Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  Scholars, driven to publish or perish, are always trying to prove their predecessors wrong. That is why some of them have tried to show that the war of 1914 was unwelcome. But that is nonsense. Not only was the war not forced on the people, but most of them desired it and even enthusiastically welcomed it. They hoped it would put an end to the general feeling of uncertainty once and for all. When it did in fact break out, it opened the eyes of the nation, enabling them to look clearly into the future. That alone explains why over two million German men and youths voluntarily joined the colors, ready to shed the last drop of their blood for the cause. The same, incidentally, happened in other countries, nowhere more so than in England, whose small professional army was flooded by so many volunteers that it soon changed its character altogether. So I repeat: whoever says the war was forced on the masses simply does not know what he is talking about.

  As for me, during the boisterous years of my youth, nothing used to damp my spirit as much as to think that I had been born in an age when the only people worth honoring were businessmen. At times it looked as if the entire world was about to transform itself into a single gigantic department store owned, as was so often the case, by the Jews. As I already said, to the extent that my young mind allowed I took a lively interest first in the Boer War and then in the Russo-Japanese War, both of which I keenly followed in the papers. But I had all but given up hope that I myself might participate in such great events. That is why, when the moment came, I sank to my knees and thanked Heaven out of the fullness of my heart for the favor of having been permitted to live in such a time. As the famous photograph of the demonstration in Munich’s Odeonsplatz shows, I was not the only one.

  On 3 August I petitioned His Majesty, King Ludwig III of Bavaria, asking to be allowed to join his army. A positive answer arrived on the very next day; a speed that few modern postal services, for all the much-improved technical devices at their disposal, are able to match. So well did the pneumatique, as it was called, function in Munich and other cities which had it that one could even send a letter and get an answer on the same day. Very soon, I found myself wearing a German uniform and undergoing basic training. Like countless others in similar situations before and since, we recruits only feared one thing: that we would arrive too late to see any fighting. That is why, when crossing the Rhine by rail on our way from Munich to the front, we spontaneously broke into Die Wacht am Rhein.

  And then, as the morning sun rose out of the mist after a damp, cold night spent marching in Flanders’ Fields–

  An iron greeting suddenly burst above our heads. Shrapnel exploded in our midst and spluttered in the damp ground. But before the smoke of the explosion disappeared, a wild “Hurrah” was shouted from two hundred throats, in response to this first greeting of death. Then began the whistling of bullets and the booming of cannons, the shouting and singing of the combatants. With eyes straining feverishly we pressed forward, faster and faster, until we finally came to close-quarter fighting, there beyond the beet-fields and the meadows. Soon the strains of a song reached us from afar. Nearer and nearer, from company to company it came. And while death began to make havoc in our ranks we passed the song on to those beside us: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über Alles in der Welt.

  After four days in the trenches we came back. Even our gait had changed. Boys of seventeen looked more like men. The rank and file of the List Regiment [after its commander, Colonel Julius List] had not been properly trained in the art of war. But they knew how to die like old soldiers.

  That was just the beginning. With death passing among us and cutting us down with its scythe, it did not take long for our enthusiasm to change into horror and fear. Only later—for some of us, much later—did fear in turn give way to an iron determination to stick it out. Coute que coute. For me this inner struggle ended in the winter of 1915-16. From then on my will triumphed, making me calm and resolute. And, yes, it also did much to immunize me to the sufferings of my fellow soldiers as well as those of the enemy troops we killed or injured as best we could. To see and hear men caught in barbed wire, their guts spilling out and begging for help, is not exactly a pleasant experience. First, they scream. Then they sob, then they moan, and then they fall silent. All this while the birds hover above, sometimes even attacking them when they are still alive. And all this amidst the inescapable stench of the battlefield, which even now I can smell in my sleep. A horrible mixture of cordite, rotting flesh, and shit. Day after day, month after month, year after year. Hell, at any rate in my experience, is kind by comparison. I had to become immune, or else I would have gone mad.

  Ever since 1945, there probably has not been a single book about me that did not set out to calumniate me as much as it could. Accordingly, I am proud to say that all of them, without a single exception, agree that I was a brave soldier. And how could they do otherwise? As the German saying goes, Selbstlob stinkt (self-praise stinks). But quite a few of my comrades in arms have testified to my qualities and performance. Chief among them was Max Amman, my former company sergeant-major, who later became a publishing mogul. Another was Fritz Wiedemann, the regimental adjutant who was my direct superior; he later served as my own adjutant until I packed him off to represent Germany in San Francisco.

  Then there were Hans Mend, a fellow dispatch runner and subsequent petty criminal and jailbird, Balthaser Brandmayer, a fellow soldier who was a newcomer to our group and of whom we initially made fun, and Ernst Schmidt, who was closest to me and who later occupied an important position in the NSDAP organization in Munich. Whatever took place later, throughout the war we were as close as only war can make men be. I did what I could for them. And they did the same for me. Without hesitation, we risked our lives for each other. Had things been otherwise, surely even fewer of us would have survived than was actually the case.

