Ostkrieg (87 page)

Over and above the impact of Soviet propaganda or political indoctrination that encouraged them to view all Germans, whether men, women, or children, as “Fascists,” many of the Russian soldiers were motivated, as a veteran of Rokossovsky's armies put it, by “blind feelings of revenge.” And who could wonder at this? Tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were from areas devastated by German occupation, had lost relatives or loved ones to the invaders, or had themselves been wounded by an enemy invader. In addition, the ferocity of the fighting had hardly abated, and, even at this late stage of the war, the Soviets were suffering very high casualties. The anger and rage of average soldiers, their desire to wreak vengeance on the people held responsible, were visible for all to see. “We are taking revenge on the Germans for all the disgraceful things they did to us,” wrote one Ivan in a feeling that was representative of his fellows, who believed that they were simply executing a just punishment on the German population, which was now experiencing firsthand the gruesome reality of war. Many Russians indeed regarded their actions as part of the struggle for “people's justice.” “You said we should do the same things in Germany as the Germans did to us,” wrote a son to his father. “The court has begun already.” “Our fellows have not acted any worse in East Prussia than the Germans did in the Smolensk region,” a Red soldier noted in his diary in late January 1945. “We hate Germany and the Germans very much. In a house our boys saw a murdered woman and two children. You often see civilians lying dead in the streets too. But the Germans deserve these atrocities that they unleashed. . . . One need only think of Majdanek and the theory of supermen [Übermenschen] to understand why our soldiers are
happily doing this.” As Soviet soldiers, in their push westward, liberated hundreds of extermination and labor camps and witnessed firsthand the gas chambers, charred corpses, piles of bodies, and pitiful survivors left to die, the deep impression of these atrocities mingled with memories of their own ruined farms and towns to create a powerful anger and thirst for revenge. “Germany must now experience the taste of tears,” wrote one observer after witnessing a destroyed village. “Frightful horrors have been committed on this earth. And Hitler is the one who gave rise to them. And the Germans celebrated these horrors. A gruesome punishment for Germany is only just.”
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Adding to the powerful rage and lust for destruction was the disconcerting realization of most Red soldiers that the standard of living in Germany was immeasurably higher than their own. “The people here live very well,” admitted one at the beginning of February, “better than us. . . . So many fine things!” “There is everything,” exulted another, then added tellingly, “even things that we have never seen.” “We are eating very well, ten times better than the Germans lived in the Ukraine,” claimed one Ivan, while a comrade marveled, “I am swimming in riches.” The shrill contrast between the unexpectedly high German living standards and their own miserable conditions at home, however, inevitably produced confusion, then anger. If conditions were so good in Germany, wondered many, why had they attacked Russia? And, asked others, why don't we live as well as the enemy? To deflect the latter question, Soviet propagandists quickly adopted an explanation reflected in many of the soldiers' letters and diaries: the Germans lived well at the expense of others, for their riches were plundered from occupied Europe. Although effective as an explanation, this propaganda line also served to intensify the anger and rage of average soldiers, who set about plundering Germany like a horde of locusts. Not only were vast quantities of industrial machinery, railroad equipment, raw materials, and even people (for forced labor) carried off to the Soviet Union at the behest of state authorities, but ordinary soldiers also looted with a disconcerting frenzy as the orgy of revenge assumed a material as well as a personal dimension. The alcohol that seemed so abundant and freely available in Germany served to escalate the murderous rage of the Russians. Food, drink, watches, household items—anything and everything was taken and much sent home, hopelessly clogging the Red Army postal service. What could not be consumed or dispatched was often simply burned.
