From School to War: Growing Up in Hitler’s Germany (Contemporary Nonfiction)

by Wolf Dettbarn

  Hanging our heads, we told the women, “Please forgive us, dear ladies. We are so sorry we drowned your hats.” My grandfather sat down with a sigh on the sofa, but his troubles weren’t over yet. He offered the ladies money for their damaged hats. “This is your pocket money,” he told us. But the ladies refused the money, so we felt relieved we wouldn’t be punished severely after all.

  As my grandmother and the women continued chatting in the dining room, Hansi and I slipped silently into the pantry. This time Hansi stood in front of a basket filled with eggs. He took the eggs, one after the other, and threw them at a sign on the wall. While some eggs spattered on the sign, like hitting the bull’s-eye of a target, others made yellow splats or drips on the walls. I laughed and pointed out when he didn’t hit the target. “You missed again,” I said.

  This time Tante Lotte was alerted not by silence but by the suspicious noise of the splats hitting the sign or the wall. She rushed into the pantry to investigate and saw the big mess of dripping eggs Hansi had created. She also saw yellow goo dripping down the front of my shirt and all over my shoes from Hansi’s unsuccessful efforts at hitting the sign.

  As usual, when there was trouble, though Hansi usually started it, she turned to me as the older brother and asked, “Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you stop your brother?”

  Before I could answer, Tante Lotte ran back to the table where my grandmother was talking to her guests and whispered in her mother’s ear. Grandma turned white, got up, and made a speech to her visitors. “I’m so sorry about the boys’ atrocious behavior,” she said.

  Tante Lotte then returned to the kitchen to calm us down. She gave us each a glass of bubbly water, called sprudel wasser, and led us back to the dining room to face our grandfather. We could tell by her somber demeanor that we were in deep trouble. Once we stood in front of our grandfather, he told us, “You have to go back to the ladies and tell them what you have done and promise never to do it again.” So that’s what we did. It was an early lesson in proper behavior.

  When the ladies finally left, they thanked my grandmother for a very exciting kaffeeklatsch, in spite of the ruined hats. The women even pinched our cheeks, as they usually did, as if to say “All is forgiven.” At least our early lesson didn’t come with serious consequences.

  School in Berlin

  I began school in Berlin, like other children, when I was six, and ran around with a little group of five- to eight-year-old boys. These included Siegfried, whose parents were great fans of Wagner; Lothar, who was the neighborhood bully; Hansi, my little brother, who continued to get into every sort of mischief; and three other boys. As for me, I was known as the quiet and determined one. There were also two girls who ran around with us: Annemarie, whom we called Annemi, and Helga, whose father was the caretaker of our apartment building.

  Mostly we spent our time in mischief, since we enjoyed breaking the strict rules of German society and getting away with it if we could—and usually we did. We rang doorbells and ran away. We tipped over trashcans. We ran beyond the city limits into the countryside, which was much farther than our parents said we could go. We also didn’t always come when our parents called to us on the street; we acted like we didn’t hear them calling and ran off. But later we paid the price for our misdeeds, since our parents often grounded us the next day. I remember how my parents often prefaced these restrictions with a stern lecture telling me, “Wolfie, you have to learn to listen to us and behave. You can’t keep breaking the rules.” Then I would quickly hang my head and agree. But after a few days, I would run wild with the boys and two girls again, doing what we always did.

  In school, though, we had to learn to follow the rules. Our school was a red brick building, which was divided into classrooms and had separate rooms for the headmaster and the teachers. On the first day of school, all the children’s parents gave them a huge cardboard cone filled with candy from a local sweetshop—a custom that is still going strong. While smoking was strictly forbidden for the children, the headmaster and some teachers smoked, and whenever we passed their rooms, we saw smoke wafting out of them.

