LEO BORCHARD'S DEATH REPORT DURING OCCUPATION OF BERLIN - 31 AUGUST 1945
Original copy of conductor Leo Borchard's death report
Rare document from the archive of Col. Rufus Bratton, the Army infantry and intelligence officer whose work and actions during the Pearl Harbor attack were fictionalized in the movie Tora Tora Tora, obtained by him during his service as Patton's Third Army Headquarters commandant.
Superb content T.D. (unsigned), 2pp., 4to., Berlin, August 31, 1945, an original copy of T.M. Creighton's report to Allied officials on the circumstances of death of German conductor Leo Borchard.
Borchard was famed for conducting the first Berlin Philharmonic concert after Germany's surrender.
Creighton, a British officer who drove Borchard around Berlin on the night of his death, submitted the following report: "...I was about 80 yards from the bridge where the Kaiserallee passes under the railway, immediately before entering the U.S. sector, a white light was flashed at the car...by a rather rowdy bunch of soldiers standing there. One of them ran out in the middle of the road and held a rifle over his head... I blew the horn and the man in the middle of the road ran back to the side... I then drove under the bridge and as I emerged on the other side shots were fired into the car, one of which hit Herr BORCHARD in the head and killed him instantly... I stopped the car at once...The sentries advanced and I told them that they had killed one of the greatest conductors in the world. One of them told me that they thought we were Russians... he then went on to say that he would as soon shoot a Russian as a rat... he then told me that he had fired six rapid shots from an American repeating rifle and said it was the fastest repeater in the world..." Creighton concludes: "If I were asked to express a personal opinion about the responsibility for the accident, all I could say would be as follows:- The American sentry undoubtedly did his duty... His manner of doing so seems to me, however, to have been one which would have been better understood in the gangster world than in the military... It is however worth mentioning that the sentry told me that he had orders from his Headquarters to fire on any car that did not stop, that he was not to fire warning shots overhead but to shoot to kill at once...".
In the aftermath of Borchard's death and Creighton's report, Allied powers decided to mark military checkpoints more prominently and change checkpoint procedures in postwar Berlin.
Condition: Fine.