Bloody Germans

13.  Mentioning The War

This is a subject that is so often in most peoples minds when thinking about the Germans. It is also a subject, that although contains many serious connotations, it is also, strangely enough, one that often brings on light humour, when referring to the Germans. I have done this a few times myself in this book. But now, I want to tell you more about my observations into this topic -- but with a little more depth, and without any of my humour.

The subject I now want to mention is, the Second World War.

War Memorabilia

The Germans, as a nation and as a  people, get a lot of stick today from the last war. It is an area that most would try hard to steer well clear of when writing a book like mine, but I consider this to be an important chapter when making my observations about the Germans.

It is so strange, but you can go all over England and you will find many museums that show artefacts or memories from the last war. London has its own British War Museum and in the Channel Island, there is so much on display that once belonged to the occupying Germans; weapons, vehicles, documents, simple items of their daily use from that time. There are also plenty of solid concrete structures, like gun emplacements or fortress buildings that look out to sea, and in both Jersey and Guernsey, they each have a large German Underground Military Hospital, that were tunnelled out deep into the rock by Polish prisoner slave labour. These old German war relics and concrete structures, are not only found within Jersey, but throughout all of the Channel Isles.

 

Yet in Germany, I see nothing; no museums or anything belonging to that time, apart from the odd small statue or sculpture, put up by the people long after the war -- but they are merely a reminder or memories of the misery, suffering and loss from the firebombing on Germany’s civilians. Even when I read periodicals or see displays that reflect on Hamburg or Germany’s history -- many times there is a vacant gap, that has been purposely left out, between 1933 right up to 1953, when Germany began to grow from its past rubble.

It is as if the time between those two dates never existed; as if it was a time when everybody was in some kind of deep coma. Sometimes, there maybe a small exhibition or article written about those past dark days -- but they are few and are always kept quite separate from Germany’s far prouder history. If you want to learn about the Germans during the last war -- go to London, or better still, go to the Channel Islands -- you’ll not see nor learn hardly anything about the last war, if you come to look for it here in Germany.

But if you observe very carefully, you will notice the dark memories on the faces of Germany’s eldest residents; you can see the sadness, the pain and even the guilt -- but never on the young, or on those who were born long after the war; those Germans look more at today and towards the future.

After the Berlin Airlift and ever since 1953, the Germans have slowly climbed out from their war-torn cities and have done well to repair all the destruction from their past mistakes. The average German, those who were not even born during that uprising, have come to terms with the past by seeing the Nazis as if they were a separate race entirely; when we speak of Hitler’s Germans, they speak of Hitler’s Nazis.

I can see this attitude as being very good for Germany and its people -- unlike Britain, they look ahead far more than they look behind. And this shows clearly in much of their culture and the way they have rebuilt their homeland.

This is something for Germany to be very proud of and for the rest of us, to admire.

Allied  Soldiers

On one day, that I  can remember so well, was when my Rolf first took me on a schnell tour throughout the city of Hamburg in our van. He drove around and around to quickly show me it all, but then, as we took a short cut through the city’s large Ohlsdorf cemetery, he turned off to show me the British War Graves.

We parked up and walked around the area.

On one side, was the dead of the Second World War; they were mostly RAF crewmen and many of them were Canadian or Australian. On the other side, were those from the First War World War; I just could not figure out how they came to be here in Hamburg. I mean, the First World War was fought mostly in Belgium or France, and not Germany -- so how did so many end up here in Hamburg? My Rolf told me that perhaps many soldiers were captured and brought back to Germany, and these are the ones that unfortunately died later from their injuries.

As I slowly walked between the lines of the so neat and perfectly aligned white headstones within the Allied Military War Graves, it was indeed a very thought provoking experience. It was also highly emotive to occasionally pause in my steps and quietly read off a few of their names; many were so very young when they were killed and it was hard for me to imagine what nightmares they must have endured at that time. When I think how I was at only aged nineteen to twenty five -- what could have prepared me for the things they had to suddenly experience, and suffer?

I then asked Rolf, “Where are the German Soldiers war dead buried?”

He drove me on to that area.

German Soldiers

These graves were so much different from the Allied War Graves; the area was not so grand in it’s layout, and the gravestones themselves, were just small dark grey stones that lay flat on the burial ground.  On each stone was inscribed a name, a date of birth and the date of their death.

They were mostly all dated the same -- around 1944. I wondered about this but Rolf suggested to me, that maybe they were also the wounded who were brought back from Russia, and later died from those wounds.

Again -- all so young.

I grasped a strong feeling of senselessness; what did these young kids know when they were taken away from their homes, families and lives -- and then forced to fight and die, and for what?  They were really no different from the young men at the Allied graveyard; they were all just youngsters who were sadly born into a wrong time.

