quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
I started watching WWII treasure hunters on youtube (speaking of rabbit holes!). There are a couple of russian channels that are constantly digging up unburied soldiers from around Stalingrad and other places. They all appear to be in marshes and were just left there. Never buried and just let the environment take over their bodies. It's hard to believe that the Soviet gov't never went and retrieved the weapons and buried the dead.

A good buddy in Germany, who's a cop and thus had some connections with the German Red Cross, had two grandfathers perish in Stalingrad, another was wounded and survived. All he had for a long time was a letter stating one GF had gone missing on 12/15/42. The Red Cross later ID'ed the body, maybe 10 years ago, and moved it to a proper cemetery for German war dead right there in modern-day Volgograd.

And then a few mos. ago they found a mass grave of 58 German soldiers there and were able to ID all of them. My buddy's other GF was in that one. The German Embassy and Red Cross arranged a nice wreath laying ceremony there and it was made into a short news story. My buddy flew out to Volgograd for it.

I read the book, Stalingrad, by Antony Beevor last year on the flight from Berlin to Seattle.

It was kinda a documentary about the battle, and it's aftermath. It was a horror story of epic proportions.

While visiting the Kaiser Wilhelm church in Berlin, I saw a cool old peice of art, and didn't think any more of it. A couple weeks later, I read a chapter in Stalingrad about a painting called fortress Madonna. The next page had a picture of the Fortress Madonna. It was the painting I saw in the church.

I really regret that I saw it in person, before I knew its history. It was worth alot more than a passing glance.



It was painted in charcoal on the back of a Russian map, in a bunker in Stalingrad.

The artist, Dr Kurt Reuber was a doctor in the German army. According to Antony Beevor, the author of Stalingrad, Dr Reuber was shot in the back of the head by a Russian soldier, for tending to a German soldier who had fallen down on a forced March.

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
If you haven't already read it, the book "The Forgotten Soldier" written by a German soldier serving on the Russian front in WWII is a great look into what life was like for a German grunt on the Eastern front.

Great book. I also recommend "D-Day Through German Eyes" by Holger Eckhertz.

quote:

Great book. I also recommend "D-Day Through German Eyes" by Holger Eckhertz.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I agree. Read that last year.

I had a friend born and raised in Nazi Germany. Didn't like to talk about it much but he was forced into the Hitler youth program. Would just talk about how horrible it was to live there then. Can't imagine being a soldier on the eastern front. Stalingrad in particular. Being under supplied during that Russian winter had to be a hellish nightmare.

My old boss (German) is in his mid-40s, and I make it a point to ask just about every German I meet what his/her father or grandfather did in the war. Boss's grandfather was a Fallshirmjäger (paratrooper), always said the war was the best time of his life and it never ended for him. While a POW he became friends with his captors and later started a business training police and military dogs. He made a good living supplying dogs to the US military thereafter. I've met plenty of folks who were true believers back in the day, but later came to see how bad that regime was. Though I sort of think they only came to that conclusion because their country ended up in ruins, occupied by foreign troops and all of them lost loved ones in the war.

And if you want to see some great films from the German perspective, you must rent Generation War, a terrible translation of the real German title, Unsere Mütter, Unsers Väter (Our Mothers, Our Fathers) and Before the Fall, in German: NAPOLA, Elite für den Führer. You won't stop thinking about them after you see them.

My late Uncle Micky, an orphan born in 1920 in Dresden, joined the Wehrmacht at age 18 in 1938, just like a lot of young men of his era.

In early March 1945, he ended up in a ditch along the A57 highway near Moenchengladbach, lacking an eye, a deal of his left arm and leg, and wondering what was coming next. He was a Funker - radio technician, and in all the years he had been a soldier in what was ostensibly a sedentary MOS, had nevertheless managed to earn a second and first class Iron Cross, get four wound awards and three close-combat medals. Some radio-op, eh?

He was too badly injured for the follow-up American infantry to deal with, so he got passed to the Brits, who sent him to UK to get fixed up. It was at the recuperation centre that he met my aunt Ruby, one of the first female physiotherapists, and six months late they got married. He got employment with a radio and TV business in the town in which they lived, and it was he who taught me German when I was a young'un. He was a staunch catholic, in spite of being married to a Jew, due to his upbringing in a convent-driven orphanage in Dresden. He had the chance to go back on a few occasions, but never took it up - where the orphanage had been was a flattened piece of ground fifty times bigger than Yankee Stadium.

He never really thrived in Wales, but accepted his destiny with good grace. He was a gentle man, and I remember him with great affection. He died the day before his 48th birthday, from pneumonia after a hard winter, in January 1968. His wife survived him by only five years, but I know she missed him every day of that time. Not all Germans killed Jews, or slaughtered civilians, and although he had had a hard war, he never complained about that either.

My wife's mother was a doctor in the Southern Russian army during Stalingrad. The only thing my wife remembers her mother speaking about was "the only water to drink was rain water collected in the vehicle ruts". During the war my wife's mother lost her first husband & her first child. My wife's father survived after being seriously wounded. Except for an uncle that was in Kamchatka, all the others in the family died except her two grandmothers. Her father's mother was shot by a German Officer in the street during the occupation of Rostov because she "looked like a Jew". After being told she was Armenian, the German had her taken to a hospital where she survived. The body of one uncle has never been found, nor do they know where he died.

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:
Dang, the Germans already had video stores.

The German word was "film", which has all the same meanings as in English. So he was asking her whether she had picked up developed frames from the photo shop, or possibly 8 mm film which was around then in the form of double-exposure 16 mm cassettes.

Sütterlin cursive in old German documents is a major stumbling block. Fortunately there now is OCR which can read it, because the generation which still learned it is dying out. I'm forever grateful to late family members who at some point typed up letters from their kin to save them for posteriority.

My father's dad was a miner, an occupation deemed essential for the war effort; so he was never drafted for WW II, and there isn't much documentation from that side of the family at all. However, my mother's is a professional military family going back a long way, and with a penchant for history.

