As a man of the cloth, the priest Ernst Hornig saw the situation differently. He criticised it as “depraved, a definite lowering of moral standards and inhibitions” and described “Orgies, whereby women and alcohol were the main priorities, and the overflowing cup of lust led to intoxication”.
Of course it was a contradiction and a paradox. Soldiers were engaged in bloody house-to-house fighting and people were enduring unbearable pain and suffering in Breslau’s hospitals. At the same time, perhaps just a couple of buildings away, comrades danced a ‘ring o’ roses’. It was however a very big exception to the rule and not to be over exaggerated, for after that ‘honeymoon in hell’ the said soldiers found themselves in the middle of a merciless battle, just a few minutes later. They could, and many often did, lose their lives. Willingness and discipline suffered the least of all under those conditions, for such virtues were too deeply rooted. Although strongly forbidden by the rules within the fortress, a short visit by lady-friends was allowed, even in the foremost lines of the front. The ‘hard-necked’ and love-hungry among the girls, donned long military coats as camouflage, daring to visit the chosen warrior at his post. It was dangerous not only because of the iron-polluted air, but also the danger of attack, and of course of being discovered on the spot. The comrades did not care and looked in the other direction. It must be said in looking back, that the soldier lost his life before his innocence. The reality of fighting within Breslau’s fortress was far from ‘love and lust’ as described by the priest Hornig, but of fighting and dying.
An affair, and my feelings for a female worker from the East, developed into a spectacular story, and one that could have had a fatal end. In the same manner that foreign volunteers fought in Germany’s army, foreign volunteers worked in civilian positions as nurses. For example, some came from the north and west European countries, as well as forced female labour from eastern Europe. It was a pure coincidence that I learned that both Flemish and Dutch nurses were working in the Spital, on the west side of the city. Overjoyed at being able to use my mother tongue, I found not only them, but also the beautiful Tanya, a Russian girl working in the kitchen. She came from somewhere around Smolensk and was very sympathetic. She had been a student and spoke very good German. In our ‘fire-pauses’ I visited her, drawn very much by her beauty, and the strange aura that she radiated. She had high cheek-bones denoting her Slavic origin. I can remember very well how her dark curly hair peeped from the white headscarf that she wore. Despite her simple clothes, for me she was the absolute Venus. I warmed in particular to her sympathetic interest in the fate of my comrades at the front. When I told her of the fate of some of my friends in that merciless war, the resonance was of utter pity and sorrow.
I could not, and did not want to believe that her absence one day was because she had been arrested as an enemy spy. Tanya a Russian agent? My friends advised me very strongly not to intervene on her behalf and luckily I followed their advice. Unwillingly I realised, and later it was to be very clear to me, how dangerous such a tête-à-tête could be, for she was in truth a Russian agent. My behaviour was based on the presence of soldiers from Ukraine fighting alongside us. I wrongly assumed that she was of the same opinion as they. Before she had begun to work in the Spital, her mission had been to inform her Red Army comrades of the supply routes and movements of German troops. It was done from her hiding place under the eaves of a deserted house in Striegauer Platz, for the Russian artillery. She was not to be compared with Mata Hari from the First World War, but was more the perfect actress. I own up to being a romantic and clearly naive admirer, and became one of many of her ‘sacrificial candidates’.
We had been warned so many times! Many times in our training period we were warned about sabotage and spies, as in Reibert’s “Service Laws of the Armed Forces”. We were particularly warned about the wiles of the feminine species. I had fallen, ‘hook, line and sinker’, into that trap. Only now is the enormity of the potential results of that situation quite clear. Cleary Tanya was very interested in the situation in our fighting zone, and had shown false sympathy for the fate of my friends. I found some consolation in the fact that I, as a subordinate, could not and did not give her any important strategic information, thank God! Despite an enormous disappointment in Tanya’s character, I had to admire her courage and her dedication to her Bolshevik convictions. It could have led to her execution, as the International Rights of Law permitted. But it pained me too. It did not turn out that way, however. Fate decided to show Tanya some mercy, at least provisionally.
Long after the war, I was informed by one of the women who had also worked in the Spital, that she had seen Tanya, in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the Red Army, driving in an open horse-drawn coach through the city, decorated with medals. I would have loved to have had the chance to ask her how she had escaped, or was freed, for that was a real wonder. The throw of the dice from ‘lady luck’ had given her the ‘six’ that she needed. Never had a German soldier such a peaceful, happy and also naive relationship, with a member of the enemy, and a Russian agent at that.
There are times when the truth is not as believable as fantasy or fiction, but is none the less the truth, such as the following. Our soldiers bumped into their well-armed Russian counterparts on a wander through the cellars, looking for wine. It was to be found in well-stocked but deserted cellars. They bumped into a group of Russian soldiers with the same idea. The ‘Ivans’ and the ‘Fritzes’ it would appear, had the same fine nose for the bottle, and both had the same needs.
Although armed, there was a stand-off. Perhaps the Russians, already in a light state of stupor, decided that reasonableness under the motto, ‘well, you find what you want, and we’ll do the same!’ was the best course of action. For that is exactly what they did. Is there anything more curious than that? It is said that Roman warriors fought with a short, sharp sword in their right hand and a bottle of ‘juice from the grape’ in the other.
The ‘good stuff’ was not the only necessity sought after in the cellars of Breslau, shelter was sought, too. It was in those cellars that both the civilians and the military found protection, when not on duty. The ceilings had been strongly supported with wooden or steel posts, to prevent collapse. The advantage of the man-made passages through the cellars, connecting whole streets with one another, was that one could escape when trapped in a house. It was carried out at the beginning of the siege and was the escape route for both the inhabitants and the soldiers, during the air raids. There was, at the same time, an orienteering problem down below. You had to know where you were and how to get to your destination. Otherwise you very quickly found yourself behind enemy lines, bumping into the ‘Ivans’. The problem was quickly recognised and the routes provisionally walled-up, or under armed guard.
Along the front-line, the cellars of the houses were emptied of their contents. Everything landed in the garden or the back yard, but the big, fat rats, in whose territory we were encroaching, stayed. The doors of their quarters were the drains into the underworld and their numbers were not small. There were literally hundreds, which is why one had to sleep, when sleep was possible, with one’s blanket over one’s head. Chairs had been commandeered for the cellars from the deserted or damaged flats and houses. So we were hunched together in the pantries or coke-rooms, or where space allowed, pale faces giving a ghostly appearance in the flickering candlelight. There was seldom conversation, as it disturbed those who dozed while sitting in a chair. We were in a continual state of listening, with at least one ear cocked as an antenna. Our weapons had been cleaned in the lull and were at the ready, for the ‘enemy’ must not surprise us.