Broken Lives Read online

  Another cause of the growing number of Wehrmacht defeats was the superiority of the Allied weapons used against it. Initially German systems such as the Stuka dive bombers and the tanks connected by voice radio had proven effective, but, misled by the victories, Hitler stopped further development. Trying to catch up, the Western Allies constructed entire new technologies such as radar, which wreaked havoc on enemy airplanes and submarines. In the East, the simpler Russian weapons proved better adapted to the climate than complicated German machines. The infantry especially feared the “Stalin organs,” mobile rocket launchers that were inaccurate but nonetheless deadly by “widely scattering shrapnel.” Similarly, the T-34 tanks had “two ingenious advantages.” Their “track-drives were twice as wide” as the German ones, making them superior in mud and ice, and “they were built with steel plates of oblique angles” that proved difficult to pierce. Frantic German efforts to catch up were too little and too late.68

  Even more important in a prolonged struggle was the inferiority of Nazi Germany in war production in spite of the resources of the occupied countries and allies. Simply put, in all essential categories such as manufacturing airplanes, artillery pieces, or tanks, not to mention ammunition and gas for jeeps and trucks, the equipment of the Grand Alliance of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union was vastly superior. Horst Grothus noted, “Our armaments are generally poor, rather uneven” due to the diversity of captured weapons. “Our losses in men and materiel rose frightfully,” Hans Tausch reported about bottlenecks: “We had no more tanks, replacements were not supplied.” Similarly, according to Hans Queiser, experienced fighter pilots were unable to cope with masses of often-neophyte enemies. Lacking sufficient fuel, their aircraft could no longer fly or be repaired or replaced. Since “there were no longer enough interceptors available for an effective defense,” the consequence became “crystal clear: the Amis and Brits had air superiority over the ‘Greater Reich,’ but we did not.”69

  Sporadic comments in the autobiographies suggest that the war was also being lost politically: the Wehrmacht setbacks raised doubts about a German victory. Trying to mobilize for “total war,” Goebbels’ propaganda machine talked euphemistically about “shortening the front lines.” Even if some still believed the Nazi lies, others who followed the news on the map realized that German territory was shrinking drastically. Because “the political climate was no longer as strongly characterized by fear, open criticism began to be voiced.” Similarly, it was difficult to understand that “Germany occupied Hungary and Romania while Hungarian and Romanian army units were still fighting bravely alongside their comrades.” In the occupied countries, collaborators began to distance themselves noticeably from the Wehrmacht, worried about what would happen to them should the Germans lose.70 Finally, the defeats encouraged local resistance attacks on Wehrmacht supply lines, which led to savage retribution.

  During the interminable retreats, death became an ever more-threatening presence for the young soldiers. It was no longer just an occasional misfortune that one could write off as a necessary evil in a great enterprise, but rather an ubiquitous danger. In a letter from home, Hermann Debus heard that both sons of a neighbor had “been killed in action. Hans drowned with a submarine and Willi perished in Russia. Within a fortnight the family lost both sons.” Moreover, “I had to read that my friend—Hermann Hehner—also died in Russia.” Similarly, Joachim Fest lost his much-admired older brother to a miserable “lung infection” contracted in a military hospital in the East because there were no antibiotics. His mother considered the death “an unspeakable misfortune for our family” and was in no mood to forgive Hitler. More and more youths became convinced that “this war cannot be won any longer.” And yet military discipline held and the soldiers continued to fight.71

  On the battlefield, the transformation of the character of the war from rapid conquest to prolonged struggle unleashed an explosion of violence that surpassed all accepted bounds. Due to technical developments, weapons had already become deadlier than during the First World War, wreaking more physical havoc and costing more human lives than before. During the initial Blitzkrieg, the ferocity of the attack remained focused on breaking through enemy lines and encircling whole armies. This limited the carnage to largely military targets, even if the Polish campaign already showed the potential for indiscriminate use of force. But with the shift to attrition, the violence intensified. More soldiers and increasingly also civilians were killed. In addition, the ideologization of warfare dehumanized enemies, leading to large-scale mass murder when the aim became not just victory, but the annihilation of entire populations. As a result of increasing brutality, troops experienced “the terrible, cruel soldierly life [as a] dirty, stinking, bloody reality.”72