Years ago I got transscripts of letters my grand-grand-uncle Friedrich von Ingenohl wrote home in 1901-1903 while subsequently commanding heavy cruisers SMS Kaiserin Augusta and Hertha, then flagships of the German Imperial Navy's East Asia Squadron based out of Tsingtao. He later made admiral and rose to commander of the German High Seas Fleet. In 1915 he was relieved over the repeat fiasco of the Battle of the Dogger Bank, though in another letter I saw he blamed his dismissal on an intrigue in the naval cabinet.

His younger brother-in-law, my grand-grandfather, served as an army officer in WW I, afterwards joined one of the notorious Freikorps volunteer formations fighting the Soviets in the Baltic, and eventually got taken over into the new Reichswehr where he fought the communists in the 1920 Ruhr Uprising. By the time the Third Reich rolled around, he was a semi-retired "supplementary officer" with the rank of colonel in charge of the Reichswehr recruiting post in Kassel, later Wehrmacht District Command II.

In 1941 he was re-activated at age 43, promoted major general and put in command of a replacement brigade which was quickly sent to Belorussia, where its troops were used piecemeal for rear area security against partisans. During this time both his sons went MIA in Russia, one an infantry captain, the other a fighter pilot who per post-war information appears to have been shot when the Soviet field hospital he was taken to as a prisoner after bailing out retreated from the advancing German front.

Along with his failing health (he went temporarily blind in the winter of 1941/42), that seems to have turned the general into a bitter crank and pain in the arse to his superiors. In a post-war letter, he claimed that when an SD extermination squad came to the town where his HQ was located to kill of the local population - which he described as "Jews of the worst, dirtiest kind" - he threatened to have his own troops fire on them, and managed to get some of the locals out under the guise of "work parties" before he was temporarily called away and the SD did their thing.

His account doesn't quite check out with times and places I found however, though it might just have worked. Never been really sure whether it was true, or something he made up to acquiesce his regrets about things he did or didn't do; the adressee of that letter didn't seem like somebody he needed to defend himself to, anyway. He was however retired in 1942, ostentatively on health reasons, but listed as a general fired for political reasons in an Allied propaganda leaflet somebody showed him later in the war. Per family lore, he showed it to his American interogator when temporarily arrested in 1945, who confirmed the list was real and he was lucky to be alive.

The best-documented life of a wartime family member is my granduncle's, who went MIA near the war's end in Eastern Prussia as a regimental commander when he went forward to a battalion command post which unbeknownst to him had already been evacuated and taken by the Soviets. Some years ago I got an absolute treasure trove on him from the effects of a late grandaunt - inocculation certificates, school reports, insurance lists, academy evaluations, promotions, a receipt for a privately purchased Beretta pistol, everything.

Then on top, an uncle gave me transscripts from letters this guy wrote home while deployed to the Kuban River front in Southern Russia as a division executive officer in 1943. I translated excerpts to English for another board back then. I'll see that I find the time on the weekend to repost some of them here; they make an interesting contrast to the one in the OP, since as a career officer who had spent most of the war in logistics commands so far, he was actually quite enthusiast to finally get to the front (which despite his posting to a division HQ turned out to be trying enough).

quote:

Originally posted by P210:
Those involved were Gerh, short for Gerhard, to Miss Lotte Bremer in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony.

My feeling, reading it, is that Gerhard was a conscript sent to war in the service of his country who just wanted to be back with his girl, family and other loved ones, and harbored no ill will toward anyone.

Yes, that is the way I read it, too. During my tours in Germany, I met several Germans who had been on the Russian front. None of them had fond memories of it. A couple were "late returnees" having been imprisoned for quite some time after the war ended. They also had memories of friends who didn't survive the prison camps.

I also met a couple of Germans who told of Russian soldiers they had come across during occupation of the East zone. Very interesting to actually talk to them about those experiences. And in the village my wife is from, there was a Russian who had been a prisoner, started to return home (to Russia) and decided he would rather stay in the village and came back.

Also, the village butcher had been a prisoner in Russia for some time. We discussed it (not much) over the years.

Years ago, in the fifties, my father hired a Russian immigrant, who was a draftsman. He had been a Russian soldier, captured and brought back to Germany for slave labor. His job was to clear wreckage from the city streets caused by alied bombing DURING the bombing. My dad said he had no use for anything German and would curse at a German Shepherd if he saw one on the street.

When I was in the British Military Mission, I was based in the early 80's in Berlin and Potsdam,and we had a lovely German lady as a baby-sitter for our then one-year-old daughter.

Her father had been taken prisoner at Stalingrad, and put down a coal-mine near Ekaterinburg. He did not see daylight again until 1956.

He was released and given a train ticket and told to go home, which he did, remembering that at that time there was no wall in Berlin.

Of the 600 prisoners in his group, he was one of just five who survived.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
The best-documented life of a wartime family member is my granduncle's, who went MIA near the war's end in Eastern Prussia as a regimental commander when he went forward to a battalion command post which unbeknownst to him had already been evacuated and taken by the Soviets. Some years ago I got an absolute treasure trove on him from the effects of a late grandaunt - inocculation certificates, school reports, insurance lists, academy evaluations, promotions, a receipt for a privately purchased Beretta pistol, everything.

Then on top, an uncle gave me transscripts from letters this guy wrote home while deployed to the Kuban River front in Southern Russia as a division executive officer in 1943. I translated excerpts to English for another board back then. I'll see that I find the time on the weekend to repost some of them here; they make an interesting contrast to the one in the OP, since as a career officer who had spent most of the war in logistics commands so far, he was actually quite enthusiast to finally get to the front (which despite his posting to a division HQ turned out to be trying enough).

Found them. Some general info on this guy:

31 March 1909 born at Pfalzburg (Phalsbourg), Lorraine (today French again), as the son to a captain of the Prussian Army.

1929 joins Infantry Regiment 3 of the Reichswehr in Eastern Prussia as an officer candidate.

