Came across these today, thought they may be on some interest, anywho, enjoy
A very interesting view of Russian life in the eyes of German WW2 solders.
**NOTE, I do no SUPPORT nor ENDORSE said viewpoints, they are here in full for historical purposes***
HISTORY: LETTERS FROM GERMAN SOLDIERS
Lieutenant Otto Deissenroth, Military Post Number 12 827D writes to local group leader Kemmel in Altenau (Mainfranken)
In the East, 30.7.1941
Dear Comrade Karl !
I write this letter from the desolation of a Ukrainian forest village, 40 kilometers from
Kiev, which we hope to capture in a few days. The fruitful land of the Ukraine is all
around us, but 20 years of Bolshevist mismanagement have brought it to ruin. The
poverty, misery and filth we have seen and experienced in the past weeks is indescribable.
You back home cannot imagine the terrible results of Bolshevism in this fruitful land.
Everything that we formerly read in newspapers and books pales in the face of
the terrible reality. Our eyes look in vain for some sign of construction, for
a trace of progress, for a bit of culture. We yearn for the sight of a clean house, an orderly
street, a few tended gardens, a few trees! Wherever we look there is filth,
decay, desolation, misery, death and suffering! Everywhere we see the ghost of
Bolshevism in the tortured look of farmers, the blank stares of captives, the
hundreds of murdered people, the farm houses of impoverished buildings and
ruined houses. I sometimes think it is all the work of the devil.
The land was rich when it was inhabited by German, Ukrainian, Czech and
Polish farmers. Then Bolshevism came, and with it enormous misery. Everything that was
prosperous or cultured was killed or burned. I spoke with dozens of people
whose family members, fathers, husbands, brothers and sons perished somewhere
in Murmansk, Siberia or the icy north. Thousands died during the great famine,
particularly in 1932-1933. Thousands more ended up in prisons and jails. The
misery of those freed from Bolshevism is indescribable. Any free expression was
prohibited, any movement banned. Everything in nature that was beautiful, good
and free was destroyed. Everything created by God was exterminated! They took
the blessing from the land and the soul from the people. They reduced them to
the level of animals, impotent, miserable enslaved animals with no hope of life
who did not know if they would be alive tomorrow, who lived from hand to mouth,
and were happy only when someone killed them. Hell can be no worse that this
"Soviet paradise." There is no hope of salvation. What Bolshevism has done to
humanity is a sin against God, a crime one cannot begin to understand. Every
German who formerly thought Bolshevism was a worthy idea and who threatened we
National Socialists with death and bloodshed only because we didn't believe in
this nonsense should be ashamed!
We were right! We are all shaken and moved as we face this misery, this
suffering, this hopeless Bolshevist life. They stole everything from these people except
the very air they breathed. The land they inherited from their fathers became a
collective, the property of the state, and they became slaves worse than those
of the darkest Middle Ages in Germany. They had a tiny plot of land of their
own, and even that was heavily taxed. They had to report to the collective's
commissars each morning, work the whole day, even Sunday, with no free time.
They belonged to the state. They were supposedly paid, but rarely saw the
money. They got 33 kopeks a day, about a third of a Mark. They owned no plow,
no spade, no wagon, no yoke. Everything supposedly belonged to everyone,
everything belonged to the state. The Jews and party bigwigs lived in
prosperity, the farmers had only hunger, misery, work and death. No one felt
himself responsible for the soil, no one felt the love we Germans have for our
homeland, for the soil that is ours. The knowledge of blood and soil had died
out. I spoke with 30-year-olds who did not understand the concept of property.
They had been educated in Soviet schools. That explains why they had no sense
of culture, no need for it. Their homes are empty, cold and desolate, much
poorer than in Poland. No pictures, no flowers break the desolation.
The art of cooking also disappeared, given the food shortages. The daily diet
consists of milk and bread, along with a bit of honey and a few potatoes. When
one see this dismal poverty, one is reminded that these Bolshevist animals
wanted to bring culture to us industrious, clean and creative Germans. How God
has blessed us! How justified is the Führer's claim to European leadership! The
poorest German village is a pearl in comparison to these ruined Russian
villages. Sometimes as I face the thousands of murdered people that we found in
the cities and villages, and in the
numerous occasions where we found women and children wailing over the corpses
of their family members, or when they asked us to free their men who had been
hauled off just before we arrived, I see the Führer before me. He saved an
enslaved and raped humanity, giving it once more divine freedom and the
blessing of a worthy existence. The last and deepest reason for this war is to
restore the natural and godly order. It is a battle against slavery, against
Bolshevist insanity. I am proud, deeply proud, that I may fight against this
Bolshevist monster, fighting once again the enemy I fought to destroy during
the hard years of struggle in Germany. I am proud of the wounds I suffered
during the election battles in Germany, and I am proud of my new wounds, and of
the medal that I now wear. It is as if the people here are awakening from a
deep sleep. They cannot yet believe in their new freedom; they do not know
where to begin. They sit down and wait for orders. Now they have them: "Go back
to work, harvest the fields, now you have your own home." That is what all the
posters say, and one sees the masses at work in the fields. Man and nature are
free again, God has his place once more, his eternal order has been restored.
We National Socialist soldiers of Adolf Hitler have restored the godly order,
though some call us heathens. That is the way life is. And what did those who
spoke about God do? Ask them!"
