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(W.W.II) I Had a Dream about Wilhelm Mohnke

Sisley

Sisley

Impressionist artist
I suddenly recalled a dream I had in the 1987 – 1988 school year when I was in art school in Toronto completing my Graphic Design diploma.

The dream was as if I was right there seeing and recording it all: what looked like a man wearing a high-ranking Nazi uniform coldly executing 3 men kneeling at the edge of a pit. Each was shot in the back of the head with his pistol and then unceremoniously shoved into the pit with a pushing-kicking foot motion. The men being executed appeared to be wearing British or Canadian soldiers’ uniforms and their helmets were that “flying saucer” style that the British and Canadian troops had.

A bona fide PL snippet witnessing the real thing? I am still inconclusive at this stage, but it would appear the date is in the summer of ’44 and the location in northern France or in neighboring Belgium.

I can remember waking up from that and thinking, why am I being shown that in a dream vision? Later that same day the news headlines screamed about a Nazi SS Brigadier leader named Wilhelm Mohnke having coldly executed 3 Canadian soldiers at the edge of a bomb crater. According to the news other Canadian veterans were campaigning to have the still surviving Mr. Mohnke arrested and prosecuted, which was done without success.

The news headlines described exactly what I had dreamed: 3 Canadian soldiers coldly executed and then being kicked down into a bomb crater, the story being related in a news write-up by a surviving witness. That specific event shows just 3 of several dozens of Canadian soldiers Wilhelm Mohnke had slaughtered and so far, I haven’t been able to trace the exact location. WWII history experts, I welcome your knowledge.


http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Mohnke
SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke was reportedly involved in more than one atrocity. A quick-tempered and harsh man — even toward other SS — he was generally disliked, even by his comrades. On June 11, he interrogated three Canadian prisoners and, after shouting at them and gesturing in anger, had them taken to the edge of a deep bomb crater and shot. (source: Wikiquote)
 
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Any idea what battle this was after? I was thinking "Operation Market Garden" but that was in Holland. Sounds like it was after the Normandy invasion and the Germans would have been in retreat mode.
 
There is a book out about the murder of the Canadians.


Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy by Howard Margolian.


"On the afternoon of June 7, 1944, Lorne Brown, a private serving with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in Normandy, was bayoneted to death while trying to surrender to troops of Nazi Germany's 12th SS Division 'Hitler Youth.' Over the next ten days, more than a hundred and fifty Canadian soldiers were brutally murdered after capture by the 12th SS. Despite months of post-war investigation by Allied courts, however, only two senior officers of the 12th SS were ever tried for war crimes."


Google books has a version online. I would post the link, but its really long. Just use google and search SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, and you should be able to find the book.


According to the book, the location of your dream Sisley, is Le Mesnil-Patry, France. It is in Normandy.


The D-Day invasion had begun on June 6, 1944, so by June 11, the Germans would be pushed very hard, back toward Germany.
 
Le "Groupe G"?


Cryscat,


If this is any authentic PL recall, I have a theory.


If I was physically present in witnessing that incident, the most likely was that I would have been an infiltrator wearing a stolen Nazi uniform and ID and that the resistance faction that I was part of was very likely the notoriously violent "Groupe G". Even the library does not have any documentation on the said faction.


As an orphaned German Jew I would have been 15 or 16 and just the right age to be able to look and sound like any of the Hitlerjugend in that SS division.


Any resistance fighter that spoke German and knew that country in any way would have been considered quite an asset by the Belgian Resistance. I remember having the most gut-wrenching disgust toward Wilhelm Mohnke and how much I wanted him to be in my next Schweinebraten ("pig roast").


And Cryscat, I'll definitely have a look at that book you mention.
 
Why would a Belgian Resistance fighter be in the Normandy, France region? Its not on France's border with Belgium. Or did the French and Belgian Resistance work together?
 
Agent for the Resistance


Cryscat,


This is a matter I will be historically researching in the weeks to come.


In some cases and in some places, the Belgian and French resistances did collaborate in the spiriting of downed airmen to neutral Spain.


Espionage was one of the things the Groupe G did, which they seemed to have a lot of resources for and that would have come from the hundreds of Nazi trains they derailed and looted for what they could.


Besides trying to locate (at the library) the book you mention, I placed an order for Herman Bodson's "Agent for the Resistance" as I am sure it will shed clarity. Who knows for sure at this stage? Maybe I will find Bodson's book to be bristling with my own PL touchstones. I'll let you know what I see when I read it.


There is some historical evidence of Canadian troops corresponding with the Belgian resistance and it must have given them an uncommon edge to find it possible to beat back such a ferocious military opponent as the 12th SS.


Again, I can't figure out why else would I dream a full color, full detail "video clip", every sordid detail complete with the soldiers' pant seats bulging out in reaction to the fatal brain injury from getting shot point-blank in the back of the head.


Now imagine if there was any way to actually extract that dream and transfer it all to a playable video medium!
 