8 August 1931 graduates as an ensign from Infantry School at Dresden.

6 August 1932 graduates officer course as a senior ensign and extends his term to a total of 30 years.

1 May 1933 commissioned second lieutenant.

1 December 1934 promoted first lieutenant; transferred to Infantry Regiment Marienburg where he served as a battalion adjutant.

1937 becomes an aide-de-camp on the regimental staff and trains for the War Academy exam which he passes in early 1939.

1 January 1939 promoted captain (the certificate is first to say "in the name of the Führer and Reich Chancellor" rather than "the Reich", the German Eagle imprint in the document replaced by the Third Reich eagle and swastika).

1 April 1939 made regimental adjutant, and in that capacity takes part in the attack on Poland in September that year.

29 September 1939 awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class by the commander of 21st Division. There is no citation, but an evaluation by his regimental commander from 4 December describes him as "fully proven before the enemy" and fit for general staff service.

30 January 1940 attached to the general staff and subsequently becomes transport commander for the Warsaw area.

1 January 1942 provisionally commanded to fill the slot of Ia (first general staff officer) at Wehrmacht Transport Command Center.

25 February 1942 tasked with holding transport classes for the 5th General Staff Officer Course.

1 April 1942 promoted major.

10 August 1942 takes over as Ia for Wehrmacht Transport Command Paris. He seems to expect some adventures there, since on 6 August he buys a personal Beretta 7.65 mm pistol at a Berlin hardware store for 47.20 Reichsmark, its original Italian proving certificate dated 12 July 1941.

15 January 1943 again transferred to become Ia for Wehrmacht Transport Command West.

1 May 1943 promoted lieutenant colonel.

Here's some excerpts from his letters after he is ordered to take over as executive officer of 73rd Infantry Division on the Kuban. He wasn't the biggest writer (in fact he failed grade in school once over it), and I stuck closely to his style including abbrevations when translating; so don't expect "All Quiet On The Western Front".

quote:

26 July 1943

[...]

Since nothing had been communicated about my posting up to this point, I was more than eager. First I met an old acquaintance from my old 1000-[sic]-man-army regiment as outer office man and then was received in a very brief and military way by the colonel himself, in which he shortly announced to me that he had decided based upon the presented good evaluations to chose me as the Ia of a division deployed at the Kuban bridgehead. That was really more than I would have ever expected. 1. Ia, which is already a monstrous fluke and 2. at a combat front, which after all is still permanently in the focal point of battle. My predecessor there, a class and division mate from 1930/31 at Dresden, is not required at once, so that I have some time to work myself in.

[...]

My plane trip goes on the 27th from here to Vynitsa, on the 28th to Simferopol and then via the individual superior commands to the peninsula across the Kerch Strait. I calculate to be there on the 30th at the latest. I am infinitely happy.

quote:

27 July 1943

[...]

After a quite early rise at 4.30 hours I left for the airfield at 5.30 and boarded the plane at 7.00 hours. That is quite a big club which goes into such a Ju. Besides 5 men aircrew we are 14 more officers and about 8 - 9 hundredweight baggage and courier mail. Much space to twist or turn does not remain now either, though. Now we have been airborne for over 2 hours with almost cloudless sky. At the start the sun rather blazed upon my brush, but now we have more of a Southeast direction, so that one does not feel it. The scenery is terribly desolate.

[...]

The next landing is at Vynitsa, from there an hour later another plane to Zaporizhia, and if I am lucky, today on the late afternoon yet another one from there to Simferopol. There I have to report first thing.

[...]

quote:

29 July 1943

[...]

Report my arrival on location effective 28.7. 16.00 hours. If I look at the distance covered in my mind, then I am still astonished how one can in 1 1/2 days - really in 9 1/2 flight hours and 5 car hours - manage such a distance after all.

[...]

The town makes the impression of a real rear echelon town and for Russian conditions quite proper. The street is crawling with soldiers, and for the usual picture of a Western town all that is missing are really just the woman signal auxiliaries. For dinner we ate very well at the army group, so that there was hardly a difference there at first either. The only and biggest difference is merely the whole uniform picture. One almost sees not a single field-grey uniform anymore, but just tropical uniform of every variant. Long pants, breeches, mostly however simply short pants with knee socks or just anklets over the boots. In part there are riding boots worn with the short panties. At first it feels funny when you report to the chief of staff, a general, and suddenly somebody in short panties and open shirt is standing before you. I find it most practical however and have received the first pieces this afternoon already.

[...]

On 28.7. I then rose at 1/2 7 hours, was rolled off to the airfield at 1/2 8 hours and took off at 8 hours with a combat plane. This flight was interesting especially due to the many beautiful points which the Crimea offers terrain- and nature-wise. We were also flying quite low, so that one could see everything very nicely. The Black Sea - which by the way is not at all black, but deeply green to blue - Feodosia etc. Then we were suddenly over on the Taman peninsula. The flight lasted 1 1/4 hours total.

[...]

I now steamed on with a car. That was a significant difference, firstly due to the road conditions, which I called more than beastly from my point of view, and secondly due to the dust, which was all but desert-like. At any rate the old hands claim that this all was nothing at all yet and I had seen only the best in roads, and those even in best weather. At any rate this final 5-hour car drive was enough for me.

[...]

Happily I found class mates at 2 commands next- and next-to-next-higher to me, which will doubtlessly ease my later work. The one I am relieving here is my class and division mate too, who however is little glad of my appearance here since he felt very much at home here in his position and places little value on any other position. The div. cdr., Lt. General von Bünau, whom I also know in passing from Dresden, Knight's Cross bearer, is making a wholly excellent impression, and I think that I will lead a good marriage with him. Otherwise the first impression of my immediate co-workers is a very favorable one, too. The mass is, like the troops too, from Swabia. Hard is currently the situation forward. Permanent Russian thrusts have lead to small losses of terrain before I came here, which to conquer back has cost much blood already. This is of course a hard beginning. I cannot help anything at all yet, as without knowledge of terrain there is no advising, I on the other hand do not see anything of the terrain during a combat action. My predecessor therefore has to stay about another 14 days to have me introduced in any respect. A too little in this can cost many human lifes, any other reasons have to stand back there at once. The difference between my position so far and the present one becomes rather clear to me in these combat days. If I had messed up somewhere earlier, then maybe a couple trains would have arrived late; if I do something wrong now, it will cost valuable blood and human lifes. [...]

quote:

1 August 1943

[...]

