‘My generation and those that followed, the young people [who were conscripted] had absolutely no yardstick to measure themselves by. We were therefore offered up [to Hitler] with no hope.’(10)
Personal standards and individual moral resilience were, therefore, in conflict with accepted peer pressure. There was not a general collective or even total acceptance of Nazi standards; many simply chose to pursue the line of least resistance. Such a course may not even have involved conscious reflection. All one had to do was ‘join in’, which the Nazi Weltanschauung philosophy enjoined all to do. Knappe claimed Hitler’s ‘hatred of the Jews made no sense to any of us, and we just wanted to distance ourselves from the ugly side of his character’.(11) It was easier, indeed safer, to do nothing. This tied in with the soldiers’ universal earthy philosophy of ‘not volunteering’, neither should anyone ‘stick his neck out’. Inge Aicher-Scholl exemplified the consequences of an alternative course. Her brother and sister were to be executed two years later as members of the ‘White Rose’ Resistance Group to Hitler. On being arrested and questioned by the Gestapo, she was under no illusion where alternative philosophical paths might lead:
‘I was only 19 at the time, and it was such a shock that from then on I was always afraid. I was afraid of anything that might lead to my being taken to prison again, and that was exactly what they wanted.’
She signed a paper agreeing that should she discuss her interrogation with anyone, it would provide grounds for a rearrest. It produced a persistent nagging fear. ‘From that day on,’ she said, ‘I was afraid of prison, and this fear made me very timid and passive, just completely inactive.’(12)
Hauptmann Klaus von Bismarck, a battalion adjutant in Infantry Regiment 4, remembers he was shocked on receiving the Commissar Order. Communist Party officials, namely political commissars, captured serving with the Red Army, were to be shot.
‘I rebelled against it and said, “No. I will not follow such an order.” Numerous friends decided to support my view and that was what I reported to my CO. He simply received the report with a grim expression. He seemed a very decent sort to us.’
Infantry Regiment 4, waiting in its assembly area as part of the invasion force, was, as Bismarck described, ‘a conservative regiment, still for the most part distinguishable as part of the 100,000- man army of the Weimar period’.(13) Hauptmann Alexander Stahlberg of the 12th Panzer Division heard about the Commissar Order from his cousin, Henning von Tresckow, a staff officer in HQ Army Group Centre. ‘That would be murder!’ was his assessment. His cousin concurred:
‘The order is just that and for that reason we are not allowed to give it to the troops in writing, but you will receive it by word of mouth before the attack begins and will still have to pass it on by word of mouth to the companies.’
Appalled, Stahlberg asked from whom the order came. ‘From the man to whom you gave your oath [Adolf Hitler]. As I did,’ responded his cousin ‘with a penetrating look’. Oberstleutnant Heinrich Becker, his commanding officer, formally briefed the Commissar Order to his officers and was met by a ‘deathly silence’. Before dismissing them, Becker warned:
‘There is reason to remind you of The Hague Convention on Land Warfare. I am now speaking of the treatment of prisoners and wounded. Anyone who abuses prisoners and wounded I shall have court-martialled. Do you understand me, gentlemen?’(14)
They did. Von Bismarck in Infantry Regiment 4 had determined not to shoot commissars because as a soldier and Christian he could not see why Wehrmacht people should despatch others simply because they possessed an alternative view of the world. They were all officers and took their own individual rather than collective decision on how they intended to conduct themselves during the coming campaign.
There were others with an equally robust alternative view. Unteroffizier Wilhelm Prüller with Army Group South confided to his diary on 22 June, following the announcement of the impending invasion:
‘The fight between communism, which is rotting so many peoples, and National Socialism was bound to come. And if we can win now, it’s better than doing it later.’
Anti-Semitism was never far beneath the outwardly decent demeanour of the majority. He noticed the Jews in Tschenstochov and other large towns ‘are herded together’, and that every man and woman is obliged to wear a white arm-band with a blue star of Zion on it. ‘That’s the way it should be in the whole world!’ he confided. There was scant sympathy shown by the majority of German soldiers for the plight of the Polish population in the occupation zone. ‘The people in general,’ Prüller observed, ‘are in a very depressed state.’ They walked with heads down. Huge queues formed everywhere for food. ‘The Poles won’t have a very rosy time of it!’(15) he commented. Nor indeed would the Russians.
‘Order and Duty’ and the Führer
‘Order and Duty’ were vital prerequisites demanded of the German soldier. He was familiar with them, because they were established Germanic qualities. The Nazi state harnessed Prussian virtues to its own ends. It was not a question of unthinking, unconditional obedience. They involved self-discipline and self-mastery: willingness to accept the consequences before God and man of one’s own actions, whatever the cost. It was a philosophy that could be, and was, cynically exploited. It started at youth. Henry Metelmann, training as a recruit when the Russian campaign began, commented:
‘Even though my father hated everything connected with the Nazis, I liked it in the Hitler Youth. I thought the uniform was smashing, the dark brown, the black, the swastika and all the shiny leather.’
