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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
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Forgotten Her es OCTOBER 29, 2020
Capturing Nazis Brig. Gen. Henry Plitt
THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME
By Avi Heiligman
Henry Plitt after capturing Nazi criminal Julius Streicher, left
B A LT I M O R E J E W I S H H O M E . C O M
M
ay 1945 saw the final collapse of Nazi Europe as the Allied armies charged in from the west and the Russian Army came from the east. Nazi war criminals tried blending in with civilians but many were rounded up in the weeks and months proceeding and following the German surrender. Pictures and descriptions of high profile Nazi war criminals were distributed throughout the Allied ranks. Through an incredible encounter, a Jewish American officer captured one of the most notorious Nazi criminals: Julius Streicher. Henry Plitt was a Jewish soldier from New York City and was born in 1918. After graduating high school in a military academy in Virginia, he went to Syracuse University joined the ROTC in college. After graduating from law school at St. Lawrence University, he wanted to join the actual military to fight the Nazis. A few months after obtaining his degree, he joined the Army Air Corps. However, he was given a desk job and requested to join the paratroop-
ers to get “into the action.” After a long training period, Plitt was sent to Europe and prepared for the largest amphibious assault in history. He was with 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101 st Airborne Division (the Screaming Eagles) at the time. Not all Allied troops fighting on Normandy on June 6, 1944 (otherwise known as D-Day) came ashore by boats. Thousands of paratroopers from three divisions were dropped by transport aircraft and gliders in the hours preceding the invasion from the English Channel. Leading the way were troopers known as Pathfinders whose mission was to come in a half hour before the other planes and set up a series of lights to guide in the arriving planes. The day before the jump, there was a command change as the colonel in charge was unhappy with the officer who was going to lead the three Pathfinder planes. Plitt was told to lead the contingent of 54 men who would be the first Allied troops to land in France for an invasion since the failed invasion of Dieppe
in 1942. Plitt was one of the first men to drop into France but there was a problem. They dropped miles away from the drop zone, so they were not able to guide the incoming planes. Therefore, in the predawn hours, he gathered up over hundred men as other paratroopers had dropped into France at this point. Soldiers from the main drop were scattered all over Normandy, and Plitt’s ad hoc group knocked out a key gun position. American paratroopers made another airborne drop in the fall – this time it was into Arnhem, Holland. The mission was a failure as the objectives in the British-led attack were not captured. Plitt was also with the 101st Division for this attack and was wounded five times during the operation. Late in 1944, he returned to the States and toured as a war hero for the sale of war bonds. Plitt subsequently returned to the 101st Airborne Division and was stationed in Germany. He was with the division when they liberated Dachau. After V-E Day, May 8, 1945, there
were Nazi officers all over Germany and Austria as well as in other areas. Plitt received a tip that the Nazi Minister of Labor Robert Ley was living in a building in Bavaria. Major Plitt and his men caught him in bed. Ley started reaching for a pill (most likely a cyanide pill) during the incident. Plitt didn’t know that it was Ley but when Plitt saw that another captured officer gave Ley a salute, Plitt knew that this was his wanted man. Ley was sent to headquarters and put on trial at Nuremberg. Three days after his indictment, Ley committed suicide in his prison cell. The leading Nazi propagandist and one of the most anti-Semitic Nazis in Germany, Julius Streicher, tried to blend in the local population after the war. Plitt received a tip that an officer – again he wasn’t told who the officer was – was posing as an artist living in Austria. Along with two other American soldiers, they went up to the house and began interrogating the artist. Plitt at first thought he had the wrong guy as the artist had a believable cover story.