This Too Shall Come to Pass: The Story of One of the 130,000 Frenchmen Drafted Into the Wehrmacht - Les Malgré-Nous (in English)
Synopsis "This Too Shall Come to Pass: The Story of One of the 130,000 Frenchmen Drafted Into the Wehrmacht - Les Malgré-Nous (in English)"
August 25, 1942. A day of infamy for Alsace-Lorraine. The Nazis have just decided to draft the first Frenchmen of Alsace and Lorraine in the Wehrmacht, the German Army. Later, many would even be drafted in the infamous "Waffen SS." For Marius Meyer, my grandfather, the draft date was April 16, 1943, not even three years after he had been discharged from the French Army in the wake of the tragic defeat of 1940. But he has no choice for the draft dodgers see their families deported somewhere to the East. So he leaves his wife and daughter to go to war, once again. His destination is Kustrin, in Eastern Germany, a few steps closer to the much feared Russian Front...Marius wrote the following poem about this painful moment of departure: "Now goodbye you, my dear homelandDear land of Alsace, goodbye!We must go to a remote land!Dear land of Alsace, goodbye!And we leave with some ... feeling.Gone to the Wehrmacht into the uniform - Dear homeland, oh dear![ ]Thus they went through the town and landAnd were soon recognized everywhere A far-out hand wave, last moment of blissAnd all this was already part of the past.And always resonates of home this melody Like the complaints of the little flower from 'Forget me not!'"This book is the story of my Grandfather, one of the 130,000 Frenchmen drafted in the German Army during World War II. 32,000 of them would be killed in action and 10,500 are still missing in action to this day. It is one of the first books in English dealing with the tragedy of French nationals forced to wear the German uniform in World War II.
