Holocaust journal 1_Kipp

Journal of Genocide Research (2007), 9(4),
December, 601–615
The Holocaust in the letters of
German soldiers on the Eastern front
(1939– 44)
MICHAELA KIPP
During the Second World War (1939– 45) the German forces’ mail service
delivered some 44 billion letters written by soldiers home to their spouses and
families. Writing these letters and reading the responses from their loved ones
was of considerable importance to the soldiers as well as to their families. For
most of them, it was the only way to keep in touch during months of separation.
In hazardous times there was a heightened need for news on both sides, be it
simply a reassurance of someone’s well-being, or letting someone know that
one was still alive. There was so much the soldiers experienced in combat or in
the occupied territories which they had never been prepared for. For many of
them, it seems to have been too difficult to talk about their more disturbing experiences, and, of course, there was surveillance and censorship of forces’ mail.
Consequently, a large portion of the extant letters read rather tritely. Still, there
are millions of letters which bear witness to the experience of the war from the
perspective of the soldiers actually involved, addressed to the persons that
mattered most in the authors’ lives, some of them actually written in the face of
death. These letters are a valuable source for the study of the motivations of
German Wehrmacht soldiers, including perpetrators of war crimes and genocide
actions. Many of the letters may have been lost, some actively destroyed by
their addressees or by their heirs, others just thrown away, as nobody was interested in them any longer. But there still exist countless numbers of letters both
within families and in public archives.
This article details research about the knowledge of German soldiers concerning the mass executions of Jews in Eastern Europe during the Second World War,
as it can be discerned from their letters.1 It examines the soldiers’ perceptions and
justifications of criminal missions committed by their own comrades or in which
they were actually involved, and their interpretations of the facts and rumours they
heard about the extermination of the Jewish population. It thus contributes to the
development of a more “down to earth” approach to the big question: how could
“the unthinkable” happen?
ISSN 1462-3528 print; ISSN 1469-9494 online/07/040601-15 # 2007 Research Network in Genocide Studies
DOI: 10.1080/14623520701644424
MICHAELA KIPP
The answer must draw on the ways in which the soldiers interpreted the
situations they experienced and on their understanding of the actions they took
part in. In order to enhance our understanding of the conditions for the participation of ordinary men in mass murder and other atrocities, it is crucial to pay
particular attention to the shared beliefs and commonplace convictions that had
already been common to most of the soldiers prior to and beyond the official
Nazi indoctrination.
1
There is no “Holocaust” to be found in the letters of German soldiers from the
Eastern front in World War II. This was not because the term had not been
coined yet, and was certainly unfamiliar to those involved,2 nor because of the
fact that many soldiers actually didn’t see much of the killing. Nor was the
reason for this conspicuous absence that the soldiers preferred not to write to
their wives and relatives about such a nasty theme, just as they kept silent about
other sore points like, for example, their own death.3 Indeed there are some astonishingly frank descriptions and commentaries about different forms of atrocities
against Jews, in spite of the censorship,4 and there are also many more or less concealed hints, insinuations or euphemisms about extermination actions going on.
Some examples will shortly illustrate this.5 The following quote is from a letter
of an ordinary soldier on his way to the Eastern front, dated early December
1942. It shows his knowledge about frequent transports of Jews to Auschwitz.
Even though he was just passing trough the area, he knew that the Jewish passengers were all supposed to be killed shortly after their arrival:
Up here you see many prison camps assigned to do construction work and other things. There
are Jews coming here, that is to say, to Auschwitz, seven or eight thousand a week who die a
“hero’s death” before long. You see, it’s quite good to get around a great deal.6
In the next letter from the end of August 1943, a technical company sergeant
clearly realizes the underlying intent of burning down the ghetto in Bialystok,
Poland, and he approves of the plan not to let any Jews escape:
There’s not much new to tell from here; during the last couple of days the ghetto got smoked
out. Unfortunately some of the Jews managed to skedaddle; and from time to time we have
some minor shoot-outs.7
In the following passage, dated September 1942 in Baranowitschi, White Russia, a
reserve officer briefly mentions some apparently horrible actions in the ghetto.
He insinuates that this did not happen for the first time and that it was carried
out in a way that was still shocking for him and his comrades. It was not easy
for him to talk about this theme:
You know our mood isn’t improved very much by all these actions, nor by the lack of work.
Currently a new action against Jews is making some impression on us; I prefer to spare you
the details of what I saw today while walking past the affected quarters.8
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THE HOLOCAUST IN THE LETTERS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS
Of course, on many occasions soldiers fighting in the East got to know about
individual events in their vicinity or heard rumours about something “big” going
on in order to solve the “Jewish Question” in Eastern Europe. Many of them
became involved in killing actions by providing the necessary infrastructure, for
example, by putting up barricades. Fewer actually participated in killing
commandos, where they were ordered to shoot on helpless Jewish civilians.
Some actively sought to join massacres on their own initiative.9 Many soldiers,
deployed behind the front lines, became eye-witnesses of mass executions carried
out by the SS “Einsatzgruppen,” special killing taskforces.10 They also saw the
terrible situation of Jews in the ghettos or labour camps, where forced labourers
were employed for military aims. On their way back home for holidays, some
soldiers coming from the fighting zones showed photos to their comrades on the
trains depicting hanged civilians, mass executions or other atrocities.11 Thus they
found opportunities to communicate in a relatively unrestricted way and they
could give some material evidence underlining their accounts of the extermination
activities under way—which, at first, were hard to believe for many Germans too.