By now I have been forward to the rgt. and btl. three times and found that we are defending us in a terrain which might be the most difficult there might be. Steepest stone slopes mostly wooded, dropping harshly, always overtowered by a ridge running perpendicularly or in parallel again, and blocked in there now our good landsers and the Romanian brothers-in-arms intermixed. I have come into a somewhat difficult combat action at this time, and I can just state over and over again, what the German soldier is for a man after all. 2-3 days in permanent gruelling artillery fire which in its severity is lacking nothing from the barrages on the Western Front according to World War participants, then the Russian comes and is greased off, and finally the German stands to for the counterthrust, is greased off too, stands to again and makes it. In this, btl. are sometimes just a hundred to a hundred and thirty men strong anymore versus an authorized strength of 600 - 700. And when they have eventually achieved success, then of 100 men only 20-30 have arrived at the final target anymore. Those then hold the sector which was filled by 100, and when the next standing-to is demanded, then those 30 men assault like they were still a full btl.

In those rides to the front you are dependant upon the kindness of the Russian, if he pops you a couple before or behind the car on the access roads which can be overlooked in many places over 1 km, but a.t.m. he seems to be better occupied otherwise, because I have not been harrassed a single time so far. Yesterday afternoon on the walk from one btl. command post to the other I had, for cutting short, to go down hell for leather a steep slope about 3 km long which was too steep to walk up already, since this slope could also be overlooked by the enemy. In this racing down on lose gravel I had finally picked up so much speed that I simply could not slow down any more, until I eventually could not put my legs forward fast enough anymore and did a salto which took me 5 meters ahead in one swoop. The only loss is my monocle.

[...]

quote:

8 August 1943

[...]

Newspapers I do not read here at all of course, firstly due to lack of time, secondly since usually severely outdated. The army dispatch and the short news I always get in the evening in copy from our intelligence and propaganda compiler. When, as today, you read of fighting at the Kuban bridgehead, I am not always directly involved, but any major attack of course affects our total forces here. Yesterday I was forward on a hill position when a new dance of the Russians commenced with an artl. fire like I have never experienced so far. For two hours it dinned, even though the matter was about 10-12 kilometers North of me. This morning the same dance. What remains of our good men forward in this is still astonishing to me with the force of that fire. The attacks following such witchdance are the easiest part, big of mass, lousy of quality, only people of 16-17 or over 45 years. If it was just the infantry and not this monstrous fire, we would long have sent the whole club to hell already. [...]

Yesterday afternoon I made my introductory visit to the Romanian mtn. div. subordinated to us, and their cdr. If all officers and enlisted were as proper and thorough-going as their div. cdr., we would stand better with our whole war action here. The coy. stands, falls and runs with their leader, after all. They are also very much weighing us down in command of course, since they are acting independently under us in part of the sector despite overall subordination.

[...]

quote:

10 August 1943

[...]

In our valley we notice the war outwardly just by the artl. fire and the enemy aircraft. All the more we notice however through our paperwork and the daily casualty numbers, which unfortunately even on days where there are no enemy attacks but just the usual shooting amount, including the Romanian div. subordinated to us, to 55 - 60. Of those about 6-8 are dead, the others injured. It is bitter, those daily numbers, and yet ever again wonderful to see the guys forward in position, how they are upbeat and making it through this all.

[...]

quote:

14 August 1943

[...]

After a farewell jamboree for my predecessor, which went on until his departure this morning at 4.45 hours - without me, since due to work and the jobs to be done today I skived off at 23.30 hours this time already - I am now monocrat. If it does not come too thick right away with possible enemy incursions, then I am going to slowly rock myself in all right. Today at noon I finally moved into my legal residence, too. It is a small cottage 100 m opposite my duty seat. The inhabitants have long since been turned out. It is lying on an ascending slope with a small veranda and 2 chambers. The first is for my batman, whom I am taking over only in 4 weeks since he has now gone with my predecessor and then has leave, the second is for me with a wire bed minus mattress, instead 5 horse blankets, a 6th for a cover and a 7th for a pillow. Depending upon cold I can - later, when the necessary calluses will be there - take one away below and add it on top. A table with washing utensils, a stool with washbowl, a mirror (enormous! only allowed to cdr. and Ia) and a desk, several clothhangers and a nightstand are making my furnishings more than luxurious for Eastern conditions.

[...]

quote:

15 August 1943

[…]

One thing I have probably not told you yet either, that malaria is rampant here. As a prophylaxis, you have to take one atebrin tablet here each day. Despite this we have up to 10 drop-outs due to malaria in the force daily.

[…]

I am having to scratch myself perpetually for 2 days, where I do not know whether it is the really small slugs which you do not see at all, or whether it is fleas, which are – despite being scarce in Europe else – still quite common. My scratching and my cursing merely evokes a lenient smile in my surroundings, as the old warriors have long since come to terms with this.

[…]

Today the son of my div. cdr. got the Knight’s Cross as a cpt. in his pz. div. My general already has it since the French campaign and has been up for the oak leaves for some time now. His youngest son was killed in action as a lt. 2 months ago, which is still visibly weighing upon him. When I congratulated him for his son today, he said really sadly, the youngest would soon get it too now, if he was still alive. The whole composition of our staff is, except for the civil servants, very nice and familial, since it is Franconians and Swabes for the most part.

