Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

Every man had a breaking point, a fact the Landser understood and, if only grudgingly, accepted. The constant strain and tension of life on the edge of death would eventually snap the resolution of even the toughest soldier. Given such continual terror, a fear to which one could never become accustomed, how did the average Landser find the strength to endure? Not surprisingly, the first instinct of many men under fire was to flee, to cope with stress simply by escaping it. Cowardice, after all, may be just a kind of honesty about fear. “Something hung in the air,” noted Claus Hansmann of an episode that was certainly repeated hundreds of times during the war:

We marched hurriedly rearward…. As we go along we hear in the ranks that Russians are supposed to have broken through…. Staff members roar to the rear, horses and wagons travel past in a gallop, truck drivers: all in a hurry, already it smells almost like a rout. And suddenly a shout from behind: “Go to the right, our tanks are coming!…” Everyone breathes a sigh: well, finally, tanks! And then come horrible seconds: [enemy] tanks duck out of the yellow-brown cloud of dust and open fire on vehicles and the column. Then there is no more stopping us. Munitions boxes fly into the ditches, rifles are thrown away, gas masks, gun belts, machine guns…. Everyone flees from them, and the men run, becoming a poor, spineless herd of animals…. Autos drive into the swamp, wagons overturn, horses run on through, and the men likewise have thrown off all reins and fled…. The reason? Yeah, the reason… well, is just immaterial. 2

Hansmann, like virtually all Landsers, understood that everyone panicked from time to time; in reaction to a mortal threat a group of men in a very real sense could lose their human qualities and become a herd of animals.

As the Landser well knew, there was no such thing as being too seasoned to panic; even seemingly immunized combat veterans occasionally succumbed to the desire to escape danger by running. Overwhelmed by a Russian assault, Guy Sajer and his comrades—hardened veterans all—gave way to this primal terror and the urge to flee. “The human tide continued to roll toward us, making our scalps crawl,” he recalled. “It’s useless!’ shouted the veteran…. ‘We haven’t got enough ammunition. We can’t stop them….’ Our frantic eyes moved from the lips of one man to the other.” Their sergeant refused to order a retreat, but orders were no longer needed, for the men were acting out of animal terror, instinctively: “The veteran had just jumped from the trench and was galloping toward the woods…. We grabbed our guns in frantic haste… [and] followed him. For a moment we were almost mad with terror…. ‘You bastard!’ the [sergeant] yelled. ‘I’ll report you for this!’ ‘I know,’ the veteran said…. ‘But I’d take one of our firing squads over Ivan’s bayonet any day.’” 3

Nor was this kind of fear an isolated occurrence. “Although our luck had been almost incredible, and had spared us so far,” Sajer reflected on another occasion,

it must almost surely run out…. I suddenly felt terribly afraid…. It would probably be my turn soon. I would be killed, just like that, and no one would even notice…. I would be missed only until the next fellow got it…. As my panic rose, my hands began to tremble. I knew how terrible people looked when they were dead. I’d seen plenty of fellows fall face down in a sea of mud…. The idea made me cold with horror…. I went on crying and muttering incoherently….

“Hals,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here. I’m afraid….” Suddenly it all seemed unbearable. My trembling hands clutched my head… and I sank into total despair.

Although his friend stopped him from running that time, a few days later Sajer again witnessed an elemental scramble to flee the horror: “As we had feared, we heard the roar of war again. The noise… in itself was enough to send a wave of terror through the… men trapped beside the water…. Every man grabbed his things and began to run…. Frantic men were abandoning everything on the bank and plunging into the water to try to swim to the opposite shore…. Madness seemed to be spreading like wildfire… [as] the howling mob… pass[ed] us by.” 4

Still, the great majority of Landsers came to realize that courage consisted simply of a dogged determination to resist the human tide fleeing rearward. Even if momentarily panicked, most did not give way to the quivering terror that could make men incapable of action but instead managed to cope with the stress of life at the front. Sometimes the courage to go on could be engendered by the most seemingly mundane means, such as the “good old-fashioned yells” of platoon and section commanders and “the practice of bugle calls.” Human responses to a human crisis of fear thus proved effective, as did the apparent triviality of playing to the vanity of men by offering them medals. Embarrassed, Harry Mielert wrote to his wife, “For us men these [medals] are… very significant. They raise our courage, and we are ready for the craziest things.” Indeed, the simplest conceit could persuade the spirit to endure. “How many times… had I thought myself invulnerable, filled with the pride we all felt,” Sajer mused, “admiring our shoulder straps and helmets and magnificent uniforms, and the sound of our footsteps, which I loved, and love still, despite everything.” 5

Painstakingly observing special holidays also served to connect the men to a wider world and sustain their morale. “The most beautiful night of the year, but for soldiers also the most dangerous night is over,” Mielert reflected on Christmas day 1942. “We sang our beautiful Christmas songs in firm spirit, if also with our rifles at hand and our pockets full of hand grenades. In each bunker stood a small green tree with a pair of lights. I [spent time] with each group of my company. They all had photographs with them and hauled them out with pride as well as sheepishly to show me…. The toughest, the ‘old soldiers,’ they are the most affected…. They don’t quite cry openly, but you see it, how they trembled, and it required the total dryness and coarseness of male humor to get over this softness. We drank a bottle of wine, ate some cookies, smoked a cigarette, then it was over.” 6

“From the army radio resound the familiar Christmas melodies,” Friedrich Grupe noted in his diary of a Christmas celebration, also in 1942.

The 24th of December 1942 is a wonderful winter day. Snow covers the devastation, transforms this wretched copse that has been shot to pieces into a magical forest. In the evening a magnificent full moon rises over the battlefield.

In the bunker stoves crackles a warming fire. About 4:00 P.M. the sergeant from the 1st squad comes and brings us a glittering, decorated Christmas tree. Now begins a lavish exchange of Christmas presents.

We actually feel now that it is Christmas. We… don’t think about the fact that the Red Army will try to force a breakthrough to the highway…. Mail has also come. We sit quietly at the rough table made from birch and with the reading of the mail all our thoughts are at home, while someone plays on the accordion the Christmas songs that we have sung a thousand times….

The Landsers , stamped by suffering, sit forward in their bunkers with their companies and probably all become soft in this hour.

The battalion leader goes with me through all the positions in the main line. We don’t leave any bunker out…. An urgent closeness reigns…. The hard, stubbled faces of the soldiers are relaxed; they attempt to laugh, shy and embarrassed.

There they are, these men who have just a short time ago repulsed attack after attack in merciless close combat and have looked death in the face a hundred times. They sing “Silent Night, Holy Night,” their white-painted helmets in their hands, and at the same time attempt to sing so softly that Ivan, outside hardly eighty meters away, cannot hear them. 7