Roland Kiemig, as a 14-year-old Hitler Youth, reflected, ‘everywhere there was a certain regimentation. You didn’t just walk around uselessly, you marched.’ All this had a certain purpose. Metelmann’s view was that training in the Hitler Youth ‘meant the army was able to train us more speedily’. Therefore, ‘when we were finally let loose on the Panzers, we knew what it was all about.’(1) Kiemig’s basic training on entering the army subjected him to a rigorous regime that clouded his perception of values. They were replaced with those the army wished him to retain.
‘They kept us on the run, they harassed us, made us run, made us lie down, drove us and tormented us. And we didn’t realise at the time that the purpose was to break us, to make us lose our will so we’d follow orders without asking, “Is this right or wrong?”’(2)
There was rarely resistance to such a process. Götz Hrt-Reger, a Panzer soldier, explained it was ‘totally normal training in how to be a social being’. They experienced the shock impact any soldier undergoes in the transition from a relatively sheltered civilian life to the rigours of basic military training. ‘Of course,’ remarked Hrt-Reger, ‘if anybody – let’s say – misbehaved, there would naturally be consequences.’(3) German recruits ran round in circles, frog-jumped, hopped up and down, drilled with full equipment, ran – threw themselves down – got up, and were made to repeat the process. ‘Whenever I see a man in uniform now,’ recalls Panzer soldier Hans Becker,(4) ‘I picture him lying on his face waiting for permission to take his nose out of the mud.’ The aim was to wear the recruit down until he responded automatically with no resistance. It worked. Kiemig realised that:
‘This drill – Ach! inhuman at times – was designed to break our pride, to make those young soldiers as malleable as possible so that they would follow any order later on.’(5)
The decision to invade Russia was not likely, therefore, to generate anything more than superficial discussion, as also their personal moral conduct in that campaign. Leutnant Hubert Becker explained:
‘We didn’t understand the Russian campaign from the beginning, nobody did. But it was an order, and orders must be followed to the best of my ability as a soldier. I am an instrument of the State and I must do my duty.’
Discipline was ingrained. The corruption of values implicit upon acceptance of the Commissar Order was not a subject open for discussion. Many soldiers would agree with Hubert Becker’s opinion voiced after t
he war. They knew of no alternative.
‘We never felt that the soldier was being misused. We felt as German soldiers, we were serving our country, defending our country, no matter where. Nobody wanted such an action, nobody wanted a campaign, because we knew from our parents and the descriptions of World War 1 what it would entail. They used to say, “If this happens again, it will be fatal.” Then one day I was told I had to march. And opposition to this? That didn’t happen!’(6)
Faith in the Führer motivated German soldiers poised to invade Russia. The oath of the soldier ‘Ich schwöre…’ was made to Adolf Hitler first, then God and the Fatherland. Henry Metelmann recalled after swearing the oath, ‘we had become real soldiers in every conceivable sense.’ Metelmann’s background and experience was representative of millions of German soldiers waiting on the ‘Barbarossa’ start-line. ‘We were brought up to love our Führer, who was to me like a second God, and when we were told about his great love for us, the German nation, I was often close to tears,’ he wrote. Disillusionment would follow, but in 1941 Hitler was at the height of his powers. Idealism and gratitude for seemingly positive achievements sustained popularity despite setbacks to come. Metelmann recalled with some affection what he felt the Nazis had delivered:
‘Where before we seldom had a decent football to play with, the Hitler Youth provided us with decent sports equipment, and previously out-of-bounds gymnasiums, swimming pools and even stadiums were now open to us. Never in my life had I been on a real holiday – father was much too poor for such an extravagance. Now under Hitler, for very little money I could go to lovely camps in the mountains, by the rivers or near the sea.’(7)
The Weimar Republic proclaimed in 1918 had borne the burdens of a lost war. It was for many of its citizens simply a way-station for something better. Values such as thrift and hard work had been made irrelevant by inflation. Martin Koller, a Luftwaffe pilot, pointed out: ‘My mother told me, when I was born [in 1923] a bottle of milk cost a billion marks.’(8) The economy, characterised by high unemployment, low profits and negative balances of payment through the 1920s, appeared to be saved by the advent of the Führer. Bernhard Schmitt, an Alsatian, summed up the feelings of many Germans who voted for Hitler when he said:
‘In 1933–34 Hitler came to power like a knight to the rescue; we thought nothing better could happen to Germany once we saw what he was doing to fight unemployment, corruption and so on.’(9)
Even Inge Aicher-Scholl, later to lose a brother and sister to the state, said:
‘Hitler, or so we heard, wanted to bring greatness, fortune and prosperity to this Fatherland. He wanted to see that everyone had work and bread, that every German become a free, happy and independent person. We thought that was wonderful, and we wanted to do everything we could to contribute.’(10)
Even when events turned sour, Hitler’s soldiers continued to believe in him. Otto Kumm, serving in the Waffen SS, admitted: ‘Sure, we had some second thoughts at the end of the western campaign in 1940, when we let the British get away, but these didn’t last long.’ Nobody questioned the higher leadership; indeed, the Führer’s soldiers believed in him. Kumm’s doubts ‘were superficial and didn’t cause us to question Hitler or his genius’.(11)
The German army on the eve of ‘Barbarossa’ was confident in itself and its Führer. Grenadier Georg Buchwald stated: ‘we had done well in France’,(12) an impression shared by Hauptmann Klaus von Bismarck, who opined: ‘We were highly impressed with ourselves – our vitality, our strength and our discipline.’(13) Victory over France had also changed sentiments back home. Herbert Mittelstadt, a 14-year-old, was astounded to hear his mother refer to ‘our wonderful Führer’ after the French victory. In his view, ‘despite her various and special religious beliefs she must have pondered the matter over a period, that all would turn out positive, and that the war could be won.’ His father had spent three years at the front in World War 1, and had ‘probably always suffered a little with the trauma of the defeat’.(14)
Stefan Thomas, a medic and social democrat, was approached by an old veteran political campaigner who admitted that perhaps they were ‘in the wrong party’. Thomas had cause to reflect: ‘my father had lain three long years in the mud of Champagne before Verdun in World War 1, and now in 1940, one saw France fall apart in a three to four weeks’ Blitzkrieg.’(15)
This confidence was reflected in the cameraderie and demeanour of the soldiers. As in all armies, ‘Thema Eins’ (theme one) was women. Events, therefore, worked to their advantage. Panzer NCO Hans Becker remembered the ‘magical’ effect war decorations had on the girls.
