Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II

Preface

This is not a book about war in the sensethat suchhistories areusually understood; instead, it concerns the nature of men at war. Indeed, war serves as merely the backdrop against which human actions and emotions can be illuminated.As a consequence,I do not take a traditional "top-down" approach, relying on official documents and assessments of events, but rather approach history from the "bottom up," from the perspective of the common fighting man. This approach, of course, has certain limitations, foremost among them the fact that the broad strategic sweepof traditional military history is absent.Nor is there any of the usual conjecture over matters of tactics, leadership,command decisions, or the relativemerits of various weapons. Not only have those matters been dealt with elsewhere by other historians, but pursuing them here would negate the entire intent of everyday history. My purpose is to allow average German soldiers to speak, with a minimum of external interference; to hear their words and see the war through their eyes so as to get at the reality of the combat experience as lived by the men in the bunkers and foxholes. It is this sense of immediacy and drama, unfiltered and uncluttered by excessive analysis, that is at the heart of everyday history. By its very nature, everyday history relies extensively on the comments of average people, which is why I have leaned heavily on quotations from the soldiers themselves. This does not mean, however, that there is no analysis or that the book is simply an edited collection of combat experiences. In reading countless letters and diaries, I analyzed them for personal, social, political, or ideological content, looked for recurring themes, created a systematic framework within each chapter in order to focus the words of the average soldiers, and then commented in a concise, analytical fashion.I could certainly have summarized much of this material in my own words, but then it would have lost the intimacy and impact of the moving stories of "little men" that are the strength of everyday history. viii FRONTSOLDATEN Because I sought to explore the lives of ordinary men by way of their own perceptions as set down in letters and diaries, I purposely avoided a reliance on official documents and memoranda. For the same reason, because I was concentrating on the average soldier, I chose not to include Waffen-SS units in my study. By the latter stages of the war draftees were being used in some of these units, but by definition the SS were employed-and saw themselves-as elite formations apart from the ordinary Lundsers. Not that my approach to their everyday history is meant in any way to glorify the average German soldier: as I take pains to point out in the chapters on combat and ideology, these ordinary men, to an extent far greater than previously acknowledged, were ideologically motivated and participated in grievous atrocities for racial and ideological reasons. By the same token, however, I attempt to point out the human fears, anxieties, emotions, insights,joys, sorrows, and tribulations that these men, like other soldiers,experienced from the perspective of the foxhole. The scope of the book is comprehensive; I have included material from North Africa, Italy, France, and the Balkans, although admittedly these selections are overshadowed by those from Russia. There is, of course, a straightforward reason for this: the overwhelming majority of German combat troops, approximately 80 percent of the total, fought on the eastern front. And since I focus on combat, not on occupation duties, the bulk of the relevant letters and diaries concerned events in Russia. The translations, unless otherwise noted in the bibliography, are entirely my own, although for difficult or ambiguous phrases I consulted ChristaHungate, professor of German at East TennesseeStateUniversity and herself a native German speaker. As far as possible I have attempted to follow the original style of the writer, which is why some excerpts seem particularly articulateand others are more rough-hewn. I have tried as well to convey the spirit of various colloquialisms and slang terms, substituting the closestAmerican equivalentif aliteral translation proved impossible. Fromthe American perspective, the Wehrmachthad a bewildering variety of ranks and titles, so in the interest of comprehensibility I have simplified the German ranks into their nearest American equivalents , using the Handbook on GermanMilitary Forces of the (then) U.S. War Department as my guide. In any work of this sort the author incurs a great many obligations, and I am certainly no exception...