High-Ranking Nazi Colonel Turns Against German Authority. Here's Why.

A Wehrmacht colonel stands before twenty American officers in a Montana prison camp. February nineteen forty-six. A discussion about constitutional rights has just shattered everything he believed for thirty years. This is the story of how a Nazi commander became one of postwar Germany's most influential democracy educators.

April twenty-third, nineteen forty-five. The Harz Mountains, Germany. Colonel Hans Schmidt pressed his back against cold granite as American artillery shells screamed overhead. His Panzergrenadier regiment—once eight hundred strong—had dissolved to forty-seven exhausted men scattered across three kilometers of forest.​

Schmidt's hands trembled. Not from fear. From recognition.

He had commanded these soldiers through France, through Russia, through the systematic collapse of everything the Reich promised would last a thousand years. The trembling came from a single thought that had been growing for months, now impossible to ignore: they had been lied to about everything.

The shelling stopped. Silence pressed against his eardrums like water pressure at depth. Then voices. American voices. English words he barely understood, but the tone was unmistakable. Not the rage of conquerors. Something else. Something that sounded almost like... procedure.

Schmidt stood. Raised his hands. Walked into captivity expecting execution.

He found transformation instead.

Schmidt had joined the Wehrmacht in nineteen thirty-three at age twenty-two, a bright-eyed university graduate convinced that Germany's rebirth required military strength and unwavering loyalty. His father had fought in the Great War, returned broken, died broken. Young Hans believed the new government's promise: never again would Germany be humiliated, never again would her soldiers be betrayed by weakness at home.​

By nineteen forty, he commanded a company. By nineteen forty-two, a battalion. By nineteen forty-four, a full regiment of Panzergrenadiers—mechanized infantry that represented the cutting edge of German military doctrine. He was good at war. Efficient. Respected by subordinates for fairness, by superiors for results.