The souvenir was an unusual choice. With the fighting in Germany now over, Sgt. Robert J. Roeber decided to bring home an enemy hospital sign. What would Mrs. Roeber say? Stored away for decades, it became uncovered at a northern Illinois estate sale in 2021. Behind its cracked painted lettering is a story of the last days of World War II in one German village.
The frontline arrives in Schmiedefeld
April 1, 1945. Easter Sunday. The Nazi party district leader holds a meeting in Schmiedefeld am Rennsteig at 4 PM. He tells residents that American soldiers are nearing and that occupation is possible. For the past several days villagers have grown anxious. The boom of artillery fire draws closer. The sky buzzes with allied airplanes on a daily basis. At night, the bomb attacks on Schweinfurt could be scene.1
Today, Schmiedefeld is a small quiet village some 14 kilometers east of Suhl. It is nestled in the mountains and dense woods of the Thuringian Forest in central Germany. A historic mining community, it supplied iron-ore for the region’s famous, and still active, weapons manufacturing industry. By 1900 tourism became the mainstay of the local economy.
Spring 1945 saw few, if any, tourists to Schmiedefeld. Two days after Easter Sunday on April 3, the American 11th Armored Division entered Suhl. That same day a large group of German soldiers arrived in Schmiedefeld. They were the 11. Marschsturm, marching storm, of the paratroopers of the SA-Standarte Feldherrnhalle.
Left: aerial view of Schmiedefeld from late 1930s postcard. From author’s collection. Right: location of Schmiedefeld am Rennsteig in Germany. From Google.
The Germans established a defense line along the hills and mountains east of Suhl. Its purpose was to halt the rapid advancing American armored forces. The southern cornerstone was Schmiedefeld.
A mixed forced of regular and conscripted troops defended the mountain village. Largest of the regular units was the Feldherrnhalle. The conscripted troops included the local Hitler Youth and Volkssturm militia. For several days in and around the village, the soldiers took over several buildings, set up roadblocks, and dug defenses. Unfortunately, amongst them were some still fanatical Nazis, who carried out murder.
It happened on Gersgrund hill on April 6. A group of ten ostarbeiter, forced laborers from Eastern Europe, recently released from employment, were found executed. The circumstances surrounding their death is unclear. Locals then and after the war accused outsiders of perpetrating the crime. Including possibly the SA-Standarte Feldherrnhalle.2
American forces grossly overestimated the Germans’ strength in the area. On April 7, soldiers from the 26th Infantry Division intercepted a patrol from the Feldherrnhalle, two kilometers east of Suhl. Captured were two young soldiers. They told the Americans that elite SS troops were concentrating in Schmiedefeld, preparing a counterattack on Suhl, with 1,600 soldiers and armored vehicles- which was false.
This inaccurate intelligence convinced American commanders to shell the village. Artillery fire rained down. In addition, aircraft from the 367th Fighter Squadron launched a strike. General Willard S. Paul of the 26th Infantry Division remained at his command post in Suhl until 2 AM the following morning. The German attack never came. Later that day, General Paul made his move.
Infantrymen assaulted Schmiedefeld on the afternoon of April 8. They entered the village around 3 PM. By then the Germans had retreated. Still, a house-to-house search ensued. After which the Allied occupation began.
A school building converted into a hospital
German casualties sustained in the defense of Schmiedefeld were high. The SA-Standarte Feldherrnhalle alone lost 23 members within the village proper, aged 15 to 22.3 A dressing station was setup during the fighting to treat the wounded. Inside the village, however, was a hospital.
The village school building became requisitioned as a hospital sometime in March 1945. Students resumed classes elsewhere locally. Built in 1920, multistoried, and on a hill near the village center, the school is still in operation today.
In 1964, when adding a gymnasium to the building, workers made a surprise discovery. Hidden behind a rear staircase was a Walther pistol. Village historian Klaus-Dieter Völker witnessed a police officer retrieve the gun. The gun’s original owner was found, a former military officer, who had been a patient at the hospital when the war ended. Hearing that the Americans were close-by and thinking quickly, he hid his sidearm.4
Indeed, the takeover of the hospital was an intense experience for its occupants.
Another patient at the hospital was Rudolf Schniedergers. Wounded on the Western Front, Rudolf arrived at the reserve hospital in Ilmenau on March 23, 1945. Overcrowding forced the hospital staff to transfer patients elsewhere. One of the destinations was the hospital in Schmiedefeld- which served as a subunit. Rudolf made the trip by truck and less than two weeks later came his capture.
Shortly before marching into Schmiedefeld, American troops fired on the school-turned-hospital. The Bavarian chief medical officer informed patients that the hospital needed better marking. He decided to hang a flag from the roof and with Rudolf, who volunteered, the pair made their way to the attic. They displayed the flag.
Just as Rudolf pulled his body back through a window, however, the Americans shot at him, with a bullet hitting the doctor in the foot. Both men crawled to the window and peered out, viewing the Americans’ arrival.
The next day the 328th Infantry Regiment filed a brief report on the hospital. A total of 63 enlisted personnel was recorded as patients.5 As for Rudolf, he remained in Schmiedefeld until mid-May, when he returned to Ilmenau for a medical operation.6
A GI’s souvenir for home
May 7, 1945. The German high command surrendered unconditionally. The Allies celebrate both at home and abroad. Allied soldiers at the front hunt for war trophies, souvenirs, to bring back home. Schmiedefeld am Rennsteig, although not laden with stockpiled weapons and munitions like nearby Suhl, held a few treasures ripe for the taking.
Three days later Sgt. Robert J. Roeber found himself in the village. His unit, the 563rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, with its four companies, and headquarters, had split up and garrisoned different locations.7 In late April the men moved into their final wartime positions. They had fought hard since landing at Normandy in late 1944. Near Schmiedefeld was C Company in Zella-Mehlis and in Suhl, D Company.
At 39 years of age, Robert was older than the average American combat soldier. He grew up on Chicago’s North Shore and graduated from Deerfield-Shields High School in 1925. His passion was scouting. Joining the local movement in 1917, Robert rose through the ranks and organized Troop 48 at Halsey School, Lake Forest, in June 1929.8
At the beginning of the war, Robert and his wife lived in Highland Park where he worked for a fuel oil company. The army then took him away, trained him on anti-aircraft guns, and sent him overseas. Robert made sergeant by war’s end. Like the average soldier, he hunted for trophies once hostilities were over.
Typical souvenirs brought back by American servicemen were helmets, firearms, edged weapons, uniforms, and uniform regalia, like medals and badges. Soldiers could ship these items back to the United States through the army’s postal service. Otherwise, they could stuff their duffel bags and footlockers with treasure, space permitting. Catching Roeber’s eye in Schmiedefeld was something peculiar and unique: a hospital sign.
During its short-lived use as a hospital the school building in Schmiedefeld featured a sign. Constructed from two fiberboard panels it measures 40 by 60 centimeters.
Its painted side reads in Fraktur typeface “Rez. Laz. [Reserve-Lazarett] Ilmenau Teil-Laz. [Teil-Lazarett] Schmiedefeld.” The teil-lazarett, partial hospital, designation signifies that it is a subunit of another institution. In this case, the hospital in Schmiedefeld is administered by the reserve hospital in Ilmenau. On both panels Sgt. Roeber wrote his name in a corner along with a date, “May 10, 1945.” The date is likely when the sign went missing from the hospital.
Whatever the reaction of Mrs. Roeber was to the sign that her husband brought home from the war is unknown. Three-quarters of a century later, this unique wartime souvenir was unearthed at an estate sale, its story now told.
Click here to read about how this article was shared in a German newspaper.
Sources
- A thorough day-by-day history of the fighting that took place in the villages of Schmiedefeld and Frauenwald in April 1945 was written by Andreas Möhring. The author incorporated contemporary sources, such as German military reports and daily community reports, and postwar eyewitness testimonies. See Möhring, Die Rennsteigfestung: Kriegsende 1945 in Schmiedefeld und Frauenwald [German] (Norderstedt: BoD-Books on Demand, 2015).
- For details of the massacre and postwar commemoration, see Möhring, Die Rennsteigfestung, pp.63-8.
- For a list of the known German casualties in the fighting around Schmiedefeld, along with the names of some of the Americans killed, see Möhring, Die Rennsteigfestung, p.36.
- Klaus-Dieter Völker, email to author, January 9, 2022.
- This report was sent to the regimental G-3 officer as well as the divisional surgeon of the 26th Infantry Division. A copy was supplied to the author. Andreas Möhring, email to author, January 21, 2022.
- Rudolf Schniedergers recalled his wartime experience to Klaus-Dieter Völker in an interview, sometime in the 2000s. The notes of this interview were saved. Klaus-Dieter Völker, email to author, January 9, 2022.
- United States Army, The history of the 563rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion (United States: [unit publication], 1946?), p.54.
- John L. Ropiequet, An Illustrated History of Boy Scouting in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, Illinois 1910 to 1944 (Highland Park: Boy Scout Troop 324, 2018 [revised July 2020]), viewed at: https://lflbhistory.org/sites/default/files/assets/files/Boy-Scouting-in%20Lake-Forest-Lake%20Bluff-1910-1944-by-John-L-Ropiequet_compressed.pdf (accessed January 1, 2022).
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