‘Let me be! I can’t bear any more of it! Stop looking at me like that! I’m clean barmy! I’m plum loony! Nothing but this bloody misery all the time. Nothing but these creatures, these wretched worms! Look at them wriggling on the ground! Can’t you hear them whimpering? They ought to be stamped out, once and for all, foul brutes, just wiped out.’
Franzl had suffered a nervous breakdown. ‘You must see it,’ he said, ‘I simply can’t stand this any longer!’(25)
National Socialist propaganda had ‘dehumanised’ the enemy even before the campaign had begun. Russian commissars were separated from soldiers on capture and executed. Maltreatment and the indiscriminate shooting of Russian PoWs was not solely the result of specific orders from above, neither was it necessarily conducted in a disciplined manner. Division and other records indicate that ‘wild’ and often indiscriminate shootings of Soviet PoWs began during the very first days of the campaign. Senior officers objected to this on discipline rather than morality grounds. The fear was that excesses might lead to anarchy in the ranks and intensify bitter Russian resistance. General Lemelsen, the commander of XXXXVIIIth Panzer Corps, rebuked his troops in an order three days into the campaign, complaining:
‘I have observed that senseless shootings of both PoWs and civilians have taken place. A Russian soldier who has been taken prisoner while wearing a uniform and after he put up a brave fight, has the right to decent treatment.’
He did not, however, question the ‘ruthless action’ the Führer had ordained ‘against partisans and Bolshevik commissars’. Soldiers interpreted his directive so liberally that a further directive followed within five days to curb their exuberance.
‘In spite of my instructions of 25.6.41… still more shootings of PoWs and deserters have been observed, conducted in an irresponsible, senseless and criminal manner. This is murder! The German Wehrmacht is waging this war against Bolshevism, not against the United Russian peoples.’
Lemelsen was perceptive enough to grasp that ‘scenes of countless bodies of soldiers lying on the roads, clearly killed by a shot through the head at point blank range, without their weapons and with their hands raised, will quickly spread in the enemy’s army’.(26)
Excesses were commonplace. Gefreiter Georg Bergmann, with Artillery Regiment 234 near Aunus on the northern Finnish front at the end of August, witnessed the bizarre spectacle of unit vehicles driving by at high speed with Russian prisoners perched on the engine bonnet or mud-guards. ‘Most fell off because of the tremendous speeds and were “shot whilst trying to escape”,’ he said. Infantry Gefreiter Jakob Zietz spoke of six Russian PoWs captured by his 253rd Infantry Division company, who were press-ganged into carrying their ammunition near Welikije Luki. ‘They were totally exhausted as a result of the heat and their efforts and fell to the ground, unable to march any further.’ They were shot. Others died clearing mines or transporting ammunition forward into the front line.
During the evening of 27 August, thousands of Soviet PoWs were jammed into a prisoner collection point at Geisin near Uman. The compound was designed to hold only 500 to 800 persons, but with each passing hour 2,000 to 3,000 prisoners arrived to be fed and then sent onward to the rear. No rations arrived and the heat was stifling. By evening 8,000 were packed into the camp. Oberfeldwebel Leo Mellart, one of the 101st Infantry Division guards, then heard ‘cries and shooting’ in the darkness. The sound of firing was obviously heavy calibre. Two or three 85mm Flak batteries nearby had engaged a grain silo inside the barbed wire perimeter with direct fire, ‘because the prisoners had allegedly tried to break out’. Mellart was later told by one of the watch-keepers that 1,000–1,500 men had been killed or severely wounded.(27) Poor organisation and administration had resulted in chronic overcrowding, but the Stadtkommandant of Geisin was not prepared to risk a break-out.
There was no place in the ordered German military mind or tactical doctrine to deal with civilian irregulars. This had historically been the case during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and was repeated again during early occupation phases of World War 1. German soldiers considered it wrong or somehow unfair’ for the enemy to continue fighting in the rear after having been overrun or encircled, fighting on in a hopeless situation. In Russia, unlike previously in the west, the enemy refused to follow the convention of orderly surrender. Irregulars were termed ‘bandits’ in German military parlance and treated as such. Thousands of Russian soldiers found themselves cut off from their parent formations during huge encirclement battles. On 13 September 1941 OKH ordered that Soviet soldiers who reorganised after being overrun and then fought back were to be treated as partisans or ‘bandits’. In other words, they were to be executed. Officers of the 12th Infantry Division received guidance from their commander:
‘Prisoners behind the front line… shoot as a general principle! Every soldier shoots any Russian who is found behind the front line and has not been taken prisoner in battle.’(28)
Such a command would not be considered unreasonable to soldiers sympathetic to the convention that warfare should be open and fair, giving the edge, of course, to German organisational, tactical and technological superiority.
German soldiers were incensed by snipers. Driver Helmut K___, writing to his parents on 7 July, complained his unit transporting material from Warsaw to the front had suffered 80 dead, ‘32 of them from snipers’.(29) Resulting repressive measures raised the level of violence. There was virtually no partisan activity in the Ukraine following the invasion apart from stay-behind Red Army, Communist officials and NKVD special groups. After the encirclement battle at Kiev, partisan operations in the Army Group South area considerably increased. In the Army Group Centre area partisan groups were to control 45% of the occupied area, but initially activity was on a small scale.(30) Sniping was the initial manifestation of resistance. During the advance to Leningrad, artillery soldier Werner Adamczyk was fired upon by people who were ‘not in uniform’ and ‘not shooting too badly’. He was surprised and indignant:
‘Now it seemed we would also have to fight civilians! It was enough to fight the Russian Army. Now we could not even trust civilians any more.’(31)
Any resistance in rear areas was always referred to as by ‘bandits’ or ‘civilians’. Karl D___wrote in his diary at the beginning of July:
‘To our right were wheatfields. Precisely at that moment a civilian fired out of the corn. The field was searched through. Now and then a shot rang out. It must be snipers. There are also Russian soldiers who have hidden in the woods. Time and again shots sounded off.’(32)
Another soldier, Erhard Schaumann, described how:
‘The Russian population hadn’t fled but stayed in underground bunkers, as we realised much later. We received highly accurate incoming mortar fire where our unit was encamped, which caused very heavy losses. There must be some Russians [observing] nearby, we thought, to be aiming so well.’
On investigation they hauled out many people from the earth bunkers. Schaumann became reluctant to explain the subsequent course of events.