2
However, these accounts were disparate in various ways. There were tremendous
differences in knowledge among the soldiers about the killings, they had different
personal experiences and developed different interpretations of the events. The
accounts that can be seen in the letters written by the soldiers reveal a strong
correlation between the point of time in the course of the war, the place where
a soldier happened to be deployed, and the possibility for a soldier to be either personally involved in extermination actions or to obtain first-hand knowledge about
the genocide. Most of the major anti-Jewish crimes the German army were
entangled with happened during the first weeks and months of the military
advance in the summer of 1941, or were committed in the occupied areas
behind the front line.12 Furthermore, the letters document considerable asynchronicities (“Ungleichzeitigkeiten”), because not all the German soldiers had joined
the “Barbarossa-Feldzug” from the beginning in 1941. The range of their tasks
was very broad and they came to different places on various routes. All in all,
much of the extent of their involvement in the genocide depended on particular
circumstances, local military leaders, the group dynamics of comradeship and
the social dynamics of their interaction with the resident civilians, as Christopher
Browning has shown.13
In contrast to the implication of a fixed term like “Holocaust,” the actors and
perpetrators of many genocide actions had no consistent, homogeneous idea of
what was going on. They participated in single actions often without a clear
picture of the total amount of murder and destruction, and sometimes without
being able to imagine, at least, that there was a real plan for a systematic extermination of the European Jews. A sample survey of the letters written by German
soldiers in the Second World War clearly shows that the average soldiers’ perception of the killings did not see them as a part of a monolithic, teleological incident
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of an anti-Jewish genocide. Instead, the soldiers went through their own military
incidents, having personal experiences and developing their own interpretations
from a subjective point of view. The following excerpts show the broad range
of reasons given by soldiers for irregular military actions against Jews in the
Soviet Union.
Early in July, 1941, a major considered mass executions of Jews, actually part
of a pogrom in a town in Ukraine, as a “regular” expiatory action against irregular
fighters, according to established conventions of war. In this frame of interpretation, an act of aggression became an act of war-induced (“kriegsnotwendig”)
deterrence:
In the old citadel 1000 Jews will be shot dead on this day. This is a reprisal for the 2800
Ukrainians who were shot in Bolshevik times. In return, 5600 Russians will now give
their lives. Two officers, whom I sent out searching for wire and iron, reported that the
Jews died without making any sound. After this human tragedy, which is unfortunate but
a necessary measure to discourage the uprising insurgents, we experienced over the following days how a large section of the looters simply left their stolen goods on the street.14
Apparently it was important for this officer to establish a link between the imminent execution of local Jews and a particular mass murder committed earlier “in
Bolshevik times” by the “Russians.” The inherent logic of the somewhat confusing
argument in the letter was: the execution must be considered a legitimate retaliation for the political murder of allegedly 2,800 Ukrainians by the Soviet regime in
the past. According to the conventional proportion of 2:1 in such cases,15 now
twice as many civilians from the Soviet-Russian side (i.e. the “5600 Russians”)
had to be shot. This measure of reprisal was started by killing 1,000 Jews,
who were considered representatives of the Bolsheviks—and were, indeed, the
easiest prey to hand.
In the following letter, from mid July 1941 in Romania, a lance corporal constructs the Romanians as “good example” demonstrating how to deal with the
Jewish population. Solving the “Jewish Question” thus becomes a project of international concern. In the eyes of this writer, the killing of men, women and children
is a legitimate act of self-defence, because the Jews were considered to have been
the ones who allegedly started the killings:
Here the Jewish issue is solved somewhat differently. The Romanians drove all the Jews
together and shot them dead regardless of whether they were men, women or children. At
the beginning it was the other way round.16
An ordinary soldier, mid August 1941, on the advance in Russia, relates his experiences of inhumanity on the rush with the war as an existential battle of life and
death. The Jews stand for his feeling of alienation. They deserve to be shot,
because otherwise they would become dominant:
The many hundred kilometres we have covered showed us the roughness and the cruelty of
this battle. It is impossible to describe all the details, but it is a matter of life and death. The
deeper we got into Russia, the more we met Jews. These guys are just as cheeky as in the
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most peaceful times. One should put even more of these guys against the wall than has been
done so far.17
A lance corporal described the hanging of “gunwomen” and Jews in September
1941 as a conventional reaction to sabotage in the partisan war. The victims
deserved it. It seemed evident to this soldier that Jews were partisans and
that women couldn’t be regular fighters, even if the Red Army had all-female
battalions:
Recently one could see a number of gunwomen in a procession of prisoners, and there were
seven Jews hanging on a gallows, seven out of a group of fourteen who had parachuted
behind our lines in order to carry out sabotage. From the upper parts of the front we get
some very uplifting news; we’re eventually going to reach a decision pretty soon in the
East.18
It is not the purpose of this article to claim that one could not find anything but
incomprehensible differences in the descriptions of anti-Semitic actions. There
is no doubt that the socialization in the national socialist institutions from
“Hitlerjugend” to “Arbeitsdienst” left heavy traces in the understanding of the
situation by the soldiers in the East. In this context, of course, the Wehrmacht
indoctrination played a crucial role.19 The letters demonstrate that Wehrmacht
soldiers had taken on board a great deal of their Nazi “education,” which was,
moreover, frequently reinforced through speeches by their commanders before
the soldiers were actually sent to carry out killing actions. But it is worthwhile
to take a closer look at the actual perceptions the soldiers noted in their letters
and at the interpretations of their experience which they developed. One
problem of the research emphasizing indoctrination as a unidirectional, sender–
receiver process of mass communication is that it involves a number of questionable preconditions: propaganda only functions in special circumstances, people
have to be positive about the items beforehand, and, most importantly, it has to
be compatible with their everyday convictions. In order to enhance our understanding of the conditions for the participation of ordinary men in mass murder
and other atrocities, it is necessary to take into account the soldiers’ efforts to
make sense of their experiences during the war of extermination, paying attention
in particular to the shared beliefs and commonplace convictions that were familiar
to most of the soldiers prior to and beyond the Nazi propaganda.
To realize that not only the victims but also many of the perpetrators had no
clear idea about the total amount of the exterminations might help us in understanding how the “unthinkable” could happen. For the soldiers to “function”
and carry out their part in this war, it was necessary that they somehow develop
their own explanations of the atrocious situations they experienced and their
own understanding of what they thought they were actually doing. One of the conditions for the systematic extermination of the Jewish population was that many of
the perpetrators could not see, or even imagine, the bigger picture. Moreover, most
soldiers refused to communicate about their cruel, awkward experiences.20 Some
of the perpetrators might actually have believed in their own myths of “clean”
warfare in the East. Of course this should not serve as an excuse in any way.