  One aspect of the increasing violence was the “scorched earth” tactic, favored during withdrawal in order to deny the advancing enemy potential resources. Initiated by the Red Army, this policy was adopted by the Wehrmacht when they lost control of occupied territory so as to delay pursuit and leave a gruesome reminder of its power. Gerhard Baucke describes the retreat from the Crimea: “For the population the withdrawal was a catastrophe. I do not want to go into the details and only say that the pioneers were the rear-guard, doing a real job of scorched earth. Nothing, absolutely nothing was left for the cautiously following foe.” This devastating method not only destroyed military supplies and ammunition that could not be carried along, but demolished infrastructural targets such as bridges, train tracks, and roads.73 The orgy of destruction engulfed raw material and factories as well as power plants and food depots, leaving the civilians without means of survival. Due to its brutality, this tactic sowed hatred and inspired revenge.

  Another dimension of the protracted struggle was a successive dehumanization of the troops. This led to increased cruelty against enemies, even when they had surrendered. In the beginning, the Wehrmacht somewhat respected the rules of the Hague Convention, for it did not want its own soldiers subjected to inhumane treatment if captured. But with the prolonging of the war, respect for such limits vanished. Robert Neumaier reported that a wounded Russian prisoner who was walking directly in front of his tank “was caught by a tread and smashed under it. We drove over him, making me sick.” Hellmut Raschdorff recalled that “a comrade next to me raised his gun and fired into a group of civilians.” When challenged about the criminality of his action, “he merely replied ‘what of it, they are only Russians.’” Similarly, when “a Russian appeared with his hands raised … a soldier standing next to us took his rifle and just shot him.”74 These were no longer isolated incidents, but rather typical signs of the escalation of violence.

  The so-called antipartisan actions, in particular, erased the distinction between soldiers and civilians and contributed to the increase in the brutality of warfare. When Gerhard Baucke was crossing the Bug River, he “suddenly heard rifle fire,” but military police told him to move on: “Go away, there is nothing to be seen, only partisans have been shot!” The next morning, he was gripped by “sheer horror” to see the corpses of “old men, young men, women and children—they were supposed to have been partisans?” An NCO calmed the troops by claiming, “during the conquest of Nikolaev, civilians had participated in the street fighting. Jews were involved as well and in revenge a number were herded together and shot.” Similarly, during a Czech school trip, Wilhelm Kolesnyk saw “smoke mushrooming over a village and heard detonations of explosions.” While he still “considered the massacre of Lidice a singular case,” his father and a Waffen SS veteran testified that “such atrocities happened regularly in Ukraine and in Russia.”75

  The memoirists only hint at the full extent of the violence because its graphic description would be too unsettling. One former soldier described the process of mutual dehumanization in an oral interview. When partisans massacred a hospital train, they had dragged the wounded soldiers out, “cut off their penis, stuck it into their mouths, blinded their eyes and nailed the so
ldiers to barn doors with their bayonets.” He was horrified by the corpses of “two Red Cross nurses whose breasts were cut off and genitalia mutilated.” In retaliation, he said, his unit “surrounded a village and started to shoot with tracer and incendiary bullets.” When the houses caught fire and people came out, “we mowed them down.” As a result of his anger, “this was one of the few times that I shot with determination and conviction” until nothing stirred any longer. “Old men, women, children, partisans.” Justified as retaliation for enemy atrocities, such confessions of indiscriminate killing are all too rare, although the actions were repeated countless times.76

  Ethnic cleansing and racial genocide also involved Wehrmacht soldiers in atrocities that had no military purpose whatsoever. None of the memoirists admits to having been personally involved, but their texts do reveal a widespread knowledge of the Nazi project of annihilation. When Gerhard Baucke was trying to get food, he had “an unforgettable, terrible encounter” with cattle cars on another track: “The doors were locked, and through the small hatches people wailed for water: Woda pan, water …!” When he tried to help them, a black-uniformed SS guard threatened, “Nix water, you comprehend? … Get lost or you shall go along as well!” Similarly, Erich Helmer saw the “barracks camp in which Jewish women and girls were housed” who had to work at his airfield: “Here we witnessed the hollowed out bodies with faces larger than life and oversized eyes which begged us ‘hunger-hunger!’” Unable to help, he was shocked to hear that, during the subsequent withdrawal, “they were all murdered, just shot.”77

