Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

As the front contracted in the final months of the war, terror menaced Landsers everywhere. Throughout Germany the field police, despised by the Landsers as Heldenklau (hero snatchers), diligently sought out so-called “enemies of the people.” Max Landowski recalled that the army “guard dogs” patrolled the NSV ( Nationalsozialistische Volksfürsorge, or National Socialist People’s Welfare) centers, which had proved quite effective in dealing with displaced persons, searching for soldiers either to haul into the Volkssturm (people’s militia) or to hang. All depended on a piece of paper, one’s written authorization, and whether it had the proper stamps and signatures. Enterprising Landsers who, like Otl Aicher, had access to typewriters and stamped, blank forms authorizing various kinds of travel, successfully navigated the treacherous path to safety. In an ironic twist of events, Karl Grebe, a corporal, helped an officer reach his hometown by signing a travel document complete except for the authorizing signature. As Grebe recollected, “smartly I signed with swelling letters: Grebe, Colonel and Regimental Commander. Satisfied, he took the document…. I continued on.” Often one needed not only luck but chutzpah to survive. 52

Traveling with falsified papers remained highly dangerous, however, as the search patrols seemed ubiquitous. For the Landser , though, the field police were not the only concern. One recalled with bitterness that in the fall of 1944 armed German officers gave his unit no choice but to attack enemy lines. The other option was clear: be shot by your own leaders. Some units even established special formations whose instructions were “to make immediate use of their weapons in order to enforce obedience and discipline.” As Helmut Altner wrote caustically, the situation many Landsers found themselves in was devilishly simple: “There were only two possibilities. Death by a bullet from the enemy or by the ‘thugs’ of the SS.” 53

Perhaps in order to spare those at home, the average Landser wrote surprisingly little about disciplinary measures in the army, and those who did referred primarily to deserters or common criminals. Nevertheless, the execution of fellow soldiers could be quite shattering. “As a sentry on a guard duty lasting several days, yesterday evening I had to [guard] a detainee sentenced to death [for desertion],” Friedrich Andreas von Koch reported from Holland:

From 1:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M. in the night I had the watch. After long indecision I entered the detainee’s corridor…. and forced myself to open the door and look inside. Pain shot through my heart as I saw him suddenly bolt up from the bed…. “What is it?” he asked in a hoarse, quiet voice. I mumbled, retreated with a kind of horror, and once again left the cell corridor. Only after an hour was I finally able to gather some strength. I walked back there and said to the chaplain, while the condemned man slumbered, that I did not want to fail to carry out what I felt compelled to do…. I asked that he read the poems [that I had written down] to the convicted man and greet him for me.

At 7:00 A.M. in the morning the field police appeared…. The shackled convict walked past me, saw me and nodded. He was quite steady, walked upright, and didn’t appear pitiable…. While I am writing this, the sentence is being carried out.

Koch remained obviously troubled by the episode; in a letter some two months later he reported having heard that “the condemned man had died in a very composed manner, after he had rejected the proffered blindfold.” 54

Others, too, were upset by the apparent necessity of harsh discipline. “A member of our battalion stole a set of silver flatware and some other valuable items from a house,” wrote Corporal J.S. of the Seventy-ninth Infantry Division. “The soldier came before a military court and was sentenced to death by firing squad. I myself was also ordered to be at the execution…. The condemned man, accompanied by a Catholic priest, was brought to the place in a car. The death sentence was read. The condemned, a twenty-two-year-old, said goodbye to the priest. To us he directed the words: ‘Comrades, do your duty!’ These were also his last words.” Even a sentencing officer might express reluctance: “One thing is always difficult for me,” noted Lieutenant Colonel H.Z. in August 1944, “namely, when for reasons of discipline I have to pronounce the final decision about life and death for a man and after the most conscientious examination… must sign the death sentence. This remains for me always the most difficult thing, but sometimes, thankfully very seldom with German soldiers, nothing else is possible.” 55

Perhaps to this officer the necessity of such discipline seemed rare, but to the average Landser the harshest punishment had become part of everyday life. As early as the end of 1941 one German division was taking steps to ensure discipline by instilling the fear that Ivan was less worrisome than the consequences of cowardice: “Lance-Corporal Aigner… was sentenced to death by court martial on the charge of cowardice,” ran the special order. “Although he had seen his unit marching forward, he entered a house, drank a bottle of schnapps… and fled to the rear without cap or weapon, where he was seized in this ragged and drunken condition. Every case of cowardice will be severely atoned for with death. The troops are to be instructed on this by the company commanders personally.” In the summer of 1943 the same division ordered that “every officer, NCO, and man… do everything to control… outbreaks of panic.” Indeed, officers were expected “to make ruthless use of all means at their disposal against men who bring about occurrences of panic and who leave their comrades in the lurch, and, if necessary, not to refrain from using their weapons.” 56

Such pronouncements were taken seriously, both by the enforcers and by the men. “The news on the radio is really shitty and I believe it is five minutes before midnight, and now they will probably soon have us by the ass,” wrote an obviously embittered Corporal B. in August 1944. “We will probably still have to work for the Russians. In any case it looks really ominous…. Accordingly, just none of us ask if you can or can’t. We must, and if you don’t want to, you get popped, and then you have no more worries.” 57Despite his none too subtle efforts at masking his true meaning, Corporal B. had his letter set aside by the censors and stamped “to be pursued further.” He may well have become a victim of the harsh discipline he decried.

Discipline was not always uniformly applied, however. Whereas in the West the Wehrmacht tended to punish crimes such as theft, murder, and rape committed against civilians, German troops in Russia were often permitted to kill Jews and other so-called ideological or racial enemies without threat of punishment to themselves. Given the designation of the enemy as Untermenschen (subhumans) to be stamped out, it was rare indeed for a Landser even to be charged if his crime was committed against the Slavic population of the East, and those who were charged tended to get off lightly. Private H.K. furnished one example of this uneven application of military justice, noting in June 1940 the case of a corporal, “the father of five small children,” who raped “a highly pregnant woman,” raped a woman over age fifty, and attempted to rape two others—“25 June from midnight until 1:00 A.M.!” Although the eventual punishment was not as severe as the case warranted (the rapist received two years’ imprisonment), what astonished Private H.K. at the time was that “the soldier in question already had an attempted rape in Poland behind him” and, far from being punished, had instead been promoted in rank. In another example of selective discipline, a Landser who had killed a Jewish woman in Russia received only six months’ imprisonment for manslaughter. 58