"My father always said, if you have done something wrong then you should at least own up to it."
— Willi Herold
Willi Herold corresponded in many ways to the Nazi educational ideals. He was very agile, athletic, ambitious and observant. He quickly learned how to use the command tone and how to give orders, how to form and lead groups; he was cold-blooded, adventurous, clever and extraordinarily self-confident. He wanted to impose himself and was capable of doing so, towards the other boys or -if he felt like it- the Jungfolk leaders.
— Historian Wolfgang Bönitz, a boyhood acquaintance of Herold, in the essay "An Executioner from Lunzenau"
"My first impression, I remember, was so startlingly different from what I had expected. I had read of all things he was supposed to have done, and then there was this boyish-looking figure... cheerful, bright and alert. It really was a total surprise. He was a very, very personable young man and it is sad that he died when he was only barely twenty [sic]. Herold was a star! There wasn't any doubt about it. He was much younger than any of the others, he was the main attraction. And he was aware of it. He liked it.
He was always very, very neat, not a hair out of place. He looked around the courtroom and smiled at people. I recall one occasion when I watched him, covertly and he became aware that I was looking at him and he gave me a wink across the court room, as if we were some old friends. And in that way, he was a truly irresistible character. It perhaps goes to explain why so many people fell for him when he'd donned a captain's uniform and transformed from an apprentice chimney sweep [sic] and lance-corporal [sic] to a captain in the German Luftwaffe. I mean, he was totally different from all the others who were with him. They were all pale and blank, but Herold was unmistakeable, I mean, he was the leader of the pack, when he was barely 19 years old [sic]. Very, very remarkable young man. It's very, very sad that his life ended this way. It was kind of his fault. But he could have had a very bright future if he had not done what he did."
— The Prosecutor, Michael Evelyn
Strangely enough, he was not demoralized. That was not in his nature. His origins, social milieu, education and state had done little to promote his intellectual and human development. Instead, he possessed a disproportionate amount of shrewdness; he was a born pragmatist - without even knowing what that meant - and had a sense of humor that was as pronounced as it was inappropriate. In his own way, he could well be called a survival artist.
—Major Theodore Xenophon Henry Pantcheff, the interrogator in Herold's case
The defendant Herold listens to the charges with an indifferent placidity, takes notes now and then, and smiles when confronted with a witness and recognized as the man who posed as "Captain Herold" and became the sole reason why this terrible court martial takes place.
—Excerpt from an article from the Nordwest-Zeitung, a local newspaper which covered the trial in 1946
With regard to the second charge, which refers to eleven of the accused, I would first deal with the thesis, and more than such it was not, that Herold was brought before a German court. It is quite clear that the charges brought against him here were not brought there, and the two accounts which Herold gave us of his alleged appearance in that court differed considerably. At last he claims to have been acquitted because he stood at attention for 4 1/2 hours and thus impressed the court so much that it acquitted him. This would hardly be sufficient reason for a competent court to acquit someone of a serious charge, and it is in considerable contradiction to Herold's behavior before this court, where he was completely calm and composed and showed no signs of remorse or inner turmoil during the trial; on the contrary, he visibly savored the recapitulation of the events of that time, and showed great contempt for and made fun of various former acquaintances who testified as witnesses.
—Excerpt from the verdict
Mass murderers have existed in all time periods and in all nations. This nineteen year old boy however, who went ahead and murdered hundreds of people, who savagely intoxicated himself with the screams of the shredded victims, is an apparition born in the years in which injustice and legal uncertainty sunk a once great people to a lamentable spiritual low. There is a strong connection between him and the men on trial at Nurenberg. His hands, bloody, and their hands, glittering with rings at the time, have committed the same crime. As they took him in their school, he wasn't even ten years old. He is the personification of their teachings, the prototype distorted by murder of the youth they envisioned. The fact that so much good still exists in the German youth is not thanks to them.
If they had remain in control of the German destiny, this young man would have had a career ahead of him just like the one he faked for himself in his pompous megalomania, as he put on a Captain's uniform so he could murder.
—Excerpt from the article "The Slave in Us" published by the Northwest-Zeitung
Dr. Allihn: Could you please explain how it came to be that you, so to say, promoted yourself to Captain?
Herold: At that time I still believed in the German victory. I put on the Captain uniform at the beginning of April 1945 at the Dutch-German border.
Dr. Allihn: Why did you do that?
Herold: I wanted to form a combat squad and stop the advancing British troops, and I succeeded.
Dr. Allihn: You could have also taken part in combat as a Private, you didn’t need to promote yourself to Captain.
Herold: As a Private I couldn’t command anyone.
Dr. Allihn: So you believed that by exercising authority you could transform your unit into a competent combat squad?
Herold: Yes. At the time, the German troops weren’t running away from the British troops. They were running blindly from the fighter bombers and the strafers, and in that moment I had the luck of finding a soldier by the name of Freitag, who destroyed sixteen tanks in Normandy, and other men who feared nothing. With these men I was able to perform operations which did not change the outcome of the war but still stopped the enemy.
—Excerpt from the transcript of the trial in which Herold explains why he masqueraded as a Captain. Herold and his “troop” joined the unit stationed in Lathen and took part in combat but suffered casualties and were forced to retreat. What he refers to here is that he ordered the destruction of a bridge as he and the others were retreating.
Prosecutor: Tell me if you believed that the shooting of all those people without any trial was just?
Herold: The crimes of the people who were supposed to be shot had been proven without any doubt.
Prosecutor: Wait a minute. How were they proven without any doubt?
Herold: Because the people who were brought in the camp from outside were dressed as civilians and back then nobody was giving away civilian clothing willingly.
Prosecutor: Has the shooting of all these men weighed at any point heavily on your conscience?
Herold: No.
—Excerpt from the transcript of the trial - Herold rejected the multiple opportunities offered by the Prosecutor to show remorse and a shred of humanity.
Unfortunately, this robber Captain came from our little town (Lunzenau). I knew him very well, because even as a boy he was a bully with whom no one wanted to play! He was violent towards the younger children. He wanted (as can be read in the newspaper) to organize a band of "Indians" but he never got on with boys of the same age and never became an "Indian"! He always beat the younger ones! When it was my turn, my brother (the same age as Herold) gave him a thrashing. After that, he was finished in our group, and he retreated to the other part of town!
— Johannes Müller, born April 1930 in Lunzenau, recalls Herold in a letter stored in the Lunzenau town archive