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But to take into account the subjective dimension of the soldiers’ and perpetrators’
actual experience and their own understanding of what they were doing might help
to analyse the reasons these people seem to have thought they had for taking part in
the anti-Jewish actions and mass murder, even if they were not committed antiSemites. A homogeneous term like “the Holocaust,” in this respect, appears
rather as an epistemological obstacle, because it obscures the subjective dimension
of warfare.
3
As I have already stated, many soldiers developed their own explanations for
ongoing activities against Eastern European Jews. These explanations are
marked by one widely shared point in particular: they usually argued along the
lines of the logic of military action. The distinctive reference point was military
rule, even when crimes were committed. Most of the descriptions we find in the
accounts of participants are embedded in a broader context of military actions,
for example:
. mass shootings, as in the case of the liquidation of civil hostages, are justified as
acts to prevent terrorism,
. hanging of civilians as an act of revenge or deterrence in the partisan war,
. massacres of hundreds or thousands of people are described as necessary in
order to establish law and order in the occupied territories,
. the killing of women and children is described as necessary in order to prevent
sabotage (because they were seen as aides or sometimes as protective shields of
the partisans),
. deportations are described as a sweeping of the dangerous fighting areas for the
sake of the ordinary inhabitants,
. the setting up of ghettos as quarantine areas was said to protect the non-Jewish
residents from plagues attributed to the Jewish population,
. forced labour was justified as a result of wartime necessities (i.e. building of
trenches) and as a means to discipline the barbaric Jews.21
This form of interpretation helped to normalize and legitimize the genocide by
counting the killings as part of usual warfare activities—cruel, but necessary in
order to win the war and save one’s own lives. They were presented as the soldiers’
natural lot and an unavoidable part of their sometimes brutal duty. The classification of anti-Semitic crimes committed by members of the Wehrmacht as
“average” warfare atrocities was an effective strategy to play the matter down,
not only during the war, but also in the public discussion up to now.22
In addition, this line of argument fits very well within the picture of the brave
heroic soldier, which was broadly accepted in early twentieth century Germany
and radicalized by the Nazis. In particular, one can show how the virtue of toughness had been made subservient to the needs of exterminatory combat. The semantic pattern of “toughness” served as one of the main arguments for soldiers to
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overcome personal feelings of dislike or even disgust, moral doubts or the longing
for their families and wives. This gendered ideal of military manliness served as a
barrier against the negative emotions linked to war activities.23
The ideal of martial masculinity was also invoked in order to dehumanize the
persons the soldiers were supposed to fight against. For example, the female fighters of the Red Army and partisan women were perceived as monstrous gunwomen,
“entartete Flintenweiber,”24 worse than male soldiers and even more dangerous
than male partisans—possibly because they were destroying the social order of
the war and because the soldiers couldn’t figure out their supposed reaction.25
According to the classic conventions of war, women, like children and the
elderly, were officially exempted from being a possible target of military action.
During the partisan war that the German Wehrmacht became involved in on the
Eastern front, however, any woman, and especially any Jewish woman, was suspected of being a partisan (or an aide to them, which was actually considered as the
same). Therefore they, too, could be killed by German soldiers in what was to be
counted as a form of “military action” without any judicial process—and sometimes this was explicitly ordered by military commands.26
A quotation from a letter should illustrate the function of this pattern of martial
masculinity as a stereotype for racial distinction; actually, it is a comparatively
positive quotation about the people of Estonia: “The Estonians are quite decent
folks, just a bit soft.”27 One advantage of this category might have been its lack
of concreteness: “soft” can be almost anything that you can’t describe clearly
and that is perceived as somehow negative in comparison with the German
virtue of strict discipline and male toughness.
Still, some events were so clearly incompatible with any form of classical
warfare that they could not be explained or legitimized by army needs, “normal”
war-induced problems, or a martial ideal of male soldierly identity. The killing of
helpless, uninvolved civilians, especially of women, children and the elderly,
didn’t fit in with any “rational” logic of war. In order to cope with such cases,
many soldiers drew on older, more traditional interpretations of the world and of
their place in it, like bourgeois ideals of purity and the (auto-) stereotypes of
“clean and neat Germans”28 and the “dirty East.”29 The soldiers used patterns of
meaning familiar to them from their everyday life before the war.30 These patterns
were diffuse and therefore stable enough to integrate a lot of different actions by
adding an external motivation to them.
The discourse of defining “cleanliness and order” as typically German attributes
often resulted from the juxtaposition of these attributes with others, in particular
during the occupation of Eastern European countries. It played an important
part in stabilizing the national identity of the soldiers. A quotation from a letter
from 1944 illustrates this:
How modest one gets over here! Almost indecent. Doing one’s daily toilet is cancelled because
we cannot bring up water. You just rinse your mouth with a sip of coffee, the beard grows,
blossoms and thrives! Anyway, you must not think in normal human (German) terms at all,
for then you would go mad!31
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“Normality” in this example is assumed to be equivalent to “human terms,” which
in turn is associated with the familiar German standard of living. This reveals precisely an underlying assumption that German habits are absolute, unquestioned
standards.
During the campaign, it was the troop commanders and the regular announcements to the German combat troops, “Mitteilungen für die Truppe,” that reinforced
the idea of the need—and the right—to implement German cleanliness aggressively. In December 1941, it was announced by No. 163 of the central organ of
the Wehrmacht headquarters that:
Whoever has seen the dilapidated villages, the rotten ways, and miserable little towns in
these foreign places knows what a gift it is to belong to the German people whose populace
have been building up Germany for many generations and have created, compared to the
East, a tended garden, a jewellery box.32
Compared to this ideal of their German fatherland, the living conditions the soldiers actually experienced in the Eastern European countries could only be considered unacceptable. As Soldier Hans N. wrote home to his family in 1944
from Russia:
But, as I just mentioned accommodation, I now want to say something about our landlords.
