From Desertion to the Black Market

And on to Prison. Chapter 5 of Who Was WM? Investigating a Televisionary: The Life and Work of Wolfgang Menge

6 min readMay 12, 2024

This fake photo — created with ChatGPT — shows a Hamburg backyard in July 1945: 21-year-old WM and his former comrade, the “merchant” Wunderlich, get down to business.

Hiding in Hamburg

In early April 1945, the three deserters make it to Hamburg. At the same time, the British Second Army conquers Hanover and Bremen. Hamburg, however, is still under National Socialist control. WM must go into hiding, spending his days in the basement of the vacant Swedish Consulate General. His friend, Bernd Hering, brings him food. WM learns that one of his two comrades has been captured and executed. Constantly fearing for his life, he celebrates his 21st birthday on April 10.

A week later, British and Canadian troops start approaching Hamburg from the west. Heavy fighting over the city’s outer defenses ensues. By now, WM has taken refuge with friends who own one of the rare working telephones.

“He remains afraid of being caught as a deserter,” says his goddaughter Sabine Hering, describing the precarious situation. WM “calls the local town halls between the Dutch border and Hamburg for days to find out whether the English ‘have already come through.’”

WM Plans an Assassination

On April 30, sensational news spreads rapidly, first in Berlin and then throughout the Reich. In his memoirs, Will Tremper, who will soon become a close friend of WM, describes the chaotic events in the Reich’s capital:

“Colleague Lothar Loewe, later a director of Radio Free Berlin, was walking down Kurfürstendamm in Halensee, an Italian Beretta in his hand, when he saw two Soviet soldiers setting up a grenade launcher on the flat roof of the Mendelssohn building on Lehniner Platz, where the famous theater Schaubühne will be located in the future. Startled, Luftwaffe helper L. L. threw himself behind a tree, and a few accidental shots were fired from his nervous machine gun. Whereupon behind him, the door to a house on the corner of Nestorstrasse opened, and an old air-raid warden called out: ‘Stop it, boy, Hitler’s dead!”

The “Führer” has committed suicide. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz immediately succeeds him as head of state and commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht. His government resides in Flensburg-Mürwik, less than a two-hour drive from Hamburg. By May 1, Dönitz appoints Joseph Goebbels as Reich Chancellor. However, Goebbels also takes his own life the same day.

The long weeks of hiding and mortal danger are wearing on WM’s nerves. To finally end the war, he is prepared to risk everything. He is still in possession of his service weapon and he plans to shoot Dönitz. Bernd Hering’s mother, Luise, has trouble talking him out of this assassination attempt.

Forgery, Forgery, Everywhere

On May 3, Hamburg capitulates. WM recognizes the new situation because the Andrews Sisters — whom he admires — are suddenly singing on the radio. British troops occupy the city and declare martial law. A strict curfew is imposed. The residents are disarmed. Active members of the Wehrmacht have to report to the city’s soccer field. WM faces a new danger.

To escape internment by the British, he has his friend, the art student Bernd Hering, issue him forged discharge papers. On May 8, Grand Admiral Dönitz authorizes the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht. The madness of war ends. A new, utterly different madness begins. Thirty years later, while researching for a television film, WM copies an entry that Erich Kästner wrote in his diary on May 24, 1945:

“Julius Streicher was captured near Berchtesgaden. Himmler poisoned himself with cyanide while imprisoned in England. When arrested, he had shaved off his mustache and wore a black patch over one eye. Robert Ley had grown a beard. It’s like a mask rental shop. Or like in gangster movies. There are no limits to the lack of dignity. The catastrophe ends as a joke. The face of the master race with an interchangeable mustache! “

The loudmouths who wanted to make Germany great again — a Greater Germany — are now fleeing for their lives, leaving behind a devastated country. In the months following the end of the Third Reich, Hamburg is not only the second-largest city in Germany but also the second-largest expanse of rubble on the European continent, populated by hundreds of thousands of homeless people.

Nevertheless, cleanup efforts are already underway everywhere. The emaciated population is displaying astonishing energy in the reconstruction effort. Many in the military administration think it is admirable; others recognize traits of manic repression in the frenzied work.

Supplying the population with essential foodstuffs is problematic. While there is hardly anything to buy in the stores, and if there is, then only in exchange for scarce ration cards, the illegal black market is flourishing. Even under the shadow of severe penalties.

The Big Sugar Deal

WM manages to rent a small room, but he has no furniture, no money, and no job. And he is hungry. His defense lawyer would later describe his plight in a letter to the Hamburg Attorney General’s Office — dated April 29, 1846 (sic!):

“The convict returned home from the front to find his parents bombed out, his civilian clothes, furniture, and belongings destroyed. His father had not earned anything since January 1945, so the family had to live off the substance. This was very small, since his father had been restricted very much in his commercial activities due to the political circumstances at the time (he was not a member of the Nazi Party, and his wife was Jewish). The convict was, therefore, completely dependent on himself. He had no work or occupation that could have kept him away from all the influences of the big city, which — favored by an extraordinary shortage in all areas and the lack of a strict state order — offered the most tempting deals openly on every street corner.“

Later, in an application for a police certificate of good conduct, WM will explain the actions that led to his imprisonment similarly. He stated:

“Since the state planning could not direct the economic resources in such a way that those in need could be helped, indeed, most official bodies did not even express such a will, I believed I was acting in a kind of self-defense.”

What the 21-year-old ultimately does in his predicament seems extremely harmless from today’s perspective. In July 1945, he bumps into a wartime comrade, a merchant with the telling name Wunderlich. He offers WM seven sacks of sugar to move on the black market. WM accepts — and is caught and sentenced on March 6, 1946, “to 7 months in prison and a fine of RM 1,000 for continued violations of the War Economy Ordinance.”

Despite the plea for clemency submitted by his defense lawyer on behalf of his father, Otto Menge, in April, WM must start serving his sentence in the fall.

The Trickster in Prison

After all, his unusual literacy earns him the position of a prison librarian. The inmate also knows how to help himself in other ways.

“On a day furlough,” writes his goddaughter, “he arrives at Luise Hering’s with packets of cigarettes and asks her to sew them into the lining of his quilted jacket. He bribes the guards with them.”

On December 14, 1946, the public prosecutor’s office finally grants him a suspension of his sentence, and WM is released on parole the following day. He celebrates Christmas with his parents. As consideration for this act of clemency, he has to pay an additional 2,000 Reichsmarks on top of the fine already imposed “in monthly installments of 500 RM, starting on 1.1.47.” The probation period will end on December 31, 1949: “If he conducts himself impeccably, the remainder of the sentence will be remitted at the end of the period.”

WM will be reluctant to talk about his conviction and months in prison in later years, avoiding the topic entirely if possible. He simply calls the time after the war’s end “a first breath of fresh air.”

It ends with the need to face the question of how to earn a living. Not least to be able to pay the monthly installments of his fines starting in January 1947.