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Ernst Höfel

My mother writes in the escape diary the following on Sunday, the 08.04.1945 "In the morning 9 o’clock the first American tanks drove through Bad Salzdetfurth – after many days of stress, the very greatest tension."

And on the 12.05.1945 she writes "Today Emmi and I were at midday again at Mayor Höfel in the town hall. Conversed longer time with him very interestingly about everything possible, as there are accommodation for my horses, about our possible later returning home etc.. He has promised us every possible support."

I can remember Mayor Höfel and how he looked like. Even better I remember Mayor Gustav Warnecke. He was master shoemaker and I have sometimes brought shoes for repair to him and also fetched them again. Best I remember Mayor Ernst Hopf. He made a speech at the end of my schooling and after that I got to know him personally. He was the mechanic in the firm for which I worked. I once went to him and told him that a machine was kaput and efforts to get it going again had failed and if he could please come and fix it. And he told me that he has a meeting over lunch, but after that he would come.

I once said to my neighbour Karl that his father had been mayor of the town when the Americans came into town, and what his father had then experienced there.

Karl now did not get at all round to give me a reply, since his friend Rolf interjected and said to him: "Indeed, but your father was definitely no Nazi!"

I knew Rolf from school. His brother Achim went with me into the same class. He sat next to me.

Rolf probably felt that my question to Karl could be unpleasant for him and wanted to help his friend. Perhaps also an effort for political correctness played a role. Such subjects, which concerned the Nazis, were normally avoided. Particularly then when one did not knew what kind of past the people present had behind them, and very particularly then when one knew what kind of – Nazi – past they had behind themselves. I had not even thought about this side of my question. I had known the father of Karl and had never seen a Nazi in him and also did not bring him into connection with this party.

But Rolf’s interjection also showed the perception of the people in town, who therefore did not see Karl’s father as Nazi.

Karl therefore gave me no answer, but first reacted to the interjection of Rolf.

Now Karl was not the man who thought that he had to make an apology for himself, or for his father, or for anything else. He did not have that need. He had been quite a successful businessman, and still was, had been a bank manager, or still was one, and had held important honorary positions in town and still held them. The point of time of our conversation was about half a century after the time of the discussed events.

So Karl first replied to the interjection of Rolf. He said that that is not correct and that his father had joined the party a relative short time before the end.

Now that was obviously a surprise for Rolf and he said as a result of this nothing any more.

I now reminded Karl of my question and he told me, or us, that his father was sitting in his office and smoked his cigar, and suddenly the door opened and an American officer came in. He indicated to the man to sit on the chair before the desk and then blew the man his cigar smoke into his face.

This answer of course gave insight into the attitude of Karl’s father, but also of that of Karl himself.

Since Karl had now stopped speaking, I asked him, what then the man had wanted.

Karl said the man wanted to know, who then had been mayor of the town before the time of the Nazis.

I then asked further and wanted to know, what the answer was, and Karl said, his father had then said, that it had been Ernst Höfel.

Upon my further question, what then happened after that, Karl said, that the American officer had then asked, where one could find this man and Karl’s father had told him.

I have often thought about this report of Karl and believe that it is very informative, also regarding political events later, for instance in the next century. I am coming back to that.

I am now bringing an extract from a paper which has the title "The escape" and was written by Georg Neumann. The paper has the date 08.04.1994. The extract is under the sub-title "End of February 1945".

In the beginning of April - it was probably one week after Easter – American troops reached Bad Salzdetfurth. All buildings in which wounded soldiers were lying, and all doctor’s practices were marked with Red-Cross-flags. A delegation with a white flag had been sent before the town to hand over the town without a fight. Sitting on the first tank it returned into town.

The American military administration declared many restrictions, so that public life came to a standstill; among many others there were no longer means of transport, the schools were closed, and curfew prevailed at night.

On the 08.05.1945 the war was ended with the unconditional capitulation of the Deutsche Wehrmacht.

When one considers the situation of Karl’s father, then one has to realize that actually a non-membership in a party for such a long time is noteworthy. Of the 12 years of the thousand years empire he had then been most of the time no member of the party. And in his position as businessman and respected citizen the membership was certainly recommended to him. And that was then no simple thing to turn down something like this.

Now follows an extract from a report which my cousin Waltraud Hilke has written on the 24. July 2005. Here now from this report:

One evening father received the visit of uniformed party comrades; they wanted to convince him that also he should join. He could avoid it for the time being with a monetary donation, as I heard later.

The words "for the time being" probably indicate, what then later happened.

I can imagine that Karl’s father, in view of the near end of the Nazis and in view of their ability to cause great damage, saw the possibility to turn away such damage from the town and from the people of the town. And when I then have a look at the report of Georg Neumann, then I can imagine that Karl‘s father was not uninvolved to see to that, what Georg describes there.

