Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

He didn’t have a home any more. Why kid himself? He could have chosen another day to resign once and for all. But now was as good a time as any. No one would disturb him until midday tomorrow. And if the officers went on the lash, as they usually did, probably not then either. Koschmieder, the doctor, was fond of saying that a man who really needs a doctor will send for him two or even three times. As there was no need to worry about medical bills behind the lines, officers became ill just to pass the time. He’d have time to consider his options and reach a decision.

The Kroysing case had opened his eyes. Then from somewhere or other he’d heard a report – disputed and denied – that the Germans had also committed arson and murder when they invaded defenceless little Luxembourg, which had almost been an ally. This news had awakened the historian in C.G. Merten, who doesn’t believe any statement until he has checked his sources. Luxembourg was close by and he had the use of an official car. He’d spent many Sundays and weekdays in the areas of Luxembourg where the Germans had broken through, first in uniform and then in civilian clothes. At first he only saw ruins and rubble, which could have been caused by military action. But he began to find the iron silence of the local mayors and residents disturbing. They obviously thought he was a spy. But he found the information he sought among the crude ironwork crosses in the churchyard, adorned with offensively ugly porcelain medallions of the departed created from photographs. A great many of these worthless memorials were from August and September 1914… In Arlon he had finally met a reasonably friendly American professor, who was travelling through the ravaged area, escorted by an officer, as a delegate of the American Red Cross. His job was to collect information to counteract the incredibly skilful horror stories with which Reuters and the British press were bombarding right-thinking American citizens, in particular American Jews who were fond of Germany. It took Professor Mertens four hours, from 9pm until 1am, to convince Professor Mac Corvin that unlike other German scholars he’d remained loyal to the truth. Then Professor Corvin opened his heart. In Luxembourg alone over 1,350 houses had been burnt to the ground and at least 800 people shot. In Belgium and northern France, the same methods had brought much worse results. The newspaper correspondents might have exaggerated certain details, but the reports were basically true.

Still in deep shock from this, Professor Mertens then had to deal with the case of Corporal Himmke from the Montmédy field bakery, which seemed to confirm his worst fears. While drunk, the man had boasted about his heroic conduct during the battle of the Marne when the village of Sommeilles was burnt down. He and two comrades had burnt six people alive, a grandmother, mother and four grandchildren, who had taken refuge in the cellar of their house. In his naïvety, this blabbermouth had thought it would help if he could prove that what he’d said was true and call witnesses to show that the men had been ordered to burn the village in terms that put little value on the lives of the peasants and their womenfolk. Judge Advocate Mertens saw it that way too and conducted the investigation with a certain hidden fervour. But the officers from Himmke’s unit who were to attend the court martial saw things quite differently, and the communications inspectorate, as the highest authority, backed them up. The man wasn’t to be punished because he’d committed a crime, though they did condemn his crime, but because he’d boasted about it, with the result that the unsavoury matter became widely known, bringing Germany’s conduct of the war into disrepute.

‘We all know that all kinds of unpleasant things went on,’ said one officer privately, ‘but that that bastard should talk about it – he definitely deserves a good thumping for that.’ And a couple of days later when Himmke was collecting the rest of his things from the bakery at nightfall, he was taken from his Landsturm escort by some unknown cavalrymen, and the following day he appeared in the Montmédy garrison hospital having been beaten to a pulp. What was that? It was war. From the point of view of legal history – and at this Mertens, who was warmer now, smiled to himself – there were two strands to justice: inviolate legal certainty, which came from outside, and the laws of revenge and retribution, based on the best interests of a given fighting unit or group. The two were cunningly interwoven such that to the outside world a façade of European civilisation was formally maintained, while behind it raged the impulses and passions that the process of civilisation was intended to control. The Bible and the human conscience demanded one sort of justice. Several other sorts were permitted by contemporary professors and current conditions. Elements of legal practice that countries had surreptitiously allowed before 1914, but had been ashamed of and disclaimed, now shamelessly reigned, though they were still disclaimed, and there seemed to be no restraining power to punish the abuses and put a stop to them. There was gruesome evidence of this in the story of the Belgian deportations, which had upset the European public in recent months, and Judge Advocate Mertens with them, in the punishment camp in Montmédy citadel, the Kroysing case, the submarine war – everything. Hundreds of thousands of civilians arbitrarily removed to Germany to provide slave labour for the law and peace breaker. Hopeless protests from neutral states against these abductions, conducted in the style of Arab slave traders or African rulers, designed to benefit German industrialists and army units short of men. Dark rumours about hundreds of deaths caused by shell fire, malnutrition and disease in the concentration camps. Was that commendable? How could you square that with German culture, with the polished performances of classical dramas put on in the theatres of Berlin, Dresden and Munich?

Well, you could square anything, it seemed. Fur coats and no knickers, his Auntie Lottchen used to say when she saw her little nephew’s neat desk, then pulled out his messy desk drawer. The punishment camp in the citadel had been set up in retaliation for the abuse of German prisoners of war that certain correspondents were supposed to have observed in France and as a way of applying counter pressure. The French government had denied the reports, and the German military administration had believed the reports blindly and ordered one of the courtyards in Montmédy citadel, which was about three-quarters the height of a man, to be covered over with barbed wire and used for French prisoners. They had to bend over double to move about. It was unwatchable.

Mertens, who as a judge advocate was not without influence, had tried to have the camp closed down, but in vain. First, he was told, the French must learn how to treat Germans properly. The idea that information should be checked had entirely disappeared. When he asked if there was any proof, they just shook their heads. With his Moltke-like face, he was seen as an old traditionalist who was obviously overworked and had better grab some leave. No worries, he was going to grab some— the only question was how. The world exuded horror and could only become more horrific, because it no longer contained any cleansing, atoning force: no church, no prophets, no reflection or repentance – and no notion that such things were needed. The world was inordinately proud of its own existence, and it would remain so in peacetime, if peace ever came. He, Mertens, had to go. He was a stain on this world that was so gloriously in agreement with itself. There was a level of shame that was deadly, because it didn’t come from one event or action, but from the very source of one’s existence: the era, the nation, the race – call it what you will. Plenty of people would pass from life to death in cities large and small this New Year’s Eve in the normal course of things – why not him too? There was no shame in standing and falling for the civilisation you loved, silently and with no fuss. He just wasn’t sure how to do it.