Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

The Labor Service seemed to many young Germans a statement of commitment to building a new society in which everyone, regardless of social position, was expected to work for the good of Germany. The “socialist” aspect of National Socialism could and did have a significant impact on Germans of Grupe’s generation. Although the Nazi revolution stagnated once the war began, the vision of a Volksgemeinschaft endured with great tenacity until the end of the war. Just as important, those who had participated in the Hitler Youth or Labor Service had instilled in them both a general spirit of camaraderie and the expectation of a continued comradeship as they flooded into the army. Grupe expressed this connection well, writing in his diary of a night march in October 1939, “We fought against the fatigue. So we sang at full volume, and… the song spread from company to company and echoed thunderously against the bare facades of the houses.” And the song they sang was one that all the men knew:

“That is actually a song of the Labor Service,” Grupe added revealingly, “but we sing it often, it fits so well: ‘gray soldiers in a storm-swept time.’” 12

Nazi ideological practice thus reinforced Wehrmacht goals, contributing to the creation of those tight groups of men who would fight, suffer, and die together. If in the Labor Service a young man felt a general sense of comradeship, in the army his world was his ten-man rifle squad. The close relationships that sprang up between the men in such a Kameradschaft (the original Prussian term for a small unit) proved vitally important in promoting both cohesion and resilience in the face of the punishing reality. The Landser’s world was circumscribed; what mattered most to him was the small group of castaways with whom he sought to weather the storm of war. If comradeship depended on trust, respect, and mutual loyalty, nothing was better suited to create it than being thrown together with a small group of men each of whose lives depended on the reliability of the others. “My unit was my home, my family,” wrote Hans Werner Woltersdorf, “which I had to protect.” 13

Indeed, the notion of family became a leitmotif in the reminiscences of many men. At the end of his arduous training period, Martin Pöppel wrote in his diary, “From the officers down to the last driver, we had become a family. We were ready.” Friedrich Grupe recorded a scene in his diary in 1939 that could easily have been that of a father reflecting on his brood: “Now once again the intimate life reigns. In the washroom the water is running, in the shower room the showers are splashing. Then the comrades finally lie in their freshly changed beds, fall asleep quickly and snore in the manner of Landsers .” In fact, Grupe and his comrades, perhaps in conscious imitation of the motif of family, referred to their respected and beloved commander as “Papa.” Reflecting after the war on “the community of those accustomed to war and those comrades sworn to each other,” he claimed: “Among them I felt, hardly to be believed, again something like security.” In similarly embracing this close-knit life, Helmut Vethake spoke of “a rewarding joy” when his men assembled before him, seeing in them “a large family that knows they will stay together in happy as in serious situations.” For Vethake himself, this sense of comradeship made his responsibilities easier, since he was “freer to do the important things, the entirely personal matters of contact that are so necessary.” To Wolfgang Döring it seemed self-evident that in these “pitilessly… revolutionary times… the only support lay in the love, loyalty, and reliability of the men next to you.” 14

An awareness of support and security within the group was a principal feature of camaraderie. Many Landsers drew a profound sense of importance from being a member of a tight-knit band, a feeling that revealed an acute longing for community. Upon being reunited with his comrades after a brief separation, Guy Sajer remarked: “Our sense of happiness and relief at meeting again was so great that quite spontaneously we grabbed each other by the shoulders and mimed an exaggerated polonaise, shouting with laughter…. Knowing that my friends were there… made me feel a great deal better.” Friendships, he reflected later, “counted for a great deal during the war, their value perhaps increased by the generalized hate, consolidating me…. in friendships which never would have broken through the barriers of ordinary peacetime life.” Sajer remembered a sergeant’s claim that “a genuine soldier’s life [was] the only life which brings men close to each other on terms of absolute sincerity. Here, a sense of comradeship exists between each and every one of us, which might be put to the test at any moment.” 15

The moment of acceptance into the group, of belonging to the Frontgemeinschaft, often proved a revelation. Willi Heinrich, in The Cross of Iron, described the sudden realization of a replacement named Kern that he had become one of the community of men:

The thought filled him with pride. Suddenly he felt a part of the platoon, as though he had been with it for ten years. It’s a damn fine thing to belong to a crazy bunch like this, he said to himself. We all belong together. All for one and one for all. He no long remembered where he had picked up the phrase, but it sent chills down his spine…. It was a great thing to have comrades…. Comradeship is everything, he thought. It didn’t matter if you pitched into one another once in a while; what mattered was that you could depend on the others when you were in trouble. And, by God, you could depend on these fellows here! You really could, and he was damned glad to be in their platoon.

“I soon felt really at home,” Martin Pöppel confided of his early war experiences, because he had been “accepted into that special circle of men…. From the officers down to the last driver, we had become a family.” Even those outside the front community readily understood the importance of it. “Comradeship must grow quickly,” wrote Karl Friedrich Oertel, a student sent hurriedly to the front in January 1945, “so that [my heart] does not burst from anxiety.” 16

For many men the feeling of camaraderie affirmed their existence in the midst of war’s cruelties and provided a positive ideal to balance the uncertainties of their daily life. “Here among these men I have finally found my inner peace,” wrote Rolf Schroth in the autumn of 1942. “They are a strange breed, these men fighting in Russia, and it had bothered me ever since I’d had to leave them. I could not rest until I had received my marching orders to go back there. This experience of growing loyalty… gives me inner strength” 17Moreover, this feeling of camaraderie could be almost tangible even in the humblest of circumstances. In a haunting and evocative letter, Helmut Pabst recorded one such incident in October 1942:

I went early in the morning through the trenches and found a sentry. He was a small fellow with a round face under his helmet. He stood alone. It was cool. He was freezing, drew his shoulders up, and jumped from one leg to the other. Then a tall, gaunt man with a full red beard slipped out of the dugout for a moment. They greeted each other warmly: “You, do you still have a cigarette?” asked the small man. “Yeah,” beamed the tall one, “wait, I’ll get them right away.” “Do you know,” said the sentry, and one felt that he just once had to say this, “we are really friends, we two.” His round face beamed genuinely from within, and he wanted a confirmation for this great and good thing…. A demonstration, I thought, that there is no greater pathos than in the act of one man giving another a light: it is totally simple, absolutely natural, and it was something grand that took place before me in these early hours in a quiet trench, this friendship between two men. 18