by Hans Werner
2 Ibid., 337.
3 Ibid., 347.
4 Ibid., 353–55.
5 Anna Janzen, letter fragment #1, 19 December 1929, OS.
6 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), xxx.
7 Anna Janzen, letter fragment #7, n.d.
8 Stalin, as quoted in Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: Norton, 1990), 46.
9 Anna Janzen, letter fragment #7, n.d. One pud is about sixteen kilograms.
10 Ibid.
11 Tucker, Stalin in Power, 190.
12 John Werner, interview tape 1, 22 March 1987.
13 Brandes and Savin, Die Siberien-deutschen, 387.
14 Anna Janzen, letter fragment #7, n.d.
15 As quoted in Figes, The Whisperers, 159.
16 Anna Janzen, letter fragment #6, 25 September 1934.
17 John Werner, interview tape 1, 22 March 1987.
18 Ibid.
19 Tucker, Stalin in Power, 321.
20 John Werner, interview tape 1, 22 March 1987. A khutor was a prosperous Ukrainian farm, and the term was adopted by Mennonites to designate a private estate owned by Mennonites outside the colony. There was a Wernersdorf in the Molotschna Mennonite Colony.
21 Ibid.
22 Figes, The Whisperers, 633.
23 John Werner, interview tape 1, 22 March 1987.
Chapter 4: The Mist Clears
1 Rennpenning was also a Siberian landowner. See Gerhard Fast, In den Steppen Sibiriens (Rosthern, SK: J. Heese, 1957), 139.
2 Tina Hinz, “Memoir,” (Paderborn: n.p., 1968), 16.
3 Tina never mentioned the names of these villages. However, based on a brief family sketch by Katharina (Werner) Hamm, Jakob Werner, her grandfather, lived in the village of Skvortsovko (Skworzowo in German), approximately seventy kilometers from Petropavlovsk. Some families at a Werner event in Germany also suggested there was a Werner family in the village of Bulayewo, approximately twenty-five kilometers from Skvortsovka on the Trans-Siberian Railway. See “Werner-Harder Treffen,” (Düren, Germany: n.p., 10 October 1992). Peter Rahn also mentions a J. Werner in Skvortsovka. See Peter Rahn, Mennoniten in der Umgebung von Omsk (Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1975), 126.
4 Hinz, “Memoir,” 19.
5 One desyatin is 2.7 acres.
6 Fast, In den Steppen Sibiriens, 24.
7 Slavgorod was established in 1909 by the Russian government. Given that the family travelled in the spring of 1909, the town must have been just beginning.
8 Hinz, “Memoir,” 27.
9 Ibid., 32; Fast, In den Steppen Sibiriens, 68.
10 Fast, In den Steppen Sibiriens, 93.
11 Jonathan D. Smele, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Soviet Government of Admiral Kolchak 1918–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Chapter 1.
12 Manfred Klaube, Die Deutschen Dörfer in der Westsibirischen Kulunda-Steppe: Entwicklung, Strukturen, Probleme (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1991), 42–43; Fast, In den Steppen Sibiriens, 96–97.
13 Hinz, “Memoir,” 53.
14 Ibid., 54.
15 Tina suggested that two children of Johann and Anna (Janzen) Werner died in the epidemic, but there is no other evidence of this second child. In later letters to her daughter Aganetha in Canada, Anna referred only to an Anna who had died, and this reference is the only evidence she had been a victim of cholera.
16 Hinz, “Memoir,” 55.
17 Jill Ker Conway, When Memory Speaks: Exploring the Art of Autobiography (Toronto: Random House, 1998), 16.
18 Hinz, “Memoir,” 2, 132–33.
19 Andrew B. Stone, “‘Overcoming Peasant Backwardness’: The Khrushchev Anti-Religious Campaign and the Rural Soviet Union,” Russian Review 67 (2008): 296–320. See also Walter Sawatzky, Soviet Evangelicals since World War II (Kitchener, ON: Herald Press, 1981), 131–56.