---
Staff Sergeant Kurt Hummel, Military Post Number L 31 605 Lg Pa. Paris, to his local group Northern Russia, 12 August 1941
Bolshevist conditions are indescribable. I had never imagined that such misery was
possible. People here know nothing about electric lights, radio, newspapers and
the like. One can't call what they live in houses. There are only shanties with
rotten straw roofs.
Huge neglected fields lay around. We haven't yet found even a small shop.
This is what people call the Soviet paradise. I wish the few outsiders who
still remain in Germany could be shipped here. There is misery wherever one
looks. One has to see it to realize how beautiful Germany is.
---
Medical corporal Paul Lenz, Military Post Number 7 14 628 Posen, to the local group of the NSDAP, Arneburg:
Only a Jew can be a Bolshevist; for these bloodsuckers there is nothing
better to be, for there is then nothing to stop them. Wherever one spits there
is a Jew, whether in a city or a village. As far as I know (we asked the
people, wanting to know the truth) not a single Jew every worked in the
workers' paradise. Even the littlest bloodsucker
had a post with big privileges. He lived in the best buildings, if one can call them
buildings. The real workers lived in small buildings, or better, in animal stalls, just like
day laborers in old Russia. It makes no difference whether one is in a village
or in a city like Minsk with over 300,000 inhabitants, the stalls are
everywhere. Even before the war, most workers knew nothing but hunger, misery
and slavery. Some may be interested to know that there were theaters, operas,
etc., even big buildings for them, but only those with money got in, and they
were the blood suckers and their lackeys.
---
Sergeant Paul Rubelt, Military Post Number 34 539 F, to Miss Grete Egger, Lebring 71, Steieirark: 6.7.1941
I was in Lemberg yesterday and saw a bloodbath. It was terrible. Many had
their skin stripped off, men were castrated, their eyes poked out, arms or legs
chopped off. Some were nailed to the wall, 30-40 were sealed into a small room
and suffocated. About 650 people in this area must have died in such ways. The stench can be
endured only if one smokes a cigarette and keeps a handkerchief over one's nose. The Jews did most of it.
Now they have to dig the graves. The culprits will be shot. Many already died
because of the stench. In this city they even opened graves and defiled the corpses.
It is terrible. One can hardly believe that such people exist.
---
NCO K. Suffner, Military Post Number 08 070 to his work mates
There was a gray cloud over Lemberg as we arrived. The stench was scarcely tolerable.
The Russians had been thrown out of the city after a hard battle. Two hours
later I found the source of the stench. The Bolshevists and Jews bestially murdered
12,000 Germans and Ukrainians. I saw pregnant women hanging by their feet in
the GPU's prison. They had slit the noses, ears, eyes, fingers, hands and arms
and legs of other women. Some even had their hearts cut out. 300 orphans
between the ages of 2 and 17 had been nailed to the wall and butchered. After
they were done with the torture, they threw the people, most of whom were still
alive, into a 3 meter deep pile in the basement, doused them with gasoline, and
lit them on fire. It was terrible! We could not believe that such human beasts
existed. Our propagandists do not say enough about the real face of Bolshevism.
The day we marched into Lemberg, the surviving Ukrainians gathered 2,000 Jews
in jail and took terrible revenge. The Jews then had to carry out all the dead and load them on wagons.
The police kept the people back. It was a heartrending sight to see the women
lamenting their husbands and children, and the men clenching their fists with
bitter, pale faces. One can't describe the dreadful scenes here. It is what the
German people would have suffered if Bolshevism had reached us. The complainers
and know-it-alls that we still have in the Reich should see this. Then they
would know what pure Bolshevism looks like. They would fall to their knees and
thank the Führer for saving Germany from such things. I and many other German
soldiers have seen this. We all thank the Führer that he let us see the
Bolshevist "paradise." We swear to extirpate this plague root and branch.
Since I have some time today, I thought it my duty to write this so that my
work mates at home can read it. We soldiers at the front have seen this with our own
eyes. We will be able to tell a lot more later.
We are fighting until final victory.
----
Lieutenant Lorenz Wächter to a Political Leader in Neunkirchen: 20.8.1941
...I really can't describe what we saw in Lemberg. It is much, much worse that the
German newspapers were able to describe. One has to have seen it. Even the
stench of corpses, noticeable a long way outside the prison walls, was enough
to make one ill. And the scene itself. Hundreds of murdered men, women and children, hideously
mutilated.
Men had their eyes poked out, a pastor with his belly slit open and the body
of a slaughtered baby stuffed in. I could tell you worse stories, but even
these upset me, and I'm used to such things by now.
---
Corporal Otto Kien, Military Post Number 18, 756, to the Factory Leadership at the Conrad Scholtz Factory. Barmbeck: Russia, 8 August 1941
Anyone who earlier had different opinions of the Soviet Union is quickly
cured of them here. The poverty is terrible. Not even the farmers have anything
to eat. They beg from us.
There are lice and filth everywhere. One has to be careful one doesn't get
them from the inhabitants.
These people don't know anything else. They sit in their huts and remove lice
from each other. They don't mind if anyone watches. I've had my fill of this
workers' paradise. We'll be glad to be out of here. In the past we saw
pictures of malnourished children. They were not exaggerated. One can't
believe it if one hasn't been here.
__________________
"Resistance is futile"
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