Hitler's Girls: Doves Amongst Eagles

by Heath, Tim

  Then another noise could be heard, a noise that you will never ever forget in your whole life, I will certainly never forget it, as it was a chilling sound, and became a death knell for all Berliners. The sound started off as a faint hum but as it drew nearer it became louder and throbbed. The only way I can possibly describe it to you is that it sounded like one of those old seaside Hovercraft vehicles as they came onto the beach.

  The BDM meetings that followed were taken up with the talk of terrorism against the Reich and how innocent men, women and children had been killed. Living on the outskirts often detached you from the reality of the war at that time. Unlike those who lived in the Mitte, I had not yet seen the dead being pulled from the rubble of their homes, or the effects of shrapnel and fire on human bodies.

  The early bombing raids on Berlin were not without cost to the RAF. Many aircraft and their crews were lost during those missions. The Germans began to deploy more and more anti-aircraft guns in and around the city to tighten the already formidable flak belt. The introduction of heavier flak guns, such as the 105mm and 128mm, proved to be very effective when used in conjunction with the small-and medium-calibre guns such as the 20mm, 37mm, and 88mm. The smaller guns would concentrate on the low-to-medium-altitude targets, while the heavy weapons dealt with the high-altitude targets. The flak guns were situated in numerous locations around Berlin, such as the main railway network and the industrial Mitte.

  To ease the deployment of their flak defences, the guns were often mounted on a mobile chassis, enabling them to be moved around the city. The heavy guns that could not be transported by road were often mounted onto railway carriages. Soon, the RAF bomber crews came to dread missions over Berlin, which they often viewed as suicidal. Theresa Moelle recalls her first sight of the British enemy after one of the early bombing raids on the city.

  One evening there was the usual commotion as the air-raid siren sounded, and the familiar drill of rushing out of bed, throwing on our clothing, and then going downstairs into the cold and damp of that wretched wine cellar. The raid lasted for quite some time, as the all-clear did not come until well over two hours later. Once we had been roused by the all-clear signal, everyone made their way back up into the house, and back to their warm beds.

  At daybreak, there was quite some excitement outside. This was most unusual as it was normally very quiet around our area, especially in the morning. There were farm workers outside talking with locals about a British plane that came down during the Friday night. The plane was down in one of the nearby fields. I wanted to go and see the plane, as some parents were already on their way to take their children to see the crashed British plane. I quickly dressed, ran downstairs and put my boots on and ran out of the door.

  Walter Moelle followed, shouting, ‘Where are you off to?’

  I shouted back, ‘I am going to see the British plane.’

  I ran down the lane past the groups of people on their way down to the field. Mud was splashing up my legs as I ran, and dirty water from the puddles filled my boots, which was made worse by the fact that I had no socks on. As I came to the field, I could see this plane, its tail almost upright in the ground, with its green and brown camouflaged paint and British air-force markings along its side. The frontal section was crumpled up and lying at an angle on its side. The wings had been torn off along with the engines, and these had fallen in adjoining fields. There were guards around the plane, but I climbed over the gate and ran up to have a closer look. One of the guards was a local man known to me, whose name was Klaus, and he smiled and said, ‘Ah, Herr Moelle’s daughter.’

  He then showed me around the crumpled remains of the plane that he said was called a Wellington. The plane had holes all over it and I was told that these were made by flak splinters or splitters [shrapnel] as we called them.

  ‘Where are the men who were flying the plane?’ I asked.

  One of the other guards pointed to a large dark-grey tarpaulin sheet around the other side of the plane. As I walked closer, I could see several pairs of black flying boots sticking out from under the large tarpaulin cover. The crew of the plane were all dead and the guards explained that the pilot had been killed by flak splinters, which had entered the front windscreen of the plane, while the remaining crew probably died in the impact as the plane crashed. Photographs were being taken of the wreckage and we were not allowed to touch any of the pieces of the plane. It was quite a sight and I can remember thinking how terrible the last minutes inside that plane must have been for the crew. But then I thought about the Berliners who had probably died as a result of that plane dropping its bombs on the city.

  As I turned away to make my way back over to the gate and return home, the guard, whom I knew, called out to me ‘Fraulein Moelle.’

  I stopped and turned around, he walked over to me and said, ‘Here, have this as a little reminder, but keep it to yourself.’

  I held out my open hand and he placed a piece of clear plastic into it. It was around three inches by four inches in size and was quite thick. He said it had come from the crew cabin area of the Wellington.

  ‘Danke,’ I replied, before wrapping it up in my handkerchief and putting it down my skirt.

  I then ran back up the lane to the house. When I arrived home, I quickly ran inside and kicked off my boots and ran up the stairs to my room. Walter Moelle, who wanted to know what I had been doing, as usual pursued me. I shut my bedroom door and slammed the chair under the handle so no one could get in. Walter Moelle began knocking and saying things like, ‘What are you doing in there?’ and ‘open the door.’