Hamburg’s Civilians

Nearby to the German war dead, there is a very large plot; a mass grave in the shape of a cross; each section of the cross is some 130 metres long and 16 metres wide. At short intervals, down and across the shape of the cross, there are large wooden beams placed over the top. On each beam, the name of a Hamburg town had been carved deep into the wood; Altona, Barmbeck, Wandsbek and so on. Beneath this mass grave lay the remains of forty five thousand people. All around the area, many small crosses had been placed, along with candles that were burning close by. Each cross was inscribed with the same date; July 24 -- 26, 1943. Those were the dates between the time that Hamburg suffered it’s worst days from the firebombing, in what was christened by the Allies as, Operation Gormorrha. Numerous people were burnt beyond recognition during that horrific raid, from the very young to the elderly; Bomber Harris’s firebombs were never discriminatory.

I stood there and watched a few old people place more crosses and light up additional candles; they knew of those times because no doubt, they had been there themselves, and had seen it all. They had also lost so many of their loved ones -- and they still weep for them today.

At that mass grave, I did not want to speak and reveal my country of origin -- for the first time ever, I really did feel ashamed to be English.

The Forgotten Past

The saddest thing about the German war dead, is that many of the people who have lost a loved one, cry alone -- ‘It's their fault that it happened' -- is what they have been reminded of so many times by the people of other nations. So much so, that now they must fully believe it.

Most of the German people seem to put it all behind them, along with their guilt -- they do not have such a grand national and televised event of Remembrance Day service for their war dead in Germany, like they do at London’s Cenotaph and throughout every other English city, town or village at 11 a.m., on the morning of the 11th November each year.

Germany does have its own official Memorial Day called Volkstrauertag -- or People Morning Day, which is held on the 3rd Sunday in November to commemorate the victims of wars and those who died in concentration camps, or became victims of ethnic cleansing. But unlike many other people throughout  the world, thoughts about their own military who died in the past two world wars, are usually done very quietly and privately. A commemoration would be held by family or old unit soldiers, who have come together and formed a small memorial group, that pays tribute to their fallen each year.

But for the majority of people, Germany's War Dead -- their young ones, mainly lie forgotten and for all times.

When we departed from that cemetery, I was left with many impressions that will never ever leave me. And while I was there, I did not see any difference; good or bad between the British and the Germans -- all I perceived was only the sheer utter madness of it all, and so much.., so much pointless wastage.

Reflections

I think the events from the last war has left the Germans with a good future prospective, as they strive to make perfect and blot out their ugly yesteryears.  Britain, in spite of everything, is many times lodged in its past; always looking back and glorifying on achievements now long gone or fallen apart. The British Empire, Rule Britannia, British cars, shipbuilding and all those once famous episodes from their now evaporated magnificent days. While Britain sits on its antecedent honoured laurels, Germany has forged well ahead of them with their today and tomorrow thinking.

Today, Germany has been left with a legacy that is called an atonement -- a kind of making up for what they did in the last war. But this atonement has put the country high on the list when it comes to World Aid and they have also both welcomed and helped a numerous amount of asylum seekers into their country. This of course is one of the arguments of the Neo-nazi’s; a very small minority here, who try to say that Germany has no need to atone. They even go as far as to say -- the Holocaust didn’t happen!

In Germany, saying such is a criminal offence. So is displaying any memorabilia of those days, like exposing a swastika or making a Nazi salute. In Germany, even computer shoot-em-up games are heavily censored and toned down before they are allowed onto the market. One such popular game called Hidden and Dangerous, which is designed on World War Two, has had all the swastika’s and Hitler paintings on the wall blanked out. They are indeed quite serious about becoming a far less aggressive nation, somewhat more than the rest of us.

I might add, in the time I have been living out here -- not once have I seen a military parade of any kind -- not even a marching military musical band. Something I see many times in Britain and goes on in almost every other country as well. Germany has learnt the hard way about what military prowess and national flag-waving can do, and appear to want no part of it at all.

After the last war, numerous Germans had to suffer hunger and humiliation, living amongst the squalor of their bombed out cities and homes. I have heard that they were so hungry, they removed wallpaper from the walls and boiled it up to make hot soup; the glue that was used to paste up the wallpaper, had been made from horse carcasses and so it was considered to contain some beneficial nutrition.

Where I am now living in Hamburg, the people of 1945 were a lot more fortunate than those in many other towns and cities throughout Germany, because Hamburg was liberated by the British. Many others, including Berlin, had the Russians for company and they had plenty of good reasons (ten million I believe) to hate the Germans and want to see them all dead.

Many German women drowned themselves and their children to escape the occupying hateful, murdering and raping Russians of that time. Bearing in mind, the Russians had to good cause to despise them for what they did to the people in their own country; it was certainly a time for their revenge.

Throughout the whole world over, there are still many people today, who for good reasons of their own, cannot nor will not ever forgive Germany or the Germans for their actions in the second world war. They not only blame the Nazis but the ordinary society as well, for allowing them into power and for giving so much support. This was something I too could never at first understand -- how could a nation of people vote for a man like Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party?

But I have since discovered, that the answer is not as simple as that..,

When Hitler and his party were first elected into to power, there were many other parties up for the vote; it was a time of so much upheaval and confusion. Hitler also had the backing and support of Germany’s existing Chancellor Hindenburg and many other leading figures in the state's industry and politics. A number of Hitler’s rivals supported the Communist party, and at that time, the Russians were the greatest fear in the whole of the Western Capitalist World. This fear of Communist invasion was strong enough for it to continue even long after the close of the war. Maybe at that time, many people and countries outside Germany, also supported and welcomed Hitler’s rise to power; Communism in Germany would have certainly been a severe threat to the West.

