Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying (47 page)

It was a source of shame to have served without having won a medal. “I shall be a laughing-stock when I get home,” lamented
First Lieutenant Herz of the Afrika Korps. “In the first place I’ve been captured unwounded, and then I haven’t even got the Iron Cross, Class I.”
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Heinrich-Hans Köstlin, whose
E-boat was rammed by a fellow German vessel during defensive maneuvers in February 1942 and subsequently sank, was plagued by similar concerns: “As Ps/W we ought to be given some sort of award, otherwise it won’t be fair to people like us. My pals will now become officers and will get the E-boat badge and the E.K.1. If later on we go to a training school, it will be possible to see at a glance that they were in the war. But I haven’t anything. You get the E.K.1 after fifty sorties.”
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The desire to earn accolades was especially strong in units whose successes were measurable. Luftwaffe fighter and bomber pilots spoke endlessly about the number of kills and missions they had as well as the decorations they had been awarded. Particularly in the first phase of the war, in which the quality of German training and warplanes led to quick success, airmen’s thinking was dominated by fame and public acknowledgment. In the navy, too, where the
tonnage of ships sunk was the dominant criterion, soldiers’ attention revolved around decorations. Revealingly, Lieutenant
Otto Kretschmer fretted intensely as a POW over whether his last radio message had reached
Dönitz. Along with the regrettable fact that he had had to abandon ship, Kretschmer wanted his superior to know about his successes on his final mission, which had made him Germany’s top submarine commander.
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Reports from the naval command reveal that submarine duty was popular because sailors had excellent chances to be decorated. Almost half of Knight’s Cross recipients in the navy served aboard submarines, and U-boat commander
Günther Prien was the first publicly celebrated hero of Nazi propaganda.
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While a Knight’s Cross was beyond most soldiers’ reach, it was a matter of
pride to wear the insignia of one’s unit. And the chances of doing that by serving on a submarine were significantly better than in other units, especially at the start of the war, when losses were relatively small. The commander of
U-473, Captain
Heinz Sternberg, is reported to have told
his crew in 1943: “We need twice twenty-one days to get the U-boat badge. I should like to have a U-boat badge. As I’ve been doomed to sail in a U-boat anyway I should also like to have the badge.”
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But Sternberg’s wishes did not come true. His ship was sunk on its second mission, and Sternberg was killed.

Statistically, sailors were far more likely to survive aboard surface vessels. But that sort of service was far less popular as of 1942; because of lack of fuel and the navy leadership’s fears of unacceptable losses, many German warships lay idle in ports. How were they supposed to prove their mettle and collect accolades, sailors reasoned, if they didn’t carry out any operations against the enemy?
Navy Private Birke, for instance, who survived the
sinking of the battleship
Scharnhorst
in 1943, complained that he had been at sea since August 1940 and still hadn’t gotten an Iron Cross.
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The pressure to fight and win
medals was enormous. As the
Scharnhorst
raised its anchor on December 25, 1943, in the northern
Norwegian fjord of Alta and set sail to attack a British convoy, the mood was jubilant. Finally the sailors were going to see some action. Few of them realized that they were being sent on a virtual
suicide mission. The
Scharnhorst
was sunk the following day, and only thirty-six men from a crew of nearly two thousand survived. They were brought to the
Latimer House POW camp, where they proudly told of their mission.

“Four destroyers should have been sufficient to sink us,” a
Private Bohle related. “There were nine ships in all. The S
CHARNHORST
had to fight a lone battle from 12.30 hours to 20.00 hours. And if the destroyers hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have sunk us. It’s actually hard to realise: twenty-six thousand tons of steel and iron and two thousand men all gone! It’s a miracle how they stood up to it for so long, for we received a hell of a lot of hits. There were seven to eight torpedo hits alone. I would never have thought a ship could withstand seven torpedo hits. We were definitely hit seven times. The last three put the finishing touches. The first ones didn’t affect us at all.”
Private Backhaus, another survivor of the
Scharnhorst,
added: “After the last three, we suddenly developed a list. What a performance the engines put up!”
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The two navy men noted with pride that their commanding officers had followed the course of the battle via
radio. “The war has ended for us,” noted a further survivor named
Alsen with regret. “I should like to have been in it longer.”
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Gaining medals that proved one’s bravery at the front was even
more important to staff officers and generals than to ordinary soldiers. The general chief of staff of the army,
Franz Halder, was completely humiliated by Hitler in a heated argument on August 24, 1942. “What can you tell me about the troops,” the Führer fumed, “as someone who was sitting in the same chair in World War I and yet who has failed to even earn the black insignia for being wounded in combat?”
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Hitler was prodding the deepest wound in the egos of many of the Wehrmacht’s top leaders: never having proved themselves in frontline combat.