  Increasing violence could only postpone the German defeat after the Western Allies finally landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. “Three thousand planes were in action in our sector and dropped their bombs,” Robert Neumaier recalled the fierce assault on the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall. “We had horrible losses; some of my comrades were buried [alive].” The defenders desperately fired on parachutists, creating “a terrible sight: Dead Americans hung from their chutes in the trees.” But Karl Härtel noted, “ever more often we had to witness that our bombers were shot down by enemy fighters or antiaircraft guns,” and air cover was lost. Hitler’s refusal to commit his reserves against the initial attack proved a decisive mistake. Hans Tausch wondered why “one of the best equipped tank divisions in the West remained inactive” until it was too late. Toward the end of July, the invaders broke through to the South, pulverizing German defenders at Avranches.78 Within a couple of months, all of France lay open. Photos by the victorious Allies document the surrender of defeated SS troops on the Western front (image 13).

  13. Surrendering SS soldier. Source: Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

  The strategic impact of the Allied landing was shattering: it caught Nazi Germany in an ever-tightening vise from which there was no longer any escape. Robert Neumaier remembered, “With our high casualties, the superior weapons of the enemy and the manpower pressure of the Americans, it was clear that we would not be able to hold out for long.” He noted that, among the troops, discipline began to break down when some infantry soldiers “preferred to be taken prisoner. Thereby the war was over for them.” Those who, like himself, did not want to give up, continued an adventurous retreat in the direction of the fatherland, traveling on bicycles at night to escape the advancing American tanks and the vengeful resistance fighters. But they failed to construct a new defensive line, and Paris surrendered without a fight. City commander General Dietrich von Choltitz disobeyed orders because he “wanted to avoid the destruction of precious cultural artifacts.” Even SS fanatics were unable to stop the dissolution of the front until the retreating troops reached the border of Germany.79

  The surprising assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 increased the confusion among the soldiers further, for it violated a deep-seated Prussian taboo. Shortly after midnight, Gerhard Krapf “heard Hitler over the radio saying (with a rather hoarse voice) that a ‘small clique of ambitious and irresponsible and, at the same time, senseless and stupid officers’ had plotted to eliminate him, but that he was unhurt and well.” Disappointed regime critics such as Erich Helmer wondered, “why did this not work?,” and began to believe that “the war is lost.” By contrast, Nazi supporters such as Gerhardt Thamm felt “shock, pure shock,” because soldiers had sworn personal oaths to Hitler. “People were confused, they wondered, ‘Why would they try to kill the Führer?’” Instead of praising the heroic resistance effort, most Germans were horrified by it. “With every failed attempt on his life, Hitler’s mystique grew.” He seemed immortal. Only much later did Gerhard Krapf realize “that on that day Germany’s fate had been sealed.”80

  In the East, the Wehrmacht found no effective defense against the relentless Red Army advance, celebrated as “the ten great blows.” The Russians amassed superior firepower and personnel in one limited part of the front, broke through the German lines, and stopped after a gain of many miles, only to begin again somewhere else. According to Krapf, the “fearsome T-34s” made the difference due to “the devastating psychological effect of those agile monsters moving toward you, belching deadly-aimed direct cannon fire.” The German officers could only entreat their troops not to be caught in the open, “to stay put and not climb out of the trench and run.” Instead, they were to fire with their machine guns “at the infantry behind the tanks.” The T-34s “indeed rolled over our trench and toward the rear,” where artillery annihilated them and the infantry charge was beaten off.81 While Krapf could breathe a sigh of relief, in the long run the repetition of such attacks broke the Germans’ spirit.

