Herbert Hans Haupt was born on the 21st of December 1919 in the busy Baltic port of Stettin, today’s Polish Szczecin, then part of the German Empire. His father, Hans Max Haupt, had served in the Kaiser’s army during the First World War and, like thousands of other veterans, found post-war Germany short of jobs and shorter of opportunity.The Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
In 1941 his private life collided with global events. His girlfriend announced that she was pregnant, and the prospect of fatherhood at a young age frightened him. With two friends, Wolfgang Wergin and Hugo Troesken, he decided to go on a quick flight to Mexico, hoping, perhaps, to find work or simply a new horizon far from parental disapproval of their actions. At the border Troesken, lacking proper documents, was turned back, but Haupt and Wergin proceeded with their journey. Because both had been born on German soil, Berlin still considered them German citizens, and in Mexico City the German embassy issued them with fresh passports. Passports of the Nazi Third Reich.From Mexico the pair boarded a ship across the Pacific and arrived in Japan, where they briefly lodged at what was described to them as a monastery but proved to be, at the end of the day, a labour camp. They slipped away and signed on as deckhands on a German merchant vessel bound for occupied France. During that voyage Herbert served as a lookout and helped the captain to find a path through the blockade created by the British Royal Navy. For this feat the German authorities later awarded him the Iron Cross Second Class, an honour that drew the notice of Abwehr – German military intelligence service.
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