Easy Company’s Mountain of Weapons
"All weapons." That’s what Winters said. What he got was enough to start another war.
In May 1945, the guns of Europe had finally gone quiet. Germany had surrendered. The war was over. But Easy Company, now stationed in Austria, still had work to do.
Their new mission: maintain order in and around the small Alpine town of Kaprun, gather German soldiers, disarm them, and prepare them for POW transport.
Major Dick Winters, now in command of 2nd Battalion, got to work immediately.
Upon arrival, he summoned the senior German officer in the area — a sharply dressed colonel in full uniform, complete with medals. Winters, 27 years old and still in his worn fatigues, issued orders without ceremony. The German commander was to collect all weapons in the area and stack them in designated places: the schoolyard, the church, and the airport.
Officers were permitted to keep their sidearms. The military police were allowed to retain their weapons for order. But otherwise: all weapons were to be turned in to the Americans.
The next day, Winters and his fellow officer, Lewis Nixon, set out in a jeep to inspect the sites.
What they found stunned them.
At each location, they saw mounds of weapons — not just military rifles and pistols, but hunting shotguns, antique muskets, fencing swords, decorative daggers, hunting knives, target pistols, and an entire arsenal of civilian firearms. It looked, Winters later recalled, like enough armament to start World War III.
The German commander hadn’t misunderstood. He had simply obeyed. All weapons meant all weapons.
Even in surrender, there was discipline.
As they continued their rounds, Winters found the German camps immaculate. The soldiers were lined up like parade ground regulars. The kitchens were clean, the troops fed. There was no tension in the air, no fear — just a shared weariness and mutual understanding that the war was truly over.
Meanwhile, back in Zell am See, another member of Easy Company, Darrell “Shifty” Powers, reflected on what came next. He recalled seeing hundreds of German soldiers emerge from the mountains to surrender.
Most were young, tired, and hungry. Shifty thought that in another life, many of them might have been his friends — the kind of men who liked to fish or hunt. They were soldiers doing their job, just like he was.
That mountain of weapons wasn’t just a mistake in translation. It was a symbol: the end of the fight, the surrender of not just armies but entire communities.
And it happened at a small castle near Kaprun, where once-enemies came face to face, not as combatants, but as human beings ready for peace.
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Read more:
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Shifty’s War by Marcus Brotherton
Photos courtesy of U.S. Army Signal Corps, James Skeffington, and Unsplash.
Want to see it for yourself?
Walk the story. Everything you need to plan your own visit to Kaprun Castle and follow Easy Company’s footsteps is in the Band of Brothers Travel Guide, available here or on Amazon.