20 Hans Werner, “‘German Only in Their Hearts’: Making and Breaking the Ethnic German Diaspora in the 20th Century,” in Beyond the Nation?: Immigrants’ Local Lives in Transnational Cultures, ed. Alexander Freund (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 2011), 211–226.
Chapter 5: War Stories
1 A report from a U.S. military attaché in Finland on 29 December 1939 noted “there are rumors that the new Russian divisions are made up largely of Caucasian and Siberian troops, believed to be of much higher quality than those already encountered.” Frank B. Hayne, MA, Military Intelligence Reports, University of Winnipeg Archives, MFIL DK60.U16 1984, reel 10, frame 623.
2 John Werner, interview tape 3, 28 February 1988.
3 Alan F. Chew, The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet–Finnish Winter War (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1971), 149.
4 John Werner, interview tape 3, 28 February 1988.
5 Carl van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–40 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 152.
6 John Werner, interview tape 3, 28 February 1988.
7 John Werner, notes of a conversation, 18 January 1987.
8 Maksym Kolomyjec, Tanks in the Winter War 1939–1940 (Stockholm: Leandoer and Ekholm Förlag, 2008), 93.
9 Cherkessians are a subgroup of the Circassian peoples who live in the Northern Caucasus area.
10 Donald Day’s quotation in the Chicago Tribune appears frequently on websites on the theme of Jewish–Latvian relations. I have taken it from Frank Gordon, “Latvians and Jews between Germany and Russia,” http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/fg_june.htm.
11 John Werner, interview tape 3, 28 February 1988.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 David M. Glantz, ed., The Initial Period of the War on the Eastern Front 22 June–August 1941 (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 187.
15 Tom Bergman, “Valerii Chkalov: Soviet Pilot as New Soviet Man,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, 1 (1998): 138.
16 Chkalov, Valery, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, starring V. Belokurov, S. Mezhinskii, and K. Tarasova, Lenfilm (black and white), 1941; see http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/slavicctr/filmsA-C.htm.
17 Alice M. Hoffman and Howard S. Hoffman, “Reliability and Validity in Oral History: The Case for Memory,” in Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience, ed. Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 107–35. See also John E. Talbott, “Soldiers, Psychiatrists, and Combat Trauma,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27, 3 (1997): 437–54.
18 Alice M. Hoffman and Howard S. Hoffman, Archives of Memory: A Solder Recalls World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 87, 131.
Chapter 6: Johann: Becoming a German
1 John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 98.
2 David M. Glantz, ed., “A Collection of Combat Documents Covering the First Three Days of the Great Patriotic War,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 4, 1 (1991): 165.
3 David M. Glantz, ed., The Initial Period of the War on the Eastern Front 22 June–August 1941 (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 200–02.
4 John Werner, notes of a conversation, 6 January 2003. The 11th Mechanized Corps melted away; it lost all but 32 of its 305 tanks and after four days was left with 600 of its original 32,000-man complement. Robert Kirchubel, Operation Barbarossa 1942 (3): Army Group Centre (Oxford: Osprey, 2007), 37.
5 Stalin’s Order No. 270, which required Red Army soldiers to commit suicide rather than be captured, was signed only in August 1941. Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 411.
6 This is consistent with German Army policy regarding captured Red Army soldiers who were ethnic Germans. See, for instance, Ingeborg Fleischauer, Das Dritte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 87.
7 Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–45: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 30–31.
8 Jo
hn Werner, interview tape 3, 28 February 1988. It is not plausible that all politruks were Jews. Many Jews were attracted to the communist ideology and active in the Communist Party, and there were many Jewish politruks. The role of politruk, however, was not an ethnic or racial office, and it attracted other politically active communists.
9 Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and National Minorities of Europe 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 161–72.
10 According to his application for citizenship, Ivan arrived in Pabianitz near Litzmannstadt (Łódź) in occupied Poland on 26 July 1941. This means the period of debriefing, interpreting, travelling, and imprisonment in Lublin was about one month. “Einburgerungsantrag,” 6 October 1942, BDC.
11 John Werner, interview tape 3, 28 February 1988.
12 RKFDV is the acronym for the Reichskommisariat für die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums. See Robert L. Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 104.
