Word: packbier
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...Allied Military Government court in Belgium last week two German civilians stood face to face with death. Robert Michel Hogen, 47, and Karl Packbier, 37, had harbored three German soldiers and an officer on Herr Hogen's farm, near the German town of Horbach. They had fed them and given them civilian clothes. Theirs was a capital offense...
Evidence was indisputable. The soldiers had been captured in Herr Hogen's farm buildings. Herr Hogen's stolid wife admitted giving them food and clothing. One of the soldiers was Packbier's brother. With a rush of guttural oratory (which had to be laboriously translated), Hogen and Packbier made their clever defense...
...cautioned by his Catholic pastor to keep his mouth shut. At the time they were hiding the soldiers, Horbach was a frontline town not yet solidly occupied by Allied troops. General Eisenhower's proclamations about turning in German soldiers had just been tacked up. Hogen and Packbier had not had a chance to read them before they were arrested...
Then they played their defense trump: the Allies had been broadcasting appeals to civilians to help German soldiers desert; Hogen and Packbier were only following General Eisenhower's instructions; the three soldiers were trying to desert from the Wehrmacht...
...took the court five minutes to acquit Hogen and Packbier on all counts...