THE WITTMANN GALLERIES

Wittmann Home		Wittmann Interview		Tiger Video Clips

I saw him for the first time in the park at Baron in Normandy. He ran through the rain with hunched shoulders wearing a black leather jacket and blue lightweight mechanic's trousers. He had his hands in his pockets because it was cool and perhaps he was cold. Two hours of sleep on a field bed somewhere were not sufficient to remove the shadows of exhaustion and of difficult battle from his face. He stood before us of middle height, his hair pale blond, a face in which modesty, calm and self-assurance could be read.

A few hours ago, he had destroyed 21 British tanks, and the most unusual thing to observe about him was that curious after-effect of great exertion, which had left not only a physical effect upon him, but also upon his heart and soul. He knows completely what he has accomplished, he knows the value of his success. Yet anyone who talks to him as a "hero" will experience that Michael Wittmann looks at him quiet and convinced with some degree of confusion and then with-rejection. He doesn't like the dramatic, the "big words" and the fuss people make about him. He doesn't know what to do with such people and he will walk away.

It will be unforgettable for me to have heard him relate how he stood alone with his single tank in the cover of the forest and had the marvelous view of a passing British tank regiment. When he spoke his words they were carefully weighed and it appeared he was very anxious not to commit any mistake, but to describe the event with the greatest degree of truth or actuality as possible. Vehicle behind vehicle, sixty enemy tanks in rapid movement along a road barely twenty meters away. There stood Michael Wittmann. Great odds had not intimidated him before, but this was suicide. Who had ever attacked a whole regiment before? Should he attack?

"I couldn't do anything else," Wittmann said in a very unheroic way.

"Vini, Vidi, Vinci"…

Wittmann didn't have to stop and think out what to do. He had a 'sixth sense' in assessing a situation, which gave a unique gift to his method of fighting. But he also knows what his success had cost him in terms of spiritual strength and the totality of the situation, which placed him under the shadows of death and in the midst of great efforts. All this changes people, creates different standards. Too much hinges on this performance for one to act like a hero out of a storybook. The mood which enclosed the combat sphere of the Tiger tank with a commander like Wittmann aboard included cold bloodedness and presence of mind, complete mastery of all means of war. His marvelous victories are not the victory of the "heroic," but of the "human."

With him, and all others on whom the battle hinges, were not made by nature without nerves or feelings. They are not "Supermen." They are human beings, with wishes, longings, hopes and thoroughly bourgeois love for their wives and children.

It was 08:05 hours when Wittmann started his attack and this was how he described it later: "I could not collect my company together and it was necessary to act swiftly as I had to assume that the enemy had seen me and would destroy me at my start line. I set off in my tank, having given the other tanks in the company orders not to retreat but to stay where they were and hold their position. I thus surprised the English in the same way that they had surprised us. I first destroyed two on the right and one to the left. Then I turned round to the left to get at the half-tracks in the centre of the regiment. I drove along the second half of the road and destroyed several armoured vehicles in front of me while on the move. There was unbelievable confusion among the enemy."

"I entered into the village and when I got to the centre, I received a severe hit from an anti-tank shell which immobilized my tank. I carried on firing at anything within range in the vicinity but I had lost radio contact with everyone as my tank was out of range. I decided to evacuate it and we took our weapons with us insofar as we could carry them, leaving the tank intact, as there was a chance of recovering it. I managed to reach a divisional HQ about fifteen kilometers away. Several times I had to skirt around enemy armoured vehicles and I would have had the chance of destroying them at close range if I had had a suitable weapon, thus with a heavy heart I had to leave them. I got to the divisional HQ and reported both there and to corps HQ."

Written by Herbert Reinecker, SS war correspondent, Das Schwarze Korps.