I can remember that there was talk about that the then mayor of Bad Salzdetfurth had committed suicide at the approach of the Americans.

Karl’s father then probably had to automatically take over this office, as deputy.

I can also remember the name of the then Mayor. I think it was Luttmann.

His daughter, a nice, quiet girl, went to school with me, later. We were in the same class.

I believe the Luttmanns lived in a house in Salinenstraße, in the same house, in which later the Headmaster Bruno Wiechert lived. That house, which is directly opposite the entrance to the Saline, on the eastern side of Salinenstraße.

This was now the 8. April 1945 and I remember this day very well, not the weekday or the day of the month or the month, because that I have only heard decades after that, after the reading of the escape diary of my mother.

I stood on the western pavement of the Oberstraße. It was then called Adolf-Hitler-Straße. After that is was again renamed, perhaps to the old name. They were Oberstraße, Am Markt and Unterstraße. I believe the number consecutively from beginning to end is still today continuous. The street Am Markt has only about 10 buildings and I lived a few years there and the number of the house was 44.

My mother writes: "Sunday, 10.11.1946. On the 20. July 1946 we have moved here to Henkes in Hauptstraße (Main Street) 44."

It can therefore be that the Adolf-Hitler-Straße was first renamed Hauptstraße or that the people simply said Hauptstraße.

Bad Salzdetfurth is situated in a mountain ridge, which runs in east west direction and which is cut through by the Lamme, the Lamme River. The Lamme flows coming from south to north, into the Innerste, then comes the Leine and then the Aller and then the Weser, which flows into the North Sea.

At its crossing point of the mountain with the river lies Bad Salzdetfurth, in a relatively narrow valley therefore, and is at the narrowest place so narrow that there is only one street, which runs parallel to the river. Behind the houses and plots of land there still was the Schwarze Weg, Black Way, with the mill ditch and after that the ground rises relatively steep. That was on the western side. An on the eastern side, which was also built up, were partly behind the houses hardly any plots, because then the Lamme came immediately and after that the rising incline started.

The mountain ridge is so the last part of the low-mountain region and further north the north German lowland comes. The Lamme valley and therefore the town Bad Salzdetfurth is something like an access road to the north German lowland. Therefore has a certain strategic value, and since the Americans came from the south, one could have stopped them there quite well. I can remember that there were tank barriers supposed to be south of the town. My mother said that some eager women - and she mentioned names – of women whom I knew – wanted to go there and welcome the Americans with anti-tank rocket launchers.

What my mother has written there in her escape diary is a shortened version of the dramatic event.

The house before I stood was, I believe, the bakery Steffen. Immediately after this house was, when one walked towards the south, on the right a ramp rising up to the school, to which I then went a decade long. Long after that, I believe, this school was used as town hall. The ramp therefore runs up from north up to south, runs parallel to the street, is passable and ends before the school and the Hotel Kaiserhof. The street itself follows the Lamme River with little gradient, towards the north. Between the ramp and the street there is just a bank. On the right of the ramp was then the plumber and heating engineer business Rasche, their daughter also went to school with me, into the same class, later, and then probably came the teacher house and then the school and behind the school came the gymnasium and after that we lived, perhaps in the caretaker flat.

I was therefore so to speak before the front door.

Whether there were still other people on the street, I cannot say.

That I was alone is probably based on the fact that my mother was more worried about the Nazis, than about the Americans. We had arrived in the town just 10 days before and still experienced an air-raid warning. To my great annoyance my mother woke me one day with the explanation, the Americans are coming to bomb us, we were to go to the air-raid bunker, and then probably was more afraid of the Nazis, than of the Americans, what the Nazis would do when she did not go into the bunker.

I was of the opinion that when the Americans want to bomb the place, then that is there business, but no reason to wake me up.

In the above mentioned paper Georg writes about his stay in Potsdam about the time at the end of January 1945:

There was often air-raid warning, and I sat for hours at Aunt Elly’s radio and listened to the air situation reports, in which the way of the approaching bomber flying units and their suspected aim was described. Most of the time Berlin was attacked, and then the announcer said: "Enemy activity over the Reichshauptstadt (capital of the empire)". Sometimes one could hear the bomb carpets going down.

This being bombarded must have been something terrible. I once listened to the report of a man, who had experienced something like this in a supported basement of a block of flats, and decided as a result to never live in a big city, because the Americans come and bomb it. But after some time I then gave up this decision. On our escape we always avoided big cities.

For us from the east these direct experiences with getting bombarded were something new.

I therefore knew that the Americans were expected. The street was empty, whether also the pavements were empty, I do not know.

And then I saw the Americans coming, from the south.

