Read Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying Online
Authors: Sonke Neitzel,Harald Welzer
In this anecdote,
violence is clearly experienced as a kind of sport. The “game” Winkler talks about is the dropping of fragmentation bombs on an alleged group of partisans in the
Vercors region of the French Alps in July 1944—something he clearly enjoyed. After a series of difficult and deadly missions targeting Allied ships in the
Mediterranean, such a relatively easy assignment came as a welcome change. At long last, Winkler had another success story, another tale of a fruitful hunt and what was gunned down. The British staff Winkler hit somewhat haphazardly in the process barely rates a mention.
Conversations of this sort took place in an atmosphere of mutual agreement and tacit consensus. This example is from April 1941:
P
ETRI
*: Have you made daylight raids on E
NGLAND
?
A
NGERMÜLLER
*: Yes, on L
ONDON
, on a Sunday and at a height of 30 m. It was fairly stormy weather and the balloons were not
up. I was the only one (who went over). I dropped my bombs on a railway station—attacked the station three times. Then I flew off right across E
NGLAND
and afterwards the papers reported: “German raider machine guns streets.” Of course my crew enjoyed it, and they fired at everything.
P
ETRI
: At the civil population?
A
NGERMÜLLER
: Only military objectives!!! (Laughs.)
100
Angermüller’s pride is unmistakable. The attack on London he describes had a special status because, although it was a solo mission, he did not just drop bombs, but also flew low to strafe ground targets with machine gun fire. This sort of raid was so uncommon that it made a British newspaper—at least Angermüller says it did in order to underscore the impressive nature of his story. Angermüller’s answer to his comrade’s question as to whether he shot at civilians is obviously ironic. It was an opportunity for a bit of shared laughter.
One of the most central and frequent conversational topics among soldiers was how their kills were visibly verified. In great detail, they list the targets they themselves hit as well as those destroyed by their squadrons and their competitors. This is not surprising when we consider that their superiors handed out
awards and
promotions on that basis. (There were also other measures of achievement:
Iron Crosses First Class and
Knight’s Crosses were bestowed after a certain number of missions or verified kills.) In contrast to infantry soldiers, airmen had immediate concrete evidence of their success. They could see, with their own eyes, the decapacitated, burning remnants of enemy machinery or houses, trains, and bridges that went up in flames or collapsed.
Two aspects of killing from the air made it particularly suitable for being perceived and experienced as an
aesthetic phenomenon. The destruction was visible, and it could be viewed from a relatively safe distance:
S
IEBERT
*: It’s grand to be an airman with one’s base in G
ERMANY
, so far away, and then to attack here.
M
ERTINS
*: One “Stuka” did a great deed. It sank an English warship. It flew over and dropped a 250 kg. bomb into the funnel and hit the magazine. It destroyed the ship. One saw it, too, in
P
OLAND
. You drop your bombs and know exactly what you have hit every time.
101
Just as important as visibility were all the myriad improvements in bombing
accuracy. A first lieutenant related in 1940:
It is as if you threw a 250 Kg. bomb at the side of a ship. That makes quite a big hole. In case of one ship, at dusk, we were able to see it ourselves. It struck amidships; it went down with a huge column of smoke.
102
Another example came from a major:
103
I set fire to the tanks at
T
HAMESHAVEN
, that was between 15 and 16 hours. I counted 12 myself … Yes, a “Gruppe.” When I first started for this target, I thought over whether I should not change my objective, as I had seen two tankers at P
ORT
V
ICTORIA
which were just being unloaded at the quayside, and there are a good many oil tanks there. I got special mention in dispatches for that undertaking that was the best exploit during the whole battle of E
NGLAND
. It is pleasant when your success is immediately recognized; flying over L
ONDON
is no review flight.
104
Along with detailed discussions of technical questions, the visible aesthetic accompanying individual soldiers’ destructive prowess was perhaps the most central theme of German airmen’s conversations.
Interlocutors told stories of attacks and successful kills in the greatest possible detail and vividness of language:
F
ISCHER
: We were over the T
HAMES
estuary in a “190” and we fired at every boat we spotted. We hit the mast of one of them and off it came; it was quite a small ship. When we were flying with bombs we used to bomb
factories. Once I was flying ahead, and the second pair were coming along behind me. It was near
H
ASTINGS
; there was a huge factory right beside the railway-line almost on the beach. The other man flew towards
the town and dropped his bombs there. I saw the factory and thought how nicely it was smoking; I dropped a bomb, and bang! Up it went.
Once we bombed a station at
F
OLKESTONE
just as a long passenger train was drawing out; down went the bomb right on to the train—oh boy! (Laughter.) Then alongside
D
EAL
station there was a huge shed we bombed that, and I never saw anything like the flame that shot up—there was a terrific explosion. There must have been some highly inflammable stuff in the warehouse. Great bits flew up into the
air before us, higher than we were flying ourselves.
105
This is war as witnessed from above, from the perspective of bomber crews and, in particular,
fighter pilots. War looks very different from the ground, where the destruction is actually taking place, where people are running, fleeing, and dying. The German
Luftwaffe also suffered significant
casualties, more than 1,700 from August 1, 1940, to March 31, 1941,
106
but that contributed to the sporting character of airmen’s missions and their aesthetic experience of destruction.
Risk was an essential part of war, and it took particular skill and control over one’s machinery if one was to have any hope of surviving:
At
H
YTHE
there’s an aerodrome right on the coast but there are no aircraft there. The Oberleutnant said to me one Sunday morning at ten o’clock: “Come along: we’re going to do a special job together.” We went across, each with the two 250-kilogram bombs underneath, and damn it, we ran into fog. We flew on and came out of the fog, and there was the aerodrome: and suddenly the sun came out and shone brilliantly. We saw the barrack buildings and the soldiers all sitting out on the balcony; we flew up to them, and zoom! Bang! the barracks shot into the air and the soldiers went whirling all over the place. (Laughter.) Adjoining the barracks there was a big hut, and another big house in front of it; so I thought we’d have a crack at those. Everyone was running for their lives, the hens were fluttering about, the hut caught fire—boy, did I laugh! I’ll say we gave those guys a packet.
