The war had hit the Reich holiday industry. The Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten (Munich’s Latest News) commented in an article on 1941 tourism that large numbers of Swiss hotels were faced with closure because 60% of their customers had previously been foreign tourists.(4) War kept people at home in Germany. Soldiers on leave preferred to spend their precious final furlough at home with their families. Hotels were overfilled, but not with holiday-makers. Most were commandeered by the state for military hospitals, convalescent homes for the wounded or for children evacuated to the country to avoid British bombers as part of the Kinderlandverschickung programme. Actress Heidi Kabel, commenting on the growing frequency of air raids, which had grown more menacing since 1940, expressed her concern.
‘My husband and I worked in the theatre. We had a son and often took him with us. It was serious but not as bad as later in Hamburg, but we were worried. We always took him and he slept in a wardrobe. It was always OK.’(5)
Local threats are often perceived to be more significant than epic impersonal events shaping history. One infantry Oberleutnant, despite optimism that the coming campaign would be short, was concerned more for his wife’s vulnerability to air raids, than of impending combat. ‘These things unsettle me less,’ he wrote home, ‘than the fact you poor women and children have to stay in cellars night after night.’ Euskirchen, his home town, ‘is revisited time after time,’ yet, he asks his wife, ‘you don’t write about casualties?’(6) She doubtless preferred not to worry him.
Although the government wished to promote an air of normality, there was scepticism in the Reich over the announced invasion. ‘It was a very serious moment,’ recalled Charlotte von der Schulenburg. ‘War had always a deep horror for me’, and with a husband at the front it was ‘an extremely worrying event’.(7) Gefreiter Erich Kuby’s wife, Edith, writing to her husband on the day the news broke, similarly expressed concern:
‘This is the first actual war letter! My God, right at the end [of leave] you had already thought of this possibility, and now you are in the middle of it! Hopefully your luck will hold and nothing bad will happen.’
The new campaign appeared more sinister than those which had preceded it. ‘The Russian wastes,’ Edith wrote, ‘will bring a different type of war from that in France, because a “forward point” is hardly discernible.’ She despairingly finished her letter saying, ‘all the time it occurs to me how awful war is, and you are now in it.’(8) The significance of these unfolding events was not lost on children. On her way to fetch the Sunday morning milk with her uncle, grandfather and father, 12-year-old Marianne Roberts heard the radio news that German troops had crossed the Russian frontier. The implications were immediately apparent. Marianne’s uncle Mattes, Pionier Gefreiter, who had already fought in the Polish and French campaigns, broke the complete silence that had ensued. ‘Now we have lost the war,’ he simply announced. Marianne said:
‘Not a word was passed. Everyone kept their silence. From this day onwards I knew there would be no Final Victory’.(9)
Her uncle departed for Russia immediately and was killed shortly after near Smolensk. Within three years her father was dead also. Four days after the outbreak of the Russian war, the classified SS Secret Report on the Home Political Situation stated:
‘The reports on the war that have recently come in unanimously confirm that the initial nervousness and dismay especially noticeable around women lasted only a few hours and as a consequence of a comprehensive information campaign has given way to a generally calm and optimistic attitude.’(10)
Leutnant Helmut Ritgen, a Panzer regiment adjutant, regarded himself as a mathematician. So optimistic was he of the outcome of the approaching campaign that he began to calculate potential leave dates. The importance revolved around his future marriage.
‘I tried to compute the length of our campaign by the duration of the past campaign in Poland and France in relation to the strength of the opposing forces, distances and other factors. My conclusion was that the war would be over at the end of July. I set my wedding day for 2 August.’
He omitted a crucial factor from his equation – the Russians. Optimism there most certainly was. The same secret SS report continued:
‘The population’s mood had changed to the extent that today Russia is generally considered an inferior military foe. That a military victory over Russia will soon be forthcoming is common knowledge to every citizen in this war to a greater extent than in any other previous campaign. The optimism of most of the population is so great that bets have already been made, not on the outcome of the war, but on the date it will end. In this context the most popular time limit for the duration of the war is six weeks!’
Helmut Ritgen’s fiancée was to wait two more years for her wedding. Marga Merz’s experience was different. Her fiancé was conscripted, like her two brothers, into the army in 1940. But the wedding never took place. He was killed within days of the opening of the Russian campaign. She was totally overwhelmed.
‘I was howling and blowing my nose throughout the year. Clearly when you think you have built up your life, truly started to live and have someone – and then something else comes along…’
The remainder of her war years passed ‘like a terrible dream’.(12) Similar tragedies were to occur ten-fold in Russia.
Victory will be ours!
Russia
Sixteen-year-old Ina Konstantinova lived near Kastin, north-east of Moscow. She confided to her diary on the first day of war that ‘only yesterday everything was so peaceful, so quiet, and today… my God!’ Her thoughts were echoed by Yitskhok Rudashevski from Vilna on the Lithuanian-Russian border, who remembered how a cheerful conversation was interrupted by the sudden howling of an air-raid siren. The siren was so inappropriate,’ he said, ‘to the peaceful, joyous summer which spread out around us.’ The first air raids began that same beautiful summer evening:
‘It is war. People have been running around bewildered. Everything has changed so much… It has become clear to us alclass="underline" the Hitlerites have attacked our land. They have forced a war upon us. And so we shall retaliate, and strike until we shall smash the aggressor on his home soil.’(1)
The outbreak of war profoundly shocked ordinary Russian people. At noon on 22 June in Moscow public address systems broadcast an announcement by Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov from every street corner describing the German invasion. Contemporary Russian newsreels captured these anxious crowds gazing with concern at metal loudspeakers as if they might offer something of more substance than the metallic voice rasp of the same shocking news that had been delivered to the Reich hours before:
‘At four o’clock this morning, without declaration of war, and without any claims being made on the Soviet Union, German troops attacked our country, attacked our frontier in many places, and bombed Zhitomir, Kiev, Sebastopol, Kaunas and some other places from the air. There are over 200 dead or wounded. Similar air and artillery attacks have also been made from Romanian and Finnish territory.’