The employees are nearly completely composed of grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers and
children, all great-grandchildren. If possible, we chose the “best” accommodation, but one
could always say: how are you living! [. . .] Excuse me, but if the following descriptions
are to be truthful, if I shall not just let fundamental points slide, then you for your part
must switch off your aesthetic feelings a little bit. We already threw ours overboard—had
to do it.33
By comparing hygienic standards and discussing questions of “purity” and cleanliness, the soldiers developed a strong impulse for identification with their German
fatherland and with the alleged fight for civilization, as can be seen in the following letter:
One just notices here how beautiful our home country is. The social deficiencies are impossible to describe. Dirt and mud. A great percentage of inhabitants are Jews.
And then the “solution” follows:
All the more urgent was the solution of the Jewish question. It is now pushed forward energetically by the Hungarian government according to the German model. A complete elimination is just necessary to give the miserable Russian people better living conditions.34
This mission of the German soldier—to clean up the country and to put things in
order—was understood on a concrete level as building roads and cleaning streets,
but also transferred to a higher level of hygienic elimination of “infectious,”
socially “poisonous” and “parasitic” Jews. This corresponded to parts of official
Nazi propaganda, as, for example, the following quotation form an article in the
regional Lippische Staatszeitung, dated May 16th, 1943, shows:
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THE HOLOCAUST IN THE LETTERS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS
The thing a physician needs to accomplish must be the complete elimination of the Cholera,
what our people need to accomplish must be the complete elimination of the Jews.35
In addition, and in a narrower context, the army was indoctrinating its soldiers
with similar slogans, as can be seen in a Wehrmacht training booklet from 1939:
But we fight the world Jewry (“Weltjudentum”) as one must fight a poisonous parasite; with
them, we do not only hit an enemy of our people, but a plague of all peoples.36
The idea of cleaning up whole areas from human “dirt” can be found in many
letters, especially those from the war against the partisans, which echo the military
terms used in the special actions against the partisans: The “Säuberungsaktion”
(cleansing action), the formulation “contaminated with partisans” and the
so-called “cleansing” of areas which were subsequently defined as “clean of
Jews” (“judenrein”). To understand the coherence of these patterns of description,
one must keep in mind that Jews were considered to be partisans in any case.)37
These often criminal military actions were executed according to orderly, rational
rules following processes of classifying, sorting and then eliminating things and
people that didn’t fit into the constructed order. Basically the procedure
followed—in a way—the cognitive script of tidying up in everyday life. Falling
back on well-established civil patterns of action, the soldiers could overcome
uncertainties when confronted with brutal actions that would not fit into their
ideas of warfare and soldierly logic.
4
In summary, it is not difficult to find countless quotations about different crimes
against Jews in the letters German soldiers wrote home from the Eastern front.
Most of them heard of, many saw and some of them—certainly a lot more than
those who would admit it after the war—committed acts of genocide. Often
they might not have been fully aware of actually being part of an abhorrent
master plan to kill the entirety of European Jewry. But many soldiers on some
occasions came to places where they could no longer ignore the true nature of
the ongoing mass murder. Many of them were searching for explanations for
the extraordinarily cruel conduct of this extermination war. The longer the soldiers
were part of the Eastern campaign, the higher the probability was that they
acquired some form of practical knowledge, collected evidence and formed conjectures about the acts of extermination committed against the Jewish population.
Besides military euphemisms and everyday racisms, one can also find realistic
judgements about the situation—for example, when the number of killings mentioned by soldiers reaches the thousands, when they write about the “fiasco” of
the Jews,38 their total material exploitation, the nature of the labour camps and
about mass executions, children starving to death, or about the fact that in some
areas there was simply no Jewish population left. Only a minority drew on the
arguments provided by the National Socialists’ ideology which claimed that the
annihilation of the Jews had to be the primary aim in this war, because the Jews
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were seen as the creators of Bolshevism and therefore as the “real,” but elusive,
aggressors against a peaceful Germany, Europe and world, as Omer Bartov
claims.39 Obviously this was much too far-fetched for the soldiers’ perspective
and incompatible with the impressions of Jewish civilians they had gained from
their missions.
Let me close my considerations with some of the rare examples of more unrestricted descriptions about the alarming situation of the Jews, their starving to death
and of mass shootings carried out by German troops. At the end of May 1942 in
Brest/Bug, a reserve officer realized the fatal situation of the civilians in the occupied territories who suffered from hardships, forced labour and hunger as the consequence of severe mismanagement by the German administration. Regarding the
Jews, he mentions the practice of beating them up and “wild” executions by the
guards. The letter describes the method of extermination through exhaustive work:
I am concerned about the nutrition of our Polish civilians whose work efficiency is decreasing rapidly. We only get so much food for them as to provide for a meagre soup five times a
week with 60 hours of labour. The extra supply they get from the city’s civil service is absolutely insufficient. It is even worse for the Jews, some of them just collapse of hunger during
urgent street construction. No flogging or shooting will solve that.40
The letter of an ordinary soldier, from the end of June 1943 in Dünaburg, Latvia,
concedes that German soldiers were not seen as liberators by the local residents.
The author assumes a clear causal link between the way the Germans treat the
local population and the reputation they have. The soldier openly talks about
destructions, mass executions and a regime of terror and arbitrary rule:
The people here do not mean well to us Germans. The city of Dünaburg is half in ruins. 75%
of the population used to be Jewish. They themselves—mostly before the Germans arrived—
blew up or burned down their houses. Subsequently 30 000 Jews were shot not far from the
city. In addition we executed other people over nothing. For these reasons, the population
don’t like to see the Germans anywhere. People are suspicious.41
In mid July 1942, two months after the previously quoted considerations about
malnutrition, the same reserve officer in Brest/Bug wrote about the mass
murder of Jewish men, women and children. With a cynical twist he shows that
he was well aware of the hideous logic of total exploitation:
In Bereza—Katuska, where I stopped at noon, they had just shot 1300 Jews the day before.
