Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

It is hardly surprising, then, that their bond of comradeship often impressed Landsers , just as it had their fathers following World War I, as a valuable organizing principle for civilian society. Camaraderie, as Helmut Vethake noted, was something we “would certainly like to bring back home from here and there preserve, namely the view for the essentials and the satisfaction in simple things: ‘simple people and simple happiness.’” Karl Fuchs thought the future would surely be based on the lessons learned at the front: “A great friendship binds us German soldiers together out here. It is this comradery [ sic ] and the support that we’re able to give each other that is, in my opinion, the secret behind our incredible successes and victories. This loyalty and devotion to the cause again and again was the decisive factor in many a battle…, and this comradeship has been one of the most magnificent experiences out here. This loyalty is the essence of the German fighting spirit. We can depend on each other unconditionally…. Let this loyalty which I’ve experienced out here in comradeship be the foundation of our future life.” 55

Writing from Russia in September 1943, an anonymous soldier asserted, “We can only feel ourselves to be preparing the way for our future nation. And that as Landsers . There is no individual destiny here.” Friedrich Grupe recalled being overwhelmed by the idealistic dream that a new vision of life based on comradeship might form the basis for a new society. After the war, he wrote, “the front soldiers, purified through the great experience of comradeship in the face of death, will decisively undertake the fashioning of the National Socialist Germany and life in the Reich. You, the true Volksgemeinschaft , who have lived in distress, will be called first to be a model and example for the Volk .” 56The experience of comradeship in the trenches thus proved an intoxicating force, leading many to believe that the Frontgemeinschaft could be transferred to a genuine Volksgemeinschaft .

Amazingly, some men even saw in the spirit of comradeship the hope of transcending Nazi racial ideology. Paul Kaysel, a part-Jewish soldier from Berlin, wrote in February 1940: “For the first time since 1933 I have forgotten the curse that otherwise burdened me and in some form was always with me. Now I have the feeling that it only matters what kind of a person you really are, not on what things are written on a piece of paper.” Others, too, felt the tug of this rough democracy, this meritocracy based on character and achievement. Eberhard Wendebourg wrote from Russia that the war had taught him “the true worth of men,” for he had learned “to judge men not by their rank and position, name and honors, but only by their character and performance.” And to those at home, despairing of the final outcome of the war, the spirit of the front soldier often offered a glimmer of hope and meaning. Bernhard Beckering, in the retreat into Germany in December 1944, noted in amazement that the civilian population ardently sought hope from the comradely attitude of the soldiers, an observation confirmed by Martin Pöppel. So powerful and so positive was the impression made by front soldiers on the civilian population of Germany that the Wehrmacht in the latter part of the war even attempted a systematic propaganda campaign using front soldiers to buttress the morale of the home front. 57

The integrating power of the Volksgemeinschaft ideal kept many in its grip until the very end of the bitter fighting. “Only one thing seemed certain to us,” Melita Maschmann recalled, “that no power on earth would succeed in destroying our community.” Out of the earlier crises of World War I and the social and economic upheavals of the Weimar years had come a new ideal: a notion of salvation based on community, an idea that was promoted—especially by the young—with a dynamic intensity and for which many were prepared to make individual sacrifices. The ferocity with which many Landsers clung to a sense of camaraderie reflected not only the experiences of war and the workings of the front but also a persistent belief that this very comradeship signified a new and more positive organizing principle for German society as a whole. The realization, at the very end of the war, that this ideal lay in ruin was devastating; as Friedrich Grupe noted in his diary in April 1945, “In these hours and days for me and for millions a world is sinking, a view of the world is shattering.” For many Landsers , the holy grail remained comradeship, possessed during the hard days and hours of war but lost at war’s end and, many feared, irretrievable. As Guy Sajer recalled regretfully, during the war “we discovered a sense of comradeship which I have never found again, inexplicable and steady, through thick and thin.” 58

Undoubtedly, the romanticism of comradeship was seductive, and many Landsers fell under its spell. But in the end there was something deeper, more intense, less shallow and sentimental, to this feeling. “Timidly I once again stroke his cold hand,” began Claus Hansmann in an entry in his diary entitled “Letter to a Mother”:

The canvas strip falls back and in a disembodying way the cloth blurs his familiar face. Dead. A few minutes ago, as we still shouted our acerbic jokes from foxhole to foxhole…, a bit of shrapnel struck him in the hear…. Dully I crawl back into my foxhole and search for a piece of paper.

“Dear Frau X…?” or simply “To the mother of a comrade….” May it be a comfort to you to hear this terrible news from us comrades, instead of through an official notification. He fell on 25 July in Voronezh, your young son Ernst, lifted out of the midst of the sacrificial life of a soldier. His fate overtook him, and for you as with us opened an awful, painful void. Yet amid all the incomprehensibility, at least a bit of comfort: he was granted a good death, good like the pitiless crack with which a young tree breaks and is not crippled…. But such poor comfort for a mother, for the continual loving concern, for the gladly borne sacrifices, the shattered hopes…. How small are the emotions that a man spends on friendship and love against that which is a mother’s love…. We [are] detached in this hard world of men full of high-sounding notions of “fulfillment of duty….” Yet we also have the reminder of a shattered friendship, of an empty place in the ranks. A place in our hearts is deserted as the days at the front become more difficult. Seeing all the suffering has not made us so numb that in our carefully protected inner being we don’t also feel the pain. 59

Yet for Hansmann, even this heart-rending letter failed to explain his thoughts on the essence of camaraderie sufficiently. In his next diary entry, made at a field hospital, he again returned to the theme. “Comrades?” he puzzled. “Yes, now, here where we everywhere stand alone, they are more important than perhaps otherwise, where human weaknesses would sometimes be unbearable through the crowding together.” Spotting a buddy, Hansmann inquired about his squad, which had been scattered in a recent battle. “What about the rest?” he asked anxiously. What about

Karl, Hansl, and Willi? You hang on his words as if it were your own fate you must hear. A tired, vague movement of the hand underscores the definitive “dead.” You can’t comprehend it…. You look at each other, you survivors, with whom you lay together in the same foxhole day in and day out, at night stood watch shoulder to shoulder, with whom you laughed together, cooked, ate, slept, fought with and made up with. Within you something aches impulsively, that you were not with them, although reason says: Probably never again will luck so clearly favor you…. What binds you together under the rough surface? [Men whom] chance has thrown together, certainly not meant for one another? What binds the living so strongly and so loyally to those who are dead? How are we tied in common? Often misinterpreted, by a few completely understood, bound by chains of necessity: Comradeship? 60