By the end of 1944 the German army was being relentlessly pursued back towards Germany by then Soviet army. Early in 1945 Gordian fled with other German soldiers and civilians from Gdingen to Denmark where, by the time the war ended, he had become a prisoner of war. In the Autumn/Fall of 1945 he was moved to a British prisoner of war camp by Lütjenburg, near the coast north of Hamburg. In May 1946, after approximately a year of captivity, he was able to return to his at Düsseldorf where he quickly built a name for himself as a particularly effective priest.