They were taken to a pit outside the city, then men, women and children had to take off all
their clothes and were finished by shots to the neck. The clothes were disinfected and then
reused. I am convinced, if the war lasts longer, it will become necessary to make sausages
out of the Jews and feed them to the Russian prisoners of war or the trained Jewish workers.42
To understand the individual scope of interpretation, it is important to make clear
that these, in a way more “objective” remarks, were also impressions noted by
German soldiers. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that such voices were
in a minority. It is a remarkable fact that a considerable part of the systematic
extermination of the European Jewry was committed by ordinary soldiers and
members of the German military who somehow convinced themselves that this
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was part of their military duties. They should, and often could, have known better.
The written comments prove that many soldiers had some bad suspicions. Most of
them took some pains to play down these suspicions—often with the help of the
corresponding answers from their relatives.43
Obviously there were some sadists and extreme anti-Semites who enjoyed the
power to kill. But as a compulsory army, unlike the SS taskforces, the majority of
the Wehrmacht did not consist of deeply convinced Nazi members. Therefore, one
can hardly overestimate the importance of these widespread strategies of affirmative interpretation, forced misreading and deliberate ignoring of the possibility of a
German genocide against the European Jews.
5
Keeping this in mind, we might think differently about a controversy between
Christopher Browning and Arno Mayer. Browning criticized Mayers’ interpretation of the Holocaust as a mere “by-product” of the anti-Bolshevik war,
arguing that even before the war had begun the plans for a total reordering of
Europe along racial lines had been drawn up in Berlin. But I think he was overreaching in the conclusion to his critique:
For Mayer Jews were killed because they were identified with Bolshevism, because they
were expendable labour, because they were easier prey than elusive partisan bands,
because the Germans were increasingly enraged over their impending defeat, and so on.
They were killed, according to Mayer, for every conceivable reason but the most simple
and obvious: They were killed because they were Jews.44
To Browning, Mayer was simply wrong in this analysis because he ignored
Hitler’s racial anti-Semitism as the most important reason for the war in the East.
In contrast to this, I would argue that it is essential to differentiate between
Hitler’s intentions—or even broader: the Nazi ideology—and the motives and
pseudo-legitimations of the soldiers as the perpetrators of these plans. Thus, it
is possible to find some reasons for their actions which reach far beyond the
national socialist world-view with its anti-Semitism and racism. Only a few of
these can be characterized as being partially identical with the aims of the national
socialist movement (“Teilidentität der Ziele”), as has been said about the military
leaders and their plans for the Wehrmacht as an institution.45 In fact, the absence
of blind, ideologically induced hatred among the vast majority of soldiers involved
in the killings, the predomination and radicalization of average, apparently harmless convictions from everyday life as seen in the letters (like the intolerant dictates of hygiene or strict “German” order), is actually much more disturbing
than discovering that all the perpetrators were committed anti-Semites.
Browning and Mayer pursue quite different questions. Browning’s emphasis on
the Nazis’ plan for a “Final Solution” shows his interest in the underlying purposes
of exterminating the Jews, while Mayer struggled with the detailed circumstances
that enabled the historical actors to carry out these plans. Thus the latter talks
about the concrete practical conditions of the mass killings, the former about
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the responsibility of those who initiated the genocide. Without either of these
prerequisites, the genocide would not have happened. From the controversy that
has arisen between these two important lines of research, we can learn that the
polarization between “systematic extermination” and “unintended results”—as
far as the genocide against the European Jews during the Second World War is
concerned—is inappropriate and doesn’t catch the point.
For the German soldiers during their combat in Eastern Europe there was
nothing like “the Holocaust,” despite—or rather because of—the fact that they
were part of the genocide. One could not reduce the killings to a simple
formula. In contemporary discourse, in Germany and in many other countries,
the term “Holocaust” is often used as a mythical chiffre. That makes it very unspecific. It impedes our understanding of concrete circumstances and of the actual
motivations of ordinary perpetrators on a lower level than the strategic planners
and the Nazi elite. Therefore, it might be better to abstain from using the term.
In this bottom up context, it seems more useful to talk about the concrete
frames of action that are involved: about either military crimes, or genocide
actions, or pogroms, or the brutalized partisan war, or mass shootings or single
excesses—instead of using a catch-all term that veils more than it illuminates.
Reading the letters of the soldiers, one becomes sensitive to the fatal power of
the essentially different views, standpoints and motivations which ultimately
added up to a catastrophe.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Professor Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Donald Bloxham,
Dominik Schaller, Jürgen Zimmerer, Sven Oliver Müller, Eberhard Ortland and
two anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks on earlier versions of this
paper.
Notes and References
1 The generalizations are based on a three years’ study of primary sources in several archives (StA Detmold, StA
Osnabrück, Feldpostarchiv Berlin, BfZ Stuttgart, Stürmer-Archiv Nürnberg, BA-MA Freiburg, BA Koblenz)
with 17 series of about 200 up to 4,000 letters each, and over 1,250 odd pieces, for my dissertation: “‘Spring
clean in the East.’ Patterns of ‘order’ and ‘cleanliness’ among German ‘Wehrmacht’ soldiers and their perception of the Nazis’ extermination warfare in Eastern Europe 1939–1944” (University of Bielefeld, forthcoming).
2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word holocaust was first used to describe the ongoing catastrophe and imminent extinction of the Jewish people as early as 1942, even before any precise knowledge
about Nazi extermination camps and incineration practices was available, in an article by the historian
Ben Zion Dinur (Dinaburg) for the London News Chronicle. However, it was only after the war that the
term was frequently (and since the 1960s more and more exclusively) applied by English-speaking authors
to refer to the genocide against the European Jews. In Germany, it gained acceptance only in the 1980s
after the 1979 broadcast of the American TV series Holocaust. See Wolfgang Benz, Der Holocaust
(Munich: Beck, 1999).
3 For the main topics in soldiers’ letters, see Klaus Latzel, Deutsche Soldaten—nationalsozialistischer Krieg?
Kriegserlebnis—Kriegserfahrung 1939–1945 (Munich and Paderborn: Schöningh 1998); Martin Humburg,
Das Gesicht des Krieges. Feldpostbriefe von Wehrmachtssoldaten aus der Sowjetunion 1941–1944
(Wiesbaden and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998).