This was now the second time, within 10 weeks, that I lived in an area which was approached by hostile military. In the first case we risked our life to get out there, and this time the mood was, at least on my part, quite different.

With the first case one fell out of the frying-pan into the fire, from one dictatorship into one much worse. And at the second time it meant the end of the dictatorship.

At that time then I had already much knowledge about America, since my father had lived there two years and talked much about it.

I have therefore heard about no atrocities of the Americans. For decades the atrocities of the Soviets were reported, until this lessened, but then again revived when 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and now also the people there could speak freely and reported that, what they had experienced.

So the first tank moved towards me and drove, on the street, past me, since I stood on the pavement. Soviet tanks, the infamous T34, also drove on the street, but which was full of refugees, and drove over them and left a mass of bleeding flesh, of the people and the horses, and still shot at the same time with the machine gun at those before the tank.

So I experienced history. With the nose of the tank the border of the Hitler Empire and of the Great German Reich became visibly smaller.

Suddenly the sovereignty of Adolf Hitler had found an end and that of the new lords began, that of Roosevelt. But to him this became apparently too much and four days later he was no longer and Mr Truman took over.

With this the wartime was certainly at an end, but still not the time where one could not get anything. That only stopped slowly, with the new money, the Deutsche Mark.

People said, before the war there had been something like sweets; I did not believe that. I believed, they lie, as usually. Once some women talked, a little bit exited, and the word chocolate was mentioned a couple of times. To me it did not mean anything. Then one woman brought out something to eat and every woman got a small piece, I as well.

I thought that almost in all cases the grownups, sometimes also my parents, tell lies. The story with Father Christmas and that of the black man and that of Easter hare were examples.

To serve up children something like that is terrible. Particularly in young age man is so prepared for spiritual things, like God and angels and heaven, the spiritual kingdom, and the things of the spiritual kingdom. I was so hungry for such things and almost nobody gave them to me. And the so-called Spiritual Ones, "die Geistlichen," proved to be anything else but "Geistliche." I only then progressed when I myself got my teeth into the matter.

When old people complain that no-one cares about them, then they should once think about why that is so. When they have given their children nothing, when they were small, why should they now expect anything from them. Hardly wisdom or life experience. As children fairy tales were dished up to them instead of truth and there exists no reason to expect now something different – than fairy tales.

Christmas is the time as no other to make children happy with spiritual information. They just wait that finally someone feeds them with that, what they wait for. And what happens? The father apologizes and goes away, to then return as Father Christmas. The children are cheated well and truly. And then the grownups wonder why they are not taken seriously, why they are not respected.

They all seemed, mostly with the exception of my parents, not to do that, what they actually wanted. For example an experienced independent businessman received a piece of paper and he was so impressed and hypnotized by it that he obeyed this piece of paper and went and they put a gun into his hands and then he went to another place and shot people dead there.

My philosophy was therefore very clearly established. Do not believe the stories of the grownups; they lie as good as always when it is about such things.

What I have written about this memorable day, the 8. April 1945, may all be quite exciting and interesting, but the really important event is still coming.

As I now saw the tanks driving past me, I suddenly discovered on one of the tanks something that let my complete philosophical building collapse.

There sat on one of the tanks a black man.

So the grownups do not always lie. The black man really exists. There he sits. He is real.

And he looks quite harmless, at least compared to the other soldiers; he may indeed be ready to fight, but not more than his colleagues.

A completely normal person.

My philosophy had collapsed, at least partly.

I had received a great teaching. Be always prepared, to check your philosophy.

But a man can now be deeply believing and fully convinced to stand in truth, also his life walk is in accordance with the will of God – but he is not able to spread pure truth as servant of God because he does not own it himself – because he does not ask and desires answers and expects them, but thinks himself to be the bearer of truth, and therefore erroneous thinking cannot be corrected.

I thought myself as bearer of truth and my erroneous thinking now had to be corrected. The fact demanded it.

That is something Bertha Dudde received from God, on the 29. August 1944, and wrote down then, and gave this message from God the No. 3237.

I could have also ignored the truth, but the tendency to religious fanaticism did not suit me already then.

So I was forced to subject my philosophy to a radical revision.

At that moment as I write down these words, I am in a city, in which several million of black people are. And I therefore have the opportunity to study them quite well. And I have detected that they, particularly also with regard to spiritual respects, are very much less degenerated then white people.

Just compare this situation, in which Germany was 1945, with another situation, where also American troops occupied a country.

In the year 2003 the Iraq was occupied by American troops.

In Germany the dictatorship had only lasted 12 years, an actually quite short time. In the Iraq there never had been a democracy.