With all this backing, it was easy for Hitler to win a majority vote, but he never got in with such overwhelming figures as many seem to think. In 1932, Hitler only received 30.1% of the vote, and a year later, the Nazi Party obtained only 37.4 %. This clearly shows that the majority of Germans voted against Hitler and the Nazi party; they were rejected by two thirds of the nation.

When Hitler first began, he did much to help a country that was trying to survive from the First World War; the Versailles Treaty kept the nation down both financially and spiritually. They suffered an extremely high cost of living and their unemployment figures were colossal. Hitler changed all that when he first came to power; he gave the people back their pride and their dignity. He also put many back into employment with the building of new roads, homes and his planned war machine.

 

Had it not been for his later atrocities (in which he always intended) -- Hitler would have probably been a hero in the eyes of Germany today and statues of him would have been erected everywhere. I have put that to many Germans and they all agree that it could have easily been so.  If any of us had lived in early 1930’s Germany, during those gloomy bedraggled poverty-stricken days,  I think maybe we too might have been cheering for Adolf Hitler -- when he improved our lives by giving us jobs, money, food and new homes to live in. Little did they know that within a decade or so, the excitement of all those dreams and promises would eventually turn into nothing but death, rubble and starvation.

 Hitler’s coming and gaining higher to power, was indeed an extraordinarily clever and scheming confidence trick on the German people. But many circumstances, both inside and outside of Germany, brought Hitler to power. Apart from the poverty, degradation or communist threat alone, I think the real blame for this happening was a direct, and maybe even an expected result, of the Versailles Treaty.  That arrangement was not only unfair and degrading, it also lacked any foresight; how far can you push somebody against the wall so hard without them soon learning, when somebody has nothing to lose -- they have only everything to fight for?

The Versailles Treaty  provided Hitler and the Nazis their best opportunity to finally win over most of the hearts and minds of the people -- by their overturning it. History and all of it’s past events, played right into their hands.

After Hitler did gain total power, it was too late for the people to turn the clock back as he ran his totalitarian regime on secrecy, fear and propaganda. One has to try and imagine what that must have been like; to be extra-cautious over everything you say or do -- or maybe even fear what others could accuse you of what you might be thinking. One wrong notion could so easily be your last act; simply not fitting-in was a serious enough crime on its own.

Many tried to save their own skins by proving themselves to be a good German -- or a good Nazi, by reporting others who they accused (often falsely) of being otherwise..,

‘I notice Frau Braun never gives the Nazi salute and she has some very unusual visitors..,’

From every street, town or city within Germany, anonymous letters poured daily into the local Gestapo officer. Nobody could trust anybody -- not even one from your own family. The Gestapo had all their work cut-out for them by those ordinary people; the weak, the feared, the selfish and the cowardly -- a mixture inherent in all nations. The remaining good or courageous, trod an extremely dangerous line.

This kind of Nazi applied psychology of all-to-human self-preservation ways of thinking, was carried on right through -- every country they occupied, they had the people turning against each other for fear or favour of their own lives; Jews upon Jews, Polish against Poles, French upon French.  I believe sincerely that the same thing would have transpired in UK, had the Nazis also occupied its land. And that’s what it was like for most of the ordinary German population; they might have seen or heard things that on the surface, would so obviously disgust us all and lead many to believe that they must have condoned -- but absolute fear and self-preservation kept them silent and subdued, and they shamefully turned a blind eye; the less they knew, the safer they felt.

But there were a number of Germans who did oppose the Nazis. I was surprised to learn, that during those dark times, there was a German Resistance and one in particular called,  Die Weiße Rose (The White Rose).

This was a student lead protest that produced and distributed anti-nazi leaflets throughout Germany during 1941-44. The White Rose movement spread throughout Germany, until three its main leaders, Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie, and Christoph Probst were arrested, tried and executed by guillotine.

They were all twenty year old University students.

Following that, there many other arrests; again, mostly students -- Willi Graf, Alex Schmorell and Kurt Huber, were three other young German students to die in the same way.  Many others from the White Rose movement were later either imprisoned, or sent to labour and concentration camps.

The Nazi’s murdered many Germans as well.

In Hamburg, there is a statue outside one of its main city churches, of a pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was one of the few church leaders who stood in courageous opposition to Hitler and his policies. His efforts, that also helped a group of Jews to escape to Switzerland, first led to his arrest and imprisonment in the spring of 1943, and he was hanged in the concentration camp at Flossenbürg on April 9, 1945; Bonhoeffer was one of four members of his immediate family to die at the hands of the Nazi regime for their participation in the small Protestant resistance movement.

The stories of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Die Weiße Rose movement are both well documented in books and films, perhaps one day, maybe more stories about many other brave good Germans of that time, may rise to the surface.

One has to be very objective when looking at war -- all wars, and all nations concerned. The spoils, along with the propaganda tales, generally go to the victor and their history records it as such -- but many bad things happen, and on all sides.

To me, the greatest villain of all wars, is the war itself.