German soldier's guilt-filled diary

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August
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German soldier's guilt-filled diary

#1

Post by August » 21 Aug 2003, 11:24

http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.as ... ld&rLink=0


We made captured woman dance naked, recounts German soldier in guilt-filled diary

Reuters

BERLIN: A guilt-ridden account of an ordinary German soldier's experiences in World War two is countering a recent trend among historians to portray Germans as victims of the war.

Willy Peter Reese, an infantryman who fought on the Russian front and died in 1944 aged 23, kept a diary of how German soldiers killed scores of prisoners of war, committed rape, threw pregnant women and children out of their homes and stole food.

Stern magazine has printed excerpts of Reese's graphic book, ''Stranger to myself'', ahead of its publication this month.

''We were without feeling for the suffering of others,'' Reese wrote. ''We bragged about what we had conquered and about the effect a pistol could have on a defenceless woman.''

His diaries tell of cruelty and rape by ordinary German soldiers, and track their decline into a numb, alcoholic stupor as ''an inferno of fire, steel and blood'' raged around them.

''We danced in the railway carriages and fired into the air, made a captured Russian woman dance naked for us and smeared her breasts with boot polish, we made her as drunk as we were,'' wrote Reese.

Germans had long clung to the notion that it was only Hitler's SS troops, and not ordinary soldiers -- their fathers, grandfathers, brothers and uncles -- who killed Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and civilians.

But since the 1990s, a controversial touring exhibition on the Wehrmacht's war against the Soviet Union, with photographs, documents and eyewitness accounts, has disproved that view.

Reese hated the Nazis but had a simple explanation for his obedience. ''We didn't want this. But we preferred to submit ourselves to the fate of battle...Than to the certain death through the courts.''

As the fighting wore on, indifference undermined the soldiers' discipline. ''Most numbed themselves with superficiality, with gambling, with cruelty or hatred, or they masturbated,'' wrote Reese.

Wounded several times, Reese volunteered to return to the front. He wrote that his soul had ''rotted'' and that he was ''lost''. The last words in his manuscript are ''I loved life.''

Reese, the son of a tax accountant, was a 20-year-old trainee bank clerk in the western city of Duisburg when he was called up in February 1941.

He was transferred to the eastern front in late 1941, and fought in the 95th infantry division in Ukraine, Belarus, west of Moscow and in southern Russia.

With brutal honesty, Reese describes being part of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the most ruthless, bloody and gigantic military assault in history.

''The dead piled up and the desperate fought on behind the walls of their corpses. My comrades fell, blown to pieces by direct hits, wounded or with nervous breakdowns,'' he wrote.

''This was no longer a battle, only murder. During short counter attacks we found our missing comrades cut to pieces and maimed, and we took no prisoners either.''

Reese went missing in June 1944 near the Belarus town of witebsk, some 500 km west of Moscow, as the Germany army struggled to slow the Soviet advance towards Berlin.

Twenty-five years later, the Red Cross informed his mother that he was probably killed in action.

Reese, a slight man with round spectacles who wrote poems and was keen on literature and the arts, typed the diary into a manuscript during his last leave in 1944.

His mother kept it for decades. After her death, it was passed on to his cousin who set about seeking a publisher.

''He chronicled his own degeneration, that's what attracted us to his work,'' said Claus Carlsberg, spokesman for the Ullstein-Heyne-List publishing house.

''I think this text could help break the silence between the generations. Almost everyone has a relative who was a soldier, and the soldiers tend to be reluctant to talk about it.''

Reese's account shows how the Nazi war machine corrupted ordinary people. It gives an insight into how a cultured, educated nation obediently followed Hitler into a war of conquest and destruction.

The book also contrasts with a recent focus that, according to historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler, has been threatening to obscure the country's view of its past.

Books, magazine articles and TV documentaries have in the past two years shifted the historical debate to the suffering of Germans in allied bombing raids and their mass eviction from eastern territories after the war.

Wehler, a historian at Bielefeld University, said: ''We mustn't forget it was Germany that launched total war, that the British with their bombings were reacting to the German blitz.

''We have to prevent history getting totally distorted. I find this view sinister if it isn't embedded in the right context.''

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Weiss Wurst
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#2

Post by Weiss Wurst » 21 Aug 2003, 18:01

Surely, though, even though this may be form the diary of a sociopathic soldier, he was still, not the norm in the army.


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#3

Post by tonyh » 21 Aug 2003, 18:14

This is nothing new. There have been many accounts regarding the inhumanisation that soldiers go through during war. In fact for some people, its essential that they become inhuman and numb to the daily horror that surrounds them, to block out the madness that threatens to engulf all the time.
Reese's account shows how the Nazi war machine corrupted ordinary people.


Whats silly is the preceived attempt to try and make this account unique to German soldiers of WWII. Reese's accounts could be backed up by other Nations soldiers too, I'm afraid. War corrupts people, no matter what political persuasion is relevant.

Tony[/quote]

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#4

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 21 Aug 2003, 18:17

Weiss Wurst wrote:Surely, though, even though this may be form the diary of a sociopathic soldier, he was still, not the norm in the army.
I wonder if you would write something like that if that happened to be a diary of a Soviet soldier.
p.s oh panzermahn, where art thou

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#5

Post by Whisper » 21 Aug 2003, 18:52

Weiss Wurst wrote:Surely, though, even though this may be form the diary of a sociopathic soldier, he was still, not the norm in the army.
How do you know he was sociopathic?

Only read the "stern"-article yet, but allready ordered the book, and my impression is that it only shows what war makes out of man, no matter what nationality they are and not trying to make special examples or for german soldiers.

