Epilog
Restart
After returning home, my father had to reorganise his life. He had to regain his physical fitness and find accommodation and work. Shortly after his return, he managed to rent a flat in Warendorf. He was offered a job as a teacher in the nearby city of Münster, where he taught at various schools before finally being reappointed at the Wilhelm-Hittorf-Gymnasium. A photo album on the Internet documents his working life.
At first, he commuted by train every day. In 1954, he built his own home in Münster with the help of several loans. When they moved in in April, my mother was already pregnant with me. When I was born on 6 Nov 1954, my father finally had the child he had longed for.
My father spent a lot of time writing this diary, which he completely revised at least once, as two different versions still exist today, one in the Stadtmuseum Münster and one with more pages, i.e. a newer one, in my possession. He painstakingly had an “Erika” typewriter imported from the GDR for the fair copy, but he was disappointed because he had hoped for a smaller font based on a pre-war experience.
.jpg)
Fear of War
My father lived in constant fear of another war.
During my school years I therefore had to attend a Russian course so that I would be able to cope better in such a war.
After school, I was called up for military service. Because in prisonership of war officers would be better off, I had to apply as a reserve officer. My father witnessed my appointment as second lieutenant and later first lieutenant of the reserve. He died in 1987 and my mother followed him in 1990.
Matters Of Honour
During my time working on the diary and the history of the Second World War, I realised a few things that still need to be said.
Crimes of the Wehrmacht
There is much debate about the extent to which the Wehrmacht was involved in Nazi crimes. The claims range from “not at all” to “every soldier”. As always, the truth lies in the middle and it is almost impossible to draw a line. I can only emphasise here that my father only occasionally reports crimes committed by members of the Wehrmacht.[1] These cases are more likely to be due to licentiousness, at least not to corresponding orders. There were orders to commit war crimes, including from von Reichenau, commander-in-chief of Army Group South from December 1941, to which my father belonged, but they were not known to him or carried out in his presence.
Even the Soviet side made a difference. Apart from generals, colonels, general staff officers and the intelligence service, the charges in the war crimes trials, which intensified at the end of 1949, were mainly directed against security units, rear commandant’s, military police, judges, prison camp personnel, etc.[2] in whose area war crimes had apparently been committed so systematically that blanket accusations and convictions seemed justified. This was therefore not assumed for the front-line troops.
Treatment of Prisoners of War
My father and his comrades cannot be blamed for complaining about their poor treatment as prisoners of war. However, important aspects are usually disregarded in the discussion.
- The Nazis did not even grant their prisoners of war the status of human beings, but defamed them as Untermenschen, which provided a skilful psychological justification for treating them even worse. (This perhaps only applied from the stage of the large prison camps onwards, but not in my father’s environment; he was aware of the less developed civilisation, but respected the humans.)
This results in a revenge motive that can never be ruled out in the case of individual Soviet guards, but which will have been a determining factor in the system for the detention of prisoners after the war, without it forming an official guideline for the treatment of individual prisoners. - The Soviet population was hardly any better off. Not every citizen would have been able to afford the butter that my father bought as a prisoner. The fact that the prisoners were only granted the lowest status was not unfair.
- There were annoyances such as the plundering of prisoners on all sides.
Times With and Without Combat
Right from the start, I noticed how few battles my father was involved in. This can only partly be explained by the fact that the 257th Infantry Division usually lagged behind the divisions fighting at the front and my father was also part of the leader reserve for half of the advance. Furthermore, he was twice lucky enough to be wounded right at the start of a battle and brought home. But the saying from my own time as a soldier is also justified: “Half of a soldier’s time is spent waiting in vain.”
Panzers or Infantry
The image of the Wehrmacht is often dominated by tanks. Many military writers place an emphasis on the depiction of the armoured weapon. This is understandable, as it offers impressive technology that can be easily researched. What gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that the vast majority of the army was on foot, the leaders on horseback and the vehicles horse-drawn. There were 499 infantry divisions[3] and only 73 armoured and armoured infantry divisions[4]. According to plans, an infantry division had around 5,000 horses and just under 1,000 motor vehicles, in 1944 only 600.[5] In the frontal arc between Krivoy Rog and Nikopol, there were two armoured divisions in early 1944 that no longer had a single operational tank;[6] one soon had 7,[7] which is less than a modern tank company. To support the infantry during the heavy defensive battles around Slavyansk in March 1942 - only occasionally, anyway -, only 1-2 tanks or assault guns were authorised, for example.
 Later there was a tailcoat chain with the most important awards in denazified design (without swastikas, i.e. 1958 at the earliest): Wound Badge in Silver / Medal Winter Battle in the East 1941/42 / Infantry Assault Badge -Silver- / Iron Cross 2nd and 1st Class |
 (1960s) The author's medals and badges:[8] 1st row: Iron Cross 1st class 2nd row: Close Combat Clasp 1st level (bronze) 3rd row: Iron Cross 2nd Class / Wound Badge in Silver / Infantry Assault Badge -Silver- / Medal Winter Battle in the East 1941/42 4th row: “Courland” cuff band |
|
Editorial 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 Epilog Anhang |
|
January February March April May June July August September October November December Eine Art Bilanz Gedankensplitter und Betrachtungen Personen Orte Abkürzungen Stichwort-Index Organigramme Literatur Galerie:Fotos,Karten,Dokumente |
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. Erfahrungen i.d.Gefangenschaft Bemerkungen z.russ.Mentalität Träume i.d.Gefangenschaft Personen-Index Namen,Anschriften Personal I.R.477 1940–44 Übersichtskarte (Orte,Wege) Orts-Index Vormarsch-Weg Codenamen der Operationen im Sommer 1942 Mil.Rangordnung 257.Inf.Div. MG-Komp.eines Inf.Batl. Kgf.-Lagerorganisation Kriegstagebücher Allgemeines Zu einzelnen Zeitabschnitten Linkliste Originalmanuskript |
- ↑ 2 cases of killing a wounded Russian, 2 cases of mistreatment of prisoners and 5 cases of looting over the course of 4 years and in a company of 100-200 men that he could oversee
- ↑ Cartellieri p. 321 f.
- ↑ 16 named units, 315 numbered, 7 Light, 31 Grenadier, 82 Volks-Grenadier, 14 Mountain, 1 Skijäger, 13 Jäger divisions, 18 Luftwaffe Field divisions, 2 Luftwaffe Assault divisions, plus countless shadow, Volks-Sturm, Airborne Infantry, Security, Landwehr, Landesschützen divisions, divisions z.b.V., infantry divisions of the RAD and others, perhaps not all of them at the same time (Source: Lexikon der Wehrmacht)
- ↑ 15 named units, 33 numbered, 8 Light Armoured divisions, 1 Panzerjagd division and 16 Panzergrenadier divisions (Source: Lexikon der Wehrmacht)
- ↑ Handbook on German Military Forces (War Department TM -E 30-451, 15 March 1945) p. II-11 Fig. 6
- ↑ 16th Pz.Gren.Div. and 23rd Pz.Div. [erroneously: Pz.Jg.Div. ] on 03.02.1944 acc. to KTB AOK 6 Bd 10 Frame 000681
- ↑ 23rd Pz.Div. on 12.02.1944 acc. to KTB XXX.AK, NARA T-314 Roll 833 Frame 000631
- ↑ Arranging them in a display case was a gift idea of mine. They are all post-war acquisitions, not just the sleeve ribbon which was newly made for this display, because the originals had to be delivered at the 19 Nov 45 Salaspils camp.