Germany’s famous unit of immortal soldiers pose with their heads in their hands, 1921. The Immortals, ordinary men resurrected from death by a process as yet unknown, served with honour in the First World War until they were liquidated (by being burned to death, the only way they could be killed) by the Weimar Republic in 1924.
What the fuck what the fuck
SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS TO METhe description basically says it all.
The man on the far left is Oberleutnant Hans von Pommen, the commander of the unit. In the last month of the Battle of Verdun he was stabbed 18 times, shot twice by French snipers and stepped on a land mine. The land mine was the hardest thing for him to recover from, but he eventually grew back his missing legs.
Third from the right is Feldwebel Ulrich Mannstein, who single-handedly (ie both by himself, and with only one arm) stopped a charge of Mk V Females on the Somme.
I’m sure there are some other famous ones there. The description doesn’t mention that the French eventually had dedicated flame units to deal with the Immortals. The unit was originally 150 strong.
some pertinent quotations regarding the Immortals:
“Coming back is like waking up from a deep sleep, a sleep that fills you like quicksand. When you wake up it’s like breaking the surface of a scummy pond. I’ve never felt as energized or strong as after I’ve come back.”– Oberleutenant Hans von Pommern, Belgium 1914
“I feel good. I feel fine. After a few times you don’t even notice the pain anymore.” – Gefreiter Georg Steinbrenner, after having his spine broken in three places and one arm severed by a shell impact. France 1916.
“We don’t need weapons anymore! We don’t need tools of any sort, we are invincible, we’re fucking gods on Earth!”– Unteroffizier Wilhelm Eichelberger, France 1915
“How did I do it? Focus, that’s all. Focus is really all you need.”– Feldwebel Ulrich Mannstein, on how he knocked out four Mark V Females with nothing but a sharpened shovel and grenades
“I can’t do this anymore, please don’t wake me up I’m not going back I’M NOT!”– unidentified Immortal, German aid station, 1917. The words were recorded in the war diaries of Hauptmann Friedrich Ritter von Sternberg, the attending surgeon, who later wrote that “such plaintive screams, coming from a man whose entire face was a wet and bloody pulp, cut me to my very core”
“Their demeanour was strange, almost cheery, as we started up the flamethrowers. Quite unsettling were their guttural cries as they burned, strange animal shouts of pleasure and joy. We had all heard the stories of how they became unhinged towards the end. I hope the government has the good sense not to re-start a project like this.”– unidentified Provisional Reichswehr officer who witnessed the burning, 1925
“The jerries walked right through our lines. Can’t have been more than a platoon. I saw only one of them fall, an FT had blasted him with its cannon and took the top half of his body off. If I hadn’t known better I’d say he kept crawling. It was then that I noticed the French were bringing up some guys who had the weirdest apparatus attached to their backs. Looked almost like they were wearing some sort of deep sea suit. Heavily armoured with two tanks on the back, carrying a pipe which had a cable streaming out from the tanks. I don’t know what was more terrible, the Germans who didn’t die, or the weapons the French used… I’m still haunted to this day.” – Corporal Alan Michael, American Expeditionary Force recounting an incident in 1918
I call bullshit. Theres no way that this is real.
look up “They Wouldn’t Die: Memoirs of An Investigation into Germany’s Most Secret Military Unit” published 1931 by CPT Jacob Klemenz, USMC. Klemenz came face-to-face with members of the Immortals during the Great War, and afterwards embarked on a decade-plus research project to find out why and how they existed. his account is for sure on Project Gutenberg, it’s a little dry but makes for fascinating reading
Wait… so zombie Nazis are real?
not zombies technically, and not nazis either (Reichswehr) but yes
To the Führer’s infamous Geisterbeschwörergruppe, the distinction between ‘zombie’ and ‘ghoul’ was academic; battlefield dominance was all that mattered.
Okay, first off, the mention of the Geisterbeschwörergruppe is pointless. The Immortals- the Unsterblichsoldaten, if you want to use the accurate term for the German unit- predated the establishment of the Geisterbeschwörergruppe by over two decades. Don’t mix them up.
Also, how has no one mentioned “Final Judgement in Belleau Wood: Immortals, Hounds of Hell, and the Fight for the Soul of Europe” by Dominick Ledford? I don’t know if there’s a better depiction of how the Immortals fought, or what the US Marine Corp did to stop them. I don’t think the Vatican has ever officially revoked that missive damning the entire corp.
you’re absolutely correct. however the GeBeGr was mentioned simply to add a wider context to the story of German research into undead technology.
which edition of Ledford do you have? mine is a 1954 reprint with drawings by J Y Pickman, a Chicago commercial artist who fought at Bellau Wood. said doing illustrations like that was the only thing that kept him from going stark raving mad.
Oh, god, Pickman’s illustrations are just incredible. Just haunting, I don’t think I’ll ever forget them.
I’ve got the annotated edition that they put out for the 75th Anniversary in ‘93- it was a limited run, but it’s got excerpts from a bunch of files that were eventually declassified. There’s some pretty fascinating stuff, especially about the aftermath of the battle and how the French were concerned with the disposal of the bodies. They were worried about anyone researching and trying to recreate the effect, so those killed in battle- whether mortal humans or otherwise- were buried in sites in Belleau Wood. It’s believed that the Immortals who died were put in a common grave with thousands of other soldiers, so they couldn’t be located and dug back up.