Such intense, rigorous training paid dividends when these men experienced the extreme conditions of the Russian front. “When, seven months later, the Russians had us surrounded in Zhitomir,” Woltersdorf recalled, “I predicted that we wouldn’t get much sleep over the next few days. ‘We’re used to that…,’ said Alfons. ‘You know: Bordeaux!’” As Woltersdorf concluded, “Nothing is more burdensome than having to suffer harassment and injustice, but nothing increases self-confidence more than having withstood hardships.” Hard training, he added, also “had a useful side effect, in that the men regarded their respective commanders as the common enemy, and nothing unites people more than shared rage against someone or something.”19
Martin Pöppel, too, emphasized the continual operational training he experienced in the paratroops. “The Regiment with all its units, is established in its field positions, which we have worked tirelessly to complete,” he noted in his diary of preparations before the Allied Normandy invasion. “Alarm exercises by day and by night increase our combat readiness.” Like Woltersdorf, Pöppel however, soon had reason to appreciate this exhaustive training. Writing on D-Day, June 6, 1944, he noted of a German counterattack: “06.30 hours. From Rougeville Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Prive makes an attack through the open countryside, pushing towards us. We use light signals to show the direction of the enemy. He pushes closer and closer. In copybook fashion, again showing the value of our tough training, his groups advance, one covering and shooting whilst the other moves forwards firing with sub-machine guns from the hip…. Arms are raised aloft in the thick bushes as the enemy surrenders. A real triumph for Prive, who takes more than sixty American prisoners.”20
Guy Sajer, despite his rigorous basic training, first realized how relentless such instruction could be when he joined an elite combat division. “One sweated blood,” he remarked. “One was either hospitalized after a week of almost insane effort or incorporated into the division and marched off to the war, which was even worse.” Nor was this mere hyperbole. As Sajer recalled, he had an inkling of how difficult things were going to be when “our noncoms… advised us to sleep, although it was still early, as we would need all our strength tomorrow. We knew that in the German army words of that sort often had a significance far greater than their literal meaning. The word ‘exhaustion,’ for instance, had nothing to do with the ‘exhaustion’ I’ve encountered since the war. At that time and place, it meant a power which could strip a strong man of fifteen pounds of weight in a few days.”21
Indeed, Sajer’s foreboding was more than realized the next day and in the agonizing days that followed. “The sun had barely touched the tops of the trees with pink light when the door flew back against the dormitory wall as if the Soviets themselves were bursting in,” Sajer remembered. “A Feldwebel produced some piercing blasts on a whistle and made us jump. ‘Thirty seconds to get to the troughs,’ he shouted. Then everybody stripped and outside in front of the barracks for P.T. One hundred and fifty of us, stripped to the skin, ran for the troughs on the other side of the buildings…. In no time, we had washed and were lined up in front of our barracks…, then [were] put… through a gymnastic routine… [that left] our heads… spinning.” But as Sajer soon realized, the morning exercises proved only a mild irritant compared to what was to come:
It was then we made the acquaintance of Herr Hauptmann (Captain) Fink and his formidable training methods. He arrived wearing riding breeches, and carrying a whip under his arm.
“The task which you will all have to assume sooner or later will certainly require more of you than you supposed. Simply maintaining a decent level of morale and knowing how to handle a weapon will no longer be enough. You will also require a very great deal of courage, of perseverance and endurance, and of resistance in every situation…. I must warn you that everything here is hard, nothing is forgiven, and that everyone in consequence must have quick reflexes….”
“Attention!” he shouted. “Down on the ground, and full length!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, we were all stretched out on the sandy soil. Then Captain Fink stepped forward and, like someone strolling down a beach, walked across the human ground, continuing his speech as his boots, loaded with at least two hundred pounds, trampled the paralyzed bodies of our section. His heels calmly crushed down on a back, a hip, a head, or a hand, but no one moved.22
A rude awakening, certainly, but Captain Fink had still more elaborate tortures by which to toughen the men. One involved the simulation of carrying wounded comrades from the battlefield: “Hals and I made a seat of our hands for a wincing fellow who must have weighed at least 170 pounds. Then Captain Fink led us to the camp exit. We walked as far as a low hill which seemed to be about three-quarters of a mile away. Our arms felt as though they would break under the weight…. Every so often an exhausted man let his grip slip… and the supposed victim slid to the ground. Whenever this occurred, Fink… would… assign them an even heavier load…. This torture went on for nearly an hour, until we were all on the point of losing consciousness and at the extreme limit of our capabilities…. Finally, he decided to shift us to a new exercise.” The new drill, however, proved just as difficult and far more dangerous:
“Picture to yourselves that over there behind that hill there is a nest of Bolshevik resistance.” He gestured toward a hillock about a half mile away. “Furthermore,” he went on in a jovial tone, “imagine that you have the best of reasons for taking that hill…. Therefore, you will… proceed toward your objective on your bellies. I shall precede you, and shall fire on anyone I see. Understood?”
We gaped at him, astounded…. We threw ourselves down on our stomachs, and began to squirm forward…. He began firing almost at once….
His bullets whistled down among us until we had reached our objective…. During our three weeks of training, we buried four companions to the strains of “Ich hat ein Kamerad,” victims of so-called “training accidents.” There were also some twenty wounded.23
For all their difficulty, exercises such as these might be considered common to all the armies of World War II. Certainly new recruits had to be toughened and given physical stamina, and the only sure way to prepare men for the rigor of combat was under realistic conditions of live ammunition. So physical training, instruction in weapons use, throwing grenades, bayonet practices, tests of endurance—all these in some way entered into the training of all soldiers, although in the U.S. Army the limits of realistic training were quickly reached when live ammunition exercises produced noticeable casualties.24
The Wehrmacht, however, went beyond these measures of instruction. “In addition there was the famous Härteübung (hardness training),” Sajer noted,
which was almost continuous. We were put on thirty-six hour shifts, which were broken by only three half-hour periods, during which we devoured the contents of our mess tins, before returning to the ranks in an obligatory clean and orderly condition. At the end of these thirty-six hours, we were allowed eight hours of rest. Then there was another thirty-six hour period…. There were also false alarms, which tore us from our leaden sleep and forced us into the courtyard fully dressed and equipped…. Sometimes a fellow would drop from exhaustion… obliging [his comrades] to get the fellow onto his feet again, slapping him and spraying him with water…. Nothing ever affected the routine…. Captain Fink simply carried on, in total disregard of our bleeding gums and pinched faces, until the stabbing pains in our heads made us forget the bleeding blisters on our feet.