  I pulled the piece of clear plastic out of the waistband of my skirt and placed it, still wrapped up, in the handkerchief under the mattress of my bed. I went to the door, pulled the chair away, and Walter Moelle entered the room.

  ‘What are you up to?’ he repeated. ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  I told him I had just been to see the plane crash with the other local people. He commented on how filthy I looked with dirt all up my legs, and said I had better wash and then go and help Mother. I swilled my boots out with cold water from the well outside and then washed the dirt from my legs. At night, I often took my little souvenir out from under the mattress to look at it for a few minutes before wrapping it back up and putting it away again.

  The smashed wrecks of RAF bombers became a common sight for those living in the outlying areas of the city, as RAF aircrews in trouble, wherever possible, sought open farmland where they could attempt to put down their stricken aircraft. In the city itself, the danger from shot-down bombers and their debris proved to be as equal a hazard as the bombs they were dropping.

  Heidi Koch remembers that the flak gunners defending the city also scored an own goal on many occasions, when their unexploded shells fell back to the ground.

  I know one story where a large shell failed to detonate in the sky during an air raid, and it fell back down from the sky. The shell crashed through the roof of a house in the Mitte and exploded, killing a young child and injuring three other family members, who had foolishly stayed inside the house. The child had been in a separate room asleep when the shell came through the roof, and crashed through the ceiling before exploding.

  Helena Vogel received the perfect opportunity to voice her anger during one of ‘Fatty’ Goering’s tours of bombed streets in the German capital:

  Word spread that Luftwaffe chief Goering was visiting an area nearby to inspect damage caused by RAF bombing raids. I wanted to confront this man and ask him questions. Well, we joined the crowd, which had begun to gather in one of the neighbouring streets, and we saw Goering arrive in his smart staff car smiling and speaking to people, trying to reassure them that everything was going to be all right.

  Guards surrounded Goering and people began to question him about how safe it was to remain in the city. The people were mainly old folk and women with their children. They were clearly scared and some were babbling and starting to become emotional. I could see that
Goering was not comfortable with this situation; the look on his face said it all. I could not get to Goering to ask him any questions, and as things were not really going in his favour, he told everyone that he now had to leave for an engagement. He would be back to talk with us again soon and to inform us of the new Reich air-defence measures which had been devised to counter the problem of the RAF bombing raids on the city.

  As his driver began to drive away, anger overtook my common sense and I shouted, ‘You fucking idiot, you Dummkopf!’ [Fat head] as loud as I could. No sooner had I shouted, two men in the crowd grabbed me from behind and dragged me out of the crowd.

  I shouted at them, ‘Let go of me as you are hurting me.’ I was taken to the police station and the two men took me into a locked room and started to ask me questions. I told them I had recently lost my man who had been serving in the Luftwaffe, and that I was angry with Goering over this and wanted to know why this was happening. The men explained to me that they were Gestapo and that I was to cause no further trouble or else! Insulting such a high officer in the Reich was treason, I was warned, and the next time there would be no conversations or warnings. Then they let me go.

  Whilst having a devastating effect on the civilian population, the early bombing raids in reality did very little damage to the actual infrastructure of Berlin. Railway yards and tracks, gas, and electricity and water stations were often up and running again within just two hours of having been bombed. Such repairs were often carried out while the air raids were still in progress.

  The advent of change in the RAF bombing campaign strategy came with a man named Charles Portal, a prominent member of the British air staff. He believed that entire villages, towns and cities should be bombed, with a view to breaking civilian morale in Germany. With such a theory, there could be absolutely no considerations for any resulting civilian casualties, and even to this day, one has to question whether or not Portal could ever have slept comfortably while party to what many consider to have been a war crime.

  When Acting Air Marshal Arthur Harris became head of RAF Bomber Command in February 1942, he authorized what would become known as ‘area bombing’, where entire villages, towns and cities in Germany would be raised to the ground. To coincide with the implementation of this new phase of the bombing campaign against Germany, raids were launched against Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Essen and many other urban areas in Germany. It was the start of a campaign that would see Allied bombing kill an estimated 305,000 to 600,000 German civilians, including large numbers of the elderly people, and young women and their children. Over 6,000,000 homes were destroyed.

  Heidi Koch emphasises what many ordinary people were saying at that time:

  The area-bombing thing was just the kind of thing that you would have thought Hitler and the Nazis should have thought of. The funny thing is that Hitler did not invent such a terrible course of action as a British man named Harris did. Harris changed the whole situation from the bombing of the railways, gas, and electricity and water plants, and of course anything connected with the manufacture of ammunition and strictly military supplies, to that of actually deliberately bombing people. That is something I could never comprehend, and was something that would only push Hitler into retaliation whereby innocent civilians in England would also have to suffer. I would like to know this: Did Harris sleep properly after the war with the weight of all those corpses on his conscience? Did he ever have a conscience? I would like to have asked the man these things myself at the time, if I could.

