Hermann Ramcke

Fallschirmjager Brest and Beyond Hermann Ramcke

This is the memoir of a General engaged in battle. It is not so much about his actions on the battlefield, where he heroically and honorably defended the port city of Brest against a numerically and materially far superior enemy in one of the fiercest battles on the Western Front during World War II, as it is about the battles he fought in the victors' tribunals, which often disregarded and made a farce of accepted legal principles. General der Fallschirmtruppe Hermann Bernhard Ramcke, a paratroop veteran of the Afrika Korps and the battle for Crete, was an officer and a gentleman of the old school. So much so, that the opposing adversary, General Troy Middleton, Commander of the 8th Corps, praised and thanked him for his strict adherence to the rules of war. However, Middleton's testimony was insufficient to protect Ramcke and his soldiers from being falsely accused of war crimes and denied due process. Thus, these memoirs primarily deal with Ramcke's experiences in successive prisons, his bold escapes and voluntary returns, as well as his legal battles conducted from his prison cells to defend against all odds his, as well as the honour and reputation of the men under his command.