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This lust for destruction also manifested itself in a systematic and persistent campaign of rape and sexual violence, as noted above. Although not the only violent crime committed by Red Army troops as they swept
westward, rape was certainly the most prevalent. In some cases, instances of it had sexual overtones, especially in a restrictive, puritanical, male-dominated society many of whose members were troubled by the sight of German women in provocative Western-style dresses, wearing makeup and in high-heeled shoes. German women, in short, seemed to some both decadent and wickedly seductive and were regarded by many as the spoils of war just as much as food and alcohol. The men's actions, after all, had been encouraged, if not explicitly ordered, by Moscow, whether to destroy the German will to resist or to engage in what would today be regarded as ethnic cleansing, since the stories of Soviet atrocities spurred Germans to flee from precisely those areas to be given to Poland after the war. For most, however, rape had little to do with sex. Rather, it neatly meshed desires for revenge and hatred of the enemy's wealth, reinforced the fragile masculinity of men under enormous strain, and cemented their victory over the German antagonist. It was, as Catherine Merridale has noted, no accident that many German women were gang-raped or raped in the presence of husbands or fathers. In this sense, rape represented the ultimate collective triumph of the group, and, although women were the immediate victims, the larger point was intended for German men: they were now the ones without power who could not intervene to alter the fate of their women or, by extension, their nation. Revealingly, German women often recalled later that, when they protested, Russian soldiers invoked the image not of German soldiers raping their wives but of the invaders killing innocent women and children. They had laid waste to Russia and caused an unimaginable degree of death and destruction; now they would be taught a lesson.
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The fear of the Red Army was by no means limited to the civilian population. By this point in the war, most Landsers understood the fundamentally criminal nature of the war in the east and feared that they might be held accountable by the Russians. Reports now indicated a growing problem with morale and discipline, especially among rear support units and outfits hastily cobbled together from the remnants of units shattered by enemy action, in which the men had no sense of primary group loyalty. Among these men, there was a reluctance to fight and a quickness to take flight; fear of Russian revenge predominated, a mood that easily dissolved into panic. Cases of desertions and plundering soared, retreats often turned into routs; soldiers (and local party officials) not infrequently commandeered places on the trains meant to carry civilian refugees westward from the threatened eastern provinces. Soldiers displayed signs of resigned indifference, lack of empathy, a loss of any sense of the future, and a preoccupation with the fates of their
families. Increasingly, too, Goebbels's propaganda stressing enemy atrocities and raising fears of Asiatic-Bolshevik hordes descending on Germany backfired. For many, it simply reinforced their will to flee, while others regarded it as profoundly hypocritical since, as one man put it, “Weren't our SS men even more cruel . . . ? We have shown the others how to deal with political enemies.” Nor did exhortations on ideological lines have much impact. Holding on seemed foolish to many since it promised only death and destruction, especially as Allied planes now rained down bombs on virtually all areas of Germany unimpeded. Hitler's boast in the 1930s, “Give me ten years and you will have airy and sunny homes, you will not recognize your cities,” was now invoked with bitterness and derision. Local party efforts to stir up enthusiasm were often greeted with indifference; where
Sieg Heil
or
Heil Hitler
once predominated, there was now only a conspicuous silence.
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German soldiers had long fought from a complex mix of motives. The Nazis had been successful to a great extent in mixing traditional aspects of military life (obedience to orders, discipline, fulfillment of duty, camaraderie) with National Socialist notions of the ideal soldier (service to the Volksgemeinschaft, fighting on behalf of an ideal, the soldier as the kernel of a new society, obligations to comrades), so any precise separation of the lines of motivation is difficult. Traditional ideas of fighting to defend family and country mingled with the Nazi racial emphasis on protecting the Fatherland from the allegedly inferior hordes or the threatening Jewish conspiracy bent on destroying Germany (“Wir kämpfen für das Leben unserer Frauen und Kinder!”). In his propaganda, Goebbels appealed to the men's sense of superiority as well as to the simple survival instinct (“Sieg oder Siberian”), while he even sought to use the logic of the hopeless situation in order to continue the fight: a common slogan among men at the end of the war was, “Enjoy the war because the peace is going to be hell.” The Nazis sought to reinfuse men with the original spirit of the movement, reminding them of Nazi accomplishments and that the Volksgemeinschaft was a revolutionary social-egalitarian society that had provided real benefits, both material and nonmaterial. As signs of demoralization and indiscipline increased, Nazi authorities tried other measures, such as active political indoctrination through National Socialist leadership officers. These proved not as effective as hoped, given the time demands on the officers and men, the weariness of the endless retreat, and the fact that propaganda was quickly overtaken by events. Most Landsers instead came to rely for support on trusted officers at the platoon and company level, with their willingness to continue the struggle decisive for many ordinary soldiers.