13 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
14 Łódź fell to the Soviet forces on 19 January 1945.
15 EWZ 45, BDC, and “Führerschein” issued at Bamberg, 28 January 1947.
16 EWZ 3, EWZ 16, EWZ T/0114 , BDC. For documents without a title, I have chosen to refer to them by their form numbers, usually located in the bottom left-hand side of the form. See also Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, 191; Koehl, RKFDV, 107.
Chapter 7: The Fog of War
1 Currently the Town of Ozersk, Province of Kalinograd, Russian Federation.
2 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
3 Ibid.
4 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988.
5 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
6 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988.
7 Stamm Batterie leichte Artillerie Ersatz Und Ausbildungs Abteilung (motorisiert) 103.
8 Paul E. Bauman, “Luftwaffe Airlift in the Tunisian Bridgehead: Expeditionary Lessons for a Transformation Age” (MA thesis, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, 2006), 69.
9 John Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1953), 637–41, 678.
10 The German Replacement Army (Ersatzheer) (Washington, DC: Military Intelligence Division, 1944), 21–24.
11 Ulrich Neisser, “Memory with a Grain of Salt,” in Memory: An Anthology, ed. Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt (London: Vintage, 2009), 88.
12 Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 76.
Chapter 8: The 401
1 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988.
2 Ibid.
3 Units such as the 401 usually had some cannons of the 10 cm K 18 type, which had a maximum range of 19,075 metres. Ivan V. Hogg, German Artillery of World War II (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1975), 63.
4 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988.
5 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988. The reference to eight charges likely makes the cannon a 15 cm FH 18 model. Its range with the eighth charge, however, was 13,325 metres. Hogg, German Artillery, 63.
6 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988. The reference to “Napolean Strasse” is unclear—a map by Richard Natkiel indicates a Napoleon route in the south of France (Nice–Grenoble), but this could not have been in that area. Richard Natkiel, Atlas of World War II (London: Bison Books, 1985), 176.
7 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
8 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988 and tape 4, 23 March 1988.
9 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
10 Ibid.
11 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Bruce Quarrie, The Ardennes Offensive: V Panzer Armee, Central Sector (Oxford: Osprey, 2000), 13; “Lexikon der Wehrmacht,” http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/VolksArtKorps/VolksArtKorps401.htm.
15 “Bundesarchiv to Dr. Horst Gerlach,” 19 September 1989. The search for records in the German military archives was graciously assisted by Dr. Gerlach.
16 BundesArchiv (hereafter BA), RH 41/950, Part II, “Befehle-401, Abteilungsbefehl, Nr. 2,” 3 October 1944.
17 BA, RH 41/950, Part I, “Befehle-401, Tagesbefehl,” 2 November 1944.
18 BA, RH 41/949, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 1,” p. 2, 10 November 1944.
19 BA, 41/949, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 1,” pp. 9–11, 5–14 December 1944.
20 Charles B. Macdonald, A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge (New York: Bantam, 1985), 130.
21 BA, 41/949, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 1,” p. 11, 16 December 1944.
22 BA, 41/949, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 1,” p. 13, 19 December 1944.
23 Macdonald, A Time for Trumpets, 310.
24 BA, 41/949, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 1,” p. 21, 14 December 1944.
25 BA, RH 41/950, Part I, “Befehle-401, Tagesbefehl,” 17 January 1945.
26 BA, RH 41/950, Part I, “Befehle-401, Tagesbefehl, Nr. 5,” 18 January 1945.
27 BA, 41/948, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 2,” p. 2, 5–17 February 1945; RH 950, Part I, “Befehle-401, Tagesbefehl Nr. 8,” 9 March 1945.
28 BA, 41/948, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 2,” pp. 2–3, 18 February–2 March 1945.
29 BA, 41/950, Part II, “Befehle—401, Abteilungsbefehl Nr. 22,” 9 March 1945; 41/948, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 2,” p. 3, 8–11 March 1945.
30 Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 130.
