Arthur Nebe
Arthur Nebe, Reichs Criminal Director, born November 13, 1894 in Berlin, Chief of the Criminal Police (Kripo), commander of Einsatzgruppe B – a Nazi mobile murder unit – in Russia, winner of the Iron Cross 1st Class, executed on March 2, 1945 in Berlin by the SS for complicity in the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler, said to Heinrich Müller (chief of the Gestapo) on Army Field Marshal von Blomberg’s new wife (Erna Grühn), whom Nebe had just discovered was a convicted prostitute: “Good God, Müller, the Führer kissed that woman’s hand!” (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich)
Erna Grühn
Von Blomberg subsequently resigned.
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On March 2, 1945, the First Battalion 39th Infantry Regiment rolls into Niederberg, four miles east of Disternich, but the attack is bloody. Merl Benton, Buck Atkins, Pfc Richard Rapuano, Walter Frueauf, as well as Privates James Ballard, William Brady, and Walter Shafron are wounded. Shrapnel hits Merl in the right forearm, his second wound, but he remains with the company. Buck is evacuated for a shrapnel to his face. Shrapnel hits Richard in the leg; he will be in a hospital until October. This is the second wound for Walter; today artillery shrapnel causes a compound fracture of his forearm, almost snapping it in two. Shrapnel strikes Ballard and Brady in the face, and Shafron in the hand. Vallis Alexander, Frank Branchfield, and Billie Flowers are evacuated for non-battle disease, Billie with trench foot. (Dying Hard: Company B, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division in World War II)