Berlin Diary (1941)* * * *

Berlin Diary (link to book at Amazon)
At 21 in 1925, William Shirer left the States to work as a foreign journalist in India and Europe. 1933 he took off a year to be a beach bum in a little village in Spain with his wife, but the dollar took a hammering, their saving took a beating, and Shirer had to quickly get a job. He worked in Paris for a few months, at a reporting job that bored him to tears, but then in early 1934, he landed a better job in Berlin. Thus it came to be that he spent 7 years in Berlin covering the rise of Hilter and the early years of WWII when Germany was celebrating one incredible victory after another. This 'diary' is not about himself, but his commentary on the events around him and on which he was reporting. As a foreign correspondent of a major U.S. radio company, he reported at the center of the major events happening at the time. Later Shirer would write many books about Nazi Germany, the most famous being The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But Berlin Diary is before all that, written in the moment and full of the uncertainty and tension that comes with not knowing how things will turn out and not knowing exactly what is happening (each side, Axis and Allies, are putting their spin on their news and official reports).

This inside-American view of the rise of Hitler and Germany would be fascinating on its own sake. But what was really gripping about this book is that is was published in April 1941 -- at the height of German power. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium, France have all fallen to Germany. Britain is being bombed and it is not at all clear that she can win against the superior German army and air force. Shirer did not know how it would all turn out when he published this shortly after his return from Berlin in December 1940. It is easy when thinking about WWII to think that 'oh, yeah, Germany took over Austria and then invaded Poland..yada..yada' as if it were obvious this would happen and that Germany would be so successful. But from reading Shirer's journal, you are reminded how incredible and NOT clear these events were. Hitler was playing a game of bluff -- threatening war to get countries to just roll over and play dead. As each piece of territory was taken over, the German war machine gained strength until Hitler no longer had to bluff but could just drop the hammer.

Reading this diary, I felt like it was all happening right now. Each evening I was eager to read to find out what had happened that day. My husband and step-son were amused when I would shuffle down-hearted into the kitchen; 'What's wrong?' they would ask. 'Poland has been invaded. They are getting slaughtered.' I would reply in all seriousness. The funny thing is that while reading Shirer's book it did feel real -- well, it is real though it happened 75 years ago. By reading his diary, I experienced in a small way the emotions and shock that Shirer felt watching these incredible events unfold.

In Deadly Combat (1964) * * * *

In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann (link to the book on Amazon)

This is a memoir of a young German soldier who started as a landser—infantry man—manning a heavy machine gun and then became a platoon leader. He began his service in the Crimea in a battle group that defeated the Russians and pushed them out of Sevastapool Castle. They were later moved up to join the army besieging Leningrad. They battled the Russian groups trying to break the siege. Later as the Russians pushed the Germans south, out of Russia, they were surrounded and trapped in what was called the Courland pocket. Against overwhelming odds, they resisted all attempts by the Russians to smash their pocket. They held out till the end of the war, when they were finally ordered to surrender. The author was taken prisoner and was one of the few to survive the gulags.

This memoir is considered one of the best. This memoir gives a good perspective on the skill of the German soldiers and why the Wehrmacht was so effective. Small teams of heavy out-numbered German soldiers were able to maintain their position by being unflinching under fire. In the beginning, the soldiers are affected by seeing death and being killing machines. In one early battle when they are mowing down wave after wave of Russian soldiers, one of the heavy machine gunners becomes overwhelmed by it all and cries out “I can’t keep killing!”. This must have been alarming to his mates who were doing all they could to stay alive. After a year or two though, the soldiers are inured to it and seem simply proud of their skills at repelling these attacks.

My thoughts? It is a good book. If one is interested in German war memoirs, this is one to read. However, I felt kind of traumatized by the end. Killing, killing, killing. Ug. The writer does not glorify this but that is what his life was about at this time.

Tank Rider * * *

Tank Rider is a war memoir from a man, Evgyny Bessorov, who served in the Russian infantry during WWII. He was the lowest level of officer, a platoon leader. It was his job to get the soldiers up and rushing at the Germans during the endless battles. He rushed into battle for 2 years carrying usually only a shovel, which he used for its intended purpose (digging in) and to 'tap' the butts of soldiers who had been laying on the ground for too long. He said of his job, no one wants to die, that includes soldiers, it was my job to get them up and running at the enemy. Sometimes he had to physically manhandle his soldiers out of their foxholes; only once did he have to threaten execution. He led his men through 4 or 5 major battles. During each he lost about 80% of his platoon. His survival was pure luck combined with caution.

