Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II

Men sought to maintain a sense of balance and alleviate their common suffering by sharing humor. Some jokes poked fun at the conditions around them: “As we were marching to the front as a relief unit a comrade’s helmet slipped off his head. He poked around in the mud with a stick to find the smelly hat again. Suddenly he discovered a human face. Dumfounded, he asked: ‘Gee, how did you get there?’ At that the face said: ‘You’ll be even more surprised when you learn that I’m sitting on a horse and riding.’” Other tales spoofed the involuntary situation in which they found themselves, although the humor often betrayed more than a hint of bitterness or jealousy: “A butcher bought a pig from a farmer. The wife, however, made as a condition that first her husband, who was at the front, had to give his consent. Her husband thereupon wrote the following postcard: ‘Dear Mr. Butcher!! Am in agreement with the sale of my wife, and you can pick up the sow tomorrow.’” Or, as one Landser supposedly wrote to his girlfriend, “Honey! I’m sitting in my bunker and writing to you while all around me here it is continuously creaking; you are probably now already in bed, and hopefully that is not the case with you.”¹⁰

Not surprisingly, many jokes ridiculed those in authority: an alleged inscription on an officer’s quarters in the field read, “Entrance for shells, shrapnel, and bombs permitted only with the approval of the commander.” One bit of humor managed to make fun of both those in authority and the often limited rations for those in the field: “At an inspection tour of the kitchen by the Captain. Everything is in the best of order. He asked the leader of the group: What is your occupation? ‘Cook, Herr Captain!’ And you!: ‘Butcher!’ Finally he asked yet another soldier standing off to the side: ‘Smith, Herr Captain!’ What do you do then in the kitchen? ‘I administer the iron rations [the emergency field rations], Herr Captain!’” And again, with a similar play on word meanings: “The captain held personal instruction today. ‘What is a Kriegsgericht [court martial]?’ was his first question. Our Langer, who otherwise never pushed himself to the front, reported immediately and said: ‘Peas with bacon is a Kriegsgericht [war dish], Herr Captain.’” And again: “A man was washing his mess tin in a nearby pond which was completely overgrown with so-called duck weed. A general passed by, hesitated, and asked the soldier: ‘Tell me, do you not know bacillus?’ The soldier answered, standing to attention: ‘No, Herr General, he is not on the staff, he probably must be in the first company.’”¹¹

Yet other witticisms expressed the all too real wistful yearnings felt by many for the pleasures of nonmilitary life, as did a rhyme titled “Bunker Fantasy”:

How comforting it is, when the silk and satins
of the world of women surround us again,
and no longer do we have to listen in the night,
to dark ghosts in forest and heath;
when all the stubble, now wild and bearded, has finally disappeared
and socially acceptable, all the way to our shirt,
we shall fasten our necktie instead of our gun belt.

And one alleged sign read: “Notice! Those who don’t leave fast enough for furlough will in the future be punished with arrest.”¹²

In addition to humor, many Landsers found music an important form of comfort and escape. Nervous and worried on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, Friedrich Grupe found solace in the “sounds of the accordion coming from the men’s quarters and the singing of the familiar soldiers’ ballads!” Not even the rigors of combat in Russia negated the need for music. “From the tent of the company commander comes familiar music over the gray Wehrmacht radio,” Grupe wrote in his diary in the summer of 1941. “I sit there in the evenings before the loudspeaker and through these melodies sink into reminiscences and dreams of the future. The Landsers listening outside also have become still and don’t let the muffled sounds of the firing in the distance disturb their reverie.” On another occasion, Grupe described hearing Lale Andersen sing “Lili Marlene” over the radio as “like a dream.” “In the transmitter car next to my tent they’ve turned on the wireless,” recorded Wilhelm Prüller. “They are just playing ‘Hörst du mein heimliches Rufen’ [Do you hear my secret call?—a popular song at the time]. My God! How wonderful this Sunday morning at home would be.” Noted another soldier from the devastation of the Normandy hedgerows, “Last night we had a little ‘soldier’s hour’ and sang our soldiers’ and folk songs into the night. What would a German be without a song?”¹³

Certainly familiar tunes helped remind the Landser that another world did exist, one removed from the death and destruction of the battlefield. But even unfamiliar music could prove soothing, at least temporarily. “In this nocturnal silence, suddenly music falls on our ear,” Prüller noted of one evening in Russia. “Wonderful music. A balalaika is playing…. Ukrainians… sit down in the park and play us their songs. We listen to them for hours…. because we fancy that they could almost be Viennese songs…. But no, the ever quicker tones of the balalaika, often a crazy pace, remind us that we are deep in Russia, that we are hearing Russian songs.” Like Grupe, though, Prüller found “one single comfort: we still heard the Belgrade Wachtposten (‘Lili Marlene’). The song has really won the hearts of us soldiers. Despite the pouring rain, we all stood round the transmitter car and listened to the music…. I’ve got to hear it, otherwise, I’m not wholly myself.”¹⁴

Martin Lindner, from the melodic city of Vienna, noted, “The north German officers especially love the Viennese… wine songs. You almost die laughing at the enthusiasm with which they sing along in our dialect…. I just heard Bach’s D-minor toccata on the radio. In its first tones it mirrors the upheaval and violence of our times…. When of an evening you walk along our quarters there is no tent and no house without music.” Perhaps the significance of music for the Landsers was best revealed, however, by a soldier trapped at Stalingrad. “Kurt Hahnke… played the Appassionata a week ago on a grand piano in a little side street close to Red Square,” he wrote to his parents in his last letter. “The grand piano was standing right in the middle of the street…. A hundred soldiers squatted around in their great-coats with blankets over their heads. Everywhere there were the sounds of explosions, but no one let himself be disturbed. They were listening to Beethoven in Stalingrad.”¹⁵ Although they were trapped, with death or captivity the only way out, music nonetheless provided a bit of comfort and solace to at least some Landsers in their moment of extreme agony and terror.

The Wehrmacht sought to provide musical diversion through such means as the popular radio Wunschkonzerts (musical request programs) broadcast to the troops, as well as by organizing stage shows to entertain troops at the front. These efforts sometimes backfired, however, for as Claus Hansmann noted furiously of one such performance,