Broken Lives

by Konrad H Jarausch

  Military service was even more difficult for Tom Angress because the isolation of his farm meant that he spoke little English. Sworn in in May 1941, he went through basic training at Fort Meade, where he felt rather lonely, but was taken under the wing of some comrades. Though fairly small in stature, he remained in the infantry, where he was harassed as a Jew until he was called up to Fort Ritchie for training as prisoner interrogator. He later recalled, “I quickly learned that my military intelligence training wouldn’t be nearly so secret, or so intelligent as I had expected.” Nonetheless, he met some impressive intellectuals, including Stefan Heym and Ernst Cramer, and learned the organizational structure of both the German ground troops and the Waffen SS so that POWs could not disguise their unit or rank. Naturalized as a citizen and promoted to sergeant, Tom was shipped to Britain in January 1944. Together with three other German Jews, he formed an interrogation team for the 82nd Airborne Division, getting ready for the invasion.80 One striking photo (image 19) shows Angress in his new identity as tough American paratrooper.

  During the Normandy landing, Angress jumped out of a C-47 that had just been hit and was taking evasive action away from its intended target. Floating through the night sky, he avoided the tracer bullets and touched down in an apple tree. But where were his comrades? For nine days he helped gather dispersed paratroopers, hiding by day in the fields and begging for food at night in broken French. After several close calls, a farmer betrayed the fifty US troops to the Germans, who surrounded them and forced them to surrender. Wounded by shrapnel, Tom was taken to a military hospital. During debriefing, the intelligence officer noted that his first name was Werner and asked whether he was of German descent. Not letting on that he spoke German and was Jewish, he claimed that his grandfather had emigrated in the nineteenth century. On the whole, he was treated decently, since, as his captors told him, “Today you our prisoners, tomorrow, we your prisoners! [sic].”81 After twelve interminable days, he was freed and put in charge of his former captors.

  19. Victorious Jewish GI. Source: Tom Angress, Witness to the Storm.

  At the end of the war, Angress even helped to liberate a concentration camp—a profoundly shocking experience. Battle-hardened in Market Garden and the Ardennes, he saw the Wehrmacht disintegrate, obtaining information by pitying rather than bullying German captives. But he felt “perfectly helpless” when he discovered Camp Wöbbelin, a satellite camp of Neuengamme, in early May 1945. The SS guards had already fled, “leaving the half-starved prisoners to their own devices.” Still unaware of the extent of Nazi mass murder, Tom was revolted by the stench of rotting corpses and could hardly believe what he saw: “In the washhouse dead bodies had been stacked like firewood,” some already in a state of putrefaction. He now made German soldiers clean up the mess, gave the dead a decent burial, and helped the captives who were still living to recover. To counter the obdurate denial of the local populace, he compelled “the entire adult population” of a neighboring town and “a number of captured German officers” to witness the burial ceremony.82

  The feelings of young Jewish men returning to their erstwhile homes in Allied uniforms ranged all the way from triumphant revenge to humane sympathy. On one hand, Albert Gompertz recalled, “It gave me great satisfaction to be at the wheel of an American Army Jeep” and to “see some of the once-beautiful towns and villages destroyed” and many Germans “suffering and miserable.” On the other, Frank Eyck was shocked by the “total chaos” of the destruction of Hamburg: “One could not feel any Schadenfreude” given that “millions of innocent people suffered in the process.” But he was glad that “divine justice had caught up with those who had perpetrated massive crimes against humanity.” Much of their response depended upon whether relatives and friends were still alive. Tom Angress was overjoyed upon realizing that his mother and two brothers had survived underground in Holland. “When we found my mother, she sobbed like a child.” But all too many survivors, like Lucy Mandelstam, could only mourn their dead.83

