Read Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying Online
Authors: Sonke Neitzel,Harald Welzer
A similar example is a conversation between two Luftwaffe lieutenants in March 1943:
T
ENNING
: There is a great deal at stake. If we win this war, it will be a threefold victory. Firstly it’s the triumph of the National Socialist idea, secondly a triumph for Germans, thirdly a triumph over Versailles.
V. G
REIM
: My only fear is that we shall become too soft, too languid again.
T
ENNING
: Not if we come over to E
NGLAND
, we shan’t be then. The air force alone will never win this war. We realised that a long time ago, but the English haven’t done so yet.
V. G
REIM
: If we were to lose, we should never find another man like the F
ÜHRER
. He was unique.
T
ENNING
: Yes, that’s true.
503
Similar sentiments also cropped up among generals in June 1943: “We can’t deny that if H
ITLER
had remained, shall we say, what he was … we could not have helped backing him up wholeheartedly and we would be looking forward to a happy time, there’s no doubt about that.”
504
Faith in the Führer was often linked with the idea that Hitler had personally ordered many details of how the war was waged. Many soldiers felt themselves to be personally dependent on his ability to make correct decisions. Luftwaffe
First Sergeant Duckstein claimed:
D
UCKSTEIN
: The F
ÜHRER
personally … … … our sorties.
K
ASSEL
: Did he order the sorties?
D
UCKSTEIN
: No, he didn’t do that but he stopped one sortie.
K
ASSEL
: Why?
D
UCKSTEIN
: As in precautionary measure in case there was something else afoot. It has happened several times that the F
ÜHRER
has personally interfered with our sorties.
K
ASSEL
: How do you know the F
ÜHRER
did that?
D
UCKSTEIN
: Because he takes an interest in everything.
505
It is clear from this dialogue that
First Sergeant Kassel finds it unusual that Hitler would have personally ordered the sorties of Duckstein’s unit. Duckstein, in turn, invents or cites reasons to make what he has said seem plausible. His final argument, that Hitler concerns himself with everything, serves to reduce cognitive dissonance by reinvesting trust. The more Duckstein claims that the Führer is personally concerned, the more intensely Duckstein himself has to believe that idea.
As
confidence in German victory disintegrated, many soldiers also developed a sense of sympathy with Hitler, which was based on conspiracy theories. “I’m sorry for the F
ÜHRER
, the poor devil never sleeps peacefully,” one POW said. “His intentions were good, but what a government!”
506
Another seconded that sentiment:
E
RFURTH
: How frightful! What trouble that
poor
man (H
ITLER
) takes and how he is always disappointed! The way everyone lets him down!
507
This, too, was a way of making
reality cohere with wishful thinking and expectations. Even high-level officers were not immune to this way of thinking, as dialogue between Major Ulrich Boes and one of his peers demonstrates:
B
RINCK
*: Yes, what is the F
ÜHRER
doing all the time?
B
OES
: He? He’s working—hard, in fact.
B
RINCK
: I beg your pardon?
B
OES
: He’s working quite hard.
508
“Throughout the world we have made only enemies, not one single friend. G
ERMANY
alone to rule the world! A
DOLF
is the twilight of the Gods.”
509
In light of the theory of cognitive dissonance, it is hardly surprising that, even after the German debacle at Stalingrad, POWs would say things like: “We are sure to win the war. I should like to see the person who would refuse to fulfill any demand of the F
ÜHRER
.”
510
It is interesting to see how soldiers resolved such sentiments with their nagging doubts as to Hitler’s military acumen. On June 28, 1942, at the start of the Wehrmacht’s second major offensive in southern Russia, two Luftwaffe lieutenants racked their brains over what was going on inside the Führer:
F
RÖSCHEL
: How can H
ITLER
have changed so much? I used to have great respect for him.
W
AHLER
: Now one begins to doubt him.
F
RÖSCHEL
: I simply can’t understand how it could have happened.
W
AHLER
: It’s perfectly clear—he tricks everyone and takes over everything himself. He investigated everything himself, he supervises everything personally, he knows everything. And with time he must imagine that he’s indispensable, and that we
couldn’t continue to exist without him. It is of course possible that this has become a disease with him.
F
RÖSCHEL
: I always have the feeling that he has been forced into it, that he is no longer a free agent. That would, to a great extent, exonerate him.
W
AHLER
: No, it wouldn’t because he is the F
ÜHRER
, and is therefore perfectly free. What we’re coming to in G
ERMANY
is not National Socialism, but tyranny. For he is the F
ÜHRER
. In every one of his speeches he stresses that he is the man. Very well then, he has a free hand and needn’t hesitate to get rid of people like
H
IMMLER
and
G
OEBBELS
. And if he’s afraid of these people, then he’s no F
ÜHRER
. If he can’t rid himself of them, and says: “I must keep the people who were with me on the 9th of November” [date of the Munich putsch], he must nevertheless understand that he is the F
ÜHRER
. He gets rid of everybody else, so why doesn’t he get rid of men whom everybody hates?
F
RÖSCHEL
: Perhaps he really is suffering from overwork.
W
AHLER
: I think, too, that his nerves are in a pretty bad state.
F
RÖSCHEL
: And that he is no longer master of the situation. Without realising it, he lets other people direct his notions. I really cannot understand—and he used to be my ideal. To think that he should suddenly be found wanting in this way! Perhaps it is due to egotism.
W
AHLER
: His actions don’t support that theory. His last speech—the one about the German legal systems—contradicts the idea.