  The bombing of Germany still provokes very strong emotions in some, and much controversy remains to this day as to the rights and the wrongs of the area-bombing strategy and its influence upon victory in the Second World War.

  Chapter Nine

  Girls on the Land

  The RADwf was the female youth section of the National Labour Service, a compulsory organization in which all young females had to enrol for a term of six months, usually after leaving the BDM at the age of eighteen.

  With the outbreak of war, the duties being performed by young girls and women in Nazi Germany began to change rapidly. As with the women in England, German women, especially girls, were taught how to make new out of old. They were even assigned to tasks where they helped German soldiers with their washing and mending of uniforms, and other such related duties. The task of helping the German soldier was one considered to have been a great privilege, with special washing and mending stations being set up especially for this task.

  During the first year of the war, in excess of 9,000,000 girls had been mobilized by the RADwf (and the BDM). Many were selected for agricultural work on the land. It was also with the advent of war that young women were brought into the previously male-only workplace of the armaments industry. Young women worked side by side with the men, most of whom were either unfit or considered too old for frontline military service.

  During mid-1940, the SS began a programme of establishing settlements in the eastern occupied territories. Once the SS had removed the former inhabitants, BDM girls were given the task of cleaning and preparing houses for habitation by German settlers. Many of the BDM girls remained within these eastern territories for up to a year, specifically to help the new occupants by providing help in the home and the establishing of schoolhouses.

  It was during this new phase in the occupied eastern territories that many of the girls would discover the brutality of the Nazi regime, of which they had become a part. Although the SS had ethnically cleansed these eastern territories with great efficiency, they were not always so careful to dispose of the evidence of their brutality. A woman named Ingeborg Schaller was one of the girls at the time sent to help set up the new eastern colonies. During a rare – and slightly reluctant – interview in May 2000, she shared some of her experiences:

  I was a nineteen-year-old at the time. I did not really like the idea of having to leave home and work on a farm or on the land, particularly in former enemy territory in the east. I did, though, volunteer for this ‘special work’, as they were calling it at the time. This would involve working closely with our military, but performing many domestic duties in the settlements.

  The placement was originally for only six to eight months, so I thought it would be fine, but my posting there was extended to twelve months. I left my home in Pirna, which is near Dresden, in late July of 1940, with a group of other girls. Some were taken from the BDM and others from the RADwf. Most of us knew each other, so we felt quite comfortable as we set out by train on our new adventure. It was a very long journey and night had fallen by the time we had arrived at our destination, which I do not wish to disclose.

  Over the following weeks, we were cleaning houses and tenements. Each had to be thoroughly scrubbed with water and they were then disinfected under the direction of the SS. There were no traces of the former inhabitants at all; everything had been stripped from the houses.

  I remember one incident that occurred one afternoon some distance away in a field. One of the dogs that belonged to one of the SS guards ran off and began digging at the soil with both of his front paws. Before the guard could get hold of his dog and pull him away, the dog unearthed what looked like the human remains of either a man, woman or child. I saw part of a torso and an arm sticking out of the ground. We never discovered just what it was, as the SS shouted at us to go away as they covered it back up, but it made those who saw it feel very uneasy, including myself. I know that after the war many areas, including that one, were investigated and a large number of bodies had been found. These were the bodies of those who had once lived there. The SS had murdered them all and buried them before our arrival. When I returned home, I was warned by my parents not to say anything about this.

  For most of the girls leaving the BDM and entering the RADwf, work placements were found in Germany. For these eighteen-year-old young women, there again lay ahead a strict regime of work, rule and regulation, but the system was different.

  The girls were given a deg
ree of freedom, and although they were closely watched, they often mixed with members of the opposite sex, particularly during the early years of the war, in ways they could not hope to do back at home. It was in this context that many viewed their placements with the RADwf as yet another adventure, an escape from the war and from the relative boredom of their home lives. This applied especially to the city girls.

  Those given placements on farms worked hard. During daylight hours, they occasionally worked from early morning when they set off to either work in the fields harvesting the seasonal crops, or tending cows, pigs and chickens, and learning how to milk the dairy herd. They lived and worked in large groups, often taking turns to cook and wash in addition to helping the farmer’s wife with her many chores.

  Many returned home with some particularly happy memories of their RADwf service. While many girls drifted back home to work in the munitions factories, many elected to stay on the farms and the land to continue with their work for the duration of the war.

  With the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s ill-fated attempt at invading the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, things could only become worse for the average German girl and woman. After some initial early successes, Operation Barbarossa soon began to stall. With the onset of a particularly cruel and freezing Russian winter, German casualties soon began to mount in staggering numbers. As a result, more and more females were increasingly required to replace those men who were sent to the Russian front.

  City-dweller Kirsten Eckermann has some fine reminiscences of her time spent with the RADwf: