Broken Lives Read online

  During the prewar years, even apolitical women became convinced that things were finally improving for gentile Germans. Influenced by her SA father and Women’s League mother, Renate Finckh summarized the change in public sentiment: “Since the Führer is here, there is ‘work and bread,’” ending the crisis of the Great Depression. “Since the Führer is here, ‘peace and order’ have returned,” overcoming the chaos of the Weimar Republic. “Since the Führer is here, ‘a firm bond links head and heart, city and countryside,’” creating a true people’s community. “Since the Führer is here, mothers with many children are no longer despised but honored,” receiving a mother’s cross instead of child support. “Since the Führer is here, we are someone again!,” with Germany respected by other countries. BdM members such as Lore Walb, in particular, believed in the promise of a better future under the Führer. Ursula Mahlendorf recalled, “I was intoxicated by the jubilation of the ‘freed populations,’ by the adulation of the crowds at party rallies.”27

  The nine essays that Lore Walb wrote as high-school assignments demonstrate that the Nazis had surprising success in preparing young women for a coming war. They start harmlessly enough with a plea for understanding between the city and countryside, but already her discussion of Jeanne d’Arc turns into a glorification of the Führer’s quest to restore national honor. Her treatment of the role of art completely follows the volkish line; in writing about air-raid protection she uncannily anticipates the terrors of mass bombing. Considering airplanes “the most dangerous weapon of war,” she predicts that “women, children, the old and those incapable of fighting” will be annihilated at home. In the conflict between humanity and honor, exemplified by the dark figure of Hagen in the Nibelungen saga, she even justifies his murder of Siegfried. She concludes, “The will and power of the German people are incorporated in the person of the Führer.”28 It was precisely the heroization of war and blind belief in Hitler’s leadership that would lead to disaster.

  HOME FRONT CHALLENGES

  The outbreak of the war fundamentally separated the experiences of young men from those of young women. While the former were drafted by the Wehrmacht and sent to the front, the latter stayed behind and worried about their loved ones in harm’s way. Because they “knew almost nothing of what is happening” in combat, they could only follow the shifting military fortunes vicariously through “intoxicating special news bulletins.” Their patriotic fervor found little outlet, for the military had no use for adolescent girls. Because they were initially far from actual fighting, “the events of the war still remained remote and abstract.” Nonetheless, “all of our lives were about to change fundamentally,” Ruth Bulwin recalled. “Nobody had understood it yet, but circumstances took care of making us every day more aware of what that really meant.”29 Though Hitler tried to protect the home front, it soon enough became obvious that in a prolonged war of annihilation, women would have to bear an essential part of the burden.

  Compared with the male adventure of combat, continuing a domestic routine seemed disappointing to patriotic young women. Eva Peters found what remained for girls to do “during a war much more boring, monotonous, and unclear.” Completing homework for school appeared less interesting than the variety of BdM service projects. Also, “having to help a lot at home,” doing chores for their working mothers, or watching over their younger siblings seemed mundane by comparison with actual fighting. Initially, accustomed rituals such as religious confirmation and middle-class dancing lessons continued unchanged from peacetime. But primary school graduates now had to find jobs in the war economy, while other young women had mixed feelings about the privilege of studying at a university during such a heroic time. And then there was the challenge of finding a suitable young man, preferably in uniform, in order to go to the movies or to enjoy dancing. Step by step, young women were drawn further into the Nazi war.30

  For many young women, following wartime events became “more interesting and exciting than the monotony of everyday duties.” The defense of the fatherland revived “the comradeship of the trenches,” even rallying people to the national cause who had been skeptical of the Nazi Party before. “After three weeks school resumed and Poland was defeated,” Renate Finckh remembered. “The jubilation about this rapid victory, the reconquest of the corridor and the liberation of the Germans was great.” According to Eva Peters, the succession of special victory bulletins on the radio and impressive shots of advancing Wehrmacht units in newsreels soon turned her initial skepticism into “habituation, confidence and the calming reassurance: ‘German soldiers are invincible.’” It was fun for schoolgirls to trace the movement of the front lines on a map at home. “For three years there were lightning wars and lightning victories.” Intoxicated by the triumphs, many girls were “proud to be German and to be living in such a great time.”31

