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

by Wolf Dettbarn

  Our history classes similarly reflected the Nazis’ approach of building up the parts of history they liked while ignoring, covering up, explaining away, and otherwise keeping from us any historical information that was unfavorable to the Nazi cause. Or sometimes the Nazis would change the facts to make history fit their view of the world. For example, in our history class, we studied the Peloponnesian War with great sympathy for Sparta, since the Nazis greatly admired their self-denial, military prowess, and intense physical training, which was necessary for a Spartan lifestyle. Just as the Nazis saw themselves in opposition to the democratic West, which had once caused their defeat and humiliation, they had little interest in the cultural achievements of the democratic Athenians. For the Nazis, the Spartans provided the role model they wanted to follow to shape a strong, powerful, resurgent Germany, free of the weaker minority members of society they viewed as parasites holding them back.

  Given this guiding philosophy, our school, like other schools in Germany, had no Jewish students, since the Jews were among the weaker minority members and were regarded as inferior parasites. In fact, at this point in the war, few Jews were left in the general population; most had fled, as the Germans went about systematically stripping them of their occupations and valuable possessions, as well as pushing many out of their homes or sending them to the growing number of camps.

  In German literature we studied Schiller and Goethe, the great romantic poets who are still taught today. But since our classes emphasized the classics like Goethe’s Faust, along with epic literature and folktales from medieval and ancient times when German warriors were celebrated in story and song, we read few modern authors. In fact, we did not read any of the books being burned in Berlin because they were by Jewish or Communist authors or they advocated democratic principles. Indeed, the other students and I did not know of these burnings at the time. Only after the war could we read the books written by these authors whom the Nazis deemed “decadent”—authors such as Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich, Stefan Zweig, and Franz Werfel. Likewise, our teachers would not let us read any plays by the world-famous Marxist playwright Berthold Brecht, author of Mother Courage and Her Children and The Threepenny Opera, which became a hit all over the world.

  Likewise, in art classes, we only studied paintings by the classic painters who painted realistic representational works such as landscapes, German peasants at work, or modern German military combat. We didn’t learn about any modern abstract paintings, because the Nazis also considered them “decadent,” as they did not conform to the German ideal of realism showing an idealized German history and society. However, rather than burning the artwork as they did books, the Nazis sold the paintings to Switzerland to get money to contribute to their growing military. They obtained thousands of these paintings by confiscating them from Jewish households and art galleries, sometimes after sending the Jewish residents and gallery owners to the camps to be killed. Even now, more than seventy years after World War II ended, the ownership of many of these paintings is in dispute, and the estates of their original owners are fighting in court to get them back. The book and film The Woman in Gold describes the successful decades-long efforts of one woman to reclaim a Klimt painting of her aunt that was sold during these times.

  After classes we had sports in the afternoon. In the summer we participated in track and field, swimming, soccer, handball, fencing, and boxing, while in the winter we had gymnastics, indoor swimming, and skiing. We each had to participate in every sport, although only the super athletes enjoyed participating in all of them.

  I soon realized I was in the wrong school because of all the emphasis on athleticism, though I had had no choice in the matter. At least going to the Adolf Hitler Schule was better than attending a school that was strictly a military school, where I might have been sent had I not qualified for one of these elite institutions. And I did like downhill and cross-country skiing, especially through the Alpen terrain. As I skied down the slopes with other classmates, I loved seeing the vast panoply of meadows, forests, and rivers beneath us, and when we skied through the quiet forest, I felt like we were one with nature. When we saw animal tracks and even animals, I found it thrilling. It was like we had a close-up view on a world otherwise unseen by humans. Among the animals we spotted were deer, hares, and foxes, and sometimes we saw white snow rabbits leap from the bushes and whiz by.

  Normally, these trips were a time for quietly contemplating nature or enjoying the thrill of speeding down the slopes. But one time, on our return from skiing, I turned to my friend Wolfram, who was skiing beside me. Since the other students similarly teased him for his lack of athletic prowess, I felt I could tell him what I thought about the war. I had been brooding about this situation, after hearing brief forbidden news broadcasts from the BBC and the American Armed Forces Network about the horrors committed by the Germans. Even listening to these stations was taboo since they sometimes played jazz, another “decadent” art form. In fact, this music was considered even worse because it was played by Negroes—the common term for blacks at the time. So it’s no wonder that these broadcasts were forbidden, and one could face serious penalties if caught listening to them. But still other students and I listened surreptitiously so our teachers didn’t know.

  The previous day I had listened to one of the BBC broadcasts describing the high number of German losses and Allied victories. While these networks were full of propaganda from the Allies, I wondered about this alternate point of view. Could it be true? I sensed that it was and that our teachers hadn’t been frank with us about how the war was really going. “I think the war will be lost,” I said to Wolfram. “It doesn’t seem to be going well for us now that the Americans have entered the war.”

  He looked at me, his face grimacing with shock, and he spoke nervously. “How can you say this? You know that saying this can land you in a concentration camp!”

