Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier's Letters from the Eastern Front

413 Pages·2011·3.17 MB·English

by  Konrad H. Jarausch

Reluctant
Accomplice
Military portrait of Konrad Jarausch, 1939
Reluctant
Accomplice
A Wehrmacht Soldier’s
Letters from the Eastern Front
v
EditEd by
Konrad H. Jarausch
With contributions by
Klaus J. Arnold and Eve M. Duffy
Foreword by Richard Kohn
PrincEton UnivErSity PrESS
PrincEton And oxFord
Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jarausch, Konrad, 1900–1942.
[Stille Sterben. English]
Reluctant accomplice : a Wehrmacht soldier’s letters from the
Eastern Front / edited by Konrad H. Jarausch ; with contributions by
Klaus J. Arnold and Eve M. Duffy ; foreword by Richard Kohn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14042-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Jarausch, Konrad,
1900–1942—Correspondence. 2. Soldiers—Germany—Correspondence.
3. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, German. 4. World War,
1939–1945—Atrocities. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—
Eastern Front. 6. World War, 1939–1945—Moral and ethical aspects.
7. Intellectuals—Germany— Correspondence. I. Jarausch, Konrad Hugo.
II. Arnold, Klaus Jochen, 1968– III. Duffy, Eve M. IV. Title.
D811.J364 2010
940.54'1343092—dc22
[B]
2010021714
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Goudy
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
v ContEnts v
Preface vii
Foreword by Richard Kohn xiii
In Search of a Father: Dealing with the Legacy
of Nazi Complicity 1
Part I
The Polish Campaign 45
Letters from Poland, September 1939 to January 1940 53
Part II
Training Recruits 139
Letters from Poland and Germany, January 1940
to August 1941 146
Part III
War of Annihilation in Russia 237
Letters from Russia, August 1941 to January 1942 246
Acknowledgments 367
Notes to “In Search of a Father” 369
Selected Suggestions for Further Reading 381
Index 383
This page intentionally left blank
v PREFACE v
t
he exact role of the military in the Nazi genocide during
World War II remains difficult to assess because of the wide
variety of combat experiences and occupation actions on
the eastern front. During the postwar years the “myth of the
clean Wehrmacht” helped to exonerate former generals and
facilitate the Federal Republic’s rearmament as well as NATO
membership. However, the shocking photographs of soldiers
committing atrocities, presented by a controversial exhibi-
tion of the Hamburg Institut für Sozialforschung, discred-
ited this apologetic legend, suggesting instead that the entire
army might have been involved in war crimes. This charge
triggered angry rebuttals by veterans like ex- chancellor
Helmut Schmidt that their units were without blame, until
Holocaust historians like Omer Bartov assembled evidence
that proved the Wehrmacht’s general complicity in the “war
of annihilation” beyond doubt. But what is still heatedly de-
bated is the exact degree of involvement of different units
at the front and in the hinterland in antipartisan reprisals,
political executions, and shooting of Jewish civilians.
Inspired by this controversy, I decided to reexamine my
father’s letters from the field, since they offer a nuanced pic-
ture of what German soldiers thought and did during the
war. This resolve turned into a curious voyage of discovery
that tested my loyalties as a son and professionalism as a
vii
PREFACE
historian. Growing up in a dead father’s shadow in post-
war Germany was not easy, because a contentious teenager
could not argue with a ghost. When generational rebellion
brought me to the United States, we were separated not
only by my distaste for his conservative- nationalist politics
but also by a vast physical and cultural distance. No doubt,
a desire to explain the collaboration of educated Germans
with the Nazis was one of the motives behind my becoming
a historian who explored topics like the academic illiberal-
ism of students or the perversion of ethics among profession-
als. But I remained reluctant to carry such investigations
into my own family, since it meant painful disclosures of
things some members would rather forget. It took until my
retirement from the directorship of the Zentrum für Zeithis-
torische Forschung in Potsdam to muster the courage to
confront this legacy.
This unusual source consists of some 350 letters sent by
Konrad Jarausch, a high school teacher and journal editor,
from occupied Poland, training grounds in Germany, and
POW camps in Russia between September 1939 and his
death in January 1942. Although as a member of the reserves
he could only report from the perspective of the rear, he
was close enough to witness the devastating impact of the
“breath of war.” A first set of letters focuses on the Polish
campaign, describing the chaos in the wake of the German
advance, the treatment of POWs, and the interactions of the
population with the occupation regime. A second section
of the correspondence deals with the details of the training
of recruits in Poland as well as in Germany, illustrating the
process of militarization of civilians in the Wehrmacht. The
final and most original group of letters presents a chilling ac-
count of the mass death of Russian POWs in the German re-
ceiving camps for want of adequate food supply. In between
viii
PREFACE
there are close descriptions of army life and ten unpublished
essays on the suffering of the conquered East that provide an
inside view, close to the perspective of an ordinary soldier.
It seemed important to share these documents with the
public, since they are more detailed and analytical than com-
parable messages from the field. Most collections available in
English, like the last letters from Stalingrad, only contain se-
lections from widely different individuals. Other editions like
Karl Fuchs’s show the naive enthusiasm of Nazified youths,
while Willy Reese’s confession describes the horror of the
actual fighting. In contrast, Jarausch’s letters document the
experience of a single, mature academic over two and one
half years and contain more critical reflections on the war.
Although they are personal in tone, since most were ad-
dressed to his wife, brother, and friends, they are written in a
clinical language and present meticulous descriptions. When
the military historian Klaus Jochen Arnold attested to their
unusual character, we decided to collaborate and prepare an
accurate transcription. Along with a personal introduction
and an explanation of their significance for military history,
we published a selection from this correspondence and some
fifty pictures as “Das stille Sterben . . .” Feldpostbriefe von
Konrad Jarausch aus Polen und Russland, 1939–1942.
For the German edition we ultimately settled on a form
of presentation that would constitute a “letter diary” of Kon-
rad Jarausch’s experiences in Poland, the Reich, and Russia.
On the one hand, the frequency of correspondence presented
the opportunity of having almost daily progress reports, but
on the other it also posed the challenge of considerable
repetition and overlap. Instead of aiming for a full- length
scholarly edition or a narrative interspersed with only a few
snippets of quotations, we chose a selective and annotated
presentation that would preserve the integrity of the author’s
ix