Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying by Harald Welzer, Sönke Neitzel Page A

brr, brr. 142
    K EHRLE : In theCaucasus, with the1. GD [Mountain Division], when one of us had been killed, no lieutenant needed to give any orders. It was: pistols drawn, and women, children, everything they saw …
    K NEIPP : With us, a group of partisans attacked a transport of wounded soldiers and killed them all. A half-an-hour later they were caught, near N OVGOROD . They were thrown in a sandpit, and it started from all sides with MGs and pistols.
    K EHRLE : They should be killed slowly, not shot. TheCossacks were great at fighting partisans. I saw that in the Southern Division. 143
    Interestingly, Kehrle and Kneipp had diametrically opposed attitudes toward the military in general. Kehrle found the primitive life of the army “idiocy” and “absolute shit,” while for Kneipp it was a form of“education.” 144 Yet despite that, and the inherent differences between a radio operator and anSS infantryman, they completely agreed on the methods needed to deal with partisan warfare.
    The practical rules of warfare often established norms deviating frominternational law. That is why the POWs spoke ofwar crimes in matter-of-fact terms and rarely showed signs of outrage. What offended them most was the behavior ofoccupied local populaces. The soldiers thought it was essential to take action against any and every form of noncooperation. Suchattitudes prevailed as early as October 1940, as illustrated in this exchange:
    U RBICH : But there one sees how theGestapo takes up every little thing. Especially how it is working in P OLAND now.
    H ARRER *: InN ORWAY too. In N ORWAY they have had a lot of work recently.
    S TEINHAUSER : Really?
    H ARRER : Yes, someone told me … (int.)
    U RBICH : Killed a number of Norwegian officers …
    H ARRER : I’m certain that even when we have actually occupied E NGLAND we shall not be able to walk about (unmolested) as in F RANCE .
    S TEINHAUSER : I don’t think so. There will be the first attempts. But when every tenth man in a town is executed it will soon stop. That is no problem at all, A DOLF will use all means to nip any franc-tireur activity in the bud. Do you know how they work in P OLAND ? If only one shot is fired there is trouble. Then the procedure is as follows: From whatever town or district of a town shots have been fired all the men are called out. For every shot fired during the following night, in fact during the following period, one man is executed.
    H ARRER : Splendid! 145
    Reflections about the rectitude or proportionality of such forms of extreme violence againstcivilian populations do not occur in the POWs’ conversations. The soldiers do not think to question their behavior. Their task is to take care of the necessities: “work,” “extreme measures,” and “retribution.” They focus on achieving results, not finding reasons.
    Stories about war crimes were part of soldiers’ everyday communicationwith one another in the same way that tales of shooting down planes and sinking ships were. In and of themselves, atrocities were nothing unusual. Only unusual actions or individual forms of behavior merited telling. One example focused on themass executions carried out after SS leaderReinhard Heydrich wasassassinated in Poland:
    K AMMBERGER : In Poland the soldiers were excused from duty so they could attend the executions, which were public. After the H EYDRICH affair twenty-five to fifty people were executed daily. They stood on a stool and had to put their heads through a noose, and the one behind had to kick the stool away, with the words: “You don’t need that stool, brother.” 146
    The appeal of this story for the soldier in question rested not in the killings themselves, but in how they were staged. Soldiers were given time off so they could witness thespectacles, and the executions were accompanied by a ritual ofhumiliation designed especially for the occasion.
    Together with tales revolving around unusual acts of violence, stories concerning