after the start of world war one crown prince
adolf hitler the hohenzollern was conscripted
to the german army when he was in his mid -20s
he received a short letter in the mail by courier
it said dear crown prince adolf hitler the hohenzollern
we are writing to inform you officially that
you have been conscripted to the german military
your participation is compulsory please report
for basic training with the german army etc they
gave him 72 hours approximately to make his first
contact with the german army conscription office
Under German law, he had the right to dispute
the conscription for obvious reasons. National
constitutional monarchy duties being the main
one he could have used. With the fact he was
the only possible next monarch, with no eligible
children. Adolf was the end of the Hohenzollern
royal family line at the time. My Hohenzollern
royal family had a history of military participation
in some ways. So, he let Kaiser Wilhelm II know,
who started crying. Packed his bags and went
to join the army. Contrary to popular rumor at
the time, he was not trying to commit service
suicide, including for being homosexual, by attending
for basic training. The protest to his conscription
may not have been successful, but was never submitted.
He ended up having a reasonable time at basic
training, fully aware he was going into combat.
He met a few close friends in the military, including
a part French web, or three, related to me. Crown
Prince Adolf served in the German army in the
trenches on the Western Front during World War
I, and was highly respected, but not comfortable
with any form of promotion offered. The German
army was very blunt, and regretted everything
afterwards. Crown Prince Adolf Xtreme left, and
circled. Crown Prince Adolf ended up being seriously
wounded on the Western Front during full trench
warfare. And I mean the fully gruesome type.
It is one of those things in history. Germans
have never officially fought against Australians
in a wartime combat scenario and it annoys some
of them. When the word Anzac was mentioned in
relation to combat against German troops, only
New Zealanders were in those battles. No Australians.
Rumors that the German troops could hear familiar
Australian accents when all was quiet but never
fought any Australians are true. I will not try
to explain how heroic Crown Prince Adolf was
along with his closest friends during World War
I. But he was good for the term heroic as far
as that sort of thing goes in context. Crown
Prince Adolf was involved in from trench reconnaissance
rescue missions in the trench network involving
a large number of attempts to assist other personnel
who had been wounded but couldn't make it back
to safe ground. It was very risky and he was
very successful at it. His uncle and second predecessor
Kaiser Frederick Hohenzollern IV died during
1916 in Gippsland whilst Crown Prince Adolf was
in combat on the Western Front. Adolf was likely
not informed of it directly at all. Shortly afterwards,
Crown Prince Adolf was extremely seriously wounded
with a rudimentary machine gun during a rescue
mission. The precursor to the modern automated
version, it fired slender bullets akin to thick
nails in short bursts at the intended target.
He was very seriously wounded in the torso, lungs,
hip, and upper quadricep on one side of his body
with a short and brutal burst of machine gun
fire. It was sprayed at him from an angle, with
most of the bullets missing to his left or right,
including some that left scarring marks as they
passed him, but did not impact him. He was hit
four times, twice through the exact same part
of his body. Crown Prince Adolf had a well -worn
and used rope around his waist that led back
to a wounded friend in a trench, tied around
his waist as well. A large man with curly hair
when it grew, particularly at the front, who
was sitting on padding -like mattresses that
lined the floor and wall of the trench at the
base in case anyone wanted to suddenly drop in.
The rope could not be seen as it was covered
in the muck and debris on the ground outside
the trench as if camouflaged. Crown Prince Adolf
was lying face down, holding a metal object he
needed tightly in his hand, breathing through
a bullet hole in his lung, also wounded in the
hip and upper quad. He laid there for a prolonged
period in excruciating pain, unable to move.
He was approached by a small bunch of men who
had a quick look at him and thought he was dead
or was certain to die. They had a short conversation
in a language he didn't understand whilst he
laid there as still as possible. They decided
he was dead or soon would be and very gently
stole his boots off his feet, slipping them off
quietly and walking away with them. they decided
not to do a kill shot and left him there as they
found him without boots when all was quiet again
he felt a tugging motion on the rope around his
waist and tried to get back to the trench it
was an excruciating brutal process of working
backwards feet first using his arms with punctured
lungs over the debris on the field in between
barbed wire and wooden obstacles following the
tugging on the rope when he made progress he
tugged on the rope and waited for a tug on it
back he inched his way backwards over an excruciatingly
long time frame until his feet went over the
edge then he tipped over and fell down onto the
mattresses lining the bottom of the trench with
a bizarrely soft landing when he got himself
upright on his back and sat up a little the friend
next to him turned and said where have you been
to be blunt that man looked like me it happens
a lot and isn't all that weird webs and other
related to me were around him constantly all
his life and he was born in gippsland when they
were found they were both seriously wounded they
were evacuated to a nearby triage emergency area
where they both had to have emergency on the
spot surgery A surgeon that performed emergency
surgery on Crown Prince Adolf had to literally
push his arm inside Adolf, grab his heart, and
squeeze it with his hand to keep it pumping due
to loss of blood whilst performing the surgery.
They were both then further evacuated to a field
hospital for more surgery. Crown Prince Adolf
and his friend were then eventually returned
to inner Germany to a recovery hospital. After
the physical process to get Crown Prince Adolf
back towards good health was completed over months,
enough for him to move more freely, they transferred
him to one of those post -traumatic stress disorder
recovery hospitals full of men wounded in similar
ways. He was one of the early victims of what
was to become the machine gun, one of the early
casualties of the new weapon. He was bedridden,
couldn't get up, and couldn't talk. The German
army awarded him two combat German Iron Cross
and looked horrified when they did. He could
barely stand up because of the wounds to his
side. They pinned them on his chest, patted him
on the shoulder, did the full ceremony in front
of the other patients and apologized profusely
repeatedly that the medals only had Crown Prince
Adolf Hitler engraved on them because there wasn't
enough room to add the Hohenzollern. The highest
ranked German army man there for the presentation
started crying and walked away. crown prince
adolf was sat down he was given a photograph
frame like stand to hang the medals from so he
could put them on the side drawers next to his
bed and they carefully placed them there for
him crown prince adolf hitler the hohenzollern
was then dismissed or discharged on medical grounds
from the german military and awarded the medical
discharge iron cross he was told he could provide
it as proof he never had to serve in the military
again he was a complete wreck mentally he could
barely say more than a few words at a time stuttered
and could suddenly lose concentration and just
stare without blinking panting very slowly eyes
wide shut is the expression What happened to
him was on the extreme end of excruciatingly
painful. He spent well over a year in the trauma
recovery hospital and was unresponsive to any
visitors, regardless of who they were. He wouldn't
have remembered them well. He gradually recovered
to the point where he could hold a conversation
for five to ten minutes at a time. Any longer
and he would phase out and go back to a blurry
stare, then forget the whole conversation. He
had daily physiotherapy on his wounded side to
help him stand on his own and eventually learn
to walk again. Crown Prince Adolf swore off the
military, he did not want to be directly involved
in any way. he eventually recovered enough to
go on what was called outings to try to reintegrate
him into a future daily peacetime life they were
not planned well and he was soon reassessed when
he had recovered enough to tolerate 10 -minute
conversations they let him leave the hospital
occasionally telling him he could come back if
he needed more rest he stated he thought he needed
more time in recovery and he could barely walk
with the assistance of walking aids