  Although it “contained a kernel of truth,” the popular hope that “miracle weapons” would bring victory turned out to be another propaganda lie. At the end of 1944, even the regular fighter squad to which Hans Queiser was attached had to be “closed down for lack of airplane fuel.” The new Messerschmitt 163 rocket fighter, the fastest airplane in the world, reaching speeds of 965 kmh, was still being field-tested, emitting an “incomparable roar.” But it could only fly for a few minutes and was produced in too-small numbers to regain control of the skies. The fuselages of the Messerschmitt 162 fighter-bomber, the first jet plane, were built by slave laborers in an underground factory in the north and the engines were manufactured in the south. “But the machines [could] not be put together. Transport ha[d] stopped.” Instead of producing antiaircraft missiles, Hitler put priority on the construction of “revenge weapons,” the V1 and V2 rockets, which did frightful damage in London, but failed to turn the tide of the war.82

  The discouraging news of continued “victorious retreats” gradually eroded the morale of the Wehrmacht, even if many soldiers continued to cling to hope. “It was true that the constant retreating, both regarding the large picture [of the] various fronts and the small perspective from within one’s regimental sector, produced a general awareness of the war no longer being winnable.” It was also discouraging that Finland, Romania, and Hungary followed the Italian example and dropped out of the war or switched sides. Warning of the terrible consequences of defeat, the Reich radio therefore broadcast “endless appeals to persevere.” Moreover, the Gestapo, SS, and military police severely punished defeatist commentary with imprisonment or sent the authors of innocuous Hitler jokes on “suicide missions” at the front. When Joachim Fest voiced his “disgust about the death of [his] brother,” only the good luck of a sympathetic officer who beat down a denunciation with a “final warning” saved him from a court martial.83

  Considering the war lost, some discouraged soldiers even attempted to desert to the enemy. Erich Helmer rejected the surprise offer of a French resistance member to convey him to safety in Switzerland out of a sense of patriotic responsibility. But, “preferring to stay alive,” Wolfgang Hubbe used a reconnaissance assignment to “jump into freedom” by going over to the British in September 1944. Similarly, pacifist Gerhard Joachim was willing to “desert in order to escape to Sweden and wait for the end of the war there.” With a comrade, he left his u
nit and hid in his parents’ apartment, but was awakened on the third night by banging and shouts of “Gestapo, open the door!” Caught, he was condemned to nine months in an army prison for “totally unmilitary behavior.” Undiscouraged, he tried again, this time marching in the direction of the Red Army in January 1945. While sheltered at a Polish farm, he watched the SS shoot another soldier, but finally reached the Russian lines, where he was received with a friendly “stoi” (stop) and “Gitler kaput!” (Hitler is busted).84

  In spite of ever grimmer prospects, most soldiers believed themselves to be defending Germany’s very existence and continued to fight until the bitter end. The Wehrmacht’s draconian discipline made malingering into a life-and-death matter: the infamous MPs called Kettenhunde tended to shoot without asking questions. The misguided fanaticism of increasingly younger recruits also played a part. When a sergeant told a unit of antiaircraft boys in too-large uniforms to “go home, war is no playground for kids,” they answered glibly: “Grandpa, now we will show you how to defeat an enemy.” Moreover, horror stories of Russian atrocities did not have to be fabricated, since what Goebbels “said would happen to German men and women, particularly women, should the Red Army be allowed to enter Germany, did happen” at Nemmersdorf in East Prussia. Hence, Gerhard Krapf felt a “genuine determination to keep the Russians from entering Germany.” Finally there was also “the feeling for solidarity and comradeship” toward one’s survival unit.85

  The final effort to defend the Reich in 1945 nonetheless fell far short because the Wehrmacht was collapsing from within. Goebbels still “promised ultimate victory, now that President Roosevelt had died,” and claimed that miracle weapons would save Germany. But on many fronts, the army was running out of supplies, for Allied air attacks had ruptured the transportation grid. In terms of manpower, “the Wehrmacht was scraping the bottom of the barrel,” drafting the hitherto-exempt, Hitler Youths, and older men and throwing them into battle without training. Devoid of planes to fly, air force pilots such as Horst Grothus were converted into infantrymen and used to plug holes in the front despite a lack of appropriate instruction, leadership, and equipment. Due to unrealistic orders, discipline was also breaking down. When commanded to “waste” his unit, Gerhard Krapf dared to contradict a general. Fortunately, he was backed up by a major who revoked the order.86 Because losses could no longer be made up, the high command moved armies around that existed only on paper.