The last German eyewitnesses of World War II – from the interviews of Dr. Christian Hardinghaus
Witness No. 01D-Day Through German Eyes: Paul Golz on the Beaches of Normandy
On June 6, 1944, he was an 18-year-old machine gunner in the hedgerows behind Utah Beach. Seventy years later, he stood next to Barack Obama at the D-Day commemorations – as one of the very last German veterans who had been there.
What he lived through
Paul grew up on a farm in Pomerania. His father, a veteran of World War I, gave him one rule to live by: never shoot at an unarmed man, no matter what. In 1943 Paul was drafted, survived diphtheria and scarlet fever in a military hospital while his training company was sent to the Eastern Front – and in May 1944 he found himself with the 91st Infantry Division on the Cotentin Peninsula, where everyone expected the Allied invasion.
When it came, Paul watched thousands of paratroopers drop from the night sky. Hours later, near Sainte-Mère-Église, a terrified American soldier surrendered to him with a white sock tied to his rifle. That same day, Paul faced a far harder test: a comrade drew his knife to cut a ring from the finger of a dead GI.
“I thought of my father. I raised my carbine and shouted: If you do that, I’ll shoot you.”— Paul Golz (1925–2021)
What else Paul tells in the book
- How a single Sherman tank ended his war – and why his comrade nearly got them all killed
- The moment on Omaha Beach when he knew Germany had lost the war
- Crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, his first Coca-Cola in a US prisoner-of-war camp
- What he learned about the fate of his family in 1947 – and what he told Obama, Trump and the Queen in Normandy
Why these voices matter: Paul fought for a criminal regime that started the war. His account does not excuse that – it shows how an ordinary 18-year-old experienced one of the most decisive days of the 20th century, and what he took away from it: “We have to live in peace with the Americans and the British.”
Paul is one of 13 Wehrmacht veterans I interviewed before they passed away – from Stalingrad and Leningrad to the Afrika Korps and the fall of Berlin. Their last testimonies, with their wartime photos.
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