Fresh food, which had been reasonably plentiful in the summer, became increasingly difficult to commandeer in the autumn. Haphazard marching routines punctuated by unexpected periods of sustained or intense fighting meant soldiers ate poorly, and when they could. Incessant hard marches with poor food produced intestinal complaints and diarrhoea, which by the fourth consecutive month of the campaign was draining physical reserves. Natural body resistance was on the decline, colds and fever commonplace, further raising the susceptibility to disease. The prospect of enduring a Russian winter in the open became both depressing and alarming to soldiers at the front and their concerned relatives at home.
A ‘Leibstandarte-SS’ medical report surveying supplies reaching combat troops revealed their nutritional value was on average ‘more than a quarter below what they should have received’. In particular, ‘the supply of fat is always remarkably low’, as also the intake of vitamin C. Summer foraging had compensated for the shortfall but, by late autumn and winter, opportunities to supplement this meagre diet fell away. This eventually ‘led to considerable numbers of men being taken out of service due to illness’. Harsh conditions and insufficient resupply reduced core body resistance to face the approaching winter. The ‘Leibstandarte’ doctor wrote:
‘Aside from a reduction in body weight, one is further aware of an increased susceptibility to disease and a tendency for these to last longer with more pronounced effect. The cause, as with the generally noticeable prolongation of wound healing times with a tendency to develop complications, can be ascribed to reduced body resistance caused by insufficient nutrition.’(22)
Casualties and harsh physical demands were starting to erode the moral component of the Ostheer’s fighting power. A sociological transformation was to occur during the coming winter. The supremely committed idealistic army that had crossed the demarcation line in eastern Poland on 22 June was undergoing change. Many of its commanders, including junior officers and NCOs, had been veterans of World War 1. The youngest were in their early 40s, serving both with the Kampftruppen (combat arms) and staffs. They were less able to endure the drawn-out hardships of a campaign which was totally unlike France, where they had been able to purloin comfortable billets at will. Cumulative physical and psychological pressure alongside the attrition of incessant combat, with still no prospect of victory four months into the offensive, exacted a toll. Atrocities were removing much of the idealistic gloss from soldiers who originally considered they were participating in a ‘crusade against Bolshevism’. Leutnant Peter Bamm referred to the original volunteers of 1914 as ‘a fellowship apart’, adding, ‘they greeted each other with an old-fashioned and traditional courtesy.’
‘These old soldiers, who as beardless striplings had been the heroes of Verdun and the Somme, now that they were adult men and not easily ruffled attempted to preserve chivalrous traditions in this war too. The younger soldiers were less sceptical and thus more courageous; but theirs was the courage not of probity but of fanaticism.’
Hauptmann Klaus von Bismarck described his own Infantry Regiment 4 as ‘conservative’, claiming ‘there were no Nazis with us in Kolberg’ (their original garrison town). But later, ‘I noticed from about 1941 onwards, how far the leadership at the top had already been successful in infecting the army [with Nazism] – ever more’. Leutnant Bamm described the development as a ‘rot that during the course of the years had slowly infected the army like a creeping thrombosis’. As the 1914–18 generation of soldiers were killed or succumbed to nervous and physical exhaustion, they were replaced by less competently trained but less compromising and younger men. These men had either been educated under National Socialism, or owed their recent advancement to it. Von Bismarck pointed out:
‘There were many reactivated officers in my own regiment who had “muddled through” during the Weimar period. That means once proud officers who had lived many years beneath their socially expected standing. Then all of a sudden they had been elevated again by the “Führer”. These people were the willing instruments of Nazi politics.’(23)
Traditional reservist commanders, such as Leutnant Haape’s battalion commander in Infantry Regiment 18, a World War 1 veteran, were beginning to feel the strain of incessant combat. Haape noticed how easily he fell asleep on occupying quarters as the weather grew colder. ‘It had become noticeable,’ he observed, ‘that the strains and stresses of these days were beginning to affect him more than the rest of us, and his responsibilities seemed to weigh more heavily on him by the day.’(24) An important strata of collective experience in the Ostheer was becoming worn out.
Heavy casualties produced a spiral of mutual concerns that applied both to soldiers at the front and to their relatives and loved ones at home. Rumours of heavy casualties prompted the despatch of emotional letters to the front which could be equally devastating to the soldiers receiving them. ‘My dearest and good Helmut,’ wrote one wife on 21 September:
‘I am already totally unsettled having had no post from you since 31 August. Perhaps something will arrive in the morning because nothing was there on Sunday today… It’s really difficult to stay calm. I think I ought to write to your Hauptmann again, that I want to have a child, because I was born to be a mother. A man offered to get me out of my embarrassment from compassion. But you do not have to worry my dear “Papa”, I could never go behind your back. I would never be able to face you again… I have to make do with only a quarter of a gram of butter the whole week… I have no peace of mind. People at work have already noticed I hardly ever smile.”(25)
Black barrack-room humour was often the only antidote to emotional pressures such as these. Soldier Hanns-Karl Kubiak described the plight of his friend, Obergefreiter Gerhard Scholz, when he discovered during an unexpected home leave that his wife ‘had not precisely followed the marriage vows’ as anticipated. The sardonic response of his comrades to the divorce that followed was to poke fun at the propaganda theme requiring men to defend their homes and families. Scholz obviously ‘no longer needed to fight for his wife at home’.(26)
Concerns for families left at home, beginning to endure the threat of Allied night-time bombing, created further nervous tension at the front. Berlin housewife Ingeborg Tafel wrote to her husband on 15 September:
‘There have been four air raid warnings already since you departed. We can reckon on the “Tommies” [British air raids] coming today, because the sky is brilliantly clear.’
Three weeks later she told her husband about the emotional effect of her young brother’s death.
‘A letter finally arrived from Gerhard today. So shocked was he at the news of the death of his little brother that he cried shamelessly like a kid. He crawled into his tent while shells were whistling over him feeling totally empty and apathetic. He beseeched his mother to look after herself because she was all that was left to him in the world making life worth living.
Todesanzeigen (death notices) produced rashes of black crosses across newspaper pages announcing the Heldentod (heroes’ death) of those ‘fallen for the Führer and Fatherland’. There was depression in the Reich. Secret SS home front reports recalled Hitler’s Sportpalast speech of the previous year which hinted the war should be over in 1940–41. ‘Now one is faced with a further year of war with new fronts and a further expansion of the conflict,’ the report read. The general tenor was: ‘who would have thought the war would have lasted so long?’ and, ‘it has already lasted two years’. Yet another anniversary of the beginning of the war (1 September) had passed, ‘and still no end in sight’.(28) Actress Heidi Kabel recalled the impact of the casualty notices published in the press: