Broken Lives

by Konrad H Jarausch

  More fortunate young women might actually profit from the war if they participated in the occupation of enemy territories. Early in the conflict, Lore Walb was sent to the “protectorate” of Bohemia and Moravia to serve with a German farm family. She found it interesting “to encounter a foreign people” for the first time and to become aware of their resentment against the victorious colonizers. Later on, Ruth Bulwin moved to Prague to be close to her SS husband. With housing scarce, she joined the police force and was delighted to be assigned the “first apartment of her own, completely furnished,” even if it was only a student dorm. Eventually she moved to a better place and was pleased that “many things could still be gotten here, if one knew the right people,” though contact with Czechs could have bad consequences. “In general, the Nemeckys (the Germans) were better off in the protectorate than in the Reich.” Gradually she also realized that the local population “curses the occupiers, hates them and wishes them to the devil.”45

  The need for manpower could even help young women to overcome class barriers and advance their careers by assuming responsibilities otherwise reserved for men. Liselotte S. was born into a rather poor family, denied education, though she wanted to learn, and not even allowed to join the BdM. When her father died of tuberculosis, she had to enter domestic service with a farmer who raped and exploited her. But when she saw a job announcement at a train station, she applied to the stationmaster, who initially hired her only to clean. After a few weeks, he realized that she was “an intelligent woman” and assigned her various white-collar tasks. Thus she learned how to sell tickets, send baggage, and even dispatch freight trains. She gradually worked her way up to become a “railroad aide” with a uniform and growing responsibility. Only “through the war did I get out and was able to learn something.” Otherwise she would have had no chance. But with bombing raids and political repression, it was nonetheless a terrible time: “I lived like in a dream.”46

  The mounting losses of the Wehrmacht drew an increasing number of young women into the military, overriding the sexist role division. About 1.4 million females served in administration, communication, air-raid defense, or nursing, and some even in combat with antiaircraft guns. Twenty-three-year-old Catholic Rita H. was conscripted in January 1945 in order to free men for front line service. Since she was rather small, she was fitted out with oversized uniform pieces and served as a telephone operator, helping to convey military messages. In spite of her only quasi-military status as part of the Wehrmacht, she had to march, stand to attention, and train with sidearms for self-defense. A friend related that one girl who abandoned her station during a bombing raid was court-martialed and summarily shot. But Rita was pleased with her final task of burning incriminating files, since it signaled “the downfall of a godless government.” Fortunately the military aides merely needed to take off their uniforms to become civilians again.47

  Another form of Nazi service was the wish “to give a child to the Führer” in the “fountain of life” (Lebensborn) program, organized by the SS. To counteract the falling birthrate, Heinrich Himmler had initiated a eugenic experiment of having Aryan males impregnate racially pure women to produce superior infants. The prospective mothers, many of them unmarried, were allowed to deliver anonymously in special homes where their offspring were cared for until adopted, preferably by an SS family. This program also extended to the occupied areas, where Wehrmacht soldiers would father children with local consorts; presumably Aryan children were also taken away from their mothers in the East. In practice, this elaborate effort was largely a failure, as it produced only about eight thousand babies in Germany and about twelve thousand in Norway, a preferred site because of its Nordic population. Toward the end of the war, Ursula Mahlendorf was shocked at the mothers’ and nurses’ neglect of these infants “that nobody wanted anymore.”48

  An even more popular way to support the Nazi regime was the denunciation of dissidents to the secret police. Since the Gestapo had only about fifteen thousand members by 1941, it had to rely on information about NS opponents, volunteered by block wardens or envious neighbors. As a known leftist, Ursula Baehrenburg’s father was first forbidden to sell the bread he had baked. When that did not silence him, he was denounced as being Jewish. His mother, who had hitherto refused to name the source of her illegitimate twins, cleverly named a deceased sailor as an Aryan father in order to save him. Similarly, Renate Finckh heard a rumor that some young people of her town had been detained. “Students who had protested. They had distributed flyers and defaced house walls” with lies about the Führer and calls for peace. One of them had already been in prison. “A female classmate had turned him in” following her political convictions. With her “soul frozen” in zealotry, Renate could not help but admire this denouncer.49