  Due to their knowledge of the language and culture, Jewish refugees from Germany played an important role in setting up the initial occupation. After “having been forced to flee Germany as a ‘racially inferior subhuman,’” Angress enjoyed the reversal of power as “kind of a symbolic triumph.” His last task in a POW camp was to sort the “sheep” from the “goats” by finding out “whether the individuals had joined the Waffen SS voluntarily … or whether they had simply been assigned” to it. Together with a dozen officers and enlisted men, Albert Gompertz was ordered “to administer the Zehlendorf district” of Berlin, requisitioning the comfortable villa of Admiral Canaris, chief of counter-intelligence. As part of Information Control, Frank Eyck helped set up the initial postwar Hamburg radio station and put out “the first news-sheet produced there by the British Army for the German civilians.” To counter rumors, he had the important task of finding journalists to reestablish democratic media in northern Germany.84

  Since the racial victims of the Nazis identified with their newfound refuges, only the political exiles were willing to return to their former homes after the war. In spite of his sympathy for the defeated, Frank Eyck declared, “I could never call myself a German again.” Angrier spirits like Tom Angress were “more than ever convinced that the German nation stinks” because of their “dog-like submission” to the victorious allies. Wanting to get on with their civilian lives, many GIs merely waited, like Albert Gompertz, to accumulate sufficient service points in order to be sent back to the States. Similarly, the few survivors of the KZ wanted to get as far away as possible from their torturers, going to Israel as Anne Fränkel did or waiting for a visa to the United States like Ruth Klüger. Only political refugees such as Willy Brandt and Sebastian Haffner risked coming back to build a better Germany. But in spite of their integration into a new country, emotional ties to their former home remained in exile: “As for so many refugees, you could get us out of Germany, but you couldn’t get Germany out of us.”85

  Far from being just passive targets, the Nazis’ victims made underrated contributions to the defeat of the Third Reich. Within the country, the very existence of circles who did not subscribe to Goebbels’ propaganda kept a flickering hope alive for an alternative, while for an international public renowned figures such as Thomas Mann or Albert Einstein proved the existence of an anti-Fascist Germany. Among the younger generation, dissident groups provided some encouragement to those who did not want to go along with the regime, while youthful exiles informed their new peers abroad of the dangers of Nazi aggression and the criminal nature of the racist dictatorship. Outside of Germany, some of the educated teenagers participated in public debate and attacked apologists for the Reich in public forums. Finally, some Communists joined the Red Army and many Jewish exiles fought in Anglo-American uniforms, serving in combat and helping military intelligence with their cultural expertise and commitment.

  VARIETIES OF VICTIMHOOD

  The autobiographical recollections of the Second World War were profoundly shaped by the shift from heroization to victimhood triggered by Holocaust memory. Initially, the unquestioned heroes were the intrepid members of the resistance who risked their lives in the struggle against Fascism. After all, they had fought against barbarism and idealistically sought to create a better democratic or socialist world after the war. Moreover, they had been systematically pursued and suffered fearfully from Gestapo torture or SS execution when caught. They made both a symbolic statement through their steadfast example and a practical contribution by disrupting Wehrmacht supply lines. Though admirable for their courage, the resistance fighters lost much of their moral luster when they participated in postwar purges or supported nationalist politics on the Right. Moreover, some were discredited when their resolute anti-Fascism served as justification for the establishment of a Communist dictatorship that denied human rights.86 As a result, their heroism gradually became less venerable.

  Somewhat surprisingly, German soldiers who had ass
umed the role of villains in public memory also claimed to have been victimized by the Third Reich. To begin with, they believed they were fighting a heroic struggle for the fatherland to reverse the defeat and shameful peace of the First World War. Official condolence letters for “having fallen at the front” and newspaper praise of noble sacrifice for the national cause worked within a traditional paradigm of male duty to Volk and fatherland. While the loss might be painful for parents, wives, or friends, it possessed a transcendent meaning that consoled them. But this conventional appreciation foundered on the immensity of the number of sacrifices, the turn of military fortunes toward defeat, and the increasing awareness of atrocities in the East. Instead of being heroes, German soldiers came to see themselves as betrayed victims of a megalomaniac Führer and Nazi dictatorship.87 Because their heroism had become meaningless, they were left only with claims of victimization.