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To combat the unmistakable evidence of growing demoralization and disintegration among the troops, the Nazi regime used increasingly radical measures as the terror that until now had been visited on the subject peoples was directed against the Wehrmacht and the civilian population. Flying courts-martial and drumhead tribunals punished with death those suspected of any action or utterance deemed guilty of undermining the war effort or damaging the fighting spirit. Men in buildings flying white surrender flags were to be shot, while individual soldiers were authorized to take command of their squads if their nominal superior officer failed to obey orders to resist. Anyone suspected of being a deserter, even those luckless men whose units had simply been shattered by enemy attacks, was to be dealt with in the harshest manner. Such men were dismissed by General Otto Wöhler, the commander of Army Group South, as “cowards and shirkers and therefore war criminals who deserve no mercy since they left their comrades to bear the hardness of combat alone. . . . [They] are to be condemned by a court-martial and shot. . . . Who refuses to fight from cowardice will die in shame!” Not to be outdone, Guderian ordered that “cowards were to be shot ruthlessly.” The consequence of the Nazis' furor directed against their own troops was plain for all to see. At Frankfurt on the Oder, German soldiers wearing signs that proclaimed, “I am a deserter,” hung from both sides of the bridge. Landsers in the final phase of the war grew accustomed to the sight of daily executions or comrades hanging from trees and bridges. In all during the war, Wehrmacht courts sentenced some 35,000 Landsers for desertion, of whom 22,750 received the death sentence, which in roughly 15,000 cases was carried out. In addition, up to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, were summarily executed in this final spasm of terror.
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Nor, in its death throes, did the regime neglect to deal with its perceived enemies. Even as it crumbled from both sides, it took its revenge on internal opponents. Hundreds of anti-Nazi resisters and those who had plotted Hitler's assassination were now murdered, often in the cruelest fashion. As Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller told one, in that characteristic Nazi obsession with the earlier war, “We won't make the same mistake as in 1918. We won't leave our internal German enemies alive.” In addition, throughout Germany in the last weeks of the war, long, meandering columns of emaciated, starving prisoners became a common sight as the Nazis marched survivors of the camps back to Germany to suffer yet further in horribly overcrowded and disease-ridden facilities. Mortality rates were enormous, with those unable to continue the journey simply shot. “It was,” remembered one march participant, “as if they were shooting at stray dogs.” Although some Germans took pity and
offered food to the wretched marchers, many others reacted with hostility and vindictiveness, not infrequently, in a sign of just how deeply Nazi propaganda had taken hold, lashing out at the Jews for their alleged responsibility in starting the war. Throughout Germany, the conquering Allies stumbled on camp after camp overflowing with the unburied dead and the miserable survivors clinging to life.
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By this last phase of the war, Hitler's destructive rage was no longer directed at specific groups, however, but now encompassed the entire nation. In his determination to prevent a repetition of November 1918, no price, even self-destruction (his own and Germany's), was too high to pay. Convinced that his enemies were determined to bring about the ruination of Germany in any case, drawing on his own rigid social Darwinism and, perhaps, as well on Stalin's example, Hitler urged a scorched-earth policy that would deny the enemy the ability to profit from German industrial resources. The idea, of course, was ridiculous since the Allies could easily supply themselves from their own resources, but, if applied, it would have had far-reaching consequences for the German people, whose very existence would have been threatened. In yet another dreadful irony, Hitler, who had long warned that the Jewish conspiracy was out to destroy Germany, resolved himself to take measures that would ensure just such a result. Few in Germany were this fanatic, even those of his close associates who wanted to continue the struggle, and certainly not the mass of the German people, who primarily wondered why he did not end the war and stop, as one put it, “the senseless murder.” In yet another ironic invocation of 1918, Victor Klemperer recorded the bitter contrast noted by one man in late March: “It can't go on much longer . . . , but how we shall suffer in the meantime! What decent people Hindenburg and Ludendorff were by comparison! When they saw the game was up, they brought it to an end and didn't let us go on being murdered.”
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