Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

In addition to the din of combat, virtually all Landsers noted the unique odors of war. “One smells a curious odor,” Harald Henry wrote of Russia, “that for me will probably always stick to this campaign, this mixture of fire, sweat, and horse corpses.” Another veteran of the Russian campaign also claimed that he would never forget the “compound of smells: stale urine, excrement, suppurating wounds, and the most unpleasant smell of Kasha, a sort of buckwheat porridge.” Friedrich Grupe was struck by the “repulsive stench of powder, burning iron, and earth.” Similarly, Siegfried Knappe “learned that the smell of rotting flesh, dust, burned powder, smoke, and gasoline was the smell of combat.” During a night attack, Knappe also observed the role played by smell in his unit’s success: “The surrounded Russians… were attacking my battery… and my men were defending themselves…. They could not see the Russians they were shooting at, but they could… smell them! The Russian soldiers smelled of makhorka tobacco, which had a very strong unpleasant odor…. This awful smell got into their thick uniforms and could be smelled for quite a distance.” 41

The Italian war correspondent Curzio Malaparte noted, in the early months of the Russian war, that the “odor of rotting things rose from everywhere…. The smell of rotting iron won over the smell of men and horses…. Even the smell of grain and the penetrating, sweet scent of sunflowers vanished amid that sour stench of scorched iron, rotting steel, dead machinery…. The smell of iron and of petrol grew stronger in the dusty air… as if the smell of men and beasts, the smell of trees, of grass and mud, was overcome by that odor of gasoline and scorched iron.” Siegbert Stehmann commented on the “sweet smell of decay” that filled the air after a battle, as did Wolfgang Kluge, who noted “everywhere the disgustingly sweet smell” of rotting bodies. Johannes Huebner claimed that the worst aspect of the war was the “noxious odor of fire…, corpses, the wounded, [and] the burnt cattle.” Guy Sajer explained simply: “We could smell the presence of death, and by this I don’t mean the process of decomposition, but the smell that emanates from death when its proportions have reached a certain magnitude. Anyone who has been on a battlefield will know what I mean.” 42

For many men one of the sharpest and most agonizing sensations of the war resulted from its awful impact on horses. “On the way lay a wounded horse,” wrote Harald Henry in October 1941. “It reared, someone gave it a mercy shot, it sprang up again, another fired…, the horse still fought for its life, many shots, but the rifle shots did not quickly finish off the dying eyes of the horse…. Everywhere horses. Ripped apart by shells, their eyes bulging out from empty red sockets…. That is just almost worse than the torn-away faces of the men, of the burnt, half-charred corpses with their bloody broken chests.” Despite all the bloodletting and mutilation of one battle, Friedrich Reinhold Haag was most shaken by the sight of a “beautiful white horse grazing by a ditch. An artillery shell… had torn away his right foreleg. He grazed peacefully but at the same time slowly and in unspeakable grief swayed his bloody stump of a leg to and fro I don’t know if I can accurately describe the horror of this sight…. I said then… to one of my men: ‘Finish that horse off!’ Then the soldier, who just ten minutes before had been in a hard fight, replied: ‘I haven’t got the heart for it, Herr Lieutenant.’ Such experiences are more depressing than all the ‘turmoil of battle’ and the personal danger.” 43

Some Landsers were gripped by odd historical sensations, treading as they were on ground fought over by their fathers in World War I, or by Napoleon’s ill-fated troops in 1812. Fighting on the Belgian-French border, Helmut Neelsen was stunned to discover that his “company commander [was] wounded in the same place where twenty years ago his father gave his life for Germany.” Hans-Heinrich Ludwig remarked in a letter from Russia, “I am living for the first time in a bunker just like father in 1914–1918,” adding, “I often think about that.” Marching through the Chemin des Dames area of Champagne, much contested in World War I, Private H.B. mused that it was “a historic region, whose soil was soaked through with the blood of our fathers in the world war.” The bloody fighting near Sevastopol in June 1942 caused Alois Dwenger to admit that “many times we think about Verdun.” 44

Images of the Great War were even more pressing for those who fought in both wars. Private A.M. noted dispassionately, “Now for the second time I am conscripted to France as a soldier and find myself not far from my old battle grounds of the year 1918.” Similarly, Captain F.M. observed: “Our company is now located almost in the area where I was situated in the world war. Many times I cannot believe whatsoever that twenty-three years have passed since I experienced those stormy days…. Certainly it would have been more comfortable to experience the war from home, yet I would have been ashamed of myself if I were not also there this time, in order later to say with satisfaction: ‘I was there in the world war, when we lost the war, but I was also there again when we won in an unheard-of rapid fashion.’” Corporal E.B., marching through Flanders, was surprised that “the trenches and dug-outs [of World War I] were still there, duds still lay about, as did large heaps of corrugated iron that had been removed from the bunkers.” Less surprising was the fact that when the first snows of that terrible Russian winter of 1941 descended on the German soldiers, some remembered an earlier attempt to conquer Russia. “One really cannot conceive why we have not received any winter things,” wrote Private L.B. in November 1941. “If it goes on this way, it’ll go like Napoleon…. But I believe that in 1812 they were better prepared against the cold than we were. Almost everyone’s socks are worn out, no one has earmuffs…. So little concern for us! In the year 1941! (not 1812!)…. If I was not in the military myself… I would not believe it. But I have seen and experienced it.” 45

Ultimately, it was precisely this sense of wonderment, the diverse sensory knowledge gained from personal experience and observation, that fascinated the Landser . “Those who haven’t lived through the experience may sympathize,” Guy Sajer declared, “but they certainly will never understand.” The myriad sensations felt by the Landser, the intense feeling of living for the moment, produced a sense of affirmation, validating his existence and at least temporarily stifling the pervasive fears of death. Hans Pietzcker quoted Goethe in an attempt to convey the impact of the sensory experience of war: “I am happy, and when I am not, at least all the deep feelings of joy and sorrow dwell in me. The main thing is that you have a soul that loves the truth and that you absorb it where you find it.” And where had Pietzcker found such truth? “In the midst of distress and death,” he confirmed, “how… much we have first learned here about living life.” To some Landsers, in fact, the sensations produced by war proved all too authentic: they wondered what life would be like without them. “In the final analysis,” Kurt Reuber conjectured, “after all the profound experiences [of the war] our further lives will not have much worth.” 46

Writing just a month after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Gerhard Meyer had already been reduced to near hopelessness by the savage fighting taking place along the Dnieper: “To believe that the rotten smell of dead bodies is the beginning and end of life and the final purpose and meaning of our existence is unbearable to me.” Just a few days later, however, he spoke of a sense of renewal: “I have been directly at the front for five days and nights, and at night, despite the nearness of the enemy, have rejuvenated my soldier’s heart by roasting chickens in the bunker [with my comrades].” 1For the Landser, life in the midst of terror and uncertainty often seemed bearable only because of the intense feeling of camaraderie forged in the fiery furnace of battle. Comradeship provided a sense of affirmation of life amid the prevalence of all-consuming death and a confirmation of community, even as these tight-knit groups disintegrated. It sustained a feeling of invulnerability and well-being, even when all understood the tenuous nature of life at the front.