The Landser initially held a contemptuous view of British and American soldiers as well. “We had no respect whatever for the American soldier,” claimed Heinz Hickmann. Another Landser thought “the Americans…. liked a little bit too much comfort.” Adolf Hohenstein was puzzled by the American reluctance to exploit their successes. “We felt they always overestimated us,” he said. “We could not understand why they did not break through [at Normandy]. The Allied soldier never seemed to be trained as we were, always to try to do more than had been asked of us.” Similarly, Martin Pöppel, in his first encounter with the British in Sicily, thought they were “certainly not eager to fight, and their equipment looks fairly pathetic…. In my opinion their spirit is none too good. They tend to surrender as soon as they face the slightest resistance.” After interrogating a Canadian prisoner taken in Italy in September 1943, Pöppel noted in his diary, “He claims they are by no means hungry for battle and don’t know why they are fighting.”61
This contempt for what he saw as stupidity and poor training gradually changed as Pöppel engaged in fiercer fighting with Allied units. Confronting Americans in Normandy, he initially professed admiration only for their medical equipment and rations, but when an SS battalion deployed next to his unit, Pöppel wrote in his diary: “The SS think they can do it easily [break through American lines], they’ve arrived with enormous idealism, but they’ll get the surprise of their lives against this enemy, which is not short of skill itself.” As the western campaign unfolded, Pöppel found himself more and more impressed with Allied skill and especially Allied equipment. Following his capture, he noted with bitterness, “We drove past kilometer after kilometer of Allied artillery positions, thousands of guns. With us it was always ‘Sweat Saves Blood,’ but with them it was, ‘Equipment Saves Men.’ Not with us. We didn’t need the equipment, did we? After all, we were heroes.”62
Even for “heroes,” the pressures of gruesome atrocities and the daily dehumanization that so characterized the war, especially on the eastern front, added to the dreary aspects of the battlefield; the shattering noise, the sight of charred, smoking bodies, and the odor of rotting corpses all took their emotional and psychological toll on the Landser. The feeling of helplessness under artillery attack, for example, could reduce the strongest man to a quivering mass of nerves. “Here and now the Russian artillery fire again pushes me into the deepest corner of my foxhole,” acknowledged Harry Mielert in July 1941, “and teaches me the prayer of distress: Lord, have mercy upon us…! The last fatalism, the feeling of being completely in the hands of God and therefore surrendered to His mercy, I still don’t have.”63
Others too were driven to near despair by the strain of being shelled. “We have suffered here greatly under Russian artillery fire,” complained Corporal W.F., “and we must live day and night in our foxholes in order to gain protection from shrapnel. The holes are full of water. Lice and other types of vermin have already snuck in.” Lamented Corporal M.H., “We… are constantly being heavily attacked by the Russian artillery. I don’t know how long our nerves can yet stand up.” Dieter Georgii, under Russian air attack, wrote, “The ears hurt from the air pressure; it is difficult to keep control over your nerves. Since Friday no sleep and no food…. A moment of despair comes over us.” As Helmut Wagner put it with self-conscious understatement, “Artillery and fighters ‘get on our nerves.’”64
Artillery and air attacks could easily trample the nerves, and the will, of the strongest and toughest men. “Russian shells were coming over in profusion,” recalled Guy Sajer of a Soviet attack on the Dnieper:
With a cry of despair and a prayer for mercy, we dived to the bottom of our hole, trembling as the earth shook and the intensity of our fear grew. The shocks… were of an extraordinary violence. Torrents of snow and frozen earth poured down on us. A white flash, accompanied by an extraordinary displacement of air, and an intensity of noise which deafened us, lifted the edge of the trench…. Then with a roar, the earth poured in and covered us.
In that moment, so close to death, I was seized by a rush of terror so powerful that I felt my mind was cracking. Trapped by the weight of earth, I began to howl like a madman…. The sense that one has been buried alive is horrible beyond the powers of ordinary language…. At that moment, I suddenly understood the meaning of all the cries and shrieks I had heard on every battlefield.65
Confronted with such elemental fright, even a combat veteran like Sajer succumbed to the force of sheer terror.
Not only individuals but whole units could be paralyzed by the savage power of an artillery or aerial bombardment. “The incredibly heavy artillery and mortar fire of the enemy is something new for seasoned veterans,” reported the Second Panzer Divsion in Normandy: “The assembly of troops is spotted immediately by enemy reconnaissance aircraft and smashed by bombs and artillery…; and if, nevertheless, the attacking troops go forward, they become involved in such dense artillery and mortar fire that heavy casualties ensue…. During the barrage the effect on the inexperienced men is literally soul-shattering. The best results have been obtained by platoon and section commanders leaping forward and uttering a good old-fashioned yell. We have also revived the practice of bugle calls.”66 Against the stress of artillery or air attack and the sense of helplessness and panic, blaring bugles and bellowing commanders served to boost the Landser’s spirit, stiffen his courage, and bolster morale—archaic human responses to the frightful destruction of modern battle.
Eventually, of course, many a Landser’s luck ran out, and he unwillingly contributed to the otherwise impersonal casualty statistics; the longer a man was in combat, the more assuredly would he fall wounded. In this agonizing moment, as metal tore into one’s own flesh and the pain and fear pierced one’s soul, the personal nature of the war—which perhaps up to now meant watching comrades die or coping with individual anxieties, reduced itself to the bare essentials. Seeing a friend die, as Siegfried Knappe admitted, “brought the utter destructiveness of war home,” but being wounded himself meant that “my own mortality became a part of my mind-set from that moment on.” Some Landsers however, displayed a curious detachment when hit. Knappe himself remembered that on being wounded for the first time, he thought, rather ridiculously, “The [enemy] machine gunner was obviously a good shot.” More than a year later in Russia, hit a second time, Knappe’s first reaction was simply, “so I am lucky, …glad to be wounded and out of the fighting, and especially to be out of the horrible Russian winter.” Similarly, Hans Woltersdorf, wounded for the second time, prayed “that if my leg was hit, it would be the left one, which was not of much use to me anyway”; he added laconically, “My prayer was answered.” Wounded and untended, Martin Pöppel reflected, “Left alone like that, you find yourself having stupid thoughts. Should I pray? For Christ’s sake no: I never needed the Lord before, so I’m not going to bother Him now.” Even as the initial shock began to wear off, to be replaced by agonizing pain, a Landser might maintain that sense of disengagement. During his evacuation, listening to the other wounded talk of their experiences, Knappe realized that he was observing them as a scientist might an experiment, that he was hoping “to learn how the human mind tries to cope with the horrors of combat.”67
Although a Landser might realize rationally that the quicker the evacuation, the better his chances of survival, the actual process of being sent to the rear could itself bring excruciating pain and suffering. “The trip to Vyazma was approximately 120 kilometers,” remembered Knappe of his second medical evacuation. “Nine of us were in the bed of the truck…. Over frozen ground, it was a cold, jolting, painful ride…. By the time I was put aboard an ambulance train…, I already had lice under my bandage, a terrible experience.” A hospital train offered scant improvement. Hans Woltersdorf recalled being among wounded men who were