Military Service
He was a group leader in the Hitler Youth organization before the war.
He was conscripted into military service and began serving with an anti-aircraft battery at Vegesack near Bremen during World War II. After brief service on the Eastern Front, including the siege of Leningrad, he returned to Germany in 1942 to work as a trainer and advisor at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium. He attended the People's Court, presided over by Roland Freisler, as an army spectator at some of the show trials for officers involved in the July 20 plot where an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate Hitler at Rastenburg and was disgusted by the whole process. Toward the end of the war, from December 1944 onwards, he served as an Oberleutnant in the Flakartillery on the Western Front. He was captured by the British in April 1945 on Lüneburg Heath and was a prisoner of war until August. During his service in World War II Schmidt was awarded the Iron Cross.
Read more about this topic: Helmut Schmidt
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or service:
“I’m not a military man, Captain. War holds no romance for me. The side effects are repulsive.”
—Richard Bluel, and Henry Hathaway. Major Hugh Tarkington (Clinton Greyn)
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)