In Germany the Americans just needed to hand over the responsibility to Ernst Höfel for the civilian life. That was quite simple, an hours work, and it was done. The democratic powers were almost all still there. They just had to get reactivated. In Cologne Konrad Adenauer was simply made mayor again. Nevertheless it lasted years until Germany was again fully sovereign.

Something like this would last many years in the Iraq.

The criminal behaviour of Obama sabotaged everything. He withdrew the Americans. He handed Iraq over to the wolves.

The former candidate to the presidency, Donald Trump, had said, fully justified, that Obama has created the Islamic State.

The Americans could have built up a democracy in the middle of the Arabic world, in Iraq, and so influence the whole region positively. They did the opposite, withdrew and created terror and war for years without end.

And the Europeans took part in it. They helped to create the terror of the Islamists and now complain about the effects, the refugees.

My mother wrote in the escape diary on Sunday 08.04.1945: "In the morning 9 o’clock the first American tanks drove through Bad Salzdetfurth – after many days of stress, the very greatest tension."

In these days of stress Bad Salzdetfurth had three mayors. Luttmann withdrew from life, the father of Karl had to take over this office for a short while, and then Ernst Höfel was appointed.

What is it all about with this webpage? It is about the fact that I believed there is no black man, but then had to look reality into the eye and had to change my philosophy.

Therefore here still the whole message from Bertha Dudde, B.D. NR. 3237

Divine revelations. False doctrine an obstacle.

29. August 1944. B.D. NR. 3237.

A direct revelation of God is marked through the direct word of the father to his child, and this word is to be believed when the receiver of the word is a man who stands in faith and in love, who therefore strives for God. The pre-condition is however not always given that wisdoms can be offered to a man, may it be that he does not listen persistently enough inwards or he is also imprisoned by teachings, which are not completely in accordance with truth, so that he would consider every correcting teaching as work of the opponent of God. And that is why the divine revelations only apply to personal admonitions and warnings, but nevertheless must be acknowledged as such. The desire of a man to stand in personal connection with God, and the belief that this is possible, are the first pre-requisites that God reveals himself fatherly. In what way now that depends on man’s powers of comprehension and willingness to receive and also on the task, which is given to him for his earth life. Is he supposed to be again active in teaching and makes himself available for this office to God, then the divine revelations will take place like an instruction and therefore also contain deepest wisdoms because man must himself first have knowledge before he can spread such. Complete lack of resistance however belongs to this, i.e., the spirit of God, the giver of truth, is never allowed to come across resistance, when it imparts truth to man. But resistance is every false doctrine when it is not given away unconditionally and makes place for truth. But a man can now be deeply believing and fully convinced to stand in truth, also his life walk is in accordance with the will of God – but he is not able to spread pure truth as servant of God because he does not own it himself – because he does not ask and desires answers and expects them, but thinks himself to be the bearer of truth, and therefore erroneous thinking cannot be corrected. He now certainly can hear the voice of God because he loves him and a loving heart is able to receive the divine spirit, but the spirit of God gives man in accordance of his desire – comforting, admonishing, warning or educational father words, which announce his love towards the earth child, or also instructions full of wisdom and deepest knowledge to that man, who is open-minded for that and makes himself worthy of it. The desire of man decides, and that is why everyone is so given how he desires. Fatherly exhortation is enough for one, and he ends his listening inwards, while the other listens to every word in thirst for knowledge, which divine love gives to him. God does not limit his gifts; he gives, as long as it is desired; but man himself sets the boundaries because as soon as his desire flags, as soon as his will is no longer active, he therefore ends his listening inwards, also the inner voice no longer sounds, the supply is interrupted and can only then again take place when man through listening inwards declares himself willing to receive the divine gift. And that is why man himself determines the measure of knowledge and also the way in which it is offered. A man interpenetrated by spiritual knowledge will mature extremely fast, and that is why it is definitely more advantageous to let God himself provide this knowledge than to appropriate it through study, because latter does not necessarily need to be truth, because men are transmitters and these are never free of error. But who clings to this spiritual material taken over from men and not even considers the thought that also error can have been imparted to him, to him deep knowledge cannot be given because he would not let it be regarded as truth, but infers to erroneous givers, when it does not agree with his old knowledge. And for that reason only such men are to be trained to bearers of pure truth who are completely free of erroneous spiritual material and who therefore all the time desire to be instructed by God himself to be very certain to receive pure truth because God can also give to them in all fullness and make them his representatives on earth, and these are they who are now to teach and pass on the deep knowledge to fellowmen, because they are able to do it and have the firm will to help their fellowmen. These will be abundantly provided with knowledge; the divine master teacher himself instructs them, and he trains them so that they can now teach in his name, always and everywhere, where men are open-minded to pure truth. Amen. B.D. NR. 3237.

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