107
Another conversation explicitly focuses on the fact that
air attacks were filmed—a further element in visible destruction. At the latest
since the Second Gulf War, we are used to seeing targets being destroyed from the perspective of the person causing the destruction. On the nightly news, we have experienced for ourselves, in real time, how a missile strikes and obliterates a bunker. But the phenomenon began much earlier. World War II also saw, in historian
Gerhard Paul’s words, “a fusion of camera and weapon.”
108
It began when
cameras were mounted on the wings of fighter planes. Later home-movie cameras were integrated into the onboard weaponry so that pilots could document their kills themselves, providing the press with spectacular images. Weekly newsreels showed pictures of targets being destroyed from the perspective of pilots and marksmen, and pictures of dive-bombing
attacks proved particularly popular with the viewing public:
K
OCHON
: In the bombers there is an automatic camera now under the cannon and the camera turns every time a shot is fired so you get a picture of every shot.
F
ISCHER
: I had an ordinary camera which had been specially built in.
K
OCHON
: The camera takes a picture when you press the button and so you know whether you scored a hit or not.
F
ISCHER
: We have them now in the wings. We now have three cameras where the cannon used to be. Once I kept my finger on the button for two seconds and the Spitfire fell to pieces. My right wing was covered with oil from the Spitfire.
109
“I can tell you I’ve killed a lot of people in E
NGLAND
! In
F
OLKESTONE
we had definite orders to drop our bombs among the houses. I was called in our Staffel ‘the professional sadist.’ I went for everything, a bus on the road, a passenger train at F
OLKESTONE
. We had orders to drop out bombs right into the towns. I fired at every cyclist.”
Corporal
Fischer, pilot of a
Messerschmitt 109, May 20, 1942
110
The
fun to be had from a successful attack played a major role in the Luftwaffe airmen’s conversations. The category not only served to
mutually confirm the virtuoso skill with which one handled one’s aircraft and the
superiority one enjoyed over the enemy or others. It also had a considerable communicative significance. Fun was part of what made a story worth telling. It was part of the tension of a well-rounded narrative, comprehensible and with a striking ending, and the mutual laughter it elicited showed that soldiers inhabited one and the same world, a world in which hitting targets and having fun went hand in hand. Victims in the sense of people with whom soldiers could empathize do not appear in their stories. Whether they were talking about ships, planes, or houses, bicyclists, fairground visitors, train and ship passengers, or mothers with children, the victims appear only as targets.
The following anecdotes from Germany’s
air campaign against England from 1940 to 1944 require no commentary:
E
SCHNER
: Our K
OMMODORE
arranged on various occasions a day-time attack for us as a special treat—on shipping and suchlike. He intended this as a special favour for us … So we started—myself in front, and I found a ship which was outside a small harbour near
L
OWESTOFT
—there were two ships there with only one guard ship. There was a cloud bank at 5–600m. I could see the ships from a distance of 10 km. I wanted to do a gliding attack and had already got into the gliding angle and attacked; the boat was hit; they opened fire, I opened the throttle and was off. That was great fun.
111
B
UDDE
: I’ve taken part in two intruder patrols attacking houses.
No, only intruder patrols. Whatever we came across; country houses on a hillside made the best targets. You flew up from below, then you aimed—and crash! There was the sound of breaking windowpanes and the roof flew off. But I’ve only done that with the 190, twice in attacks on villages.
At the Market Place, there were crowds of people and speeches were being made. They ran like hares! That’s great fun! It was just before Christmas. We had no losses on that occasion.
112
B
AEUMER
: Then in the retreat we played a fine game in the
“111.” We had a 2-cm
cannon built into it in front. Then we flew at low level over the streets, and when any
cars came towards us
we put on the searchlights and they thought another car was coming towards them. Then we turned the cannon on them. We had plenty of success like that. That was grand, we got a lot of fun out of it. We did it with railway trains, too, and that sort of thing. The nights are comparatively light in R
USSIA
anyhow, if the weather doesn’t happen to be really bad.
113
H
ARRER
*: I take my hat off to our
mines, when they go off they raze everything to the ground, they knock down 80 houses. I have had friends, who in an emergency—that is they should have dropped their mines in the sea—have dropped them on a small town, and they have seen how the houses were lifted up and fell apart in the
air. The mines only have quite a thin wall, a light metal shell. And moreover they have a much better explosive than all our bombs.
When such a thing drops on a block of houses it simply vanishes, just falls to pieces. It was the greatest fun.
114
V. G
REIM
: We once made a low-level attack near
E
ASTBOURNE
. When we got there, we saw a large mansion where they seemed to be having a ball or something; in any case we saw a lot of women in fancy-dress, and an orchestra. There were two of us doing long distance reconnaissance. […] We turned round and flew towards it. The first time we flew past, and then we approached again and machine-gunned them. It was great fun!
115
A hunt consists of locating, pursuing, felling, and eviscerating
game. Hunts come in various forms. The most common ones are the hunt in which a solitary rifle wielder goes after his prey together with a game dog, and the roundup, in which beaters drive the prey into the hunter’s sights.
Hunting has a
sporting aspect. The hunter has to be skillful and alert, smarter than his prey. He has to know how to hide, how to attack without being spotted, and how to shoot well. But hunting also entails special rules. One hunts only at particular times, for instance, and only shoots at individual animals.