WIESBADEN, Germany -- Even as a young man growing up in Cleveland in the 1930s, Dudley Strasburg said he knew someday he would join the fight against National Socialism in Europe.
The World War II veteran described how he read Adolf Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf," when it was translated into English in 1936 and was convinced that Germany, under Hitler's command, would carry out the Nazi leader's "vision" of a Europe purged of Jews, Gypsies, physically and mentally handicapped people, homosexuals and others who didn't fit Hitler's world view.
"In his book (published in Germany in 1925 and 1926) he said 'I'm going to eliminate from Europe all these groups,'" said Strasburg, explaining that because much of the world's attention was focused on the struggle for survival during the Great Depression, people didn't believe or pay attention to the threat posed by Nazi Germany.
"When I read the book as a little boy, I believed it," Strasburg said, adding that he started giving talks to groups to try to raise awareness about the threat.
Meanwhile many Americans were struggling to survive, he said, describing the images of long lines at soup kitchens and reports of people committing suicide in the wake of bankruptcy. "With this depression - our minds, our energies were not on what was happening in the rest of the world."
"By 1937 Hitler had moved into Austria and Austria welcomed him. In the same year he was clearly moving into Czechoslovakia. ... We (the United States) did nothing," said Strasburg. "We clearly believed that with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Pacific on the other he wouldn't harm us. ... I was thinking, and everyone I knew was thinking, that we would never ever have a war again. We grew up believing that World War I was the war to end all wars."
When Japanese suicide bombers attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Strasburg was 16 years old. He and his fellow high school students "all knew that we'd be Soldiers in the Army. ... I knew I was going in because I was going to fight the Germans and the Japanese."
After graduating from high school and attending Oberlin College on a scholarship for a year, Strasburg joined the Army through the Army Specialized Training Program. Although he was worried that he wouldn't be accepted for wearing glasses, he said he memorized the eye chart at a sympathetic eye doctor's office and when taking his physical simply recited the chart from memory.
During talks to service members and school groups Strasburg tells listeners what it was like to do battle as a 19-year- old and later occupy territory in Germany. He describes how out of a company of 175 men breaching the Siegfied Line, taking pillboxes one after the other and killing the enemy, his unit - Company I of the 94th Infantry Division - was reduced to 11 men. He talks about being shot in the stomach, but being saved by seven layers of clothing and a can of K-ration corned beef.
Life-changing events
He also describes the experience of killing enemy Soldiers and discovering a Nazi atrocity - a mass grave with the bodies of 71 men executed in the forest. "It was a life-changing event for me," he says.
The 84-year-old veteran, who today is still an active member of the Wiesbaden military community helping mentor the Wiesbaden High School's tennis team among other endeavors, spoke to U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden Soldiers and civilians in the Wiesbaden Dining Facility Nov. 10 as part of a special Veterans Day event. The talk followed a Veterans Day Observance at Veterans Park on Wiesbaden Army Airfield where Col. Jeffrey Dill, USAG Wiesbaden commander, and David Cain of Post 27 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars spoke about the need to remember all those who served and are still serving.
"There is no mystery behind the endurance and the success of American liberty," said Cain. "It is because in every generation, from the Revolutionary period to this very hour, brave Americans have stepped forward and served honorably in the Armed Forces of the United States. Every one of them deserves the thanks and the admiration of our entire country."
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