  In my first years at my school, which had both boys and girls, we did not have to wear uniforms, just neat, clean shorts and shirts most of the year and sweaters in the winter. But not long after the Nazis came to power, beginning about 1935, we had to wear uniforms, all part of the Nazi plan to educate children early on to become part of the German Motherland. Along with our uniforms, we came to school wearing small leather satchels, much like the backpacks of today, on our backs. These were filled with our books, and in my first year these satchels also contained a slate and chalk for writing as well as a sponge to wipe the chalk off of our slates.

  We all loved our teachers, who were like second parents to us and were very kind. They never used corporal punishment on young children. If we misbehaved, they sent us to stand in the corner, or they asked us to write sentences or lines of poetry.

  Each class had about twenty-five students, and we sat at old-fashioned desks with inkwells. In my first year of school, we wrote on our slates with chalk and cleaned them off with little sponges. In my second year, the teachers gave us paper, pencils, and erasers with which to write in little blue copybooks. The following year, we got pens and began to write with ink, dipping the metal pen points in our inkwells. The teachers first taught us to write in cursive, and we practiced our handwriting day after day, filling our books with lines of individual letters and then words so they looked just right.

  We had seven classes a day: writing, reading, arithmetic, religion, art, music, and sports, which included handball, kickball, and soccer, each class lasting about an hour. But rather than moving us from class to class, the teachers came into our classroom, where different teachers taught different subjects.

  Every class began with a short prayer. As we sat at our desks, the teachers led us in these prayers of thanks for what we had. This was one of the few times we were all very quiet and respectful, as we followed along and gave thanks for having our wonderful life, or we asked for blessings for those in need. Once the Nazis were firmly entrenched, the prayers stopped as the Nazis discouraged religion of any kind.

  After a few classes, around noon, we were let outside for recess in the schoolyard. Then we all ran around and played games like tag and hide-and-seek, much as we did before beginning school. I was not very good in sports, especially in team sports, such as soccer. So I was the last one selected for football or handball. But my worst subject was handwriting. I wrote very badly, scrawling my letters together so my words were hard to read—much as I do to this day.

  One day when I was doing my lessons, our maid, Irma, saw me struggling with my writing, so she wrote the letters for me. When we got our report cards, my father was thrilled to see that my grades in handwriting had gone up considerably. “You are improving so much, Wolfie,” he told me, and I happily accepted his praise.

  But a few days later, he looked at some of my German lessons and became suspicious. He asked Irma, “Do you know how Wolfie suddenly improved his handwriting so much?”

  She turned bright red and said, “I can’t lie. I did the writing for him.”

  My father replied, “It would be much better if you show Wolfie how to write rather than writing for him. This does not help him one bit.”

  When I got home from school and walked into the living room, I found Irma crying and my father frowning. He looked at me sternly and said, “You must always do your own work. What you did is dishonest and unhelpful. How can you learn by letting others bail you out?” He then tore up the page on my report card with the good grade, and I promised him, “I’ll always do my own work in the future.”

  While still in my first year, I soon learned from my friends to act superior, because we all were from Berlin. We acted as we did because Berliners thought of themselves as number one, although no one outside of Berlin really liked the Berliners because of this arrogant behavior. All of the Berlin li
cense plates said A1, and the drivers behaved just like that—like they were first-class entitled aristocrats. They were usually the fastest on the highways, speeding along at sixty or seventy miles an hour, and they were the rudest, honking their horns at the slightest provocation.

  Being part of this group gave me a sense of superiority. As a result, I felt that I could do anything, that I could make the rules and other children would follow me. Of course, I knew I couldn’t behave this way with adults, since all children had to be respectful toward them, whoever and wherever they were. Since such proper behavior was required, I simply accepted that was the way things were. I could act like a king with the other children in my school, but when it came to adults, I knew my place.

  Yet, while our group felt superior, we had no chance to flaunt our superiority while we lived in Berlin. Instead, Hansi and I had to wait for our trips to Lingen to visit my grandfather. Once there, to show off, we criticized the country children’s clothing and the way they talked. If they acted scared, we teased them. We laughed at the length of their pants, since ours were short and theirs came down below the knee. In response, the children in Lingen cowered at our criticisms, telling us, “Yes, you’re right. We wish we could be like you Berliners.” I felt a great sense of confidence and pride.