612
THE HOLOCAUST IN THE LETTERS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS
4 Editions of letters: Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum: Vernichtung.” Das Judenbild
in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1997); Ortwin Buchbender and
Reinhold Sterz, eds, Das andere Gesicht des Krieges. Deutsche Feldpostbriefe 1939–1945 (Munich: Beck, 1982).
5 Quotations in this article—if not quoted differently—are from the archive of collection Sterz, BfZ Stuttgart,
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg.
6 7.12.1942, Sold. Sigbert M., 22 091, Trägerfrequenz Zug 28, z.Zt. on the train (on the way to the front): “Hier
oben sieht man so viele Strafgefangenenlager, die Bauarbeiten und noch so verschiedenes machen. Juden
kommen hier, das heißt in Auschwitz, wöchentlich 7-8000 an, die nach kurzem den ‘Heldentod’ sterben. Es
ist doch gut, wenn man einmal in der Welt umher kommt.”
7 23.8.1943, Uffz. Heinz K., 3. techn.Kp./F.F.S. C 21, Bialystok: “Hier bei uns gibt es nicht viel Neues, die
letzten Tage wurde das Ghetto hier ausgeräuchert. Leider konnten aber einige Juden türmen gehen, und ab
und zu gibt es noch kleinere Schießereien.”
8 23.9.1942, Zahlm.d.R., Heinrich K., 37 634, H.K.P.610, Baranowitschi: “Daß unsere Stimmung durch die
Taten und Arbeitslosigkeit nicht gerade gehoben wird, ist wohl klar. Zur Zeit sind wir außerdem durch eine
neue Judenaktion beeindruckt; Einzelheiten, die ich Dir ersparen möchte, sah ich heute bei einem Gang
längs des betreffenden Wohnviertels.”
9 About the Wehrmacht and its perpetrators see Stephen G. Fritz, Frontsoldaten. The German Soldier in
World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995); Harald Welzer, Täter. Wie aus ganz normalen
Menschen Massenmörder werden (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2005); Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg.
Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2006). On the juridical differences between active mass
murders, perpetrators by command, bystanders, etc., see Herbert Jäger, Verbrechen unter totalitärer
Herrschaft. Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Gewaltkriminalität (Olten: Suhrkamp, 1967), p 141.
10 Helmut Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen. Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges 1938–1942
(Frankfurt: Fischer, 1985).
11 Peter Jahn and Ulrike Schmiegelt, eds, Foto-Feldpost. Geknipste Kriegserlebnisse 1939–1945 (Berlin:
Elefanten-Press, 2000); Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Volker Rieß and Wolfram Pyta, eds, Deutscher Osten
1939–1945. Der Weltanschauungskrieg in Photos und Texten (Darmstadt: WBG, 2003).
12 On the varying involvement of soldiers in crime actions, depending on their position in the army and place and
time of deployment, see Christian Hartmann, “Verbrecherischer Krieg—verbrecherische Wehrmacht?
Überlegungen zur Struktur des deutschen Ostheeres 1941–1944,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte,
Vol 1, 2004, pp 1–76.
13 Browning’s findings for the social dynamics in the police battalion are mostly of general interest and can be
transferred to the soldiers of the Wehrmacht. See Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
14 11.7.1941 (written probably in Lemberg), Mj. Hans S., 33 691, Stab/Pi.Btl.652: “In der alten Zitadelle
werden an diesem Tage 1000 Juden erschossen. Es ist dies eine Vergeltungsmaßnahme für die zur
Bolschewistenzeit erschossenen 2800 Ukrainer. Dafür lassen jetzt 5600 Russen ihr Leben. Zwei Offiziere,
die ich auf die Suche nach Draht und Eisenzeug geschickt hatte, berichten, daß die Juden gestorben
wären, ohne irgendeinen Laut von sich zu geben. Nach dieser menschlich wohl bedauernswerten
aber als abschreckendes Beispiel für das überhandnehmende Freischärlertum unbedingt notwendigen
Maßregel erleben wir es, wie am nächsten Tage ein großer Teil Plünderer ihr gestohlenes Gut einfach
auf die Straße setzten.”
15 Explanation of the military term “reprisal” by Lassa Oppenheim in H. Lauterpacht, ed., International Law.
A Treatise, Vol. 2, War and Neutrality (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1935), pp 447f.; compare
Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskriegs 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), p 24.
16 18.7.1941, O’Gefr. Georg B, 06 208, 13.Kp./Inf.Rgt.42, 46.Inf.Div.: “Hier wird auch die Judenfrage etwas
anders als bei uns gelöst. Da treiben die Rumänen alle Juden zusammen und erschießen sie, ganz gleich
ob Mann, Frau oder Kinder, denn zuerst war es umgekehrt.”
17 17.8.1941, Sold. Erich L., 24 768, Stab/Geb.Pz.Jäg.Abt.44, 1.Geb.Div.: “Die vielen hundert Kilometer, die
wir nun zurückgelegt haben, zeigten uns die Härte und Grausamkeit diese Kampfes. Es ist mir nicht möglich,
dies alles im einzelnen zu schildern, aber hier geht es wirklich um Sein oder Nichtsein. Je tiefer wir nach
Rußland vorfuhren, um so mehr trafen wir auf Juden. Die Kerle sind noch genauso frech wie im tiefsten
Frieden. Man sollte eigentlich noch viel mehr dieser Ausgeburten an die Wand stellen, als bisher geschehen
ist.”
18 25.9.1941, O’Gefr. Richard T. v. F., 28 774, 2.Kp./Pi.Btl.70: “In einem Gefangenenzug konnte man neulich
auch eine Anzahl Flintenweiber sehen, dann an einem Galgen sieben Juden hängen, die zu 14 für Sabotagezwecke hinten mit Fallschirmen absprangen. Von den oberen Fronten hört man ja wieder allerhand
Erhebendes, es geht wohl heuer im Osten doch vollends auf’s ganze.”