[…]

quote:

24 August 1943

[…]

You may quite reasonably stick with your good wishes which you send on the way with every letter, because there are in fact many rocks such a field mail bag has to circumnavigate in the truest meaning of the word, because the way from the Crimean to the Kuban often brings some mishap with it, either one of our shippies getting torpedoed, or running onto mines, or a cage of our cable car connecting the two peninsulas tilting, and then bringing Neptune the joy of our correspondence instead of ourselves, provided that Neptune is not illiterate.

[…]

Today now circumstances have occurred with me which are putting me and my whole work to a very hard test. My general got the news last night that his oldest, who got the Knight’s Cross 10 days ago, has now also been killed in action. At the end of April his youngest, now his oldest. He had not yet come over the first loss, so that the new one has shaken him completely. The only two kids. He has now been given 4 weeks of leave immediately. As successor for command of the div. a colonel has come from corps. Since the Romanian div. is led by a lt. gen., it cannot be subordinated to the colonel as a battle group. Consequently, the Romanian is now the leader of the battle group, the staff for it is mine and I for the battle group chief of staff to him, but else Ia to my colonel. That will bring much work and grief, as the Romanians obviously have different views and opinions. With my inherent thick-skinnedness I will bite myself through that too, though. My main opponents I know, those are the 5!! general staff officers of the Romanian div., who are now seeing their chance and want to co-govern with their general.

[…]

My new div. cdr. or rather leader has been known to me for some time already, too. He has the byname “hour theft” with us, since he talks infinitely much and entertains you for an hour and more without a break on the telephone.

[…]

quote:

31 August 1943

[…]

If in the meantime until the arrival of this letter the Wehrmacht dispatches have reported of the hopefully thwarted new attack from all three elements, water, air and earth, then this my work has not been in vain. Such a little business here in the shop is sometimes really refreshing after all, since else signs of weariness occur with all involved due to the monotony of reports to be processed. In addition, the music played close to us once again last night and towards first light and gave us the clarity that we are not unreachable for the enemy artillery, and the combat pay also paid in headquarters has to be earned.

[…]

Meanwhile I have had to pause this scriptum a couple times already, had a talk with my Vasilin Rascanu, generale divisioni, 1 à munte, together with the cdg. gen., wolfed down lunch, greeted four young lt. and four senior ensigns who have come freshly to the front, dictated and devised a four-page-long order, and in half an hour an issue of orders on a rgt. command post, for which I still have to pick up my Vasilin and orientate him with the help of an interpreter about the order which he is supposed to have given, as leader of the group. The matter will become easier once I get the interpreter from Bucharest personally promised to me. Then I can also talk directly to my Vasilin by telephone.

[…]

4 years ago today I had given my last orders for the attack to Poland and was slowly dispatching myself to the German-Polish border. How did one think about the war then, and how does one think today?

[…]

quote:

12 September 1943

[…]

60 hours I have been sitting at the desk uninterrupted now. I think I have slept 2 x 2 hours since then. You heard the army dispatch last night of course and know what is going on here. It was devastating, but I think we have the crassest behind us now. Some time later more of this.

[…]

quote:

14 September 1943

[…]

It is a beastly situation in which we are sitting a.t.m. and have to fight as poor people with the most puny means against an enemy who is outnumbering, outshooting and out-equipping us 4-5 times. If we make it in the end after all, then not a minute I had to sacrifice for this will be too much to me.

[…]

Since noon today I am sitting in our air raid shelter, which has been never occupied so far as it was only finished recently. This morning the Russian, during one of his 8 – 9 air attacks which he executes daily with 20 – 25 planes onto our whole sector, actually put a bomb directly behind the house and one 10 m before the veranda. In this of course all the window panes jumped into our face, and since it had become too funny in that stable for us now, we moved. It is strange how indifferent you become to those air attacks, but it is really so that there is either a direct hit or it misses you, so that it is uninteresting.

[…]

quote:

18 September 1943

[…]

Ivan is currently annoying us all the time with his “butchers”, those are battle planes with MG and 2 cm cannon, with which he is appearing in impertinently low raids over the village all the time. I have frequently threatened the brethren with the pistol already, but they will absolutely not refrain!

[…]

By my calendar I celebrated my farewell party two months ago today, on the 19.7., in Paris. How ever slightly changed are the situations, even though I have at least 1 glass of red wine standing before me this evening, too.

[…]

quote:

20 September 1943

[…]

Today we had ceremonial farewell dinner with the Romanians, whom we have finally gotten rid of in our area of responsibility now. I will not cry a tear after them.

[…]

quote:

11 October 1943

[…]

Now I can also report to you in closer detail about the whole events after all, since they have become public through the Wehrmacht dispatch. On 5.9. we got the order to prepare the pullback from the Kuban bridgehead. It began with sending off all major baggage, victual stocks etc., so that my quartermaster had most of the work first. While we were supposed to have 21 days for this part at first, the time was shortened to 10 days on 9.9. already, so that as 1st day of the pullback from the old frontline 15.10. was decided. I was now just busy with fixating this very difficult tactical maneuver in writing orders-wise, which was not very easy since my div. cdr. was on leave after all and the Rom. div. cdr. was nominally leading his and our div. together, i.e. I was making the orders and he signed them, wherein there was not always the time to translate them to him to the last word. Into this trouble burst on 9.9. in the evening the newly named div. cdr. promoted to maj. gen. on that day.

On 10.9. at 02.00 h the bomb blew as the Russian landed with about 2 inf. rgt. in our port of Novorossisk. Without reserves worth mentioning we now had to try to clear the situation and were by-and-by fed yet some reserves from behind which were still available at the whole bridgehead. Those were tough hours as we always had to think after all of how this formations thrown together and felted into Novorossisk by street fighting, how we could pull them out for the pullback move on 15.9. Until 14.9. we then managed to clear up the situation at least so that we had contained the thing. In this there was permanently the soul stress to have bases in houses in the middle of the enemy, in which one could give provisions, ammunition and care of the wounded only at night by breaking through with assault guns. So the cdr. of our eng. btl. particularly held a position with 40 men for 5 days which was very important for the whole operation after all. For this we were able to hand him the Knight’s Cross yesterday.

