by Heath, Tim
My next placement was with a family in Westerburg in a bakery shop. I helped in the house and the bakery shop, but regulations of that time prevented me from being able to serve customers. I also helped out on the local farms by working in the fields. The people of Westerburg were very nice to me and the work was pretty easy to master. I remember once at the camp while we were waiting for our dinner. Our camp guide would often leave us unsupervised in the dinner room for quite a long period. During one such occasion, I smuggled a book in with me titled Feldpostaugaben, a book that was produced specifically for our soldiers. It appealed to me and the other girls in particular, because it contained poetry and readings of a philosophical nature. When the guide appeared, we all had to stand up so I slammed the book shut and held it in my hands behind my back, before dropping it onto the seat. When we were given permission to sit, I would sit down on the book and the guide would not know it was there.
There were many happy times and I remember visiting the old house and bakery after the war. I was shocked to find that so much had changed, it was all so different to how I had remembered it all, even many of the faces I had known had gone. When I called at the bakery, the original owner answered the door and I was given the terrible news that during the war bombs fell and hit the bakery and other houses. The baker had lost his wife, son and daughter in just one bomb attack and his business was also wrecked. Though he later rebuilt the shop and also found love again and remarried.
In all, there were many happy times back then and I still recall how we girls talked amongst ourselves on a quite personal level when no guides were around. We talked about many things including literature and about our own personal identification. The one guide in particular was very kind to me as she let me play and practise with my violin on many occasions throughout my time with the RADwf and that was something which meant a lot to me back then.
For a great many, the RADwf experience proved to be a worthwhile one, from both a personal perspective and in the way that it provided a much-needed secondary workforce to replace men who had left their jobs in the factories and fields to fight in the war. Skilled men, with highly valuable knowledge of their particular trades, were not permitted to leave their jobs to join the army or air force. Instead they had the task of training up young girls and women who were now entering the male factory world to work on tank, artillery and aircraft production lines. Young girls were also employed in the munitions industry where their small hands became valuable assets for such tasks as the polishing of the insides of artillery projectiles.
Heidi Koch was one of the girls who, after turning eighteen, apprehensively entered a local ammunition production facility.
I was not very happy about having to go and work in one of the factories. They were dirty and noisy and full of old men who would stare at you for hours. I had always wanted to move out of the city and work on the farms in the countryside, but certain social changes meant that more and more girls and women had to replace the ordinary workingmen and labourers in our factories. Only the skilled men (and those too old to fight in the war) remained, so as they could then pass on their knowledge to the women workers. I was given an overall to wear, and this was too big for me and I had to wear a scarf over my head to keep the dirt and grime out of my hair.
I was taken into the factory and given a brief on safety procedure and where I must go if the air-raid siren sounded. There was much danger in these places and women were warned to beware of all of the moving machinery inside the factory. I heard that one girl had got her headscarf caught up in a wheel; this pulled her into a large drive belt and she was decapitated.
My first job was a relatively simple and very boring one. All I had to do was polish the insides of shells with a piece of cloth. The shells came down very steadily on a moving belt and you picked them up and cleaned the insides with the cloth. With my small hands and nimble fingers, I was ideal for this job, but it was terribly boring.
Many of the men constantly smoked rolled cigarettes as they worked on their machines and the combination of the smell of oil, smoke and hot metal gave me a headache. I only stopped very briefly for a light lunch and we either had coffee or water to drink.
After working in the factory, I would return home where I would have to help Mother prepare our meal. I often felt too tired to do anything, but knew I had to help as Father never helped her very much. I also had to wait until he had washed himself before I could wash. If he came home and I was washing in the tub he would consider that I had been disrespectful to him, just because he had to wait a few minutes. I often lay awake at night wondering just how long I could go on living like this, the routine of getting up, going to the factory, doing the boring work and then returning home. Other girls that went to work with me felt exactly the same way.
Later on we even had slave labourers come and work in the factory, but we were not allowed to talk to them or go anywhere near them. We felt so sorry for them, as they received little to no food or water and were forced to work much longer hours than we did. Often when the daylight raids began, when the siren sounded while all of the German workers were being evacuated to the air-raid shelter, the slave labourers were forced to continue working under the threat that if they stopped working they would be shot.
I once broke the rules and risked severe punishment when I saved up some lunch which I should have eaten myself, and by crawling along the floor on all fours I managed to get near to a young Polish woman working at a machine. She must have been a little scared and probably wondered what I was doing, and she tried to pretend that she had not seen me so as not to attract attention. As I crawled nearer, I was then able to throw the small wrapped bundle of food over to her feet. I then looked up at her and gestured for her to have it. I smiled at her and she smiled back and I then crawled away back over to my area. She pretended to drop something and I saw her bend down to pick up the bundle of food. A few weeks later she was transferred away and I never saw her again.
