A Wehrmacht officer born in the 19th century describes his life in diary form during his captivity in the US between the end of May 1945 and January 1946. After completing his emergency high school diploma in 1917, he volunteered for a royal Bavarian field artillery regiment on the Western Front. He witnessed the assassination of Kurt Eisner in Munich after World War I and the subsequent unrest during the Communist Council Republic. As a volunteer in World War I, he became a career officer in the Reichswehr during the Weimar Republic, which continued to exist as the Wehrmacht after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Additionally, he attended the Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg from 1930 to 1934, graduating as a diploma engineer in economics. He experienced World War II as a front officer in France and Russia, where his regiment advanced up to 20 km from Moscow with the 10th Panzer Division. When the division was relocated to Tunisia in November 1942 to support the Afrika Korps, he initially served as the regimental commander of the 90th Panzer Artillery Regiment and then, in the final days, as the division commander of a hastily assembled German-Italian division. Following the defeat of the Afrika Korps, he was captured by British forces on May 12, 1943. After the prisoners of war were handed over to the Americans, Heinz Schmid initially spent his captivity in Texas and Arkansas, and from January 1946 in Arizona.