  In contrast to male perpetrators, German women have appeared to be better candidates for the status of victimhood. Their recollections are replete with suffering. Such claims also fit a feminist perspective that considers women the victims of male brutality in general, independent of particular circumstances. Moreover, during war it was females who were caught in the bomb shelters, raped by victorious enemies, or forced to flee in subzero temperatures. Even during postwar rebuilding came “the hour of the women” in holding together the remnants of their families and assuring their survival through hunger and cold. Though appealing, this stereotype ignores the widespread enthusiasm for the Nazis among young women, which misled many to volunteer for munitions factories or service in Germanization in the East. As a result of their own complicity, self-critical women eventually began to question their role in the Third Reich and admit that they had brought much of their suffering on themselves.88

  Jewish narratives, however, remain the most convincing renditions of victimization, since their authors were the key targets of mass murder in the Holocaust. While Nazi ethnic cleansing brutalized Slavs and the machinery of death also swallowed Polish intellectuals, homosexuals, Sinti, and Roma, Hitler targeted only the Jews for complete annihilation. Their autobiographies tell different, yet related tales of suffering. One fortunate version relates the increasing discrimination and persecution in the Third Reich, which compelled emigration and required the adoption of a new identity in a safe haven. Another presents a story of survival by luck or instinct against all odds in the murderous maelstrom of the KZ, offering irrefutable testimony to Nazi inhumanity. Yet another variant relates the adventures of resistance, with its author going underground, joining anti-Fascist groups, or escaping from German-occupied Europe in spite of incredible difficulties. The emotional impact of such narratives is so strong that they have rendered victimhood the prime prism through which to remember Nazi atrocities.89

  The memory competition for acknowledgment of victimization as a basis for restitution is nonetheless problematic for several reasons. The attempt to compare degrees of suffering by rival groups tends largely to obliterate its underlying causes. Treating the recollections of resistance fighters, Wehrmacht soldiers, Nazified women, and targets of mass murder as separate developments also ignores their essential interconnectedness. While both suffered, the difference between perpetrators caught in their own trap and victims of their repression remains essential for historical understanding. This is why Helmut Kohl’s amalgamation in the dedication of the Neue Wache Memorial in Berlin with the phrase “To the Victims of War and Tyranny” has provoked such public protest. Yet the singularity of Jewish suffering also remains problematic when it downplays the pain of other groups subjected to persecution and war. The universal lesson of ethnic cleansing and mass murder is therefore that only a general prohibition of genocide and reaffirmation of human rights can ultimately do justice to their victims.90

  PART III

  POSTWAR ADULTHOOD

   7

  DEFEAT AS NEW BEGINNING

  During his prerelease interrogation in the summer of 1945, Martin Sieg anxiously faced a British major who introduced himself as a Polish Jew. For a moment, the German POW hesitated, but then confessed that he was an officer candidate of the air force from Rastenburg in East Prussia. After asking, “Was Adolf Hitler not there?” the major demanded, “Were you not also a leader in the Hitler Youth?” Overcoming his rising panic, Sieg claimed that “anyone who was relatively intelligent and athletic automatically became an HJ leader without being asked.” To his surprise, the officer jumped up and saluted him, showing his respect. “You are the first of almost a hundred of your comrades who has admitted to having been an HJ leader.” More generally the questioner went on: “If Germany wants to start over again, the Germans have to confront their past, no matter how they acted during that time.” Sieg was overwhelmed by the humanity of the officer: “This Polish Jew had shown me a way to a new beginning—without hatred, accusations or threats.”1

  Only gradually did former soldiers realize the full implications of having “really lost the war.” Seeking to return to his father’s house, Erich Helmer walked through a veritable desert: “Indeed, as far as one could see, rubble, rubble and rubble as well as ruins which jutted ghostlike into the sky.” On the cellar wall of a destroyed house, he found a message: “Willy, we are still alive and living with Else.” Looking for the main road, Helmer encountered a distressed woman, pitifully querying whether her son had survived: “Have you seen Paul?” Counseling her to be patient, he wondered “how many Pauls will never come back?” Seeing trucks filled with debris made him wonder: “Will it ever be possible to get rid of all the ruins, the rubble?” And “how long will it take, until new life will grow out of the ruins?”2 The utter devastation of most cities threatened the survival of those who had gotten through the war. The Germans now confronted the hunger, cold, and suffering that they had earlier brought upon others.

