Gotthard Heinrici - After The War

After The War

After his capture, Heinrici was held at Island Farm where he remained, except for a three-week transfer to a camp in the United States in October 1947, until his eventual release on 19 May 1948. He lived in Endersbach in Weinstadt and was buried at the cemetery in Freiburg, with full military honors.

Throughout the war, Heinrici was opposed to Hitler's scorched earth policy, whereby everything of use had been ordered destroyed so as not to fall into the hands of the advancing enemy. He refused to lay waste to Smolensk as Göring had ordered, and late in the war he supported Minister of Armaments Albert Speer who worked to save Berlin from total destruction. When he was briefly put in charge of the defense of Berlin itself, Heinrici's first command was that nothing be purposely destroyed.

After the war, Heinrici's diary entries and letters were collected into a book entitled Morals and behaviour here are like those in the Thirty Years’ War. The First Year of the German-Soviet War as Shown in the Papers of Gnl. Gotthard Heinrici. He was also featured prominently in Cornelius Ryan's book, "The Last Battle."