Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

“I am giving here much of my best strength, both physical and emotional,” Günter von Scheven remarked of the first summer of war in Russia, and later, “The war is becoming a decisive fate for me…. What strengthens me is the insight that each individual sacrifice is necessary, because it is connected with the necessity of the whole.” And Scheven left no doubt that the necessity of the whole was linked to the Volksgemeinschaft. “One doesn’t need to stand in a hail of grenades to experience the change in our era,” he claimed. “Your attitude at home has the same consequences as ours at the front… because we see in you the necessary foundation for the inner frame of mind that will help determine the future. We are… fighting… in the belief that the noble and the best must prove their worth anew in the struggle with the ghastly appearance of materialism. I see the whole nation in a recasting process, in a stream of suffering and blood that will enable it to win new heights.” Amid the ghastly reality of the Russian war, and perhaps despairing of Germany’s ultimate victory, Scheven glimpsed a deeper meaning: “What we see here,” he mused in March 1942, is “perhaps the last, unattainable expression of our time.” Nor did he doubt that this aspiration was intimately bound up with the Volksgemeinschaft. In his last letter, written on the day he died, Scheven reflected: “All our hopes are concentrated on the homeland, the only soil with the authentic people for our creation. It is important that… the holy fire is not extinguished. We are internally armed.” 47

Many Landsers, in fact, had a clear view of a new creation centered on the homeland. “Can a vision, strong in faith, be born into a new world?” mused an anonymous soldier in a letter to his wife in August 1944. “The social order rooted in National Socialism cannot be delayed for ever.” This sense of creating a new society permeated other letters as well. “Despite all its frightfulness,” claimed Sebastian Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in October 1944, “the appearances of this war are only of a secondary character. The primary thing, of course, is the necessity of a new social order in the world to overcome the present contrast between acquired and inherited property, between manual and intellectual labor, between followers and leaders who move in the dazzling light.” Mendelssohn-Bartholdy could not better have articulated this crucial element in Hitler’s vision of a Volksgemeinschaft where status would be based on talent and ability, a conception that inspired a good deal of idealism. The “greatness” of the German soldier, claimed Heinz Küchler, lay precisely in going “unbowed [as] a sacrifice to a [new] world order.” This was, he argued, “a new struggle for the better future.” In November 1944, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy insisted that he was happy “to be one of the nameless in the greater community who takes on every sacrifice for the war in order to serve a future that we don’t know and yet in which we still believe.” The future was manifest to Klaus-Degenhard Schmidt, who exclaimed in December 1944, “The development of the nation… is for me the goal of this struggle. Only with this premise can every sacrifice be demanded…. To me my nation is an earthly law…. I believe in its holy purpose and goals, in its reality as divine providence. It fights for its existence against a world…. It will undergo its spiritual struggle until the end. We may be allowed to sacrifice and help. At stake is the secret as well as the outward Germany. Every year of distress and war was a school, whose meaning was evident despite all the suffering.” 48

The Landser often embraced the notion of Volksgemeinschaft with a startling passion, seeing in it the justification for his own sacrifices. “With us soldiers, whoever excludes himself from the comradeship doesn’t belong to us and would be disowned and publicly denounced before the entire company, and you [at home] should do it as well,” admonished Private W.P. “The entire Volk should know such people, so that they recognize who their enemies are.” Trapped in Stalingrad, another Landser asserted, “I do not begrudge the fate that has placed me here. The harsh difficulty, which could still last for months…, is to us merely a requirement of a higher fulfillment of duty, a higher service to the community.” “I suddenly feel a great strength,” declared Lieutenant H.H., also ensnared in the Stalingrad cauldron. “In times of distress there is only one commandment. What is the individual, when the life of the nation is at stake?” Echoed Lieutenant H.B.: “This war compels us again to make the deepest exertions of all of our powers…. But still we want to hold on because we know: it must be done for our own, for our children’s, and our people’s future. And because we have the belief that our people is not yet exhausted, still has vigorous powers that give it a claim on the future…. If we stick it out now, then we have a future…. It is terrible that such sacrifices are demanded of us as there in Stalingrad. But the Führer will know why they are necessary.” 49

The cause of Volksgemeinschaft led Karl Fuchs to exclaim to his wife, “With loyalty and a sense of duty we must fight for our principles and endure to the end. Our Führer represents our united German Fatherland…. What we do for him, we do for all of you; what we sacrifice in foreign lands, we sacrifice for all of you…. We believe… in the future of our people and our Fatherland…. It is our most holy duty and our most beautiful assignment to fight and struggle for this future. It is worthy of every sacrifice we can make.” For some, this faith seemed a daily reality. Retreating in the winter of 1943, hungry and bereft of supplies, Guy Sajer nonetheless marveled at “the unity of the Wehrmacht …. The sense of order which was part of National Socialism was still very much alive among the troops who were fighting for it.” In late 1944 Sajer still wondered that he and his comrades “could live only for the cause, …and despite all the difficulties and disappointments I had endured, I still felt closely linked to it.” “We are advancing an idea of unity,” he remembered that his beloved Captain Wesreidau had claimed, “which is neither rich nor easily digestible, but the vast majority of the German people accept it and adhere to it, forging and forming it in an admirable collective effort…. We are trying… to change the face of the world.” 50

We are trying to change the face of the world; many Landsers did indeed see their mission as the creation of a new world. Harry Mielert, in November 1941, spoke of a “fervent seeking after new forms,” and a month later Friedebald Kruse emphasized the fierce “desires and requirements being placed on the new [society].” “We held to this one final idea [of a new society] which would justify our sufferings,” Sajer asserted. On another occasion he recalled an officer’s injunction: “Think of yourselves as the trailblazers of the European revolution.” In June 1942, praising a fellow soldier as “the best comrade,” Friedrich Grupe called him “open, without arrogance, and very brave, …full of sympathy and understanding for his men…. He was… a faithful harbinger of a new Germany.” 51

A harbinger of a new Germany: as a soldier put it in September 1943, “We just feel ourselves to be the hearld of our future nation. And that as Landsers. There are no individual destinies here.” Another Landser rejoiced in like fashion in August 1941, “Never has a vision, the soul, an idea…, the superiority of a thought… so triumphed as today.” Claimed yet another, “We know what the Führer is fighting for and we don’t want to stand in the rear, but rather to be constantly endeavoring to be faithful followers! And should fate also demand sacrifice of blood and property from us, then we will grit our teeth and with determined brow, defiance on our tongue, say: I’ll do it. Long live the Führer and his great work!” 52