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#6

Post by Odessa2 » 21 Aug 2003, 19:03

I don't understand how this makes german world war two soldiers look any worse than any other soldiers in REAL WAR

it says in the diary that Russian soldiers treated people just as savagely.

and that's what we know from history.

the Japanese Rape on Nanking, The americans in Vietnam. the Bataan Death March.

War is Hell, and just because germans were taught racism ideals about being superior, everyone seems to have this stupid notion that it makes them more Evil.

that is bullcrap, and i'm seriously confused about this issue.

(when considering german divisions that fought, i'm not counting the SS camps that systematically killed jews)

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#7

Post by Whisper » 21 Aug 2003, 19:07

I wouldnt judge the book or trying to interpret it in any way without having it read yet. Till now i only know the "stern"-article said, but i dont have the impression that its only ment for german soldiers, thats only what the media makes out of it, i think it just shows what war makes out of man, no matter what nationality they are.

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#8

Post by Odessa2 » 21 Aug 2003, 19:09

I highly recommend the Book "Forgotten Soldier"

it's a book written by a survivor of the Eastern Offensives in the Gross Div.

He starts off saying how he loves hearing French Veterans claim they were heros and all of their fighting, when He saw 200 times more action, 200 times more loss of friends, 200 times more deeper into hell than anyone can ever imagine.

Imagine fighting thousands of miles from home, with little supplies and in the freezing cold, or mericless Mud and taking huge casualties while you have diseases like dysntery and other problems.


I believe that while yes, some german soldiers committed atrocities,. there are many that fought bravely, against other armed soldiers and deserve some honor.


"It was those defensive battles in Russia which I shall always remember for the sheer beauty of the fighting, rather than the victorious advances. Many of us died horribly, some even as cowards, but for those who lived...it was well worth all the dreadful suffering and danger. After a time we reached a point where we were not concerned for ourselves or even for Germany, but lived entirely for the next clash, the next engagement with the enemy."

- a LSSAH captain"
"

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#9

Post by Lawrence Tandy » 21 Aug 2003, 20:32

It may just be me, but every time people start to realize that maybe the Germans were not a race of butchers and that maybe Germans were also subjected to the horrors of total war, that something like this comes out of left field to paint them all as murdering scum again. I will wait to pass judgement until I read it though. Maybe they should start a travelling museum showing cities firebombed or discussing the rapes of their own women, daughters and grandmothers.

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#10

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 21 Aug 2003, 22:03

Odessa2 wrote:I don't understand how this makes german world war two soldiers look any worse than any other soldiers in REAL WAR

it says in the diary that Russian soldiers treated people just as savagely.

and that's what we know from history.

the Japanese Rape on Nanking, The americans in Vietnam. the Bataan Death March.

War is Hell, and just because germans were taught racism ideals about being superior, everyone seems to have this stupid notion that it makes them more Evil.

that is bullcrap, and i'm seriously confused about this issue.

(when considering german divisions that fought, i'm not counting the SS camps that systematically killed jews)
it says in the diary that Russian soldiers treated people just as savagely.

and that's what we know from history.
from what "history" do you know that if you don't mind me asking?

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#11

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 21 Aug 2003, 22:05

Lawrence Tandy wrote:It may just be me, but every time people start to realize that maybe the Germans were not a race of butchers and that maybe Germans were also subjected to the horrors of total war, that something like this comes out of left field to paint them all as murdering scum again. I will wait to pass judgement until I read it though. Maybe they should start a travelling museum showing cities firebombed or discussing the rapes of their own women, daughters and grandmothers.
well the thing is they started it - makes all the differnce.

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#12

Post by PAK » 21 Aug 2003, 22:11

oleg wrote:
Odessa2 wrote:it says in the diary that Russian soldiers treated people just as savagely.
and that's what we know from history.

from what "history" do you know that if you don't mind me asking?
Do you want me to list all books which refer to russian war crimes?
oleg wrote:well the thing is they started it - makes all the differnce.
Between what? Having feelings or not?

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#13

Post by Whisper » 21 Aug 2003, 22:23

Once upon a time there was guy fighting in WWII, he wrote down what he and his comrades did and what he went through in his diary, 60 years later this led into a discussion about warcrimes, and who did what and when!
I dont know why this has to end in a warcrime discussion without anyone has been reading the book yet! I dont think he planned to puplish his diary, and wanted to earn any attention, in my eyes that was his way to handle his expieriences.

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Lawrence Tandy
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#14

Post by Lawrence Tandy » 21 Aug 2003, 22:24

oleg wrote:
Lawrence Tandy wrote:It may just be me, but every time people start to realize that maybe the Germans were not a race of butchers and that maybe Germans were also subjected to the horrors of total war, that something like this comes out of left field to paint them all as murdering scum again. I will wait to pass judgement until I read it though. Maybe they should start a travelling museum showing cities firebombed or discussing the rapes of their own women, daughters and grandmothers.
well the thing is they started it - makes all the differnce.
I won't dispute that as there are too many threads for this argument already. It just seems like they are flogging a dead horse these days. Some of these people were decent and it is more eye openining to see those kinds of stories, just as all Soviets were not rapists and it is good to see those stories too. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of WW2 knows that there were atrocities. I realize that these should never be forgotten, though war brings out the worst in men, it can bring out the best as well and I'd like to see these sorts of stories for a change.

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#15

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 21 Aug 2003, 22:48

PAK wrote:
oleg wrote:
Odessa2 wrote:it says in the diary that Russian soldiers treated people just as savagely.
and that's what we know from history.

from what "history" do you know that if you don't mind me asking?
Do you want me to list all books which refer to russian war crimes?
oleg wrote:well the thing is they started it - makes all the differnce.
Between what? Having feelings or not?
I wnat a book that would run qualitive analyzis between Geraman and Soviet war crimes -have one of these?

and please don't tell me there is no differnce between the morla outlook of the invading and dfending armies.

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