  A select group of female fanatics even served in the machinery of death as infamous guards in the concentration camps. Though shrouded somewhat in mystery, the KZ were reputed to be corrective institutions for “work-shy elements.” Nazi families approved of them because the inmates were “supposed to be Communists. The men were picked up because they were against the Führer.” Some Nazi professionals, such as Marianne Busch, were sent as support personnel to teach the children of the German staff at Auschwitz. About 3,700 women guards who were attached to the SS worked directly in the camps as supervisors, targeted on female inmates. Survivor Ruth Elias recalled, “Especially evil were the SS-women” who were “young and sadistic,” beating and stealing from the prisoners. Their cruelty seemed more shocking than the bestiality of men because it contradicted the image of feminine gentleness. One of the most notorious of these was Ilse Koch, the so-called “witch of Buchenwald,” who was married to the camp commander, abused the prisoners, and had extramarital affairs with other officers.50

  Fanatical women were an integral part of the machinery of death, often failing to respect the simplest dictates of humanity. In 1941, for instance, an Austrian resistance member, Antonia Bruha, was interrogated by the Gestapo after having been betrayed by a spy. During the interview the young mother held her baby. But when her interrogators were ready for her to sign a confession, a female social worker “tore the child from my hand! She ran to the door, I wanted to follow, but two SS men with revolvers beat me back. And the child cried.” Bruha was devastated. Once they had moved her to solitary confinement, she knew that the baby would die. After a year, she was sent to the women’s KZ Ravensbrück, where she experienced some solidarity from other prisoners. She befriended a small Dutch girl named Hella who “was pretty” as a ward and helped her survive—until their guards sent her to Bergen-Belsen to be murdered. Antonia “could never understand what the purpose of killing children was, but [she] recognized thereby that the Nazis did not stop at anything, not even the murder of infants.”51

  Though numerous clues demonstrated the repressive nature of the Nazi dictatorship, most young women ignored this evidence and kept supporting the murderous regime. Ursula Mahlendorf recalled that the father of a friend had been sent to a KZ after “someone had reported him to the Gestapo” for defeatism. He had “gone around claiming that after Stalingrad defeat was inevitable.” While “the adults said that he had been beaten up, [they] would not talk about it.” Similarly, Ursula Baehrenburg’s father reported from an old-age home “that new people who were dead after a few days arrived continually.” It was obvious that something sinister was going on, but nobody stood up against it. “Jewish stores no longer existed” because the “Jewish owners had all been transported away. Nobody knows where to.” But when Renate Finckh saw a long line of pitiful figures wearing yellow stars, a friend told her that “they are now going to Poland. There all of them will be killed.” In her mind, pity struggled with guilt.52

  As a result of their lack of interest in politics, few young women resisted the Third Reich. In general, “there were two different minorities” of critics and supporters of the regime. “The majority of the people were in the middle, apolitical and
pretty well conformist. At most these folks shook their heads.” Some families simply retreated into silence in order not to make their dislike for the regime noticeable in public. Others told jokes that made fun of leading Nazis, camouflaging their distaste for the crudeness of the SA by irony, even though such criticism could land them in jail if the wrong person was listening. The inane demands and rigid party discipline of the BdM even triggered some noncompliance among its adolescent members. But it was rare for a fanatic such as Renate Finckh to meet a young man who used his “entire energy in order to work against National Socialism.”53 A few young women, such as Gertrud Koch, were courageous enough to join the rebellious Edelweiß pirates in open opposition.

  The stream of victory bulletins reinforced faith among women that Germany was bound to win the war in the end. Following the fighting closely in her diary, Lore Walb noted “an incredible jubilation and enthusiasm” after the triumph over Poland and added, “It is wonderful to be a German.” While she was longing for a male friend to whom she could bare her soul, she was convinced that “we … can only win this war!” All her adulation was focused on the greatness of the Führer: “He had already proven his political genius, but he is no less militarily brilliant.” Although she was an intellectual, she accepted the Nazi ideal of marriage and motherhood. Only the rising toll of young men and the heavy bombing attacks gradually revealed the “cruelty of the war” to her. Nonetheless she “still believe[d] in victory, which will and must be ours, since we want to live!”54 Even if the consequences of war became more real, during its first three years most young women continued to believe that Germany would ultimately prevail.