On 15.9. in the evening we then pulled back about 30 km into a prepared position which we held for three days. So it went on then from 3 to 3 days from line to line. On the so-called Kuban bridgehead, which was closed up by the Taman Peninsula in the rear, our position narrowed down all the time of course, so that upon occupying each new position some div. could be spared and sent off already. Before we came onto the Taman Peninsula, there were only 2 ½ div. in the last position, of which ours had to defend well half of it. On 25.9. in the evening we then went away from the Kuban and had the last people over the old Kuban on 26.9. in the morning. The defense of the Taman Peninsula then other forces of our army had to lead while we reached the port of Taman, where we were put across with engineer ferries. I already wrote you that I had the pleasure to take care that everything went across and therefore had to hang out as a stevedore for two days in the port of Taman.

As final success we were proud however to have executed the whole pullback move without major losses of men, arms, materiel and other goods. The new mission now was to collect all the single elements which had arrived over at Kerch over 3 days and at first set off marching into the Crimean, and deploy them for the new mission, defense of a 30 km long coastal strip incl. the port of Feodosia. The takeover of this sector had just begun when a new order hit us, which sent us into a whole different area again. From yesterday’s Wehrmacht dispatch you can see that we have found a mission here again, too, which is very much giving us the gyp. The last nights again were waking nights with at most 1 ½, sometimes 3 hours however uninterrupted sleep. If I could ease our good guys their hard missions by work at the desk alone, I would gladly be busy for 14 days uninterrupted, but sadly I can only ever just think and ponder how I can shape the missions the most favorable by avoidance of too-high blood loss.

[…]

During this time, his wife also collected issues of the local paper back home in Kassel covering the retreat from the Kuban. The same uncle who gave me the transcripts of the letters also gave me copies of those recently at the wedding of my brother #4. The focus of attention was actually on the aftereffects of a severe British bombing raid on the city on the previous weekend, but of course there were also other topics like the defection of Italy to the Allied camp, fighting in the Mediterranean Theater, and even some reports from Japanese actions in the Pacific. It's basically a look at the world in a week of 1943 through the lens of Nazi propaganda. Most interesting to me were the attempts to play up domestic quarreling and inter-allied frictions in the enemy camp, like warnings of post-war unemployment, complaints about a bloated US government bureaucracy sheltering millions from military service, and about US soldiers in the UK by locals. I translated a lot of that, too. Maybe I'll post some later, it certainy fits the topic.

quote:

Ivan is currently annoying us all the time with his “butchers”, those are battle planes with MG and 2 cm cannon, with which he is appearing in impertinently low raids over the village all the time. I have frequently threatened the brethren with the pistol already, but they will absolutely not refrain!

I can imagine him shooting his beretta at the planes.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ_Boston:
I can imagine him shooting his beretta at the planes.

I thought he was crossing into cartoon stereotype territory when he wrote about losing his monocle while racing down a slope trying to evade Russian fire, myself.

Here's some of the newspaper articles looking at world affairs during the same time. Some lines on the page bottoms were unfortunately cut off in the copies.

quote:

Unrest Among the Small States

Secret block forming against Roosevelt's imperialist plans

rd. Berlin, 26 October

In USA. there is a boom in post-war plans. New League of Nations, world commodity bank and single currency are recommended today, tomorrow everything is overturned, to accept instead only a supremacy of the great powers England, Soviet Union and China under the leadership of the USA., only conditional sovereignty for the small states, blockade measures as a permanent facility even against inconvenient neutrals. The senators want a different world order than the president, the farmers a different foreign policy than the bankers. Only one point of the program salad is unanimous: extension of the North American borders, establishment of a Yankee empire.

"New York Times" is now puzzled that the small states are starting to get uneasy, and the paper notes that there are new block formations in progress that are secretly directed against the splendid unification plans that Roosevelt seeks to make the world happy with. The small states would start looking for their own solutions. Perhaps it was neglected, says "New York Times", to allow Europe to speak at the Moscow conference.

This concern of the New York paper is superfluous. Europe has no desire whatsoever to attend the meetings in the Kremlin. Europe is against Moscow, with the possible exception of certain Swedish circles and those gangs who are incited by Moscow by appealing to the lowest human instincts. For Europe, Moscow's decisions, whether they are taken at foreign ministerial conferences or in Stalin's darkroom, have no significance. Europe is and remains in defensive position against armies and programs, which are only concerned with the delivery of most of our continent to Bolshevism.

The small states have another reason to be disturbed by the foreign policy of England and the USA., namely based upon the fate of the emigrant governments. The latest example of this ceaseless chain of conflicts and divisions is the "protest" of the former Greek envoy to Rome, Politis, who plays the role of the diplomatic spokesman for the exile Greeks. Under no circumstances, he announced, must England work together with Victor Emmanuel and those Italian generals who had thousands of Greek women and children slaughtered. The reputation of England in Greece was on the wane, Germany's standing was growing, and the gulf between exile Greeks and their homeland was growing.

This fits in with the English confession that the Southeast European peoples would thrive quite well without their fugitive kings. And this impression must be deepened if one observes the almost ridiculous escalation of conflicts among the Yugoslav emigrants. A group of London exile Serbs accuse the former Belgrade cabinets of having squandered the nation's money while the people sunk into poverty. We have often said that. In this failure we saw one of the compelling causes for the collapse of the Yugoslav system. Refugees now make the same judgment about the pernicious policies of the men they have fled with, and about the system they are trying to rebuild.

The small states and the liberated peoples really have much reason to worry about what the anti-European powers are planning with them and what exile politicians [cut off]

quote:

Anti-Gang Fighting in France

Laval promises to establish order

j. b. Paris, 27 October

Recently terrorist gangs have appeared in individual districts of inner France, which are dwelling in woods, raiding farms and commit all sorts of wrongdoing. This gangsterism, of which the citizen in the cities notes hardly anything at all, is wholly common criminality, which provokes the disgust and outrage of all decent Frenchmen.