  To reward my efforts I was decorated with the Iron Cross II and I. Though I did not mention the fact in Mein Kampf, the former was handed out to me by the Kaiser, who happened to be visiting the front, in person. War, especially a long one, invariably causes the number of medals issued to go up as their value goes down. The Great War, as it was initially called, was no exception. As commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht during World War II, I did my best to limit the phenomenon. Not, I am afraid, with much success. Inflation notwithstanding, for an ordinary soldier at that time to receive the Iron Cross Class I was quite unusual. Some miscreants, with an eye to discrediting me, have spread all kinds of lies about the way I got it. Let them look at the official citation which accompanied it and is readily available; that is all I have to say.

  I passionately loved soldiering. For four years on end I acted as a runner, carrying messages from headquarters to the front and back. It was a dangerous job, the more so because I often volunteered to carry out missions few others wanted and from which my superiors did not really expect me to return. I learned it in the only possible way, i.e. by doing it. I developed map-reading skills, carefully planned my routes, acquired a keen ear for various kinds of enemy projectiles and an equally keen eye for any shelter that might be available on my way, was always alert for the sudden emergence out of some shell hole of enemy soldiers, and became accustomed to crawling, worm-like, on my stomach.

  My comrades used to call me the Lucky Linzer. I was wounded twice, once in my left leg in October 1916, and once by mustard gas—yellow cross as it was known—in the very last days of the war. Like so many others on both sides of the front who came under this kind of attack, I lost my sight. Luckily, in my case, the effect was temporary. The claim that my blindness was the outcome of hysteria is so preposterous that I need not bother to answer it. Let me just say that, of all the blockheads who have speculated about this matter and scribbled down their conclusions, not one has gone through what I, along with so many of my comrades, did.

  Unlike most soldiers I did not have any people back home with whom I could correspond and from whom I could receive parcels. Unlike them, too, I wanted to keep my bod
y and character clean as, my difficult circumstances notwithstanding, I had always sought to do. I did not join in the escapades which, in Belgium and northern France, were readily available even a short distance behind the front. These facts made my comrades in arms look at me as a rare bird. The more so because, keeping my interest in politics, from time to time I talked to them. Sometimes I met with success as they accepted my position, and sometimes I failed as they made jokes about me. So what? In such things, live and let live is my motto. Then and later, unless there was some political issue involved, I never interfered with the private lives of others. And I expect others to do the same in regard to me.

  An oft-asked question is why I, who by every account was a good soldier, never even made the rank of Feldwebel (NCO). The question is misplaced. After all, millions of others who went through the war just as I did were not promoted either. That apart, there were three reasons. First, as Wiedemann was later to testify at Nuremberg, I seemed to lack what the Prussians call Schneid, the kind of comportment that signals decisiveness and the will to be obeyed. Second, I was not a German citizen. Third, I did not want to be promoted. I felt comfortable in my lowly, if dangerous, position. My commanders did not always act in a responsible manner. At times they sent me, as well as other runners, into the fire simply to deliver a family postcard. However, the job left me with considerable spare time on my hands. This was time which, as I had done in both Vienna and Munich, I used to draw and to reflect.

  On the other hand, four years did not pass without teaching me some things. One was minor tactics. In the German Army, as in all others at the time, officers were not normally commissioned from the enlisted personnel. Instead, coming out of high school, they were preselected and put through a special lengthy training course, one which, in wartime, might or might not include a period at the front. Next, assisted by their sergeant-majors, who often knew much more than they did, they were unleashed on their subordinates. Much of this remains true to the present day. Strange to say, I am told that the one major exception is the Israeli Army, which selects most of its officers straight from the ranks. But then who ever said that these Jews, for all their shortcomings, are not clever? Swindlers often are.

  In any case, by spending four years in the field I came to understand tactics much better than many senior officers did. Some officers, particularly artillerists on one hand and those wearing the General Staff’s trousers with the red stripe on the other, hardly saw the front at all. In part this was due to the peculiar nature of trench warfare. In addition, they did not want to be there. These gentlemen spent the war in comfortable—at times, very comfortable indeed—circumstances, where they were hardly in greater danger than during peacetime. They were always writing, writing, instead of leading, leading. Army Commander in Chief General Werner von Fritsch, Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder, and Halder’s successor, General Kurt Zeitzler, all belonged to one—or both—of these categories. So did the three top officers in the Wehrmacht High Command; Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, his deputy General Alfred Jodl, and Jodl’s own deputy, General Walter Warlimont. By far the best of the lot was Jodl. But even he did not have nearly as much field experience as I did. And he never forgot it.