He starts his front-line service at the battle of Kursk.
From there, it is a relentless 2 year push towards the German border and then into Berlin. He is part of the troops the encircle Berlin from the east. Here he is injured and then rejoins his battalion when they are outside Prague. And then 'Woina kaputt'...the war is finished.

As he states in the introduction, this is a book about what he saw and what he did. He doesn't analyze the war or his experience. He doesn't dwell on the horrible things he saw, but he says many times that it was very hard, he was scared and no one wanted to die. He does not mention anything about the Russians treatment of German POWs or about raping and pillaging when the Russians came into Germany. However, he was a frontline soldier and everything I've read has said that the frontline soldiers were too tired to do anything and were on the move forward constantly. The raping and pillaging and shooting of POWs happened behind the lines. Thus I would think that he is not 'leaving out details'. He is upfront about his failings: the times when he was too scared to move or when he made an error that got men killed. He is not philosophic about his job which was to lead men to their deaths. His job was to lead groups of men forward to take objectives at any cost. It was his job, and that was that.

Although, as I mentioned, he doesn't talk about Russian bad behavior, many passages are telling. He asserts that he did not allow his soldiers to loot. Loot however was defined as killing pigs and destroying property. Emptying out the larder and the chicken coop was not looting. He talks a lot about how well they ate in Germany and how well stocked the German pantries were. At one point when they catch a bunch of soldiers, the political officer comes racing forward screaming, 'Don't Shoot Them!!'. He is affronted, noting that the officer acted like he had been shooting prisoners the whole war. However, that the political officer was afraid that the prisoners would be shoot is telling. In other places he talks about 'taking the middle way'. They would come into a village in Western Ukraine, and the people didn't want to feed the soldiers. Bessorov said that he would pull out his gun and threaten that if food wasn't on the table in a hour, he would shoot them. This was the 'middle way'. We did not loot, but the soldiers got fed.

WWII was a war that had a huge effect on his generation. 40% of the boys in his high school class were killed in the war. Interestingly, in start contrast to the USSR propaganda about the country rallying together to support the troops, he gives many stories of the rural people not supporting the soldiers. In training, they practically starve because they are sent to the countryside to learn to dig holes and the villagers refuse to feed them. In the eastern Ukraine, when they push the Germans out, the villagers are very welcoming and always make food for the soldiers, but in the western Ukraine, people are downright hostile.

Overall this is an interesting book for those interested in the eastern front of WWII. This is one of the few memoirs from the Russian side. Until the fall of the USSR, such memoirs were forbidden since they might conflict with the official stories.

Blood Red Snow * * * *

Blood Red Snow is memoir of a German soldier who fought as a heavy machine gunner in Russia, Ukraine and Romania. He also did a short stint in Italy, chasing partisans. This story is very different than A Stranger To Myself. No endless philosophizing or ruminations on the glint of snowflakes against the sun. Instead this is a straight-forward story of what happened to him as an elite front-line soldier.

His first battle is on the outskirts of Stalingrad. He starts as a naive and idealistic young soldier, but that doesn't last long. His first job is a trip into Stalingrad to deliver food at night. This is just before the encirclement, and the battles are done from rubble pile to rubble pile. All he can think about is getting away from the horror. Shortly after the fighting begins and his unit is one of the sacrificial units that are maintaining a fight to the death position. Almost everyone in his unit is killed, and then when all is hopeless the last 10 make a dash to safety through heavy gunfire. They are among those that race across the River Don on foot and are only saved because the ice is too thin for the Russian tanks. It is a brutal fighting retreat. He get injured, gets sent to the rear, and survives.

After a stint in Italy, where not much of interest happens except some looting, he is sent back to Russia. He is now in an elite unit that is steadily retreating from the Russian offensive east into Romania. By this point, he is very weary after so many months of frontline fighting. In the end, he ends up in Poland and is in East Prussia when the Russian arrive. He is once again injured at a lucky time and manages to survive by being in a hospital at the right time.

