Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

Of course, the very opposite of the cold rain and mud, heat and suffocating dust, also produced their share of laments, as the Landser quickly discovered that Mother Nature had stockpiled a treasure of torments. “We moved over deeply rutted dirt roads, through patches of loose sand and clouds of dust,” noted Siegfried Knappe of the summer weather in Russia in 1941. “Our feet sank into the sand and dirt, puffing dust into the air so that it rose and clung to us. The horses coughing in the dust produced a pungent odor. The loose sand was nearly as tiring for the horses as the deep mud would have been. The men marched in silence, coated with dust, with dry throats and lips.” “We are, enveloped in glowing clouds of heat and dust, again on the march farther eastward,” confirmed Günter von Scheven of the conditions in August 1941. “There is no rest. Always the same advance through treeless plains, in thick clouds of dust along endless roads, column after column, horse, rider and artillery like ghosts.” Similarly, Harald Henry marveled at how “the dust positively disguises all of us: the blondes have almost white, dully gleaming hair, the brunettes look like Frederician soldiers, brightly powdered…, and the military mustaches that many have… now, left untouched, turn gray.” Marching through the Ukraine, Ludwig Laumen wondered at the “oddly strange landscape…, almost the entire trek we were under dust like a gigantic gray cloud, …dense, steep mountainous peaks [of dust].” 8

Dust could torment the Landser everywhere. Writing from Egypt in September 1942, Martin Penck observed that after an artillery bombardment “clouds of dust and smoke crept ghostlike over the earth.” Retreating through Rumania in late March 1944, Rembrand Elert complained, “The dust is so unbearable that now and again you cannot see anything at all.” But it was while waiting for transportation deep in Russia that Claus Hansmann sat watching “supply and munitions columns tramp to the front covered in a massive banner of dust.” He soon discovered that even a closed vehicle offered little relief: “The countryside was drier, sandy meadows alternated with parched fields,” he noted. “In the column we now traveled as in a sandstorm. Clouds of dust penetrated through all the gaps in the windows…. The wheels churned up fountains of sand that blacked out the sun. Unbearably dry heat made sweat run from our pores. The dust burnt our nose and throat.” Wilhelm Prüller, however, witnessed perhaps the most amazing spectacle of all, noting in his diary, “The shoulders of the road are all muddy from the previous rain, you sink up to your knees, but in the middle of the road there’s dust already. The covers of the vehicles are rolled back, the men sit in them in their helmets, carbines in their laps, each vehicle surrounded by an impenetrable cloud of dust.” 9

If heat, dust, rain, and mud proved irksome and discomfiting, the legendary cold and snow of Russia inspired genuine fear and long hours and days of agony. Some Landsers were terrified merely by the approach of winter. In the autumn “the already flat rays of the sun, low in the horizon over the plains, misled us,” said one. “But each evening… ominous black clouds would build up far in the distance, towering high above the steppe. These dark masses carried… the rain, the ice and snow of the coming winter.” So menacing did the grinding approach of winter seem that a Landser might now and again turn his attention to an earlier winter campaign in Russia: “Now one can understand how Napoleon suffered under the still more primitive transportation methods and weather conditions of that time, and therefore no supplies came to the front,” worried Private L.B. already in August 1941. “If we… were trapped into the winter, it would not go well for us either. If it only rains heavily for a few days, then that is a setback for many days, especially for the supplies. Unless you see it for yourself, you just can’t imagine how chronic it is.” Private H.S. admitted in September 1941: “The announcement that already plans are being made for the construction and organization of winter quarters weighs heavily on us…. In any case we might then count on a leave. But none of us wants to return to this gray and rainy country.” “God save us from a winter campaign in the East,” exclaimed Sergeant H.S. with fervent directness. 10

New arrivals were particularly terrified by the prospect of facing a Russian winter. “Toward the end of [November 1943], we at last got some replacements,” remembered Gustav Kreutz. “They were mostly young chaps from the training barracks…. In no time they were complaining about the cold. They kept fires going during the day as well as at night and were… [using] fuel which would have been valuable later. I had occasion to speak sharply to them about this and one of them answered that on that day the thermometer had fallen to ten below [Celsius], and was this not abnormal? I told him that soon he would count himself lucky when the thermometer was not ten but twenty-five degrees below, and that in January it would fall to forty below. At this the poor fellow broke down and sobbed.” 11

The autumn weather frightened Wilhelm Prüller as well. “It’s very unpleasant now,” he noted in his diary in late September 1941. “Terribly cold. You can’t wrap yourself in too many blankets…. And who knows what’s in front of us…? The wind whistles through the canvas of the lorries… and blows the rain in. It’s freezing cold.” A few days later, Prüller worried, “Autumn has made its appearance punctually. And then the question arises: which is better, to be moving and to sweat more with a coat… or to go on as we’ve been doing, without one?” He soon had his answer: “At night it gets really cold now,” he noted in early October, “and we all think that it can’t go on much longer. In this morass we shall soon be unable to move at all…. What will it be like in the rainy period?” The next night it was no longer the rain he feared: “Tonight we had the first real Russian snowstorm…. The wind whistled through every nook and cranny of our hut, and we expected the straw roof to take off at any moment. A nice foretaste of the coming winter. That can be a real mess!” A real mess: nice understatement in a diary. The reality soon proved paralyzing. “Icy snowstorms swept over the land and obstructed our vision,” complained Lieutenant H.H. of the bitter weather that slowly ground the German advance to a halt in December 1941. “The ground was so slick that the horses had difficulty even standing up. Because of the cold our machine guns wouldn’t work at all.” 12

“The snow blew almost horizontally in blizzards… with the wind piercing our faces with a thousand needles,” recalled Siegfried Knappe. “The cold numbed and deadened the human body from the feet up until the whole body was an aching mass of misery. To keep warm, we had to wear every piece of clothing we owned…. Each man fought the cold alone, pitting his determination and will against the bitter winter.” Yet this first onslaught, Knappe was stunned to discover, provided only a glimpse of what was to follow:

A paralyzing blast of cold hit us…. Our trucks and vehicles would not start, and our horses started to die from the cold in large numbers…. We all now numbly wrapped ourselves in our blankets. Everyone felt brutalized and defeated by the cold. The sun would rise late in the morning… and not one fresh footprint would be visible for as far as the human eye could see….

The flesh on our faces and ears would freeze if we left it exposed for very long, and we tried to wrap anything around our heads to prevent frostbite…. Our fingers froze even in gloves…. They were so stiff from the cold that they refused to perform any function. We could not have fired our rifles. 13