‘They loved to be seen out with an old campaigner, and what did it matter if his pay stretched no further than one evening a week at a local dance hall or cinema!’(16)
Landser jargon, ‘soldier talk’, adapted tactical military expressions to describe their relationships with women. Annäherung, the approach to an objective, was to ‘trap a bird’. Ranrobben, to ‘get stuck in now’, ‘frontal attack’ and ‘emergency landings’ provided graphic conventional military descriptions of developing relations with the opposite sex.
Wehrmacht soldiers had never had it so good. One Panzer NCO dressed in black uniform, on losing his girlfriend’s ring in a cinema, had his money refunded on explaining his predicament to the manager. The latter, acutely embarrassed, apologised on behalf of the teller who had mistaken his black uniform for the Hitler Youth! Unteroffizier Jürgen E., apprehended by an attractive girl on home leave, was enticed to join her in a flat. Hardly believing his luck he shyly followed. On entry the lights came on, and he found to his astonishment that he had been ‘captured’ by the young lady for a party. She won the competition she was engaged in, and the young NCO was awarded the prize within weeks. The lady became his wife.
Two signallers, Karl Heinz Krause and Hanns Karl Kubiak, based in eastern Prussia, were despatched to Berlin to pick up spare radio parts required for the forthcoming Russian campaign. Krause struck up an amorous relationship with a young cook named Bertha. Kubiak was persuaded to write romantic letters on behalf of the less than literate Krause, in exchange for a share of the resulting food parcels, regularly despatched by the cook. Even when both were subsequently wounded in Russia, Krause kept the relationship going to ensure the continuity of much appreciated resupplies, claiming he had received wounds to both hands. Bertha thankfully continued to be compassionate. Soldiers, as ever, made the most of opportunities between life and death.(17)
‘Prepared… to face what is coming!’ The German Army, June 1941
Conquering France in six weeks had been a military achievement of some magnitude, but in a number of respects the campaign had been unique. Many allied divisions were obliged to undergo their baptism of fire in mobile situations for which they were unprepared. General von Kluge’s Fourth Army campaign evaluation, coolly detached, admitted victory had transpired under special circumstances. Factors such as the poor morale of the French Army, complete German air superiority, exceptionally favourable weather and the double surprise of the employment of massed tanks and aircraft all conspired to produce resounding success.(1)
German tactical principles were particularly sound. Auftragstaktik, a philosophy of mission directives giving subordinates maximum freedom of action in pursuing clearly identified tasks, enabled initiatives, once grasped, to be retained. General Erich von Manstein, a corps commander, similarly assessed that success was due to the enemy’s inability to defeat German tanks. The lesson to derive for the future was that other nations would similarly mass their tanks, motorise their infantry and aggressively use their air forces to support ground combat.(2) There would be no more cheap victories. After the painful initial ordeal of combat, many French divisions fought well after Dunkirk, even against hopeless odds. By the end of the campaign in the West the German Army had lost one quarter of its total tank strength – 683 tanks were lost – and 26,455 men were killed, 111,640 wounded and 16,659 missing in action.(3) It had not been
a total walk-over.
The German Army officer corps meanwhile had retained a healthy respect for the Red Army. If the experience of World War 1 was any indication, a fight with the Russian Army would be a serious affair. Its soldiers had always demonstrated innate combat toughness with the ability to endure great hardship. Their tactical doctrine, not dissimilar from the German, was aggressive. Von Kluge’s assessment was that, although his Fourth Army motorised forces had performed well in France, they were not tough enough for Russia. They needed to be more aggressive in the attack.(4)
War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 Page 5