The French government is now determined to put an end to this gangsterism as quick as possible. Head of government Laval announced in the council of ministers' last session that French police will be equipped with modern weapons to be be deployed against the terrorists in the near term. It is to be assumed that some focussed police actions will succeed in catching or subdueing the work-shy rabble, which sojourns especially in little-settled departments. Indicative of the government's determination to establish order in the country are Laval's latest addresses to public prosecutors, who were compelled to not let themselves be intimidated by hostile threats, but to see that in the terrorists which [cut off]

quote:

USA State Bureaucracy In Giant Circulation

Three million deferred getting Roosevelt's protection

By our Berlin editorship

rd. Berlin, 29 October

It has reached even the ears of the President of the United States that his federal government is "a paradise for slackers and lazybones." Since it can not be denied that the high and highest authorities were included in this criticism, a kind of justification attempt had to be launched at a convenient or inconvenient time. In two letters with the same text, one addressed to the speaker of the House of Representatives, the second to the President of the Senate, Roosevelt himself has emphatically denied what malicious tongues had claimed of the USA bureaucracy. To prove the opposite, the President collaborates with the Goddess of the United States, with statistics. There can be no doubt after his letter that on July 31, 1943, the last recorded reference date, 2,828,904 men and women on the mainland of the USA were employed full-time in government services. Two-thirds of this small number, exactly 1,982,100 men and women, belonged just to the war and the navy ministry.

It certainly can not be the job of the German press to deal with the justification or non-justification of such circumstances. Taxpayers in the United States will do that themselves. The plutocratic war was not brought about by the American people, but desired and compelled by the small stratum of ambitious politicians and the country's financial rulers. It is all the more necessary, then, for the rulers to secure a certain stratum which, by virtue of the advantages which they enjoy before the others, consider unconditional followership advisable and worthwhile for their own interest. This exaggerated construction of the state bureaucracy directly affects three million, and indirectly, with the families, relatives, and all those hoping to be also accepted into the privileged ranks, quite a considerable number. As Roosevelt pointed out, he merely refrained from applying for deferrals for the 145,808 short-time workers and 25,163 unpaid workers employed yet beyond the stated number. All the others, that is, the round sum of three million people, sit on secure and unassailable chairs and will be grateful to the breadgiver. With big finance also controlling the entire press, radio and all means of agitation, the Roosevelt government believes itself secure in the saddle and does not fear the accusations and questions of those who have to bleed on the battlefields for Roosevelt's war aims.

quote:

The Military Situation in East Asia

A second speech of Tojo before the Japanese Diet

Tokyo, 29 September

Minister President General Tojo spoke for the second time before the Japanese Reichstag in his capacity as Minister of War. In longer statements he treated the theaters of war on New Guinea and Solomon Island. The enemy pursued the tactic here to land primarily where the rule of the air could be secured. At the landing sites he tried to build up air bases to expand the air rule. Clashes with Japanese land forces would be avoided if possible. A further effort on the part of the enemy would be made, Tojo continued, to disrupt the Japanese supply lines through the air force and the navy. This hostile tactic was being thwarted by the Japanese Army in cooperation with the Navy. Japanese airplanes, in addition to their task of protecting the lines of communication, constantly attacked enemy air bases with the greatest success, inflicting the greatest damage on enemy supplies. The front reports showed that the enemy losses in aerial battles were in each case several times greater than the Japanese losses. Tojo once again mentioned that the total loss of the English and Americans in New Guinea of dead and wounded amounted to over 14,000. The battles in the jungles and on the inhospitable islands of the South Pacific offered indescribable difficulties. According to reports of prisoners, however, the enemy still has far greater difficulties, and his human consumption in the areas there was extremely high due to tropical diseases and nervous breakdowns.

On the situation in Burma Tojo says that the fighting had also increased there, while in the past an average of 1,000 combat aircraft had been involved in attacks, the number had increased in September to 1,600. At the Burma front, there were signs that the enemy was about to launch the long-announced offensive. The Japanese Army had already dealt a fierce counterthrust to the Chungking forces on the Yunang border mid-month.

In the occupied southern territories, Tojo continued, there was peace and order everywhere.

The strength of the enemy air force in Chungking China Tojo estimated at about 800-400 aircraft. Which consisted mostly of American long-range bombers. On the Chinese front, the Japanese forces were also constantly conducting successful operations. In the land operations, a constant decline in Chinese morale was felt due to the Japanese policy towards China.

quote:

Focal Point Mediterranean

By Rear Admiral Gadow

Stronger than in all other combat zones, politics is now mixing in the Mediterranean with warfare. In fact, this already happened with the landing in North Africa, which is now known to have been devised and planned in the USA, in order to gain a foothold in the economic territory at the same time. The initially relatively clear situation of Anglo-American competition, embodied in the two puppets Giraud and de Gaulle, then became complicated by the restoration of the Jewish prerogatives and popular front, and the new impetus of Communism in de Gaulle's organization. But the highest emphasis occurred only with the formation of the Mediterranean Commission in Algiers, into which Moscow dispatched as a highly qualified representative Vyshinsky with his 30 Myrmidonen. From that moment on, as the magazine "19th Century and after" put it, the question of whether Balkan and Dardanelles can be surrendered, and what that would mean for England in the Mediterranean, has been renewed. That in this case the so painstakingly conquered position in the Middle East, from the Suez Canal to Iran, and thus the core of the imperial connections, would be lost. One could say to this that England has neen no longer master of Iran for some time after all, that Bolshevik interference in the Mediterranean already dates from the civil war in Spain and is today in full swing from French North Africa to Egypt towards the east unto the Bosnian lands of Tito. More important however is how these complications affect the conduct of the war.

