.: Frater, Ave Atque Vale -- Hail, Brother, and Farewell || Home

I knew that my life was over that day I came home in November, 1918 and found that my fiancée had been unfaithful to me. Only from there did my life spiral into chaos and did that make me a prime candidate for their recruitment and I so willingly followed in their ideology and promise of a Greater Germany.

For a time, it was all I ever wanted. Everything seemed to unfold in front of me. Ever opportunity, every savory moment of life was there, ready for me to merely reach out a take hold of it. Take hold I did, with such fervor and lust that I found my self unable to quench this want for more. My Friends are few, but those who have been closest to me all these years have seen the change. The change that was induced by the Party and for the Party

But I didn’t complain, I couldn’t complain for those who spoke out would disappear. I foresaw the troubles that were brewing outside my home country and I knew that if this path continued the only place it could lead was to war, to a conflict against the world that we were not ready to handle. But I could not protest, I would not protest for I had been caught up in the swarm of nationalistic feelings and when that day came that I lifted the border block and entered that foreign country, I cherished every moment of it. I relished every moment of it

Frater, Ave Atque Vale is the story of a German soldier from Friedrichshafen, Wuerrtemburg, named Albert Vogel. The story focuses upon his take on life in the German Empire coming home from a defeat in the trenches and the slopes of Rumania in 1918, to the inside of a Tiger 1 Tank roaring through Russia in 1941 and to the constant fear over his shoulder in the post war era and the Berlin Uprising of 1953. Transcribed from interviews taken by a college student in Detroit, Michigan from 1974 to 1978, they were released to the public in 1989 shortly after the Wall fell and Germany was reunited.

*Frater, Ave Atque Vale is the story of a Waffen-SS soldier during the Nazi Era and thus contains language, sexual content, gore, violence, racism, sexism, madness, torture, disturbing scenarios and everything else that is terrible in human nature. Discretion advised.*