One interesting section concerns a home-leave he gets in the summer of 1944. He writes that things were very tense at home. Many refugees. People being sent to concentration camps. He does not mention Jews, but rather dissenters and those that refuse to fight. He is not critical of them nor is he sympathetic. Everyone has a duty to do and they refuse to do theirs. In retrospect, we know that Germany mounted an unprovoked attack on Russia in the summer of 1941. But this is not what Germans were told at the time. They were told that Russia was massing troops on the border and this was a defensive attack to protect Germany and Europe from the war-mongering Bolsheviks. I'm sure that this is what everyone believed.

In this memoir, the viewpoint is unconflicted. The Russians are the enemy and they are brutes. He writes about how as his unit retreats and the Russians move forward, the Russians kill villagers in the eastern Ukraine who helped the Germans -- even if they were forced to do so. This is also mentioned in the book, Stalingrad. As they retreat into Romania, he talks about the rampant raping by the Russian soldiers. This is also well documented. He also writes about the treatment of German POWs and that they are killed or worse. Again this well-documented. So to him when he was a soldier, it was clear-cut. He does not mention German war-crimes, but then it sounds like he was not in areas where these were happening in the extreme. He did not fight in the Ukraine in winter 1941 where he would have seen 100,000s of Russian POWs interned with no food nor does he see the round-up of Jews in those areas nor the winter looting and rampant killing of civilians. He does not experience the scotched-earth retreat from Opel. Many other soldiers did experience this and the documentary Mein Kampf has footage taken by these men.

Overall I found this to be an unrealistically rosy picture of German soldiers in Russia. Here there is no mention of the poor treatment of Russian POWs. There is mention of wounded Russians being shot, but this is attributed to sadism. Looting is punishable and soldiers have to be sneaky about it. I don't necessarily doubt that this is a true account of this soldier's experience, and people I've talked to in Czechoslovakia during the war have commented that the German soldiers were well-behaved. Nonetheless, I was struck by the lack of any reference to German treatment of Russian POWs, the massive institutionalized looting, and mass starvation of civilians (like in Leningrad). I cannot believe he was unaware even if he did not personally see this. This especially struck me at the end, where he makes a comment about wanting to be an POW of the Americans since at least they treat POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. I was pretty much flabbergasted by this comment, given what happened to so many Russian POWs. Granted from what I've read, those that were shipped to Germany for slave labor were treated decently, but millions were starved or gassed.

Another part of the book that I read with skepticism was the part where he said he was among the first German troops to come into the village of Nemmersdorf after the Russians briefly took it. Nemmersdorf is the site of the most famous Russian war atrocities in East Prussia. This is the first German town that the Russian troops reached. The Russian troops were accused of killing all civilians, raping the women and girls to death, and then mutilating the bodies. Goebbels had a famous propaganda film made of it. There are questions however about whether it was 'enhanced' for propaganda purposes by SS troops in the area. That the Russians killed the civilians and mass-raped the women and girls meshes with well-documented reports of many, many similar events from East Prussia (discussed in Fall of Berlin). But the Nemmersdorf massacre was also characterized by mutilation and crucifying people on barn doors -- I have never read of anything like that in other reports. In any case, the author claims to have been among those troops that first arrived after the Russians and claims to have seen the mutilated bodies. I found it surprising that of all places, he just so happened to be in Nemmersdorf on Oct 21, 1944.

In the end, I'm not sure what to make of this memoir -- except that it gives me a new insight into more of the evil of war.

Chronology
October-November 1942 On the Don River outside Stalingrad. Makes a hasty retreat and get injured. Thus survives.
October-November 1943 On the Dneiper in Eastern Ukraine some 500km south of Kursk. Russians are in the process of their steady push of the Germans out of Russia. His unit is one of the delaying units set up to give the retreating soldiers more time.
December 1943 Major assault by the Russians on the line of the Dneiper River.
January 1944 Retreat from the Dneiper River near Dneproperovsk.
March 1944 Miserable retreat to just north of the Black Sea. From where they are transferred to Romania.
April 1944 Part of a big successful fight where the Germans defeat the Russians near Lasi (Jassy) on the border between Romania and Moldava. Russian will have it back by July.
June 1944 Heavy fighting near Jassy as Russians are intent on retaking Jassy.
July 1944 Transferred to Poland; hard fighting; losing; injured and off the hospital.
October 1944 Fighting in Poland. Says he is in the troops that first come into Nemmersdorf (the site of a famous Red Army massacre of civilians), but that seems hard to believe.
January-March 1945 In Denmark as a trainer for new recruits.
March 1945 Volunteers for the front with his ragtag group of new recruits. Sent to Stettin on the Oder as the Russians are pushing their way to Berlin. Is soon injured, and sent back to a hospital.
End of April 1945 Is in a hospital that is taken by the Americans, but the Americans turn the German POWs over to Russia. He reinfects his wound to get back to the sick ward, and survives this. Spends time in American camp then released.