  This “continual sense of exhilaration” was, however, dampened by preparations for defense against air raids, which suggested that the actual fighting might also involve civilians. Although the Führer had promised that no enemy airplane would be able to drop its bombs on a German city, Britain’s Royal Air Force soon demonstrated that this was a futile boast. In the cities, huge concrete bunkers were built as shelters, while in private homes, cellars were reinforced to withstand the impact. “The entire population was compelled to participate in air-defense exercises where we learned to fight against fires and incendiary bombs” by using sand, Ruth Bulwin recalled. “The owners of apartments had to make sure that all windows were equipped with black blinds,” for after twilight, “not a single ray of light was supposed to get outside.” Moreover, “black caps were put onto automobile headlights, leaving only a small slit.” Even if such preparations were only a nuisance, they made it clear that women would not be spared.32

  Another irksome consequence of war was the imposition of rationing, which complicated shopping for housewives and caused exasperating lines. In order to guarantee equal access to scarce goods, coupons were introduced in 1939 that governed how much nutrition, clothing, or gasoline a person could obtain. Ruth Bulwin remembered, “Initially some foods were rationed, such as butter, meat, and bread; later on everything else.” These restrictions led to shortages in the cities, forcing people to rely on their rural relatives or turn their flower gardens into potato or vegetable plots. Moreover, clothing was sold on the basis of cards as well, since most of the cloth production went into uniforms. As a result, people began to mend their apparel and clever seamstresses turned old dresses into new fashions. BdM girls such as Ursula Mahlendorf were also busy with “collecting herbs and recyclables—scrap iron, rags, bones, paper—with which to make guns, uniforms, medical supplies for [the] troops.”33 Lacking sufficient raw materials, Nazi Germany had to reuse what it had.

  When the attack on Russia bogged down during the winter of 1941, women faced a new task: providing military men with warmer clothing. “Everybody donated, whether she was devoted to the Führer or not,” Renate Finckh remembered. “Everyone wanted to help the freezing soldiers.” Ursula Mahlendorf went from house to house to collect “wool clothing for our soldiers in Russia from our families, neighbors, or friends.” In the weekly squad meetings, “we knitted mountains of gloves” and socks. During holidays, the Mädchen also baked cookies and sent hundreds of packages “to an unknown German soldier” to cheer up the lonely young men. The intensification of Allied bombing attacks created another chore closer to home as well. Now the teenagers engaged “in rounding up children’s clothing and household utensils for bombing victims.” Although it was not clear whether the material “ever reached the troops or the air-raid targets,” the effort had a positive effect on the collectors, one of whom reported, “I felt we were helping the war effort.”34

  Because most field hands were at the front, the BdM also expected its members “to help in bringing in the harvest.” Ursula Mahlendorf’s offer to work in the fields on her uncle’s estate was therefore “accepted as a matter of course.” Lit
tle did she know that she would have to do hard physical labor during long days together with adult women. While teenage boys were allowed to drive tractors, she had “to bind the sheaves of wheat and pile them upright against each other to dry out.” Unused to such exertions, she “was so exhausted that [she] began to sob involuntarily.” She resented “the coarse sexual jokes and rough bantering of the German women.” But “all of the field hands hated the foreman,” who drove his laborers mercilessly, yelling, “Come toil and slave, you damned bitches!” This challenging experience was a far cry from Hitler Youth propaganda about a healthy rural life, close to the soil. Only the taste of self-baked bread and the “hefty sum” of money at the end of the summer made the entire exercise seem worthwhile.35