  Almost worse than the physical challenges were the psychological difficulties caused by the political disorientation due to the loss of the war. For everyone the future seemed without hope. “We youths were especially badly off, because we had no training and no occupation.” Martin Sieg wondered, “What prospects existed for us in a shattered Germany? To me the past which had only left emptiness seemed like an apparition” that nobody wanted to talk about. Nationalists like Karl Härtel complained bitterly that, after winning for years, “we lost the war and everything, home, property and the claim to historical justice.” In the prison camps, captives struggled to understand the reasons for the defeat, with unregenerate Nazis who tried to hang on to their misguided faith coming to blows with budding democrats who were willing to admit Germany’s crimes. Captivity “was the end of high-flying plans and dreams,” Hermann Debus recalled. “At least we now knew that we had been betrayed and sold out by Hitler and his minions.”3

  The totality of defeat ruptured biographical trajectories and reoriented life patterns, creating a major break in virtually all postwar narratives. This does not mean that 1945 constituted a “zero hour,” because that apologetic claim signals the illusion of shedding a negative past in order to make a new beginning. Nor does it imply the contrary, more recent contention of substantial Nazi continuities, since that underestimates the massive disruption of individual lives. Rather, to survive in a world dominated by victors’ punitive policies the defeated had to develop new, obsequious strategies to get what they wanted. Under the occupation powers, the hegemonic Volksgemeinschaft transformed into a community of defeat, held together by shared guilt and suffering. Moreover, the collapse of the Third Reich reversed social hierarchies, with former Nazis losing their privileges and their erstwhile victims having the power to decide on their fates.4 The German collapse and postwar chaos between 1944 and 1948 therefore fundamentally changed social positions and altered many life plans.

  For the Weimar children, the “great upheaval” of 1945 finally provided “an opportunity to become a full-fledged adult.” The fighting at the front, the huddling in bomb shelters, and
the suffering in concentration camps had created a warped maturity through exposure to mass murder and mass death, aging adolescents before their time. But the Nazi war had also postponed the completion of schooling, entry into occupations, and foundation of families, all of which are considered part of normal development. By supporting Hitler’s conquests and atrocities, most of the parents had also lost their authority as guides: the fathers were tainted by Nazism and the mothers overwrought by their daily cares. When the fighting ended, the skeptical youths therefore had a lot of catching up to do as they took charge of the rebuilding themselves. Martin Sieg remembered the impact of this experience: “At eighteen I was completely grown up, responsible for my life alone. All plans, decisions, and attempts of shaping the future now lay in my hand.”5

  TASTE OF DEFEAT

  After the German surrender, “the population began to feel what it meant to lose a war,” Agnes Moosmann remembered. “Hardship and misery only increased.” Ideological propaganda and military orders had loosened the constraints of civilization—only now the Germans found themselves at the receiving end of brutality. According to the motto of not taking any prisoners, the hatred and revenge caused by Wehrmacht crimes and civilian atrocities led to spontaneous killings of soldiers trying to surrender. At the same time, the conflation between Nazi perpetrators and all Germans encouraged violent behavior against noncombatants. Martin Sieg’s mother “was raped and hanged herself after her apartment had been looted.” Joachim Fest’s dejected grandfather simply gave up: “Cause of death should be given as: No interest [in living] any longer.”6 While the end of the official fighting came as a relief, the transition into peacetime was fraught with danger to soldiers and civilians alike.