F
RÖSCHEL
: It’s just possible that egotism and self-importance enter into it on my side and prevent me from acknowledging that I have been so mistaken in a man.
W
AHLER
: Anyway it is clear that he has changed to an enormous degree.
F
RÖSCHEL
: Yes, and I still believe that it is not his real self.
W
AHLER
: Perhaps it is an impersonator; perhaps he himself died long ago.
511
This dialogue perfectly illustrated how the mechanism of dissonance reduction functions. The speakers transfer blame for any doubts about the Führer and their own emotional investment in him onto external factors. Psychological circumstances or conspiratorial activities here are what caused the change in Hitler’s personality. The Führer,
Wahler and Fröschel posit, is no longer figuratively or even, in the impersonator idea, literally himself. Interesting, too, is the fact that Fröschel himself acknowledges the possibility that psychological factors are preventing him from acknowledging the truth. In so doing, he describes the mechanism of dissonance reduction. But the final turn in the conversation offers a much more satisfying explanation, that the real Hitler has been replaced by an actor, allowing the two men to maintain their
faith in the Führer even when they have lost all faith in his actions.
Private
Költerhoff had a far less extravagant explanation for Hitler’s behavior: “The F
ÜHRER
himself is not the worst. There are many things which simply never come to his ears.”
512
The idea that Hitler was being kept in the dark was one of the most common
German legends, especially as the war neared its end.
Sergeant Gamper also proposed that the truth about the course of the war was being withheld from Hitler:
G
AMPER
: I spoke to a journalist who was at the F
ÜHRER
’s headquarters and he told me some appalling things about the F
ÜHRER
.
K
EITEL
controls the F
ÜHRER
’s headquarters. Before his “Generals” or anyone get to A
DOLF
to make a report they are given detailed instructions by K
EITEL
[as to]
what
they are to say,
how
they are to say it, and only then are they allowed into A
DOLF
’s presence. For example, if a “General” had to report that a withdrawal was necessary, at the time when the first withdrawals occurred, when people weren’t yet accustomed to the idea of Germans withdrawing, they had to say the following: “My F
ÜHRER
, I considered it better not to hold that position but to move to here. That is to say, not that we are withdrawing, but because the positions there are more favourable.” Whereas that was entirely untrue, they had been flung out.
513
Sergeant Müss used the same language. Hitler’s behavior, he posited, was becoming increasingly strange because he was hermetically sealed off from the truth:
M
ÜSS
: I too have always had the impression that they have deceived the F
ÜHRER
at every turn. For example, they say that A
DOLF
sometimes sits down at the table with a large position
map in front of him and stares at it. Nobody is allowed to disturb him, even if reports of the utmost importance come in. Sometimes he sits at the table for six, seven or ten hours in an attitude of deep meditation. Sometimes matters of utmost importance come in and are all dealt with by
K
EITEL
. But he sits there staring at his map and goes into a frenzy, more or less crazy. He shrieks and raves and socks people in the jaw and so on.
514
Such theorizing usually held that Hitler was being systematically deceived. SS
Hauptsturmführer Born and Sergeant
Wolf von Helldorf, the son of the president of the
Berlin police, named the guilty parties:
H
ELLDORF
: My father [the police president of Berlin] had unlimited access because he always told him what he thought directly without any crawling. The Führer appreciated that a lot.
B
ORN
: Back then, I think it was near
C
HARKOV
,
Standartenführer Krumm (Kumm?) received the oak cluster, and
Krüger, I think. In any case it was two or three people, and a Hauptsturmführer. At the award ceremony, the Führer must have asked something special. In any case, these three men fell silent and looked at each other. The Führer noticed that something wasn’t right. They received orders to report to him the following day for a discussion. They spent no less than three hours with the Führer and laid everything out of the table, with total honesty.
H
ELLDORF
: That’s what the Führer is lacking.
B
ORN
: It’s said one of them gave him a real shock.
H
ELLDORF
: The Führer is fully isolated. He exists on what three or four people tell us. He depends on them and they … well, I don’t want to use any hard words but …
B
ORN
: Who are the three people.
H
ELLDORF
: It’s
B
ORMANN
, one of the worst figures there is among us. Then, on the military side of things there’s K
EITEL
, and politically … in the same company is
G
OEBBELS
.
B
ORN
: Strangely, until now, it’s always been the case that the R
EICHSFÜHRER
[
H
IMMLER
] is permanently with him.
H
ELLDORF
: The R
EICHSFÜHRER
is half to blame.
B
ORN
: Consciously or not, the Führer has never been in agreement with all these
Jewish actions. I know that for a fact. A lot of
the time no one told him what was going on and instead … did it on their own authority. The Führer isn’t as terribly extreme and terribly sharp as he’s depicted.
515
Even a high-ranking officer like Field Marshal
Erhard Milch put forth a variation of this conspiracy theory. In May 1945, he proposed:
M
ILCH
: The F
ÜHRER
in 1940/41 was not the man he was in 1934/35, but was completely confused, and had completely wrong ideas and followed these wrong ideas. He must have been made ill, I’m convinced of that, though of course too much
responsibility is enough to make you ill on its own.
516
In another example, a POW regretted that the constant manipulation of Hitler unjustly diminished his historical significance. But even more lamentable was the fact that the misinformation of the Führer had led to things for which the German military was now going to be held responsible.
Major General Reiter articulated this fear:
R
EITER
: He was a historical figure; only history will be able to give him his proper due; one must first hear all that happened; we have heard nothing. Those incompetent fools who never told the F
ÜHRER
that he was being lied to in reports etc! We, too, shall be blamed for that, you can be sure of that.
517