“There is no enemy, Herr Unteroffizier,” replied Gefreiter Krause, slapping his arms across his chest in an effort to stay warm. Oster swallowed his disgust. He knew soldiers like Corporal Krause, soldiers who Oster believed would never amount to anything. They shirked every duty, including combat. They’d joined the army before the war because they liked the prestige a uniform afforded them. That prestige grew after the battle of France, no thanks to them, and until the winter of ’41, they’d thought soldiering was eating three square meals, marching in parades, and kissing a pretty Fräulein. In short, soldiers like Krause were a thorn in Oster’s side, but the Unteroffizier didn’t believe he’d ever be rid of the slacker.
Of course, Krause wasn’t the only slacker in the Unteroffizier’s squad; he was just the worst and most obvious culprit. It was an unpublicized fact that only half of any rifle squad did any actual fighting. When things got nasty and bullets began to fly, much of the squad simply shot their rifles into the air instead of actually aiming at the enemy. For some, like Krause, it was an act of cowardice: aiming required lifting one’s head and exposing it to enemy fire. For others, it was an act of misguided compassion. They simply couldn’t bring themselves to kill another human being purposefully, so they intentionally missed.
In France, Unteroffizier Oster had learned that most of his job as squad leader was identifying the cowards, the compassionate, and the killers. He armed and deployed each accordingly. The cowards were worthless, so, much to their dismay, he deployed them in the most forward positions. There they could act as decoys, drawing fire away from the more combat-ready members of the squad. And if they ran, they would have to run right past Oster, who would threaten to shoot them himself if they didn’t hold their line. The compassionate were somewhat less worthless. They were unreliable in an assault, but they could hold their positions and defend themselves. In fact, if they survived an enemy attack, they overcame their natural inhibitions against killing. Once they faced the prospect of “kill or be killed,” practicality prevailed over their Christian upbringings, and they began to aim for the enemy’s heart.
The most important members of Oster’s squad were the killers, and Oster’s most ruthless killer was a man named Pfeiffer. He was small and scrawny, but he enjoyed fighting and sought out conflict, be it in a beer garden or a field of battle. Pfeiffer was the type of thug Oster would have avoided in civilian life. But in a combat squad he was invaluable. This was why Oster had assigned Pfeiffer his squad’s most important weapon: the heavy machine gun. The MG-34 was, perhaps, too large a weapon for the diminutive Pfeiffer. Many leaders assigned the heavy gun to their largest and strongest squad member. Pfeiffer looked comical dragging around the big weapon. He preferred not to sling it over his shoulder like a rifle, since the strap dug into his flesh. So he carried it behind his neck, both arms propping it in place, and as he marched he looked like he was affixed to a cross. It was an ungainly posture, and in a firefight, valuable seconds were often lost while Pfeiffer untangled himself from the gun before setting it up. But Oster didn’t care. He felt it was more important to have a killer like Pfeiffer manning the gun than someone stronger but less dangerous.
The MG-34 was the weapon around which every German infantry squad was organized. The only purpose of the rest of the soldiers was to support the machine gun. Their bolt-action rifles only served to keep the enemy pinned down until the deadly fire of the machine gun could kill them. For that reason, the other killers in Oster’s squad were given extra machine-gun ammunition. So long as the machine gun was operational and was constantly fed linked belts of ammunition, it didn’t much matter what the rest of the riflemen did. Pfeiffer was the one causing casualties among the enemy.
“If there’s no enemy, why do you think we’re patrolling the woods?” Oster asked Krause.
“To find the dog,” Krause replied.
It was true. Their reconnaissance patrol had been hastily organized and sent into the wilderness after a supply convoy arrived in their village and described an odd encounter with an Alsatian wolf dog. Oster’s platoon leader, Leutnant Schaefer, had ordered Oster and his squad to locate the dog and capture it. He was worried the canine would fall into the hands of Russian partisans. A fine dog like that was a piece of military equipment valuable to the Wehrmacht.
Oster hated the Russian partisans, many of whom were refugees from the very village Oster’s platoon had captured. Unlike the more useful Russian peasants, who stayed behind to cook, clean, and labor for the German soldiers, the partisans ran away and hid in the woods. There they lurked like dangerous animals, waiting to prey upon solitary motorcycle couriers or poorly armed supply trucks, sniping with hunting rifles from the trees. Oster had never actually seen a partisan, but he’d spent more than one winter evening hungry and shivering because partisans had attacked a supply truck and stolen his platoon’s heating oil and food. If Oster had believed this dog-finding patrol would somehow help strike a blow against these troublesome partisans, who were really nothing more than glorified bandits, he would have been much more enthusiastic about the mission. But he knew all Schaefer’s talk about protecting military equipment from the Bolshevik bandits was nonsense. In truth, Schaefer just happened to love dogs.
Oster liked dogs, too, but not in the same way as his Prussian commander. Oster’s family had relied on dogs for generations. Oster’s business was cheese, a particular kind of goat cheese that was prized by Germans and had therefore kept his family financially secure for hundreds of years. Dogs were essential to the business of raising and herding goats, but they were simply a tool, like a hammer or a hoe. And they were a tool with extra, associated costs. You had to feed dogs. And so to maximize profit, you had to make sure that you fed the dogs who worked hard and got rid of the ones who didn’t. That task was made more difficult by the fact that dogs didn’t have just one or two pups; they had full litters. So whenever it was time to breed the dogs, Oster was faced with the task of identifying the hardworking puppies among the general rabble. That usually took a few months, at least. Oster then hiked the undesirable puppies out into the mountains, where he left them to starve in the wilderness.
It wasn’t much different from organizing a combat squad. Perhaps that was why he’d been promoted to squad leader. After all, Oster realized with satisfaction, it was how the German government was treating the Russians. Humans were just like animals, weren’t they? Those who could work and could contribute to the greater good should receive food and provisions so they could survive—such people, Oster believed, were the Germans. Those people who could not work efficiently—the slackers or naturally slovenly—should be eliminated. As Oster saw it, these people were the Russians, Bolsheviks, partisans, bohemians, and anyone else who didn’t agree with official German policy. These were the so-called undesirables. And it was good and proper that Oster and his companions were ridding the world of them. The world would become a more efficient, and more pleasant, place to live.
“The dog is merely a means to an end,” Oster explained to Krause after a long silence. “It is our manifest destiny to improve this land, to make it more productive. In order to achieve that goal, we must protect our army. In order to protect our army, we must reduce the capabilities of the Slavic partisans who seek to hinder our advance. In order to reduce those capabilities, we must find that dog.”
“Then maybe we should just whistle.” Krause halted, pursed his lips, and whistled a melodic call to the dog. The rest of the platoon broke into laughter.