  Breaking the Rules

  Since being a Berliner was very impressive to the other boys in this small country town where we spent summers, Hansi and I soon built up a little group of country boys around us. They liked being a friend of a Berliner and following our lead when we played the usual games of cops and robbers and hide-and-seek. And they followed along when we stole fruit from the trees and berries from the bushes around town.

  We also led the group of boys on some adventures and at times felt free to break the rules we didn’t like. For example, one time we wanted to take our group to the beach, though all children were strictly forbidden to go there by themselves without an adult. The adults didn’t want us to go there alone, since the sea was dangerous, and we were very young. But Hansi and I didn’t want to obey this rule, so we told everyone, “Let’s go. If we go right after breakfast and are back by lunch, our parents don’t have to know.”

  Henrik, who was always trying to be the leader of the pack, said, “No. We can’t go. I’ll tell.” The other boys, game for an adventure, shouted him down, saying, “Don’t tell on us. We want to go.”

  I said, “Who’s a sissy here? Anyone brave will go with us to the beach. Act like men!” At this, Henrik backed down and said, “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

  We headed for the beach on the Baltic Sea, about a fifteen-minute walk from town. Once we got there, we found the sand covered in seaweed, shells, horseshoe crabs, and some bits of garbage thrown overboard from the fishing boats. As we looked around, we saw no other people on the beach other than a few men with fishing rods hoping to catch fish on a nearby pier.

  Excitedly, with our shoes and socks still on, we ran in and out of the water. We shrieked joyfully and splashed about as the waves lapped in and out on the beach. Suddenly, some fishermen came running over to us from the pier, terrified that we would chase away the fish.

  They told us, “Get away! Go home! You’ll frighten all the fish away! We’ll tell your parents! We’ll call the Bürgermeister [mayor] and tell him, too.” But we didn’t care what the fishermen said. We simply scampered away, with the fishermen running after us, pleading for us to go home, though we ignored them and kept splashing in the water. We weren’t worried that they would really speak to our parents, so we just laughed, because we enjoyed scaring the fishermen. When they walked off, we felt so powerful, thinking they were leaving us alone so we could continue to play.

  Wolf (kneeling) with (left to right) Annemarie, Hansi, and Helga, Berlin, circa 1934.

  However, they had actually gone to call the Burgermeister, who returned with my grandfather and half a dozen parents of the other kids. They marched ahead like an approaching army, ready to retrieve their children, and they were all hopping mad. One parent cried out, “Who had this stupid idea? You know you can’t go to the beach! Do you want to drown?” Of course, all the children immediately pointed at Hansi and me.

  “It was them! They started it,” Henrik said, triumphantly. “I tried to stop them, but no one would listen.” Some parents then grabbed their children by their arms or ears and dragged them off the beach. I didn’t want to think what their punishments might be. When my grandfather came over, he was steaming mad and told me, “Don’t you ever go on the beach again. This is not permitted for children without an adult.”

  He grabbed Hansi and me by the hands and took us home. Along the way, we sheepishly apologized, since we were a little embarrassed to be caught. The truth was, we were still proud of our leadership, no matter how wrong we had been.

  After that, my grandfather punished me as the main culprit, and I didn’t dare say that Hansi was as guilty as I was. Since I was older, I was supposed to be the more responsible one. Besides, Hansi and I rarely tattled on each other. Tattling was considered bad form.

  Our punishment was that both Hansi and I were banned from the beach even with an adult for one week—a very severe punishment because a week can seem like a lifetime when you are a child. Though my grandfather considered Hansi less guilty, he still felt Hansi deserved the same punishment for following me, as he had committed the same crime.