  “But it’s true,” I said. “I’ve been hearing on the BBC about how the war has been going, and we’re losing so many men.”

  “This is terrible,” he said, horrified. “I can’t imagine that Germany can lose the war. We have become so strong under our Führer.” It was clear to me that he didn’t know any differently because he didn’t listen to the foreign reports. Like most of the boys in our school, he still believed Germany was ascendant and would win the war. Anything else was unimaginable.

  As my friend, Wolfram became very concerned about what I had said because of the danger of saying anything negative about the regime. “No one can find out what you just said to me,” he said. “And you know that if I don’t report it, we could both end up in a camp.”

  Suddenly, I realized the danger of what I had said, even though we were completely alone in the mountain wilderness.

  “I’m sorry I said anything,” I told him. “And I promise that I will never, ever repeat what I said.”

  “All right, that’s fine,” he agreed, and he never mentioned my statement again to me or anyone else. It was rather heroic of him not to say anything since he knew the risks of not reporting my comments, should it ever come out if I happened to mention our exchange to anyone else while the Nazis were in power. But, of course, knowing the danger for both of us, I never said anything. It was only later, long after the war ended, in the 1970s, when I was in my forties and Wolfram and his wife visited me at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratories where I worked during the summers, that he told me he had only shared the story with his wife. Now that they had come to visit me, he wanted to show his wife the brave boy who had defied the Nazi codes of behavior and whom he considered a hero for doing so. As he explained, “At the time, I felt much as you did in not liking the Nazis, but I was afraid to say anything against the regime as long as they were still in power.”

  That skiing trip marked a turning point for me, since soon after that trip, I became disillusioned with the school’s program. Besides all the misinformation about the war we received, I learned about the special tr
eatment given to the students who were proficient in track and field. These athletes did not have to participate in sports they did not excel in, while the rest of us had to take part in all of the sports. These athletic students also received little insignias of eagles to pin on their uniforms, and the teachers were kinder to them.

  By contrast, the students who were not so good at sports were kept from participating in certain sports when we competed against other schools, mainly other Adolf Hitler Schules, so our overall standing in athletics would not be diminished. We had to participate during practice, but at the games we had to warm the benches. Ironically, in spite of our best efforts, our school was not the strongest in sports because of boys like Wolfram and me. While most students accepted this policy of favoring the more athletic students as a way of contributing to the betterment of the school, just as the Nazis wanted to better society as a whole, some students, including us less athletic types, felt this policy offensive and whispered about the unfairness.

  I became even more disappointed with the school when I saw that some of our teachers had favorites. Typically, they chose students who were good in team sports to become their special pets, and they favored them with all kinds of rewards. For example, some teachers would overlook a student’s poor academic performance if he were good in sports. They even singled out these athletic students for praise before the whole school. This special treatment of favorites especially bothered me because none of the teachers ever chose me as a favorite, I who was poor at team sports, and therefore the last one chosen for teams. No teacher seemed to think it important to recognize me or any other student for academic achievement. Naively I thought my teachers should be fair-minded, but the students they chose as their favorites reflected the type of individual the Nazis selected as the perfect Aryan representative of the super powerful German race.

  Chapter 4

  Challenges

  My time at the school continued to be difficult. Not only was I in a school that stressed military order and athletics, but I was something of a loner and I disliked being with people I had not chosen to be with myself. Instead I was thrown together with a mix of boys, many of whom were highly militaristic in their attitude, as well as being excellent athletes. I also had difficulty with many of the boys when they spoke because of their regional accents and they had difficulty with me. I spoke High German, while they spoke dialect. They taunted me by saying, “You are a snobby Prussian. You think you are better than us.” And, in truth, I did think that.

  Another problem I had with the other boys was that they considered me a bookworm because they often saw me behind the open door of my room with my nose in a book. They could see me because we were required to keep the doors of our rooms open. While I sat there reading, the boys would pass on their way to play and taunt me by calling out, “Brown-noser!” “Apple polisher!” “Do you ever lighten up?” Yet, while I was sometimes tempted to stop studying and join them at play, I feared I wouldn’t do well in my studies, and even if I joined them, I thought they might taunt me, since I was not good at most sports and was usually the last one chosen for a team. So I soon realized I was in the wrong school.

  Thus, rather than joining the other boys in team sports, knowing I would not do well, I sometimes went to the field to work on improving my running and other track skills because I could participate in this sport on my own. I felt if I could do well in this sport, this might help me get special attention from the teachers because I knew that they favored the people who excelled in sports. Also, the image of a young boy running into the wind appealed to me. I thought there was something heroic about a boy facing down the elements. But my heroic vision for myself was soon shattered because when I ran, my knees knocked together, which did not seem at all heroic. I ran slowly and unsteadily, so it was clear that I would not break any track records.

  Still, for a time I kept trying to run, thinking I might get better at the sport. To do so, I frequently snuck into the shower room late at night to do a few push-ups to get stronger. Many times, these sessions ended with my feeling exhausted and eager to get into bed. At times, though, my efforts backfired, when the other boys caught me doing push-ups and laughed and teased me, telling me, “Give up, Dettbarn. You’re never going to be a champion.”