  The other—and even more important—thing I acquired was a good understanding of the common soldier. Here again, not coming from a privileged background, not having the Abitur (high-school leaving diploma), and not having gone to officer school and received a commission, were advantages. I knew, as well as anyone else, how the poor worm, or Frontschwein as many called him, felt and thought. I knew the sources of his behavior, his hopes, his frustrations, and his fears. I knew—much more so than many officers, general-staff officers in particular—what he could and could not, would and would not, do, when, under what circumstances, and for what purposes. Later, when I commanded the Wehrmacht in what was and is likely to remain the largest war in history, the experience I acquired proved invaluable to me.

  Then and later, I sought to expand my knowledge of military affairs by studying. The works I read included Ernst Junger’s The Storm of Steel. By common consent, it is one of the best descriptions of life at the front ever written. However, since I knew most of it already, it did not leave a powerful impression on me. Then there were Frederick the Great’s various Werke, Moritz Arndt’s famous Catechism for the Teutonic Warrior, Conquest of the Air, with an introduction by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Hiegel’s Handbook of Tanks, a biography of General Schlieffen, the author of the plan named after him, and Colonel Charles de Gaulle’s The Army of the Future. That is not to mention books on the navies of the world: Jane’s, (the standard English-language handbook), its German equivalent Flottenkalendar, and the current Kriegsmarine yearbook. So detailed was my knowledge of the world’s warships that I could often embarrass my admirals by asking them questions to which they did not know the answer. I am told that my volume of Clausewitz’s essays, now at the Library of Congress, has never been opened. That may be so, but it does not mean I did not read him. In fact I can quote him by the yard, which is much better than many of my generals, who, uninterested in philosophy and politics, considered him too theoretical for their taste.

  The outbreak of war caused the German people to rally behind their Kaiser. No one could have asked for more. Before 1914, he had often struck a ridiculous figure, strutting around, backslapping, and playing practical jokes on his subordinates. But this time he rose to the occasion. His declaration that he no longer recognized parties, only Germans, was magnificent. Amidst immense enthusiasm, everyone was keen “to do his bit,” as the English say. This atmosphere lasted for about two months and was stimulated by the immense victories Hindenburg and Ludendorff won in the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. During the second half of September, though, our enemies, in what they later called “The Miracle of the Marne,” succeeded in saving Paris. They even forced us to give up some of the country we had overrun. Much worse, it was becoming clearer every day that the war would not be over by Christmas.

  While the armies continued fighting heroically, sustaining losses larger than those in any previous war, back in the homeland discordant voices began making themselves heard. As so often, it was certain sections of the press that took the lead. Some of these gentlemen, pretending to seek nothing but the good of the nation, started doubting whether we should really celebrate our victories. They believed that moderation might make our dear enemies more inclined toward peace. Others were Marxists. To them the fact that, at the beginning of the war, the German worker had risen and offered to give his all for the Motherland came as a deep disappointment. It showed all their theories concerning the “international” character of the working class to be so much rubbish. It put a spoke in their wheel, which they could not easily overcome. Still, they did not give up. Drop by drop, they continued to spread their poison. Drop by drop, it did its work.

  A proper government would have taken these fellows by their long ears and hanged them. However, the German imperial government was a product of the monarchic past. Its roots in the people had always been weak. As, for example, when it never invited workers’ representatives to attend national events such as the dedication of a monument or the launching of a warship. On such occasions, all one saw was a sea of top hats! Being weak, the government did not dare take the necessary drastic measures. It did not impose effective censorship. It did not abolish the parties. It did not bring the Reichstag, where the Social Democrats had formed the largest faction from 1912, to its senses. Comparative data on the way these things were handled in different countries do not seem to be available even in Hell. However, the statistics show that the German Army executed incomparably fewer soldiers than the French and English ones did. Not to mention the Russians, of course.

  In any case, as Napoleon said, the pen is mightier than the sword. At times, persecutions and executions are necessary instruments of government, never more so than during total war, when every muscle must strain for the attainment of
victory. Nevertheless, they are no way to overcome a powerful ideology with strong roots among the people. That is something only an equally powerful counter-ideology can do. It was the Kaiserreich’s greatest failure that it failed to produce such an ideology. In fact it did not even try to produce one. Starting right at the beginning of the war, it made little effort to use propaganda in order to maintain the nation’s fighting spirit. What propaganda it did engage in tended to be timid and apologetic. After first giving our enemies a field day by calling Belgian neutrality “a scrap of paper,” how many times did not Bethmann-Hollweg apologize for our invasion of that country and even promise to pay reparations? While the life-and-death struggle for Germany’s very existence was raging all around us, our dear government did its mediocre best to stay humanitarian—humanitarian! As if war, by its very nature, is not the very opposite of “humanitarian.” And as if propaganda were some form of high culture rather than an instrument whose sole purpose is to mobilize and energize people.

  Based on such considerations, the truth is that neither our government nor the High Command produced any worthwhile propaganda at all. The little they did produce was aimed neither at the common man nor at the simple soldier but at those eternal doubting Thomases, the intellectuals. As, for example, by reprinting the Allied accusations and then trying to refute them. Much of the time, it was to no avail. Even at the time, it made me want to tear my hair out.