Around three weeks later, I fell ill, and as a result was moved out of the factory and given a placement at a small chicken farm. I was overjoyed at the news, as it would mean I could escape the factory. The chicken farm was not necessarily any more exciting, but it was out in the air. I woke up each morning at around 7.30am as I wanted to go with the owner’s wife, Marlene, who I called Frau Marla, and she would take me out into the field runs to collect the eggs from the birds. We would return to the house where we then had breakfast, including brown bread and some of the eggs that we had just collected. I would go and help her with things like shopping and with her washing and housework.
On weekends, I often went swimming in a large lake that lay at the bottom of one of the fields, though only in the warm weather.
One evening Frau Marla said to me, ‘Tell me something, are you happy with everything, you know, with home and everything else?’
I replied, ‘Yes, I am happy.’
She then said, ‘I am not so sure, there is so much sadness in your eyes child, and you never talk of your family or ask if you can write to them.’
She then said that if I ever needed to confide in her with anything then I could always tell her. I told her about how I hated life in the city and the fear that everyone felt with the bombing. I also told her a little about my home life and about how I disliked father’s discipline and his habits. I told her that I did not want to go back home and that I wanted to stay with her at the farm. At that, she gazed at the tall grandfather clock which stood in the corner of the kitchen area and said, ‘Look, it is time that you were in bed, now get some sleep and I will see you in the morning.’
After about a week after our conversation, she informed me that she had been speaking to the local authority responsible for the labour service. I thought for a minute I was in trouble and was maybe going to be sent home for what I had told her.
She said to me, ‘I am going to need help for much longer than I expected, and rather than have another girl sent here I felt it wo
uld be easier if you stayed on, as you are aware of the routine and what to do.’
I am not sure how she managed to arrange this, as the rules were rules, but I think she knew people in high places, I am not sure. I remember throwing my arms around her and hugging her. Later I also wrote a letter to my mother explaining that I was not coming back home just yet as I was still required on the farm.
Other girls were sent to us from the labour service and I was given the task of showing them what to do, and I later became a leader and was in charge of around thirty-five girls. With the emphasis of land work and agriculture becoming ever more important, Frau Marla had to expand her farming and we soon had pigs, and planted crops which all helped to provide food for the German people. The expansion also helped me to remain out of the city and I never returned home. I remained in touch with my mother and sisters by letter and I had arranged meetings with them, as I often paid for their train fares to come and visit me. I never returned to our house until my father passed away. In a way I regret not seeing him, but you have to understand that we had grown apart in our attitudes.
Frau Marla did not like Hitler and neither did I after what I had experienced in the ammunition factory. My father was convinced that Hitler was the right choice of leader for Germany. How could I have lived under the same roof and lived the way that he had wanted me to? It was not possible, and if I learned anything from the RADwf, then it was that you as a woman could use the system to your advantage and to escape. As regarding our service in helping to aid the Nazi war effort, that is rubbish. Almost everything that we produced on Frau Marla’s farm was for the civilian populace. Often the food was sold much cheaper than it should have been in order that families who we knew were poor and had little income could eat.
Later in the war most of the livestock on our farm, and indeed many others in Germany, also became the focus of the Allied attacks. Fighter aircraft would often dive down and machine gun cattle and pigs deliberately to kill them. Whether this was just for sport I cannot say, but we were resourceful, and we were able to collect up the dead animals and then prepare them in mass storage. Usually the meat was butchered, salted and then dried or smoked, it would keep longer this way. Other farms just stopped the rearing and keeping of livestock to concentrate on crops and vegetables. Though I know that Allied planes took great pleasure in shooting up grain silos and storage units, even carts were fired on and sometimes destroyed. It was only a matter of time before someone was killed and this person was a girl aged only seventeen. American fighter planes fired at the horse-drawn cart she was on, killing her and the horses. Then the planes just flew off.
It is certainly true that marauding Allied fighters became frustrated at the lack of action. As a result, they began shooting up anything that took their fancy. Farm livestock was viewed as an enemy resource that could be utilized, so cows, pigs, horses and goats were often strafed with machine-gun fire, without particular regard for any civilians within the immediate vicinity. Grain storage facilities also provided a fun target to shoot at. Pilots often liked to watch the puffs of smoke as their bullets found their mark, though this was a practice also favoured by certain Luftwaffe bomber and fighter crews. This was just another thing that the German girls, along with countless thousands of German civilians would have to learn to contend with on an ever-increasing scale during the course of the war.
Gabrielle Haefker:
As young women, soon we were doing everything. We worked on the land, in the factories, we drove buses and trams and we did nursing duties. Yet, still in a way we gained little respect in the eyes of the men. Some of the men I came into contact with, particularly during my labour service, made me feel sick with their stupid remarks and comments.
