Unteroffizier Robert Rupp, equally despondent, wrote in his diary on 12 July:
‘Many of the others seem particularly cheerless. I considered whether I ought to write a letter to Maria [his wife], so that it would be in my pocket should I never get to go home.’
Two days later the company dead were piled on a lorry, which had to be towed into their position because it had been disabled by a strike in the radiator. ‘H. was there,’ he noticed, ‘with his wedding ring on the finger.’ One of the Unteroffizier section commanders told him, ‘it looks like the whole of his squad had been taken out’. He had ‘three dead, four seriously wounded and the others were at least badly injured’. Morale was low; ‘everyone is very gloomy, very quiet,’ said Rupp. The dismal task of sorting through the possessions of the dead and wounded followed. Private things were separated from military. Shaving utensils and writing materials were shared out among the other soldiers because they were short. ‘It is sad work,’ he confessed. Pocket fighting had exacted a serious toll. The company was being led by a Leutnant one month later (normally a Major’s appointment). Another Leutnant was wounded within 24 hours of his arrival at the front. He had confided to one of Rupp’s friends that ‘the company commander insisted on senseless sacrifices, but I am not going to be considered a coward’. It was a particularly dismal incident. The company commander had been wounded in the leg and his company pinned down. ‘Wait here you cowards,’ he had called out. ‘If I could still run I would soon show you how to attack.’ Thirteen more men were wounded to prove him wrong. Even the company commander’s batman was shot in the stomach and another soldier through the nose. ‘One hundred and sixty-two men have been taken-out so far,’ said Rupp, ‘not including the sick.’(16) This meant that, taken from a company fighting establishment of 176, often in reality much lower, very few veterans survived from those who had crossed the border on 22 June. These were depressing survival statistics.
There were approximately 16,860 soldiers in a German infantry division. By the end of July casualty figures reveal that the equivalent of 10 full divisions had been lost. August was even worse, with 11.6 divisions, and a further 8.3 divisions were removed from the order of battle before the end of September. The Ostheer was indeed ‘victoring itself to death’. Before the onset of Operation ‘Taifun’ at the beginning of October, nearly 30 divisions’ worth of casualties had been lost. This figure exceeded the entire strength of Army Group North’s 26 divisions, which had been sufficient to fight to the gates of Leningrad. These losses represented three-quarters of the size of Army Group South, now in the Ukraine, and three-fifths that of Army Group Centre in June.
Dry statistics do not encapsulate the full significance of the negative impact upon those remaining. Pressure was moral, psychological and physical, all cumulative in their effect. The moral and psychological character of the Ostheer was intangibly but perceptibly changing. Faith remained in the Führer’s ability to see the campaign through to a successful conclusion, but Feldpost letters written by educated and articulate soldiers were beginning to question the extent of the sacrifice relative to the value of the objective. One soldier, writing to his former schoolmaster, apologised for not answering his letters for two months. His ‘bad conscience’ was quoted as part reason.
‘The contrast between what you are saying and what I could tell you is so crass I feel unable to write without being under considerable moral pressure.’(17)
The gulf between front and home was virtually insurmountable. It applied pressure in two directions. Front soldiers were reluctant to reveal the reality of their experiences for fear of worrying their loved ones. Conversely, those at home had no idea what they endured. Infantryman Harald Henry, although prepared to reveal his innermost thoughts to his diary, struggled with any imperative to inform those at home.
‘Mother writes how much knowledge of our suffering torments her. Should I not write at all, simply offering greetings each time and that I am still in one piece? If so, who knows where I have already been!’(18)
A number of factors enabled the Ostheer to endure privation and enormous casualties. The realities of war produced increasing cynicism alongside growing experience. Dr A. Stöhr, for example, recalls ‘actually witnessing a case during the Polish campaign when a German infantry company stormed the citadel at Brest-Litovsk singing the German National Anthem’. His veteran judgement was that patriotism combined with tactical training, repeated so often it became automatic, kept the German soldier going:
‘One did what one practised a hundred times. Take cover! You give fire support – I will move! Jump up – go! Orders were to be followed above all else. The natural survival mechanisms to hesitate were turned off by this automatic process.’(19)
Patriotism continued and was rationalised as ‘duty’. It did, however, became tempered with a more realistic appraisal of what should constitute ‘sacrifice’.
Another motivation was so called Halsschmerzen. This so-called ‘sore-throat’ affliction was suffered by heroes who aspired to the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest order for bravery, worn at the throat. Its holder, whether officer or soldier, was entitled to a salute by all ranks. The medal was implicit recognition: ‘I have proved myself.’ Knight’s Cross holders were less inclined to avoid tight situations because collective peer pressure anticipated results. Nazi propaganda extolled the concept of a ‘nation of heroes’. The resulting by-product was a crop of veterans who mastered their lethal craft. One former soldier described them as:
‘Those soldiers who were called “excellent chaps or fellows”. They were men who recognised their calling and carried out the tank- and bunker-busting required of them. They led the assault teams or long-range patrols, being hauled in or volunteered freely when the situation was especially precarious. Their names were known throughout their units.’
Killing was their expertise, and as such they were bizarrely appreciated in the same vein that football or racing-car heroes are feted in peacetime. Veteran A. Stöhr remarked, ‘they were not particularly unique because every other man also risked being killed himself all the time’. War also changed men. Veterans remarked that the scale alternated between sensible types, who overcame their fear, to insensitive psychopaths, who, because they lacked imagination, knew no fear. Alongside doubters fought fanatic ‘Hitlerites’, to whom everything was the same. Stöhr recalled a Feldwebel whose bride was killed before his eyes during an allied bombing raid. From that moment on he became a ‘hero’, whose reckless courage won him the right to wear a string of tank victory badges on his sleeve, proof he had destroyed seven tanks single-handed in combat. At his throat hung the Knight’s Cross, ‘a hero,’ Stöhr remarked, ‘because his own life had become unimportant’.(20)
Hardship at the front was a physically cumulative and psychologically wearing process. Fewer surviving soldiers meant more to do – notably sentry and other security duties – for those remaining. There is also universal comment in Feldpost letters and diaries from soldiers about the filth, dust, mud and lice and other discomforts on the Russian front. Obergefreiter Erich Kuby wrote typically in his diary on 19 August, ‘I slept miserably in a soaking bed and developed a headache. Since 22 June I have spent every single night in the open.’(21)