  HORRORS OF DEFEAT

  With the turn in fortunes after the defeats in Stalingrad and North Africa, the mood of women at the home front gradually turned pessimistic in early 1943. The special army bulletins that talked about “straighten[ing] out extended front lines” or “strategic retreats” could no longer hide the shrinking of the area that the Wehrmacht occupied, and soldiers on leave reported desperate defensive battles against superior enemy forces. Ursula Mahlendorf recalled that “we stopped keeping our war diaries on the fate of our troops.” Moreover, “after a while the map of Europe disappeared from our classroom” in order to hide the reverses and the teacher “concentrated his efforts on earlier historical heroics” so as to bolster morale. As a result, she “soon lost interest altogether and [her] world grew ever narrower.” Similarly, Lore Walb noted: “It is best not to talk about the war at all. One no longer sees any path that seems to lead to an end.” For her the war had changed from an exciting adventure into “a punishment from heaven.”55

  Young women began to feel the increasing pressure of total war by a gradual deterioration of their daily lives. In spite of the use of foreign slave laborers on farms, rationing led to scarcity, which made for long shopping lines and bartering of consumer goods for food. Real coffee was replaced by a roasted grain substitute called Muckefuck, which tasted horrible, and regular dark bread was turned into indigestible square loaves of Kommissbrot, stretched with the addition of ground tree bark. Due to the priority of military movement, trains became irregular and overcrowded, making travel exasperating and requiring special priority passes for long-distance trips. In the fall of 1944 Renate Finckh “was dismissed from school from one day to the next” because “manpower was needed.” For Bettina Fehr, early graduation meant a constant lowering of intellectual standards for the sake of additional labor in the munitions factories.56 No wonder that grumbling increased among the populace and Nazi critics who had hitherto been silent began to speak up more openly.

  When the hope for victory faded and war became “a permanent condition,” the Nazi leadership redoubled its efforts to shore up the home front. Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels shrieked into the radio, “Hitler and our scientists will prevail, if our nation will but hold out bravely!” Calling for energy conservation for the war effort, posters “in schools, municipal offices, banks and other public places warned of Kohlenklau (coal theft).” To make sure that all members of the Volksgemeinschaft suffered equally, another campaign pilloried war profiteers: “Hoarding food supplies or obtaining rationing cards by some pretext or other counted as felonies.” A similar effort sought to suppress rumors and to keep news of defeats from spreading. “Another sign in railroad cars, streetcars and buses proclaimed ‘Caution: Enemy listening in.’” Anyone caught tuning in to foreign radio such as the BBC was threatened with jail. And the “worst offense was to defame Hitler.”57 This punitive approach showed that the Nazis were starting to lose control.

  By early 1943 the “total mobilization” of manpower reserves also conscripted women to war duty. Head of the labor service Fritz Sauckel called on all not-yet-employed “men and women to report for duty to defend the Reich.” His order, directed at women between the ages of seventeen and forty-five who had no children, created “an enormous uproar.” Else W. recalled that she “had to work hard” in a munitions factory without sufficient food. Side by side with slave laborers, she made “detonating fuses for tank grenades. We had to work in blue overalls and wear wooden clogs,” Renate Finckh was ordered to do labor service in the Bavarian countryside. The conditions were miserable, her uniform did not fit, and the food was terrible, but she “felt free as never before” because she had escaped from her quarreling parents. She was doing “a man’s job” and glad to be contributing to the war effort. With the men gone, the remaining women “shouldered the entire burden in war production, railroad, post-office, administration or agriculture.”58