613
MICHAELA KIPP
19 Wolfram Wette, Die Wehrmacht. Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2005);
Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army. Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995); on the indoctrination of the killing taskforces compare: Jürgen Matthäus, Ausbildungsziel
Judenmord? “Weltanschauliche Erziehung” von SS, Polizei und Waffen-SS im Rahmen der “Endlösung”
(Frankfurt: Fischer, 2003).
20 As, for example, Ernst G., who wrote to his wife, December 25, 1941: “Was in den letzten sechs Tagen vor
sich ging, wirst Du in meinem Tagebuch suchen. Aber es befindet sich dort, wo ich auch die anderen vielen
Dinge lassen mußte. Nur in meinem Hirn. Und dort ist auch ein dicker schwarzer Strich. Schweigen wir
darüber.” Same author, April 21, 1942: “Bobi, vielleicht weißt Du, was in dieser Zeit hier los war. Ich
will nicht mehr darüber sprechen, und möchte nicht daran denken.” Both Feldpost-Archiv Berlin.
21 See note 2.
22 On the tendency to play down the role of German soldiers for the realization of the Holocaust compare:
Hannes Heer, Vom Verschwinden der Täter. Der Vernichtungskrieg fand statt, aber keiner war dabei
(Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2004); Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller and others, “Opa war kein Nazi.” Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2002).
23 Thomas Kühne, “Kameradschaft—‘das Beste im Leben eines Mannes’. Die deutschen Soldaten des Zweiten
Weltkriegs in erfahrungs- und geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Vol
22, 1996, pp 504 –530.
24 Two examples: 26.7.41, Sold. Werner F. 34 911 ¼ 4.Kp./Fla.M.G.Batl.(schw.)mot. Z 52, Slg. Sterz.: “Gestern
sah ich eine der Megären vom russischen Frauenbataillon. Sie trug schwarze Pumphosen, schwarze Bluse und
eine weite, schwarze Schirmmütze und sah entsetzlich fies aus.” September 14, 1941, Lance Corporal
Heinrich D., 7. Komp. Schtz. Regt. 4., in front of Leningrad, diary of the 20-year-old soldier about
the East campaign, 1941– 42, StA Detmold, D 70 B Nr. 16: “Dazwischen Flintenweiber, die den russischen
Kompanien zugeteilt, dieselbe Uniform wie die Soldaten trugen und ebenso wie sie entmenschte Wesen, mit
Gewehren, am M.G. und schweren Waffen kämpften. Da lagen sie nun von der tödlichen Kugel getroffen. Im
Todesschmerz hatten einige ihre Uniformblusen aufgerissen und boten nun, vom Tod niedergeworfen und
entblößt, das grauenhafte Bild verhöhnter Weiblichkeit.”
25 Lutz Klinkhammer speaks in this context about the “male matrix of war” (“männliche Matrix des Krieges”).
See Lutz Klinkhammer, “Der Partisanenkrieg der Wehrmacht 1941–1944,” in Rolf-Dieter Müller and
Hans-Erich Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp 815–836.
Compare for World War I: Hanna Hacker, “Ein Soldat ist meistens keine Frau. Geschlechterkonstruktionen im
militärischen Feld,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Vol 20, No 2, 1995, pp 45 –63.
26 Order of the “Chef des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht” with “Führerbefehl” from 16.12.1942, StAN,
NOKW-068.
27 “Die Esten sind ganz ordentliche Leute, nur etwas weich.” From a soldier’s letter quoted in: Stephan Linck,
Der Ordnung verpflichtet. Deutsche Polizei 1933–1949. Der Fall Flensburg (Munich: Schöningh, 2000),
p 115.
28 Manuel Frey, Der reinliche Bürger. Entstehung und Verbreitung bürgerlicher Tugenden in Deutschland,
1760–1860 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997).
29 Stephan Linck, “‘Ordnung und Sauberkeit . . .’ Briefe Flensburger Ordnungspolizisten 1944,” Sowi, Vol 26,
No 1, 1997, pp 42–47; Sarah Jansen, “Schädlinge.” Geschichte eines wissenschaftlichen und politischen
Konstrukts 1840– 1920 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003); Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien (Frankfurt: Piper,
1977), in particular Vol 1, Chapter 2: “Vermischung der Körperränder: Schmutz, Schlamm, Sumpf,
Schleim, Brei, Hinten, Scheiße,” pp 492–507. Compare the analogue expressions for torture during the
French Algerian War: Kristin Ross, “Hausputz,” in Christoph Conrad and Martina Kessel, eds, Kultur und
Geschichte. Neue Einblicke in eine alte Beziehung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998), pp 362–383. More generally,
compare: Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Paul, 1966); Christian Enzensberger,
Größerer Versuch über den Schmutz (Munich: 1968), pp 23f.; and the special issue of the journal Sowi on
cleanliness: “Sauberkeit. Geschichte einer Praxis,” Sowi, Vol 26, No 1, 1997.
30 For categories of “social knowledge,” see Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of
Reality (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
31 From a letter of the soldier Hans N. to his family, April 29, 1944, in Russia (Staatsarchiv Detmold, D70b):
“Man wird hier ja direkt unanständig anspruchslos! Tägliches Toilettemachen entfällt, da wir kein Wasser
herbeischaffen können. Der Mund wird mit einem Schluck Kaffee ausgespült, der Bart wächst, blüht und
gedeiht! Man darf an normale menschliche (deutsche) Verhältnisse aber auch gar nicht denken, dann hakt
es aus!”
32 Mitteilungen für die Truppe, December 1941, No 163: “Wer die verkommenen Dörfer, die verluderten Wege
und die kümmerlichen Städte in der Fremde sah, der weiß, welches Geschenk es ist, dem deutschen Volk
anzugehören, dessen Menschen seit vielen Generationen aufgebaut und, verglichen mit dem Osten, aus
Deutschland einen gepflegten Garten, ein Schmuckkästlein geschaffen haben.”