Chapter 9: The Collapse
1 BA, 41/948, “Kriegestagebuch Nr. 2,” p. 3, 23 March 1945; Len Cacutt, ed., Decisive Battles: The Turning Points of World War II (New York: Gallery Books, 1986), 118.
2 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988.
3 This might have been a result of the Germans opening the Schwammenaul Dam on 10 February 1945 to slow the advance of the Americans.
4 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
5 John Werner, interview tape 6, summer 1988. The soldier’s quip did not come up in the formal interviews, but was an often repeated feature of my father’s stories.
6 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988; Deutsche Dienstelle, VI/313, 20.10.1988.
7 Frank Kermode, “Palaces of Memory,” in Memory: An Anthology, ed. Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt (London: Vintage, 2009), 9.
8 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
9 John Werner, notes of a conversation, 15 October 1989.
10 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
11 James Bacque, Other Losses (Toronto: Stoddart, 1989).
12 Steven Ambrose, “Ike and the Disappearing Atrocities,” New York Times Book Review, 24 February 1991, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/22/specials/ambrose-atrocities.html.
13 Robert S. Anderson, ed., Preventative Medicine in World War II, Volume IX, Special Fields (Washington, DC: United States Army, 1969), 378–79; Bacque, Other Losses, 22–23.
14 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988.
15 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
16 John Werner, notes of a conversation, 15 October 1989.
17 John Werner, interview tape 4, 23 March 1988.
18 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
Chapter 10: New Beginnings
1 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988. My father had a “Prisoner of War Discharge” document dated 21 August 1946 at Regensburg. It was signed by Fred E. Wilson and has a stamp with “1st Infantry Division Discharge Center” on it. The same date is noted in the transcript of his military record. Deutsche Dienstelle, VI/313, 20.10.1988.
2 David Thelen, “An Afterthought on Scale and History,” Journal of American History 77, 2 (1990): 591.
3 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988. My father had a letter from the Civilian Labor Office of the 3492nd Ordnance MAM Company dated 17 January 1947 certifying his employment with the above from 28 August 1946 to 17 January 1947. There is also a document from the Nurnberg Military Post APO 139 US Army, Bamberg Sub-Post, dated 31 May 1949, certifying his employment from 17 January 1947 to 31 January 1949 and again from 10 February 1949 to 23 March 1949.
4 On another occasion, he remembered him as Buhler. John Werner, notes of a conversation, 14 September 1986.
5 One of my father’s documents from these years is an employee’s pass for the “Artillery Kaserne,” indicating that my father was a driver for the BMSP (Bamberg Military Sub-Post) Motor Pool.
6 Goering began his testimony on 13 March 1946 and along with the other defendants made his final statement on 31 August 1946. Goering died on 15 October by poisoning himself by taking a cyanide pill smuggled into his cell. In his final statement, written as a suicide note, Goering appealed to the tribunal to be shot as a soldier rather than being hanged. I found no evidence that Goering made this statement in the courtroom, where my father could have heard it. He did indicate this in a letter to his wife Emily. See G.M. Gilbert, Nuremburg Diary (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1947), 194–216, and Ben E. Swearingen, The Mystery of Hermann Goering's Suicide (London: Robert Hale, 1990), 43–59.
7 John Werner, interview tape 5, 4 March 1988.
8 MHC, CMBC, vol. 1331, file 993.
9 Motor Pool, Nurnberg Military Post, Bamberg Sub-Post, APO 139, U.S. Army, “Bestaetigung,” 31 May 1949.
10 In his taped interview, he mentioned Ludwigsburg; in documents of the day, he indicated he was processed at Nellingen, the IRO’s Area 2 headquarters.
11 Marie K. Wiens, “Activity Report, January, February, March, Fallingbostel, Germany,” Mennonite Church Archives (hereafter MCA), Goshen, IN, IX-19-9, box 1, file 1/75, C.F. Klassen files—Refugee Migration, Fallingbostel, 1949–50, MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
12 O. Cormier, “Memorandum: Re: Johann Werner, German Ser. No. 31621,” 8 June 1949, MCA, IX-19-16, box 13, file 2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.–Wer., MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.