cross and promoted to Captain.
23:24On May 20, he became adjutant to the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Hermann Göring,
23:30until August 1940, and then served as Chief of the 9th Citratis, Company of the 1st Airborne Assault
23:38Regiment, which he also led in May 1941 during Operation Mercury in Crete.
23:45During this, Witzig was so badly wounded in the leg that his recovery took almost a year.
23:52From May 10, 1942 now, as Commander of the Engineer Battalion of the 11th Air Corps,
24:00he took part in the fighting in Tunisia and was promoted to Major on September 1.
24:06From June 1943, Witzig was Commander of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Engineer Regiment,
24:1321, and on the 17th. On October 17, he was awarded the German Cross in gold,
24:19and from November, he was Commander of the Parachute Engineer Regiment of the 11th Air Corps.
24:25In June 1944, he was appointed Commander of the Parachute Engineer Regiment, 21, which was
24:34transferred to Lithuania in July 1944, and took part in the defense of the Duna-Dunerberg-Kovno Road.
24:43In October, the decimated regiment was transferred back to Germany for replenishment.
24:48Major Witzig then took command in Holland in the 6th.
24:53Paratrooper, Division of the Paratrooper Regiment, 18
24:56On November 25, 1944, he was awarded the oak leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
25:06With his regiment, which was awarded the Cross in February and March, he had taken part in the battle
25:11in the Reichswald near Kleve on the lower Rhine, fighting heavy battles against superior British
25:17and Canadian troops, against Major Witzig on the 8th. In May 1945, he was taken prisoner,
25:24and remained in captivity until September. After the war, while he was living in the British zone
25:31near Hamburg, he learned that the French wanted to kidnap him and convict him as an alleged war
25:37criminal, which, however, had not been prevented by the British commander. However, and this shows
25:44the strangeness of the years that followed, Witzig was convicted by a French court in absentia,
25:51and from then on avoided the French zone like the devil avoids holy water. The time was strange,
25:58because the bearer of the oak leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross since the 16th. Since
26:04January 16, 1956, he was an officer in the Bundeswehr, among other things, commander of the 7th Engineer
26:12Battalion in Holzminden, and later, as a colonel, commander of the Army Engineer School. On September 30,
26:191974, Witzig retired. The former Bundeswehr colonel, Rudolf Witzig, who was mentioned in the Wehrmacht Report,
26:27and highly decorated with the Wehrmacht honor rollclasp, and who was for many years the first
26:33chairman of the German Paratroopers Association, is at the German
26:38who passed away in Oberschleisheim in 2001. The next officer to the right of Rudolf Witzig
26:46was Reserve First Lieutenant Otto Zirach, who served as the S3 responsible for planning and leadership in
26:55Assault Detachment Koch. During the Eben-MIL operation, he was assigned to the largest group,
27:01Beton, where he served as Koch's representative with the paratroopers at the fiercely contested bridge
27:07near Vroenhoven. Otto Zirach was there on the 26th. Born on January 26, 1907, in Eberswalde,
27:16near Berlin, and on the 13th. Entered the police academy in Brandenburg,
27:20and der Havel on April 13, 1928. From April 1929 to April 1934, he was in Battalion Weka,
27:30then from October in Regiment General Goering. In April 1938, he was transferred as a von Junker
27:39Oberfeldwebel to the 1st Battalion of the 1st Parachute Regiment, from which two years later,
27:46since the 1st Uri. February 1940, promoted to Reserve First Lieutenant, he was transferred to
27:54Koch's Assault Unit during that month. For his service at E. M. Eben-MIL,
27:59he had on the 15th. May 1940 received the Knight's Cross. Here, marked with a green cross,
28:05in conversation with Propaganda Minister Dr. Josef Goebbels and the Chief of Staff of the SA,
28:12Victor Lutze. The officer standing to his left, marked with a red cross, is the already mentioned
28:19Reserve First Lieutenant, Joachim Meissner, Deputy Leader of Group Eisen. On May 20, 1940,
28:27Zierach was promoted to Reserve Captain and on the 1st. In July, he was appointed Commander of
28:33Parachute School 1 in Stendhal in the Altmark region of Saxony-Anhalt. When Operation Mercury in Crete
28:41was imminent in May 1941, Zierach was reassigned as a Special Duty Officer to the Staff of Airborne
28:50Assault Regiment, and he was part of the First Wave with the objective of attacking Maleme.
28:56Here is the parade of the paratroopers after their hard-fought and bloody victory.
29:01On the 14th. On March 14, 1941, he was appointed as an active captain among the war officers,
29:09so-called wartime officers, meaning officers commissioned from the enlisted or non-commissioned
29:15ranks under eased wartime conditions. On the 1st. On September 1, 1942, Zierach was promoted to major.
29:25On September 28, 1942, he became the commander of the 3rd. Battalion of the Luftwaffe Field Division,
29:32I under Colonel Gustav Vilka, here with Reichsmarshal Goering on the 25th. July 1943 on the Eastern Front,
29:42near Novgorod, where he had transferred the division in November 1942 and had taken part in the battles of
29:51Demyansk. At the beginning of November 1943, it was taken over by the army as the 1st Field Division,
30:00where, during the Soviet Leningrad-Navgorod operation, it was destroyed in the Novgorod area in January 1944.
30:12On January 8, 1944 until April, Zierach was assigned to the Air War Academy in Berlin-Gatau,
30:20a year later, on October 15. In February 1945, he became the IB,
30:27the head of the Quartermaster Department of the 2nd. He was appointed to the Parachute Corps,
30:33where he was taken prisoner of war by the British, either in April or early May 1945 in the Breckendorf
30:40area in Schleswig-Holstein, from which he was released at the end of 1945. Major A.D. Otto Zierach died
30:49on the 12th.
30:50He passed away on August 12, 1976, at the age of 69, in Nacrot-Vezerde in the Sauerland region.
30:59That was the first part, with the biographies of the officers who were awarded the Knight's Cross of
31:06the Iron Cross after the capture of the Belgian fort Eben Emael. The introduction of the other
31:13protagonists will take place in the second part. But after talking about German paratroopers for
31:19quite a while now, I would like to take this opportunity to point out my major paratrooper
31:25novel, Geheim Kommando Nikolaus, which tells the story of paratroopers from the 1st Parachute Panzer
31:33Division, who were given the responsibility by the fate of war for 25 Anglo-American pilots,
31:40prisoners of war, taken from the Stalag Luft III in Sagan, who were being sought by the Reich main
31:47security office for a reason crucial to the war effort. The novel is available on Amazon.
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