  After a while, I gave up trying to be a runner and I returned to my books, which were a comfort to me. I reread my books about doctors, along with a lot of history. I especially loved reading about medieval history and stories about knights, and still do. At least with reading, I could escape into my own little world framed by science and history, and I could shut out the world around me of taunting students, military training, and the rules and regulations affecting all aspects of our life at school.

  Unfortunately, this feeling of escape lasted only so long. Instead, my frustrations of being at school kept growing. One time I was so frustrated about my life that I called my father and asked him, “Can you pick me up and take me home because I can’t live at this school anymore?” But he responded adamantly, “‘I cannot’ is only allowed in the cemetery. You cannot quit.”

  So now I had disappointed my father as well, because he could not accept defeatism. His view was that one had to do one’s duty without any questions. One could not give up. One must soldier on. Reluctantly, grudgingly, I accepted that I had no way out of attending the Adolf Hitler Schule. I had to do the best I could and that was that.

  Though I never really learned to love the school, at least I tried to adjust. Mostly I turned off my feelings, so I could accept what was, although the one exception occurred a few months later when I went to Slovakia as a student teacher—the one time I really loved being at the school.

  Growing Disillusionment

  Meanwhile, as I experienced more difficulties early in my time at the school, I began to grow more critical of the regime. My critical view developed after I found a copy of Rousseau’s Social Contract in the school library while I was there with a few other students. The librarian, along with the cooks and servers at meals, were the only women on the campus.

  The librarian, a forty-something woman dressed in a blouse and skirt, came to our table to be helpful, telling us, “If you need my help, I can tell you where different books are in the stacks. Please ask me any questions you have.”

  Yet, while she sought to be helpful, she watched over us with an eagle eye to make sure we didn’t go anywhere in the library where we shouldn’t, such as a section for books that only the teachers could read. When I began to enter this section, the librarian quickly came over to me and told me, “I’m sorry. You can’t go here. These books are only for the teachers, and you are not permitted to touch them.”

  I quickly returned to the table with the other students. But her words made me more curious to see what these books were, although I didn’t dare to question her authority. Like the other students, I nodded my agreement, and I stayed away from those books, many of which were later burned by the Nazis in Berlin during the war as “degenerate” literature.

  Despite all these restrictions about books we couldn’t look at, most of the stacks were open, and we could browse through the books there. This was how I came upon a copy of Rousseau’s Social Contract, in which he criticized dictatorships since he believed strongly in the power of the individual. Before reading this book, I had not thought of Hitler as a dictator, but rather considered him a strong leader with our welfare in mind. But I now came to think differently, as I read Rousseau’s discussion of different political systems. For the first time, I learned about the qualities of a democracy, including free speech, the election of officials, and the exchange of ideas leading to a general agreement on the laws, rules, and regulations that people would obey, along with the officials they wanted to elect to represent them.

  Suddenly, upon reading these ideas, I rejected the idea of any dictatorship, and I realized how Hitler had created a dictatorship to honor himself as a kind of God. I even now viewed the Nazi salute and accompanying cry
of “Heil Hitler” as a way of worshipping a person by addressing him like God. For now, I felt a veil lifting from my eyes, and I could see all the restraints that the Nazis had imposed on us. I realized that we were not allowed to speak freely or criticize Hitler or the Nazi Party, and this new way of looking at Hitler influenced my attitudes toward both the school and the Nazi government. For a time, though, I kept my views to myself, afraid to create even more dissension with the students or teachers, since I was already something of an outsider in their eyes.

  With this new insight, I began to think about the Jewish students at the Friedrich Wilhelm Schule who suddenly disappeared. I began to wonder what was the big threat from the Jews, which Hitler spoke about so eloquently and persuasively. He and other government officials created and enforced laws against them, pushed them out of their homes, and took their property on the grounds that the Jews were demons, who had to be eliminated for the safety and security of our society. Yet, thinking back to the Jewish people I had known, such as a few owners of neighborhood shops, they had seemed like very friendly, helpful people. Then suddenly their shops were closed, and they were gone. But why were they considered so dangerous, so evil? What could they really do to damage our society? Were these charges by Hitler against them really true? All these troubling thoughts went tumbling through my head.

  Worse, now that I had these thoughts, I felt more alone than ever because I could not let my comrades know how I felt about the dictatorship. It would be treason, I knew, to speak ill of Hitler or the Nazis in any way, so I felt further isolated. Just knowing that I was not allowed to speak freely infuriated me, though I could not show these feelings either. I felt increasingly alone, especially when the other boys talked about Hitler with great admiration. They worshipped him, thought he could do no wrong, and believed he was shaping a perfect pure society. But I said nothing, knowing that if I said anything not only I, but my parents would pay the penalty. They might be imprisoned, my father could lose his commission, and I could be sent to a reformatory and even to one of the camps.