Many of the top Wehrmacht generals had been staff officers in World War I and had thus never been wounded, and it was Hitler’s will that that situation not be repeated in World War II. Proving one’s mettle at the front was supposed to be part of everyone’s career, even for staff officers. The idea that generals, too, should be prepared to fight personally was one consequence of this change in the
military frame of reference. But not every general took the imperative as seriously as
Walther von Reichenau, who swam half naked across the
Weichsel River with his men during
Germany’s invasion of
Poland and earned an assault badge as a field marshal in Russia.
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Most generals focused on status symbols more in keeping with their class: the Knight’s Cross and rapid promotion. Major General
Hans Sattler, whose career had suffered a setback when his will to fight was questioned in 1941, turned up his nose at this attitude, carping: “An adjutant who was present there told me that he said: ‘The worst people are the generals; if they are not promoted or given accelerated promotion and awarded the Knight’s Cross, they are discontented.’ What do you think of that, that’s what S
CHMIDT
says.”
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The weight carried by the most prestigious decorations among high-ranking officers is clearly evident in the conversations between the sixteen generals who were captured in
Tunisia in May 1943. Colonel General
Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, the last commander of the German-Italian troops in northern
Africa, attracted pity from his colleagues because he had not even been given the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, while
Rommel had been awarded the one with Diamonds.
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The POWs in
Trent Park also whispered of General
Hans Cramer: “He had been recommended for it, but he didn’t get it, and as a result he is furious that he didn’t. He has made every possible effort to get it, and he’ll get it yet.”
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When Lieutenant General
Gotthart Franz received word in August 1943 that he was to be awarded the
Knight’s Cross for his service in
Tunisia, he fastened his Iron Cross First Class around his neck even before the International Red Cross delivered his new medal. Bursting with
pride, he wrote home that he could now look his family in the eye again.
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Not everyone in the POW camps was lucky enough to receive retrospective decorations. Lieutenant General
Menny wrote in his diary, with a sigh, that he no longer had any chance of receiving the much coveted Oak Clusters. It was better if officers had already racked up all the
medals they wanted before they were captured. General
Bernhard Ramcke boasted to his fellow detainees that he had received the highest accolades for bravery in both World Wars I and II.

A high-ranking, frontline officer without a sufficient number of medals was sure to be eyed with suspicion by his peers. For this reason, shortly after his arrival in Trent Park, the fortress commander of Aachen, Colonel
Gerhard Wilck, felt compelled to justify himself: “I was CO of a ‘Regiment’ in the east. I was in N
ORWAY
for a long time, that’s why I have relatively few decorations.”
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There is also
photographic evidence of the
importance of decorations for feelings of personal pride. In November of 1943 and 1944, inmates posed for group photos that were then sent home as Christmas cards to their families. While some of them simply donned their uniforms, without any decorations, others preferred to appear in front of the camera wearing all their medals.

The Iron Cross was a permanent topic of discussion among POWs of all ranks. Everyone had a comrade or a relative who had received the Iron Cross, First or Second Class, and since soldiers were perennially oriented around others’ achievements, this created social pressure. If a soldier had not been awarded the decoration, an explanation was required. The simplest sort of justification was that others had unfairly received the medal or that the person in question had performed just as well as his peers, but had been unjustly neglected. Endless discussions were held about the criteria by which the medals were awarded. As early as February 14, 1940, when World War II was barely six months old, Navy First Lieutenant
Fritz Huttel complained:

Huttel’s complaints were baseless. Submarine officers had the best chance of anyone at being
decorated, and
U-55 had been sunk on its maiden mission. The officers had had no chance to distinguish themselves. Nonetheless, Huttel felt the need to justify why he had not been decorated. Complaints of this sort were by no means restricted to the navy. Luftwaffe officers were also constantly griping. For example, in July 1940, after Germany’s successful campaign against
France, one Luftwaffe sergeant complained: “At
R
OTTERDAM
all
parachutists got E.K.2 and E.K.1, although they only fought for three days. I’ve been an aviator since the beginning of the war and have got nothing. An aviator who has no E.K. after the war will be looked down upon.”
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Along with the never-ending criticism that the criteria for decoration were either too lax or too strict, recriminations abounded that
medals were handed out on the basis of rank and not achievement. Common soldiers and low-ranking officers often felt their superiors were pulling strings to gain accolades. “I can surely put in for the E.K.1 after 33 Active Service flights,” registered one low-ranking officer bitterly. “The officers get one after 3 flights and what do we get? We don’t get one Iron Cross. We get shot in the spine (literally—the iron in the cross).”
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Meanwhile high-ranking officers complained that they did not get enough recognition from Hitler because of his National Socialist worldview.
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In their view, members of the
Waffen SS were disproportionately decorated for
political reasons. “The SS get their badges, not for what they’ve done, but for their political and moral attitude,” griped navy lieutenant Günther Schramm.
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It is no doubt true that medals were sometimes handed out for political reasons alone, but those were exceptional cases. In general, there is no evidence for the frequent claim that members of the Waffen SS were more often decorated than others. “Abuse” was far more common within the Wehrmacht, where accolades were sometimes handed out for nonexistent achievements. For example, during Germany’s campaign against
Norway, the Luftwaffe awarded Knight’s Crosses to five bomber pilots who had fictitiously claimed to have sunk enemy ships.
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The veracity of airmen’s often grotesquely exaggerated claims could have been easily checked against navy
radio surveillance. But for obvious reasons, the Luftwaffe leadership did not want to diminish the air force’s prestige in the interest of the truth.
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