  The frantic nature of women’s efforts to distract themselves from the grim reality of the war was another clue that in spite of all protestations of “perseverance,” doubt was beginning to grow. One favorite form of entertainment was going to movies and admiring stars such as Paula Wessely or Emil Jannings. In response to public wishes, Goebbels shifted motion-picture production from propaganda films such as Jud Süss to romantic comedies in order to make female viewers forget their wartime struggles through fantasy lives. Though she resented the sexism of the few available men, Lore Walb went to student parties to enjoy “dancing, kissing, laughing, eating, and talking” and to flirt a little. Still a teenager, Ursula Mahlendorf disliked her mother’s raucous celebrations with officers: “They played cards, sometimes danced; they always drank heavily.” Growing cynicism made the jokes crude and the mood sentimental: “Children, enjoy this war, the peace will be terrible.”59

  By 1943 the increase in Allied bombing attacks brought the war to the women at the home front by putting their lives directly at risk. After the radio announced that enemy airplanes were on their way, the wailing of sirens and booming of flak (antiaircraft) guns confirmed their imminent arrival, making people dash for the flimsy protection of shelters. Initially, it seemed like a game for neighbors to huddle in a private cellar, but when the bombs got closer it turned deadly in a hurry. In a public bunker in Krefeld, Rita H. saw men drinking schnapps and smoking while women knitted to combat their fear. Everywhere children and old people were lying on the ground, trying to sleep. She reported, “I had the feeling of having gotten into an underworld of dirt and chaos.” In Berlin, Liselotte G. noted in her diary thirty bombing alarms within the span of two and a half months. Interrupting sleep and spreading terror among civilians, these air raids made life miserable.60 But, contrary to Allied expectations of eroding morale, the attacks only reinforced the Germans’ will to persevere.

  When neither antiaircraft guns nor Luftwaffe interceptors could stop the bombing, people sought to escape the inferno by evacuating themselves to safe areas. Many families, such as the Jarauschs, moved mothers and infants from industrial target cities such as Magdeburg to friends in the Bavarian countryside, where they would get better food and more likely be secure. The NSV also organized an extended version of the Kinderlandverschickung in which entire school classes were sent to remote areas with their teachers. Edith Schöffski was moved with her sister to
Upper Silesia, far from bombing range. Her host family took good care of them. There was even a loose form of instruction, but the two girls still enjoyed their freedom from maternal supervision. In spite of the marginal food, lack of privacy, and some homesickness, Ingrid Bork quite fondly remembered being sent to Bohemia, as well as to the Baltic coast.61 While urban areas lost much non-essential population, this mass evacuation minimized the human losses.

  One typical attack on May 31, 1943 destroyed the industrial city of Wuppertal, located in a river valley in western Germany. Erika Taubhorn remembered how her father showed her what looked like Christmas trees in the night sky—flares that marked the bombers’ targets. “Now we grabbed clothes from the wardrobe and rushed into the cellar” while the first bombs dropped. The lights failed and the neighbors arrived, “almost all in pajamas.” Taubhorn huddled under her father’s coat in a corner. “The bombs continued falling, and the cellar door broke open from the impact. A giant cloud of dust came in. Mother suffered a heart attack, so that father had to take care of her in the dark.” Then the frightened housemates broke down the door to the adjoining cellar to open an emergency exit. “We were lucky, no bomb fell on our house”; only the courtyard had been hit by incendiaries, which they doused with water. But in the entire building “windows were smashed by the air pressure and the curtains set on fire.”62 Fortunately enough, these people all escaped with their lives.

  As a result of the deliberate strategy of creating firestorms with phosphate bombs to kill civilians, the entire center of Wuppertal soon went up in flames. Erika Taubhorn had to run from her house when the blaze from neighboring buildings threatened to engulf her home. Next door, “a paralyzed woman cried out. She was being burned alive because the entire house was aflame.” Her mother led the frightened child—who had snatched up “the Sunday roast and [her] puppet”—to an open square where they spent a harried night. But her aunt’s house was burned down. The Red Cross tried to help the victims by providing sandwiches. In the street where her uncle had lived, she “saw only rubble to the right and left.” On a big sign with the names of the inhabitants, someone had scrawled the question: “Where are you?” But in these narrow lanes, nobody could have escaped alive. She almost stumbled over a corpse that “looked like a charred piece of wood in the form of a human being.” Older BdM girls then had to rescue what possessions might yet be saved.63