One morning, I was on the way to do my work on the land when two men passed me on their bicycles. I smiled and greeted them with a customary ‘Heil Hitler’ followed by a ‘good morning’, and then one of them turned around and said, ‘That is what I like to see, German girls on the land,’ while the other quickly butted in and said, ‘German girls on the land, but better on their backs.’ They both laughed and cycled on.
Was this all that men could think of? Were we just objects for screwing? That is how I felt and I don’t think we were ever respected in quite the way that we should have been. Not until after the war, even though what we did with the RADwf proved us as more than equals to the men.
Chapter Ten
Terror from the Sky
In many ways, 1943 was the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. Hitler’s failure to invade England, followed by the crushing defeat of his armies in Russia, were events that would seal Germany’s fate. Again, Hitler’s interference had cost the German forces dearly. By not allowing his armies to conduct tactical withdrawals and retreat at the critical points during the battles in Russia, Hitler had resigned his military machine to certain annihilation. To make matters worse, by May 1943, the German military campaign in North Africa had also began to falter and lose ground to the Allies.
America’s entry into the Second World War, following the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, would prove to be the real nail in the coffin for Germany. American forces could not mount attacks on Germany from their own shores, but bomber and fighter-bomber aircraft based in England could. Up until January of 1943, the RAF had fought the air war against Germany alone, sending its bombers to attack German cities at night.
The whole strategy of the Allied air offensive against Germany, however, was to change from January 1943. The changes were relatively simple, but ones that would prove to be devastating to the German infrastructure, which would find itself rapidly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of attacks launched during the new phase of the Allied bomber offensive. By 10 June 1943, it was agreed that, while RAF Bomber Command would continue to attack Germany by night with saturation-bombing raids, the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) would attack by day, in what were termed precision-bombing raids. A system of round-the-clock bombing was planned, which was steadily intensified in the hope that German civilian morale would collapse.
It was on 27 January 1943, that the USAAF made its first daylight raid against Germany. With a force of B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator heavy bombers, the USAAF attacked Emden and Wilhelmshaven.
On 29 January, the Nazi Party’s tenth anniversary celebrations were disrupted when RAF Mosquito fighter-bombers came in at low level on what was the RAF’s first daylight raid on Berlin. Without any opposition from the Luftwaffe they strafed buildings with 20mm cannon and .303 machine-gun fire, before roaring off over the rooftops. Such an attack proved not only to have been a huge embarrassment to Goering, but also a huge psychological blow to the German civilians taking part in what was an important celebration in the Nazi calendar.
The USAAF would suffer appallingly high losses amongst bomber crews during the daylight raids, particularly against Berlin. The city had more anti-aircraft guns per square kilometre than either Hanoi had during the Vietnam War or Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War. More bomber crews were lost while attacking targets over Berlin than any other city of the Third Reich. In comparison, German civilian loss of life was even greater, but quite apart from destroying the German civilian morale, the bombing only had the effect of hardening civilian resolve. Life still went on, but it was incredibly hard, especially for schoolchildren, whose lessons would now be constantly disrupted by the howl of the air-raid siren.
Anna Dann recalls:
I remember the first daylight air raid very vividly. We found it hard to believe when the siren sounded, as previously the bombers had only attacked at night. We hurried out of the classroom as quickly as possible and out of the school building. As we ran out of the building and headed for the air-raid shelter, which was a large semi-recessed concrete structure, we could hear the distant drone of aircraft. As I ran with the others, I thought of Mother and Father and my brothers, and wondered if they were going to be safe. The fear started to turn to blind panic
and I felt my heart begin to race in my chest, my mouth started to go dry, and that familiar headache start to instantly develop. This would become something I felt every single time I heard that horrible siren. When we got to the shelter and it was made clear that everyone who should be present was present, the heavy door was slammed shut and there we crouched down in an almost subterranean darkness lit only by a dull light from the ceiling. Even though we were relatively safe inside the shelter, we clearly heard the bombers approach and we knew from the sound that there must be many planes. The guns began to fire and their fire was so intense and rapid that it drowned out the noise of the planes. It was absolutely terrifying, and at one point, for a few seconds, the lights went out and it was pitch black; some of the girls began to scream and panic. The teachers who were in with us shouted, ‘Girls, don’t panic, remain where you are and please try to remain calm, everything will be alright soon.’
The light flickered and came back on, and in the dull light I could see the frightened faces of some of the other girls, tears running down their faces as their eyes stared wildly up at the ceiling, as if it might come crashing down upon them at any moment. We all began to huddle together and we were shaking from the fear, and dust began to fill the air inside. I was aware that one of the girls next to me was so scared that she had grabbed hold of my hand; her grip was so tight that it almost hurt. One girl urinated herself with fright it was so bad, but at that moment nobody seemed to care. We sat crouched together like sardines in a can in that shelter before the all-clear siren meant that the danger had passed. The smell inside the shelter had become unbearable; it was the smell of sweat, urine, masonry dust and fear, an indescribable mixture of smells.