A Stranger to Myself * * *

A Stranger to Myself is a book made from the diaries of a young writer/poet/philosopher who died in Russia on his 5th tour on the Eastern Front. This is a memoir about what it was to experience the Eastern Front as a little human not an uber-German. If you've seen any books on the Eastern Front, you've seen the pictures of the winter of '41. The German soldiers in summer uniforms are laying in endless frozen heaps. The walking have their hands and feet wrapped due to frostbite. It is a disaster. Reese entered the war during that winter and lived through the experience in those pictures. He also was on the front near Kursk during the disasterous winter of '43 when Germans were again pushed back. 100'000s German soldiers were killed or froze to death during that winter. He returns to the front in winter '44 as the Germans are getting pushed out of Russia after the failure of Operation Citidel. So this is a memoir of the winter defeats. He misses completely the heady summer of '41 when the Germans pushed to Moscow and the summer of '42 when they pushed to Stalingrad.

A Stranger to Myself is unlike any war diary that you would have read before. This is Wagner meets WWII. It is an at times lyrical and, in the first half, overwrought exploration of his experience of the war. We are transplanted to the Russian steppe. The writer paints a vivid and poetic pictures of the the landscape and how it changes from winter to summer. As I read it, I could almost smell the crisp morning air and see the red sunrises, and then later the endless brown and mud that covers everything. In the beginning of the book, Reese struggles with yet embraces the role of the soldier. He repeatedly talks of the mask of the soldier and playing a role. He tries to understand his existence. Life is suffering. It is what must be. Suffering defines existence. In the beginning he sees himself as part of a larger thing. The master race scouring the countryside. Yet he does not see himself as superior; he is simply part of this larger thing that is happening. He feels no emnity to the people or his enemies. Yet he participates. His life is not defined by Free Will. He gives in to the larger forces and plays his role. He embraces herioc nihilism. After 2 years of war, he view will change however....

Reese is unsparing in his examination of himself. And if all soldiers were like him, the Wehrmacht surely wouldn't have gotten very far. He kvetches, he gets lost, he has heart palpations, somehow he repeatedly manages to stay behind and hold the fort while his comrades go off to fight, etc, etc. During the brutal winter of '43, he descends into pure desperation and finally stands up in his trench until he is shot. Salvation, a home-pass. In the winter of '44, however, he is a seasoned frontline veteran and participates in endless battles -- although he and the others are fighting just to save themselves nothing more. He is unsparing in his admission of his participation in abuses of civilians; he does not agonize over it nor does he feel good about it. In the winter of '41, he describes how the soldiers were constantly hungry and suffering. They looted from the civilians viciously and if the people complained, they were shot. Later in the book, during the retreat from Orel, he writes of the endless destruction behind the frontlines. The Germans instituted a scorched earth policy on their retreat. He is sad of the war is consuming noncombatants and recognizes that he is both perpetrator and pawn of the war-monster.

After 2 years of war, Reese has changed. He explores his mental scars that simply do not heal. His writing has changed. Before it was overwrought and explored endlessly this idea of heroic nihilsm. Now his writing is terse as he tries to comes to grip with who he is, what his life is, and the images in his head. He decides his life can only go forward after going through the fire. He volunteers for the frontlines. In the end, after going through the crucible, he is ready to live. The beauty of nature consumes him. But he accepts that death is his fate and is not sad. He did about 3-4 months after he finished the book during a furlough at home. He was killed in June 1944 during the retreat from Russia.