614
THE HOLOCAUST IN THE LETTERS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS
33 From an annual report of the Soldier Hans N. to his family, 1944, in Russia (Staatsarchiv Detmold, D70b):
“Doch da ich gerade bei den Quartieren bin, will ich etwas im Folgenden von den Quartierwirten erzählen.
Die Belegschaft setzte sich fast ausschließlich aus Großvätern, Großmüttern, Müttern und Kindern,
sämtlichen Urenkeln zusammen. Nach Möglichkeit suchten wir uns ja die ‘besten’ Quartiere aus, immer
konnte man aber sagen: Wie haust ihr nur! [. . .] Entschuldigt, aber wenn die folgenden Schilderungen
wahrheitsgetreu ausfallen sollen, ich wesentliche Punkte nicht einfach unter den Tisch fallen lassen soll,
dann müßt ihr andererseits euer esthetisches [sic] Gefühl mal etwas ausschalten. Wir haben das schon
längst über Bord geworfen—werfen müssen.”
34 A lieutenant’s letter (no date given in original): Leutnant d.SchP.d.R. St. Ordonnanzoff. im Bat.-Stab. No 3:
“Hier erst merkt man, wie schön unsere Heimat ist. Die sozialen Mißstände sind nicht zu schildern. Schmutz
und Dreck. Eine große Prozentzahl der Einwohner sind Juden. Umso dringender war die Lösung der Judenfrage. Sie wird nach deutschem Muster von der ungarischen Regierung jetzt energisch vorangetrieben. Eine
restlose Vernichtung ist alleine schon erforderlich, um dem russischen Elendsvolk bessere Lebensbedingungen zu geben.”
35 Lippische Staatszeitung, May 16, 1943, author of the article: Prof. Dr. Johann von Leers (Staatsarchiv
Detmold), quoted in Andreas Ruppert and Hansjörg Riechert, Herrschaft und Akzeptanz. Der Nationalsozialismus in Lippe während der Kriegsjahre. Analyse und Dokumentation (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1998),
p 93: “Das Ergebnis für den Arzt muß die restlose Ausschaltung der Cholera sein, das Ergebnis für unser
Volk muß die restlose Ausschaltung der Juden sein.”
36 Training book of the Wehrmacht from 1939: “Der Jude in der deutschen Geschichte,” in Oberkommando der
Wehrmacht, ed., Schulungshefte für den Unterricht über nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung und nationalpolitische Zielsetzung (Berlin: Zentral verlag der NSDAP, 1939): “Das Weltjudentum aber bekämpfen
wir, wie man einen giftigen Parasiten bekämpfen muß; wir treffen in ihm nicht nur einen Feind unseres
Volkes, sondern eine Plage aller Völker.”
37 Tim C. Richter, “Die Wehrmacht und der Partisanenkrieg in den besetzten Gebieten der Sowjetunion,”
pp 837–857.
38 “Hier erleben die Juden ihr Fiasko.” From a letter of the ordinary soldier Ernst G., February 3, 1942, in the
East (Feldpost-Archiv Berlin).
39 Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction. War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), p 109.
40 28.5.1942, K.V.-Insp. Heinrich K., 37 634, H.K.P.610, Brest/Bug: “Sorge macht mir die Ernährung unserer
polnischen Zivilisten, deren Arbeitsleistung stark absinkt. Wir erhalten für sie nur soviel Lebensmittel, daß
wir fünfmal in der Woche bei 60stündiger Arbeitszeit eine klägliche Suppe reichen können, und was die
Leute außerdem durch die städtische Zivilverwaltung bekommen, ist völlig ungenügend. Noch schlimmer
steht’s bei den Juden, von denen manche bei dringenden Straßenarbeiten bei Hunger einfach umfallen.
Dagegen hilft auch kein Prügeln oder Erschießen.”
41 27.6.1943, Sold. Heinrich R., 47 168, Pferde-Laz.575, Dünaburg: “Die Bevölkerung ist uns Deutschen nicht
gut gesinnt. Die Stadt Dünaburg ist bis zur Hälfte auch nur noch ein Trümmerfeld. Hier lebten bis zu 75%
Juden. Diese haben ihre Häuser, meist ehe die Deutschen kamen, selbst gesprengt oder verbrannt. Daraufhin
sind zusammen 30 000 Juden nicht weit von der Stadt erschossen worden. Außerdem sind an anderen Leuten
auch von uns viele Erschießungen vollstreckt worden über Kleinigkeiten. Der Deutsche ist einmal dadurch
nirgends gern gesehen. Die Leute sind mißtrauisch.”
42 18.7.1942, Zahlm.d.R., Heinrich K., 37 634, H.K.P.610, Brest/Bug: “In Bereza–Kartuska, wo ich
Mittagsstation machte, hatte man gerade am Tag vorher etwa 1300 Juden erschossen. Sie wurden zu einer
Kuhle außerhalb des Orte gebracht, Männer, Frauen und Kinder mußten sich dort völlig ausziehen und
wurden durch Genickschuß erledigt. Die Kleider wurden desinfiziert und wieder verwendet. Ich bin der
Überzeugung: Wenn der Krieg noch länger dauert, wird man die Juden auch noch zu Wurst verarbeiten
und den russischen Kriegsgefangenen oder den gelernten jüdischen Arbeitern vorsetzen müssen.”
43 See, for example, the letters between Gertrud S. and her son Helmut S. from Poland (1940) and Russia (end
1941–44), Feldpostarchiv Berlin, digital transcript.
44 Compare Christopher Browning, The Path to Genocide. Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp 77 –85, quotation from p 84.
45 The original quotation is from Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, Zeit der Indoktrination
(Hamburg: von Decker, 1969), p 1. Latzel suggests one should talk analogously about the “Teilidentität der
Motive” of soldiers and the national socialist movement, compare: Klaus Latzel, Deutsche Soldaten, p 370, as
well as Klaus Latzel, “Wehmachtssoldaten zwischen ‘Normalität’ und NS-Ideologie, oder: Was sucht die Forschung in der Feldpost?,” in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans Erich Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich: Schöningh, 1999).
615