With the failure of the Italian leadership in North Africa, and of the Italian fleet in securing supplies, Rommel's promising position at Al Alamein was lost. The turnaround began, soon aggravated by the enemy invasion in Morocco-Algeria, which was again opposed by too little Italian effort. Tunis could not be held like that either, and in the enemy landing in Sicily not much was lacking to make the Italian desertion visible from the outset. At that time a strong deployment of the Italian fleet and air force would still have been able to provide a halt, but defeatism was already too deep, with the glorious exception of those brave men who had always sood their ground, who went over to their German allies without hesitation along with their vehicles and aircraft, or else preferred death and self-scuttling to shame, like the commander of the submarine "Murena".

This collapse has allowed all further enemy success, and only the tenacious and dogged German resistance could slow their pace. The lossless evacuation of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica could not be prevented by the enemy despite his superiority. It resulted in the contraction of the German front in southern Italy. In the Battle of Salerno, the huge firepower of the enemy ship guns helped avoid a second Gallipoli or Dunkirk, but the invasion fleet lost over 600,000 GRT, also 3 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 1 torpedo boat, 15 landing craft, 9 transports with 58,000 GRT etc., and also other warships and transporters were catastrophically damaged. This was the third major bloodletting after the 600,000 GRT for North Africa and the 1.2 million GRT for Sicily, which is followed by ongoing individual losses. With the expansion of the offensive in southern Italy, the need for supplies grows rapidly, it was calculated from the enemy side at 1.5 tons of material per man and month, without the necessary personnel replenishments, repatriation of the wounded etc. Thus, while our resistance continues to stiffen, the length of the connections and the need for transportation continues to grow with the enemy, which in the sucked-dry country includes all food and even water. At this point, therefore, it becomes clear how much the deployment of the U-Boats in all seas, even with the present extent reduced by the circumstances, further weighs upon the strategic possibilities. Although the monthly loss of 3-400,000 GRT can not compensate the regeneration by new builds, the lead aqchieved by the tripartite powers is too large to get lost in this slightly more sluggish time.

As it is known, the American people and in the end American imperialism, too, is more interested for the Pacific than for Europe. This demands lavish operations there. Soviet Russia is demanding the second front in Western Europe, which also poses higher demands to military effort and shipping space. England for its part [cut off]

quote:

"Broadening Of USA Predator Policy"

USA senators demand faster and further-ranging action

Lissabon, 30 October

In a Senate debate, two senators took position on USA foreign policy. Their comments suggest that the rigorous approach of USA imperialism to acquire new fields of exploitation and sources of profit for the dollar capital is still too slow for them. They also vigorously called for a greater expansion of predatory policy, with one suggesting to put all USA agencies abroad in the hands of some "Americans armed with two fists", while the other senator demanded a more robust American policy.

Senator Russell based his reasoning on the USA's oil policy, stating that the US had used its oil reserves in an almost ruinous manner, supplying not only its own troops but also those of its allies. Russell said it was time to use oil reserves in other parts of the world, and he saw no good reason why the own oil deposits should not be spared and those of other other areas utilized. Senator Russell also expressed his dissatisfaction with the 99-year lease, which was then given in exchange for the US destroyer, and wanted further expansion of the bases. The handling of the lend-lease deliveries was also not to his taste. He thus found fault with Great Britain passing on great lots of those USA deliveries to Turkey to secure itself this country's sympathy. By Russell's conception, the wares could better be delivered directly from the USA to Turkey, the sympathy of which could also be valuable for the USA. Russell further spoke out for an expansion of USA rights in the airspace. He concluded the list of his demands by recommending the acquisition of certain rights on Iceland and in Dakar and immediate steps for the acquisition of permanent rights on New Caledonia as "a compensation for the great sacrifices which the USA people have taken upon themselves" when it entered the war.

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The True Conditions In England

Report by internees returned from the British island

Berlin, 30 October

A representative of the German news offices had the opportunity to talk to some of the internees who returned from England these days, including wounded soldiers, captains and sailors of German merchant ships, as well as some women.

The soldiers and internees of this exchange group have collected numerous impressions due to their observations and were able to form an instructive image of British everday life by conservation with guard staff and the population. Their assessments result in and confirm the notion that the image of the true situation in England differs essentially from the one British agitation is trying to draft daily.

E. g. the returnees thus report on the mood in England that there is great disappointment over the long duration of the war, which was believed to end in 1943 there for a long time. The English as well as the Canadians were extremely tired of war.

The often-revealed differences between British and Americans are also confirmed by the returnees. There existed a pronounced hatred for the Americans in England. Several weeks ago, several thousand Negroes from the United States were landed in England. Their appearance caused a wave of indignation. The US-American attitude was, as the returnees drastically put it, "pig-like" anyway. Among them were numerous downright gangster types who were becoming guilty of committing lust murders and similar crimes, the trial of which by US-American courts in England was felt to be unsettling. There was general complaining about poor diet, which caused not only dissatisfaction in the camp, but also growing serious concerns among the population. Under the influence of difficult nutritional conditions, tuberculosis had become ominously widespread. The most-discussed topics of warfare also included the issues of the terror attacks considered as more problematic in the English audience, and the growing fear of German retribution.

Particularly interesting and noteworthy perceptions the returnes could make on the attitude of the English population towards the social issues of the present and the future. They all agree on the extraordinary interest which the simple man in England has in the socialist achievements and institutions of Germany, which stand in such stark contrast to the miserable conditions among the broad working masses of England.

The Jewish question, too, occupies the common English people extraordinarly [cut off] with which the Jews are profiting from the war. The whole British middle class states with outrage that the big Jewish enterprises are systematically destroying small businessmen. The same attitude prevailed among the USA soldiers as soon as they came from the farm areas of the Midwest. They express, like the English soldiers, the fear that the Jew will take advantage of the economic collapse sure to come in England and the USA after the war. In this context, the majority of British soldiers kept asking the question: "Who is England fighting for? For none other than for Jews and capitalists."

It must be added that despite all attempts by the British Government to influence the interned Germans with their agitation, the confidence of all in the Führer and the Reich has remained unshakable. They never doubted German victory, even in their seclusion in England. They return with the firm conviction that the German people, who, unlike the British, know exactly what they are fighting for in this [cut off]