Brainwashed and back

COEUR d'ALENE — American-born Herman Esfeld was "brainwashed" by the Nazi Party after his family moved to Germany in 1937.

Esfeld's father Henry, an engineer, had accepted an offer from Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the Porsche car company, to move to Germany from Detroit to help build the Volkswagen factory.

Esfeld said his gradual coercion into the Nazi Party started in school when he was 10.

"As an impressionable youth, I began to believe in the teachings of the Nazi Party," the Coeur d'Alene 88-year-old said. "The transformation in myself was very subtle and methodical, starting out with German history. The doctrine of the Nazi Party was to glorify Germans through the centuries in cultural and literature achievement."

Esfeld's early teen years consisted of war games in the Hitler Youth, a youth organization of the Nazi Party.

"You had a blue side and a red side," he said. "This was to hone our minds to believe that might is in strength. I slowly started to embrace the idea of an invincible Third Reich. The only thing that I didn't relish was the forced marches that caused blisters on my feet."

Serving as a German teen

While still in high school, Esfeld and other students were told to serve anti-aircraft duty, fighting Americans and the British during World War II.

"One day in class I heard the typical clickety-clack sound of German military boots coming down the hall when a German officer announced that students are to report south of Brunswick," he said.

The fighting was fierce.

"There were some close calls when we were bombed by the British by night and Americans by day," Esfeld said. "I had more close calls serving as a German flak than when I served in the German Army."

He recalled one night in which he had just finished digging a foxhole when the British swarmed with bombers.

"The rolling thunder of carpet bombing started up the hill toward our battery while we were crouching in the foxhole," Esfeld said. "My classmate broke down, embraced me and said, 'I don't want to die.' That never occurred to me, so I said, 'Fritz, if it hits us, it hits us.' The rolling bomb carpet ended just a few hundred yards from the edge of our anti-aircraft installation."

Esfeld said he realized he had been brainwashed by the Nazi Party when the Germans were being fired upon in their foxholes by the Russians.

"That's when I realized I was getting close to death," he said. "I blurted out, 'What the hell am I doing here?'"

Looking back, Esfeld, who co-authored a book called "Brainwashed: Fighting for the Enemy" about his war experiences, said he's not embarrassed to say that he brainwashed by the Nazi Party.

"I had no control over that," he said. "I just realized how impressionable teenagers — regardless of their creed or race — can be influenced very subtly. That is why it is so important to watch outside forces that teens are subjected to. Teenage years are a very influential period in one's life."

A new start

After Esfeld served in the German Army for a year and a half and the war ended in 1945, he was offered an apprenticeship at the bombed Volkswagen factory.

Esfeld returned to Detroit in 1948 when his U.S. citizenship was reinstated.

He recalls being enlightened when he was reintroduced into American culture.

The first time he'd heard of ham and cheese combination sandwiches was on a train when a man was selling them.

At the tool shop where Esfeld worked, a vendor was selling items for "two bits." The cost stumped Esfeld until he learned that meant a quarter.

"He could see that I was a greenhorn," Esfeld said.

After two years of working at the tool shop, Esfeld received another military notice. This time it was from the U.S. government.

"Two months after North Korea invaded South Korea I received Uncle Sam's greetings," he said.

Esfeld served two years during the Korean War in an Ordinance Corps in the U.S. Army that included a non-combat role in, of all places, Germany.

"In spite of my German accent, I got along well with my section leader," he said. "I vowed that I would serve to the best of my ability and be the first one in line for a promotion should one come up."

The experience of serving in the military of different countries was entirely different, Esfeld said.

"In Germany, you were told, 'You do this; you do that; you go here,'" he said. "But the American Army treated young recruits with soft leather gloves. I was amazed after what I went through for 11 years in Germany."

When he returned to Germany as an American soldier, Esfeld said he was amazed at how much of the devastation from the war had been cleaned within less than three years.

"There were freshly red-bricked buildings and new cobblestoned streets where craters, left over from bombs, had been," he said. "It helped make up for the ghastly war pictures in my head."

During the mission, Esfeld was given the title of "unofficial German interpreter" by his section leader.

Esfeld's said his service in the U.S. Army following his time with the German Army was a sense of duty.

"I felt that I had to redeem myself," he said softly.

Trips down memory lane

While serving as a U.S. soldier, Esfeld met up with a young woman named Helga, a former neighbor of his when he lived in Germany. It had been 13 years since the two saw each other.

"This young, vivacious (college) student was a far cry from the 6-year-old girl with whom I sneaked a kiss sitting in my father's car in our garage," Esfeld wrote in his book. "I liked Helga even though I soon realized that because of her status, my pursuit of a serious relationship with her would not get me very far. But because of the contribution my father made to the creation of the now-flourishing Volkswagen factory, they treated me warmly … "

Despite German women being practically forbidden from dating American soldiers or even being seen with them, Esfeld's persistence toward a waitress named Ida paid off. Ida's mother died during the war, but her uncle was open to them getting married in Germany.

Ida and Herman divorced after 27 years of marriage in 1981, but he met and married his second German wife, Ruth, in 1982. In 1999 the couple, after Ruth's insistence, visited the spot where Esfeld fought for his life against the Russian front in 1945. It was Esfeld's first trip back to that site since being a German soldier.

"The farmhouse that had been almost completely demolished by the anti-aircraft guns now stood beautifully restored with modern picture windows," he wrote, adding he noticed some pockmarks on the brick siding that were made by the exploding Russian mortar rounds decades before.

After Esfeld received permission from the owner to view the property, he spotted a concrete pole that had been used as a landmark near his foxhole still there after 45 years.

The scenic farmland, he said, cleared his senses.

"Now I was no longer a young, brainwashed soldier for the (Nazi Party), but a loyal American citizen who had served my country of origin in the U.S. Army," Esfeld said.