  German women were also helped by foreign laborers who, partly by contract and partly by coercion, assisted them in the households and the fields. Not even sixteen years old, a Ukrainian farm girl named Sonja Kolesnyk was brutally abducted in the spring of 1942 by men with machine-pistols, put into a cattle car, and first shipped to the outskirts of Vienna. Helpless because she spoke no German, she was stripped, deloused, and had her possessions stolen. Upon arriving in Bavaria, she was requisitioned by a farmer’s wife whose husband was at the front. Unused to German food, Sonja “cried a lot” while peeling mounds of potatoes and helping around the farm. Falsely accused of miscegenation with a German farm laborer, she was almost killed, like a young Polish man who was hanged for sleeping with a German woman. Fortunately, the farm woman “stood up for” her, fed her decently, and treated her almost as a member of the family. Because the news about mass murders in the Ukraine was discouraging, Sonja ultimately decided to stay in Germany.36

  Some BdM leaders also volunteered for “service in the East,” the Osteinsatz that supported settlers while Germanizing the western Polish region of the Warthegau. According to one Nazi tenet, an overcrowded “Germany needs living space. The Führer has now won it for us. The East beckons!” In the summer of 1943, Renate Finckh participated in this “noble mission” of transforming conquered territory into German land. The local Polish farmers had been expelled to make room for German resettlers from Bessarabia and Volhynia. When the farm woman to whom she was assigned “lay sick in bed,” thirteen-year-old Renate had to run the household, even having to “kill, pluck and carve a duck.” Shocked by the dirt of the settlers, who had “medieval notions of hygiene,” she started to clean up the farmstead. Only by ramming her knee into the groin of the local Nazi peasant leader did she escape being raped. But she did beat a Polish boy for not minding the cows.37 Ashamed, she became aware that she had sown hatred.

  Older teenagers who had finished school often had to take over jobs for which men were no longer available. “We poor women must replace the entire male society. That creates a bunch of additional work,” Christel Beilmann wrote to her brother at the front. Ruth Bulwin was fortunate enough to find a position at an important firm that made “generators for producing gas from wood as a replacement for petrol.” After passing a difficult entrance test, Edith Schöffski managed to get a bookkeeping job at the home office of a postal bank in Berlin because she was good with figures. When almost the entire office complex was destroyed by bombs and she had barely escaped alive in the air-raid shelter, she changed over to the central telephone office. There she manned a switchboard for long-distance calls as “an operator girl.” Toward the end of the war, Eva Peters stopped her studies and became a streetcar conductor, proud of her uniform and status. “Eva loved her ‘occupation’ for technical, athletic and personal reasons.”38

  Nursing wounded soldiers was another wartime women’s occupation that became more important with the greater the number of German casualties. After her training as a “medical technical assistant,” Gisela Grothus was assigned to a “military hospital for the brain impaired” in Berlin, where she “encountered the bloody traces of the war every day.” Ursula Mahlendorf responded to a Red Cross call for trainee nurses’ aides in Silesia, where she learned about “putting bandages on every conceivable body part … how to take temperatures … [and] how to give hypodermic shots.” The reality of coping with wounded soldiers smelling of “shit, urine, and acrid sweat” was more gruesome than she had imagined because “they are just like the boys [she went] to school with.” She got used to seeing “flesh wounds to arms and legs laced with pus.” But watching men die without being able to help was hard, even if some bragged of committing atrocities. Overwhelmed by the suffering, she at least believed to be doing something meaningful.39 A typical photo shows a Red Cross nurse bandaging a wounded soldier (image 15).

  Party authorities also encouraged teenage girls to correspond with unattached soldiers in order to foster romantic relationships. Ursula Baehrenburg developed a “pen friendship during the war. Joachim and I wrote to each other regularly. We had gotten close as if we had known each other for a long time and yet had never seen each other.” Toward the chaotic end, she received a letter with the vow, “Our Führer will not leave us in the lurch,” but never heard from Joachim again. Through a friend, Anneliese Huber met Kurt, a young soldier who loved playing the piano and had a good voice. This acquaintance grew into an intimate correspondence, admired even by the military censor. “I don’t know how it was possible for him to write almost daily, sometimes in the worst situations. But I believe that gave him the power to persevere,” she recalled. Since both were “romantically inclined,” they fell in love with each other, which sustained Kurt when he was imprisoned for defeatism.40 Such epistolary bonds were crucial for maintaining the morale of both sides.

