Stephen Fritz: Frontsoldaten

Driven by hunger and the tormenting fear that the nightly provisions would have vanished by the time they returned, Sajer’s unit spontaneously exerted themselves beyond what they had believed to be their own capacities, which was precisely the outcome aimed for by the training officers. “At the sergeant’s order we halt, and wait for his next order to break ranks and fetch our mess tins,” Sajer recalled upon his return to camp. “But, alas, that moment has not yet come. This sadist obliges us to put our guns back in the gun rack, in their proper numerical order, which takes another ten minutes. We are frantic. Then, abruptly: ‘Go and see if there’s anything left…!’ We surge wildly toward our quarters. Our hobnailed boots throw off sparks as they clatter against the courtyard pavement. We rush up the monumental stone staircase like eighty madmen…. Every face wears the same burning look of exhaustion…. I open my mess tin. I haven’t had a chance to wash it since my last meal…. [Still] I bolt my meal with ravenous hunger…. As we haven’t been given anything to drink, I go over to the horse troughs like everybody else, and swallow down three or four cups of water.” Although he had finally been fed, the long, torturous day still refused to end for Sajer: “Evening assembly and roll call take place in a large hall where a corporal addresses us on the subject of the German Reich. It is eight o’clock. Lights out is sounded…. We go back to our rooms and fall into a dead sleep. I have just spent my first day in Poland.” Sajer himself recognized the purpose of all this arduous training, however, when he remarked of his drill sergeant, “He wasn’t really a bully, but a man with a clear idea of a job to be done…. He made us realize, rightly enough, that if we couldn’t stand a little cold and a vague, possible danger, we would never survive at the front.” 14

Given the nature of their task, to prepare men for the hardships of combat, it is hardly surprising that most recruits had a love-hate relationship with their drill instructors. While resenting the harsh and rigorous training the instructors put them through, most Landsers nonetheless realized that it aimed at the one thing most important to them: survival in combat. Many men even came to see their drill sergeants in paternalistic terms, as Friedrich Grupe illustrated:

I will not so soon forget my drill instructor, “big mouth” Schmidt, as he shooed us up the heights of the training area…. I had the munitions box for the machine gun, filled to bulging with the heavy ammunition, in both hands. I gasped uphill with it, my knees failing in their duty, my heart hammering in my neck.

But there above stood my sergeant, with his arms crossed, shouting: Come on, get going, don’t plead exhaustion as an excuse…! Many ran as if they were already drunk, but there was no mercy. [But] in the evenings “big-mouth” Schmidt comes into the barracks room, sits informally with us, and laughs and jokes and sings with us just like a good comrade…. You get accustomed to it, especially the companionship with the comrades, which helps you get over much. 15

This “language of family,” as Richard Holmes put it, recurred again and again in the letters and memoirs of Landsers and even made its way into their jargon: the slang expression for the senior sergeant in a company was “mother.” Nor was this a happenstance occurrence, for training aimed to build a sense of group identity and solidarity out of the shared privations, as well as to weld young men from diverse backgrounds into motivated, cohesive fighting units. “I’ve become such an integral part of my company,” admitted Karl Fuchs in a letter to his father that admirably illustrated this bonding process, “that I couldn’t leave it ever again.” Similarly, Hans Werner Woltersdorf claimed that “my unit was my home, my family, which I had to protect.” 16

Furthermore, Holmes asserted, “There is a direct link between the harshness of basic training and the cohesiveness of the group which emerges from it.” If so, the tough and realistic German training goes a long way to explaining the remarkable performance of the Wehrmacht during World War II. Also important, however, was the fact that the Germans conducted continual training even of combat experienced troops just behind the front lines. “We went back to our old precampaign schedule of training,” Siegfried Knappe noted after the victory in France. “We had to be prepared for whatever might happen. We planned a full schedule for every day, from 5:00 A.M. until 8:00 P.M. Even though these were the same troops we marched into France with, …we kept them active and practicing. We wanted to keep their skills sharp and to train them in other functions so that if someone was wounded, we would have someone else who could do that job.” 17

“They may well have cursed me every time I made them dig holes in the hard ground in the burning heat in order to cram themselves into the protective covering of the earth,” recalled Hans Werner Woltersdorf, a lieutenant, of the training exercises he conducted in occupied France, “every time they had to bring their antitank guns, mortars, or infantry guns into position so that all the movements became second nature to them; and when, stop watch in hand, I demanded that it take not twenty but only ten seconds to be ready to fire. They had to realize that ‘Take cover, charge, forward march!’ is no punishment drill or sadistic form of harassment but life insurance.” Life insurance, indeed; as Woltersdorf himself acknowledged:

How often did I have to go without sleep in Russia while we continuously pushed forward against the enemy lines, or later, while the Russians stormed our positions… day and night without a respite, when we used Pervitin to keep awake and I had hardly more than twenty-four hours sleep in ten days. That is why I did night drills….

The normal daily routine was followed by the first night drill…. It was miserable. Just as the men were thinking they would make up the lost sleep the next day, I announced that they had only forty-five minutes in which to wash and eat breakfast before resuming their normal daily schedule. After this, they thought, they would sleep that much better the following night. I will never forget their despairing expressions when I announced that evening that they had to assemble in one hour in full marching order with all weapons, light and heavy, in order to repeat the night drill.

At sunrise they stood there again, covered in dust, filthy, and wanting nothing more eagerly than to be able to hit the hay now. But it wasn’t to be! Two hours later, weapon and gun roll call, because weapon care and constant readiness for action are essential! 18

Such intense, rigorous training paid dividends when these men experienced the extreme conditions of the Russian front. “When, seven months later, the Russians had us surrounded in Zhitomir,” Woltersdorf recalled, “I predicted that we wouldn’t get much sleep over the next few days. ‘We’re used to that…,’ said Alfons. ‘You know: Bordeaux!’” As Woltersdorf concluded, “Nothing is more burdensome than having to suffer harassment and injustice, but nothing increases self-confidence more than having withstood hardships.” Hard training, he added, also “had a useful side effect, in that the men regarded their respective commanders as the common enemy, and nothing unites people more than shared rage against someone or something.” 19

Martin Pöppel, too, emphasized the continual operational training he experienced in the paratroops. “The Regiment with all its units, is established in its field positions, which we have worked tirelessly to complete,” he noted in his diary of preparations before the Allied Normandy invasion. “Alarm exercises by day and by night increase our combat readiness.” Like Woltersdorf, Pöppel however, soon had reason to appreciate this exhaustive training. Writing on D-Day, June 6, 1944, he noted of a German counterattack: “06.30 hours. From Rougeville Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Prive makes an attack through the open countryside, pushing towards us. We use light signals to show the direction of the enemy. He pushes closer and closer. In copybook fashion, again showing the value of our tough training, his groups advance, one covering and shooting whilst the other moves forwards firing with sub-machine guns from the hip…. Arms are raised aloft in the thick bushes as the enemy surrenders. A real triumph for Prive, who takes more than sixty American prisoners.” 20