  A Lesson about War

  Soon after returning from the beach, Hansi and I went to the wall of the prison, which was about one hundred feet from the house, thinking it would be fun to play there as we often did. But this time, as we approached the wall, we saw our father sitting on a straight-backed chair bending forward and making strange movements with his arms and legs, waving them around and jerking them up and down. As we came closer, he told us, “Go away.” When we hesitated, he said even more firmly, “Go away. I want you to go away now.”

  So we returned to the house and looked out of our second-floor bedroom window at my father, who was still sitting there acting strangely. Now he was writing something on a piece of paper in front of him, but instead of writing with his hand, he held a pencil between the toes on his left foot and wrote like that. Later, I learned he had written down a set of numbers, as if writing down a math problem.

  When he came into the house, I asked him, “What were you doing, Father, writing with your foot?” My father seemed embarrassed and surprised. “I didn’t know you saw me,” he said. “I was practicing writing with my foot. You know, in times of war it is not unusual to lose an arm. I saw much of this in the first war. So I want to be prepared for anything that might happen. I didn’t want to frighten you, but that’s the truth.”

  It was my first lesson in the real dangers of war, and I remembered this lesson later when I was older and faced the horrors of war once the Nazis’ war came to Germany.

  Those early years seem almost dreamlike now. We were loved, indulged, and happy. We could not have imagined the terrible things that would occur just a few years away. Even my brave father could not have imagined the terrors of the Russian front or the rigors of ten years in a Russian prison camp, all of which would occur after World War II came to Germany. And I could not have foreseen the fate of my fearless brother, whose bravery later led to disaster.

  Chapter 2

  Science, School, and the Hitler Youth

  When I was eight, my father’s military career took us from Berlin to Leipzig and soon after to Eschwege, in Hessen, where some of my family remains to this day. We relocated there because my father was assigned to the military garrison. Eschwege, surrounded by mountains and forests, and on the banks of the Werra River, was then a town of about seventy-five thousand people and a center for the leather industry. Half a dozen manufacturing companies turned the hides from the cows raised by local farmers into leather goods, such as shoes, belts, bridles, and saddles for the farmers’ horses.

  The town was steeped in history, its origins going back to the Mid
dle Ages. Many old half-timbered buildings, made of exposed timber frames filled with plaster or brick, still exist and line the cobbled streets. It was fascinating to learn the town’s history. In the tenth century, Otto II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, presented his daughter with a castle for her wedding, and the castle, called Hochzeit Haus, or Wedding House, continues to be used for weddings.

  Eschwege’s most well-known landmark is in the Schloss Tower, or Castle Tower. Inside a wooden figure called the Dietemann is dressed in a red shirt and blue trousers to look like the night watchmen of medieval times. He emerges from the tower every hour on the hour and blows his horn, which makes a noise that sounds like “Deet, deet.” So he was named the Dietemann, and the people of Eschwege were called the Dietemänn—and still are today.

  Wolf (left) and his brother, Hansi (right), circa 1936.

  I also learned that the blue basalt stone called the Blauekuppe is in the center of the remains of a volcanic explosion. As my grandfather once told me, “Germany’s greatest poet, Goethe, visited the Blauekuppe, and he took pieces of it with him.”

  I especially enjoyed visiting the marketplace in the central town square, which was surrounded by half-timbered buildings and is now a pedestrian precinct. When I was a child, the open-air markets offered all kinds of produce from the local farmers, which varied depending on the season. In the summer, the marketers sold peaches, strawberries, cherries, and plums, and in the fall they sold pears, apples, and many other fruits from the harvest. In the spring, the market overflowed with an abundance of vegetables, among them potatoes, cabbage, and kohlrabi, to name a few of the most popular varieties. During the hunting season in the autumn, the marketers sold venison, wild boar, and hares. Throughout the year, they sold pork and beef, along with many varieties of the German favorite—sausages, or Wurst—made by grinding up pork and beef. They also sold herring and other varieties of fish, mostly from the Baltic Sea and Iceland, and leather goods made in the Eschwege factories. Except for some of the fish, almost everything in the market was made in Germany, and most of it was grown or made locally.