Chronology
August 1941 Reese is stationed in Poland and participates in fights to push the Russians east
Sept 28, 1941 Reese arrives in Kiev the day after the greatest encirclement of the war; 650,000 Russians
October 1941 He is near Kursk. Winter arrives they begin to freeze and starve;
Dec 1941 - Jan 1942 Starving and freezing and trench warfare near Kursk; Reese is injured and returns home. This was the eastern end of the big Russian counter-offensive.
July 1942 Reese joins the summer offensive in the push towards Stalingrad. They start marching near Kharkov. But he collapses in the march and is sent back to Germany.
October-Dec 1942 Reese is sent to Rshev NW of Moscow. In Dec/Jan a big Russian counter offensive at Rshev pushes the Germans back 200km.
Feb 1943 In the midst of this counter offensive, Reese stands up in his trench to get shot. He does.
July 1943 Reese is sent to about 200mi SW of Moscow near Smolensk on the Vopez River. Fighting.
End of July 1943 Moved to Mileyevo NE of Bryansk (100km W of Orel). Fighting.
August or so 1943 Collapse of the Citidel offensive. Enormous retreat by the German Army back to the Dneiper River in the west. All villages destroyed on retreat. Reese describes this.
To Dec 1943 North of Gomel (200km W of Byransk). Reese is part of the fighting to hold the line of the Dneiper River against a huge Russian counter-offensive.
Spring 1943 Home leave
June 1943 Reese is killed in the Vitebsk region 400km W of Moscow during the start of the Russian counter-offensive that drove the Germans out of Russian

A Woman in Berlin (1954)* * * * *

A Woman in Berlin (link to book at Amazon)
A Woman in Berlin is the diary of Marta Hillers who was living in Berlin when it fell to the Russian Army. The diary starts as she is sitting in a bomb shelter to avoid the nighttime bombing raids by the Americans. During the day, they can hear the Russians over the horizon. It is 3 more days before the Russians will make it to their part of town. This diary records what she saw in her small part of Berlin during the two months starting just before Berlin fell. Marta Hillers (who published this anonymously but it is well-known who is the author) was a 34-year old journalist. An orphan from WWI, she lived as a free-spirit. A modern woman. A traveler. She had studied in Paris and had visited Russian, back in her youthful days as a coffee-house red-sympathizer before she became disillusioned after visiting Russia. She had a working command of Russian, which would change her experience during the Russian occupation (it's unclear if it was a positive or negative).

I had approached this book with trepidation. I knew that during the fall of Berlin, there was an orgy of mass rape and that estimates are that 50% of all women were raped. As I opened the book, I braced myself for horror. The book wasn't anything like that. Yes rape is a big part of this book; the author herself loses track of the number of booted soldiers that force their way into her bed. But unlike in Prussia, most women were not getting raped AND beaten. It was happening to all women, and the Berlin women quickly developed a gallows humor about it. Marta relates how every visit to friends quickly found the women huddled together discussing 'So, how many...'. Just like women huddle together and tell birthing stories. When one relates a particularly unpleasant encounter, the rest wince and can commiserate with their own unpleasant encounter.

After one particularly uncouth rapist, the author decides she's had it and that if she's going to have forced intercourse with Russians 2-3 times a day, at least she is going to have it with only 1 Russian of her own choosing. So she goes out to find an officer. Her plan is a bit vague on how this is going to work, but she figures if she gets an officer boyfriend, he will somehow keep the others at bay. She manages to find one, and thus her apartment (actually not hers but a widow who she is living with) becomes a gathering spot every evening for a group of Russian officers of various levels. Endless late nights of drinking and discussing politics (followed by ... with her officer). She is amazed at the diversity of men -- they come from all over Russia and represent very different backgrounds. At some point, she realized that she has become a willing participant and ponders whether she has become a whore. She provides sex; the Russian visitors provide food. However, the alternative is starvation. So she is practical about it. A number of other women in her building have similar arrangements.

In the second month of the diary, the Russian Army leaves from her part of town. Gone are the Russian visitors. Gone is the food. Back to potatoes and nettles. She joins a number of forced labor call-ups. A day of rubble clearing. A week dismantling a factory and loading it on a train to Russia. I have often wondered how the Germans (esp women) could rebuild Berlin so fast after the war. I had imagined that the women must have been shattered by their experiences. Some were. But this book gives insight into the many women who were not. Who somehow coped and focused on the work to be done and not on self-pity. As one woman comments, "Life goes on..."