Sisley said:
Now imagine if there was any way to actually extract that dream and transfer it all to a playable video medium!
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Whoever invents that will be an instant millionaire. LOL
 
"Mehr Schweinebraten"


TY Cryscat!


Unfortunately I couldn't open the link but I'm sure I'll have that book in my hands soon enough.


I do have yet another theory: Normandy is where the Allies breached the Nazis' shore fortifications. Although the Groupe G operated mainly out of the forested Ardènes part of Belgium, it sometimes reached beyond that haven. It seems to me that it would make good military sense to know how the Nazis were (vainly) trying to counter and where their supply lines were. Also consider that Belgium and Holland lay between Normandy and their ultimate target city, Berlin. That would have been the anticipated path.


What better subject could there be for such a job as a fake Hitlerjugge than a vindictive German-Jewish orphan, then in his mid-teens and drooling to have another Schweinebraten on the behalf of his dead mother? The mission would have been dangerous including dodging Canadian bullets and pretending to fight for the 12th SS.
 
Sisley said:
What better subject could there be for such a job as a fake Hitlerjugge than a vindictive German-Jewish orphan, then in his mid-teens and drooling to have another Schweinebraten on the behalf of his dead mother? The mission would have been dangerous including dodging Canadian bullets and pretending to fight for the 12th SS.
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This sounds a little bit like the story of Arminious. Do you know who Arminious was?
 
argonne1918 said:
I had never heard of this resistance group before, but it looks like it was maybe the most important.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/belgian_resistance.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Resistance
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Argonne, I've been trying to find out more about the Belgian Resistance and it is perplexing to see that there is not that much mention about it anywhere.


Unfortunately the lower link is too blurry to be able to read. In the meantime I did place an order for the book "Agent for the Resistance" by Herman Bodson. I should have it in my hands by the next month. It should bring more clarity about the Belgian Resistance and especially about the extremely violent "Groupe G".
 
Monkhe

Cryscat said:
There is a book out about the murder of the Canadians.
Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy by Howard Margolian.


"On the afternoon of June 7, 1944, Lorne Brown, a private serving with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in Normandy, was bayoneted to death while trying to surrender to troops of Nazi Germany's 12th SS Division 'Hitler Youth.' Over the next ten days, more than a hundred and fifty Canadian soldiers were brutally murdered after capture by the 12th SS. Despite months of post-war investigation by Allied courts, however, only two senior officers of the 12th SS were ever tried for war crimes."


Google books has a version online. I would post the link, but its really long. Just use google and search SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, and you should be able to find the book.


According to the book, the location of your dream Sisley, is Le Mesnil-Patry, France. It is in Normandy.


The D-Day invasion had begun on June 6, 1944, so by June 11, the Germans would be pushed very hard, back toward Germany.
Click to expand...
Cryscat,


I arranged for an interlibrary loan of the book. I'll probably have it temporarily before this month is out.
 
Sisley said:
Argonne, are you referring to this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
Click to expand...
That's him. He was captured by the Romans at age 9 and taken back to Italy and schooled. Twenty years later he commanded a legion sent to invade Germania. But he never forgot where he came from and devised a plan to turn on the Romans and attacked them. I was told this story by a 75 year old German-American named Armin who was told the story by his father who immigrated from Germany to the U.S. after WWI. This story is not told in Germany today for fear of reigniting nationalism.
 
TY Cryscat! I'll have at least a quick look. And yes, the Hitlerjugend 12th SS were proud to a point of vanity. Showing any weakness was not in the SS mindsets
 
argonne1918 said:
http://www.hpu.edu/CHSS/History/GraduateDegree/MADMSTheses/files/2004KimdeVidts.pdf
Click to expand...
Argonne,


I am pleased to say that after clearing a glitch in my computer, I was finally able to read the link in its entirety.


Through reading it, it has come to my awareness that most of what records that were kept about the Belgian resistance factions were lost in a fire and that what does remain has been embargoed until 2042. This would explain why so little is documented about the Belgian Resistance compared to other resistance factions that campaigned against the Nazi war machine. Is somebody hiding something?


From another source and also mentioned, there is anecdotal evidence that many German Jews did sneak into Belgium before May, 1940. Many of the same who were in their teens did go to join the more structured resistance factions “to the west”. I believe I was one of them.


There was active and abundant sabotage against the occupying Nazis taking place as of mid-1943, the same time that the 12th SS was first formed in Antwerp.


At p.76, there is mention of the Belgian Resistance having its own internal justice system to deal with anybody that betrayed them. Conditions like that would have put the occupying Nazis into a civil war situation, making it probably their most dangerous venue. I would have theorized the same myself. How else could a resistance faction continue to survive and operate with such devastating effects?


At p.80, it is said that Winston Churchill was aware of the Groupe G being active and he even called it his own secret army to set Europe ablaze. Whatever the Groupe G could loot from the Nazis was in fact supplemented by night-time air drops of weapons and sabotage material from England. Now imagine being able to work like that with what was probably the best supported resistance faction in the anti-Nazi campaign!


p.84 – 85: Obviously the partisans played a significant role in the sabotage actions against the Nazi apparatus but became best known for the murders of traitors, collaborators, and Nazi military. They committed at least 74 guerilla actions, killing 956 hostile soldiers and officers and wounding 1000 more. This is the resistance faction that matches most closely with my own dreams and visions of that incarnation.


p.86: Sabotaging included 68 trains derailed besides ruining the hundreds of locomotives, and attacks on rail yards. And yes, my dreams and visions seem to contain an inordinate amount of train wrecks.


p.89: The Witte Brigade (another group of saboteurs) aided Canadian and British soldiers to drive away the Nazis (probably the 12th SS).


To add more to the theories derived from my own dreams and visions: the emblem of the 12th SS was a single S-rune with a key crossing it diagonally on a shield. Considering that brief incarnation straddles in between two other incarnations as artists (preceding and currant), that orphan must have subconsciously derived some twisted artistic inspiration upon seeing it: the S-rune would have stood for Schweinebraten, the key would have been seen as a hand-held meat hook for snagging and dragging carcasses on to the butchering table, and the shield would have been the permanent “protection” for any live-captured SS’er that fell into their hands.


Add to that a barbaric mindset that was bred by the events, conditions, and experiences of being a child at war. As Auschwitz had Mengele, the Groupe G had a vindictive orphan of the land and language who liked to make live-captured SS’ers “taste their own medicine”. Could that have anything to do with why those records are embargoed? I will have to answer to that karma at some point.
 
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Agent for the Resistance


Agent for the Resistance


(A Belgian Saboteur in World War II)


Author: Herman Bodson


ISBN1-58544-265-8


For those of you who want to read it I will leave you in suspense. However I will say this much: it is the closest resembling account of anti-Nazi resistance I have seen in correlation to my dreams, visions, and flashbacks.


Here the author offers a mostly personal account of his resistance actions in Belgium in WWII as well as telling about his personal struggles in transforming from a gun-hating pacifist to a cold blooded killer with a mandate to "fight anything and everything wearing a Nazi uniform".


The author's acts have included attacks on Nazis and also their Belgian collaborators with unbridled brutality (and as I have seen myself do) as well as blowing up Nazi trains, and correspondences and missions into neighboring France.


No specific names or faces rang familiar to me although there did seem to be a vague familiarity in seeing the author's face; the same kind of familiarity as if I was looking at a pic of former colleagues in a past workplace venue.


I believe I was in a cell of the Belgian Resistance other than whatever the author was. The read itself seems to have stirred up some memories.
 
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Conduct Unbecoming


Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy


University of Toronto Press


ISBN # 0-8020-4213-9


I was not able to read the volume to completion in view of firstly the enormous injustices bestowed on the Canadian troops of that campaign seemingly with impunity, and secondly I am not left with the feeling of the whole truth being told. All in all it was too upsetting. The book will be back at the library after I post this.


I did trace the event of the 3 Canadian troops in the bomb crater to the afternoon of June 11, 1944 and the book's version reads as follows (p.101, The Mohnke Murders):


Within minutes of the stripping away of the prisoners' last vestiges of personal identity,, the Germans' real purpose became frighteningly apparent. In full view of Mohnke and Kaiser, the two military policemen marched the Canadians northward into a meadow. After they had gone about three hundred yards, they were ordered to halt near a bomb crater, one of many made by Allied planes over the past few days. As soon as the prisoners had come abreast of one another, the sergeant of the Feldgendarmerie fired his machine pistol into their backs in a long, continuous burst. Hit by numerous rounds, Ionel, Benner, and Owens fell face first and lay motionless at the edge of the crater. Gratuitously, one or both of the military policemen pumped additional shots into the fallen Canadians. Then the impromptu firing squad returned to the front of the regimental command post, where Mohnke and Kaiser were still standing, looking out at the macabre execution site.


In my dream version of 1988 I was no more than the width of a 2-lane street from where it happened. My dream version of the scene was one of bare earth with the ruins of houses or other buildings in the backdrop. My version also had the 3 Canadian soldiers on their knees at the edge of the crater and the shots appeared to be fired execution style into the backs of their heads, one by one and each successively kick-shoved into the crater. Was this the actual Mohnke incident or was there another nearly identical scenario? And why would I dream that on the night before the headlines of the same showed up in The Toronto Star?


Unfortunately, if I was any physical presence that close to the event, the real witness cannot be traced and questioned as he would be dead by the next winter. Only the reincarnations of the people of both sides might be able to channel and reveal what really happened. My own psychic investigation of that incarnation continues.
 
You've done a lot of impressive research! Standing vs kneeling is a minor variation and the 12th SS was responsible for a lot of these types of executions. The Nazi's were brutal and thus most resistance cells responded with their own brand of brutality. The whole truth will probably never be known.
 
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