  15. A nurse bandages a wounded soldier. Source: Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

  Young women’s social life with men was limited to the precious days of furlough when the boys came home to enjoy their company. Even in timid Ursula Baehrenburg, “the first tender feelings toward the other sex awakened.” She developed a crush on a friend of her brother, a “dashing air force soldier,” with whom she went on walks and was happy when he put his arm around her shoulders. Similarly, Anneliese Huber was delighted when Kurt asked to see her again, for she found him a kindred spirit, interested in music and literature. When he received a convalescence leave after being wounded, they spent many hours enjoying the sights of medieval Strasbourg together, and at Christmas he sent a poem with the suggestive line “Love me, as I do you.” Ruth Bulwin was more forward when her Rolf came to visit, ignoring the warning: “Don’t do anything stupid!”41 Though in general premarital sex was still frowned upon, the uncertainty of survival accelerated the consummation of relationships.

  Inevitably, such involvements also led to marriages, which were somewhat constrained by the circumstances of the war. Rolf and Ruth Bulwin were lucky: he was assigned to garrison duty in Prague after being wounded and her father allowed her to marry although she was underage. On January 4, 1943, their civil wedding took place in an “impressive ceremony” with a speech by the corps commander, but without any family present. Similarly, Anneliese and Kurt Huber got engaged in Vienna a few months later, accompanied by relatives from both sides. “It was a wonderful, happy time which we crowned with our marriage on July 24th, 1943.” The bride even managed to have her dress sewn from Brussels lace. The couple drove to the church in a carriage, and the ceremony was “framed by beautiful music.” But by August the new husband was once again sent to the front, reducing their relationship to long and passionate letters. Having procured a necessary white dress, Ruth Weigelt married her Gerhard on January 4, 1944, in spite of his typhoid fever.42

  In due course these unions produced babies, whose birth affirmed the continuation of life in murderous circumstances. Anneliese Huber’s pregnancy was complicated by the shocking news that her husband was missing in action. But in May 1944 she gave birth and was “happy to hold a healthy boy in [her] arms.” Two days later an alive Kurt suddenly stood at her bedside: he had finally gotten parental leave. The family celebrated the baptism and the new parents “spe
nt a few blissful days” before the father once again had to leave the young mother to cope on her own. The Bulwins were more fortunate. Ruth was pampered by both grandmothers. She delivered a little girl, named Brigitte, in November of 1944. Her husband was not disappointed that it was not a boy, since she was “such a sweet thing.” The proud parents could then parade with the baby carriage through the streets of Prague, until Rolf was also returned to combat duty in the final futile struggle of the Reich. During the collapse of July 1945, Ruth Weigelt gave birth to her oldest son, Reiner.43

  Many war marriages were, however, cut short by untimely death, causing “endless suffering and grief.” In the newspapers, death notices multiplied as more and more soldiers were killed at the front. Increasingly, women wore black mourning dresses and suddenly broke into tears for no discernable reason. “Everywhere it is now dark, because the times are cruel and full of danger,” Kurt described his forebodings to his wife Anneliese in September 1944. Then a dry form letter destroyed her happiness: “Unfortunately I have to convey to you the sad news that your dear husband, the infantryman Kurt Huber, fell on September 17 for Führer, Volk, and fatherland. An enemy grenade prematurely ended his life.” The young mother reeled from “the heavy blow of fate.” She had now joined hundreds of thousands of bereaved wives as a “war widow” and would have to bring up her son alone. Echoing a Nazi cliché, Lore Walb commented on the loss of many classmates, “It is always the most courageous, bold, and valiant—the best who have to die.”44