attitude toward the enlisted men. When several other officers entered the bunker to join our group, he said with undisguised distaste, “Shut that door! It smells of ordinary people out there.”
Relatively few officers from aristocratic backgrounds acted so haughtily, but this captain’s attitude reflected the importance of class in German society at the time. If someone had a ‘Von’ in front of their last name and was well educated, they would typically sail right through the hiring process when seeking a job. This same sort of favoritism similarly applied in granting military promotions, though the Wehrmacht was not generally a class-based institution in other respects.
Once becoming a German officer, you were accorded respect because of your rank rather than because you were a Prussian, a Nazi, or possessed some other privileged background. Interestingly, I never witnessed any particular cultural clash between officers coming from aristocratic Prussian backgrounds and those coming from less privileged circumstances. In my experience, it would be more accurate to say that the aristocrats separated themselves from everyone else, just as they did in civilian life.
A couple of weeks into our training, Anneliese surprised me with a telegram announcing her impending arrival in Dresden at the end of December. During this unanticipated but very welcome visit, Anneliese and I crammed as much as we could into our time together. In the couple of days before the New Year’s celebration, we wandered through the city’s famous rambling baroque complex of pavilions and galleries called the Zwinger, watched a play at the opera house, and called on some of my distant relatives.
Anneliese and I also dropped by a number of Dresden’s jewelers in order to select a shop to craft our engagement rings. Because it was impossible to purchase anything made of gold during the war, the customer had to provide the jeweler with an adequate amount of gold to fashion the desired item. Several weeks after we supplied our collected gold to the jeweler we had settled on, the shop delivered an attractive pair of rings to me.
On January 6, our cadre of officer candidates traveled 25 miles south from Dresden to the mountain resort of Altenberg for a week of training in downhill and cross-country skiing. The evenings included entertainment by a talented troupe of female dancers and a youth choir singing local folk songs, but our daytime “recreation” was far more demanding.
In a scenic winter setting among snow-covered trees, our instructor spent the first couple of days teaching us the basics of downhill skiing. Though I had cross-country skiied in Russia, this type of skiing was completely new to me. Once our instruction ended, we headed up to the slopes.
Waiting in single file at the top of a ski run, we watched each man in turn disappear from sight, uncertain what lay beyond our view. Finally, the instructor ordered me to push off. Building up speed as my skis carried me down the slope, I came over a hill to confront a ski jump located directly in my path. There was no way to avoid it. Racing down the ramp in a crouch, I was sitting on my leather riding britches by the time I left the end of the jump. And that was how I crash-landed in the soft snow at the bottom.
A couple of days later, our instructors ordered us to ski down an icy bobsled run. On my attempt, I managed to ski about 20 or 30 yards. By that point, I was traveling too fast to navigate the turn. In desperation, I threw my arms around a large tree growing beside the run to keep from breaking my neck.
Soon after our return to the academy in Dresden, we were faced with another test of courage. About ten o’clock one night, our instructors ordered us to put on our swimming trunks and come down to the school’s large indoor pool. On our arrival, we lined up at the bottom of the ladder leading to the 33-foot-high diving platform.
One at a time, each officer candidate was directed to ascend to the top. Once there, the instructor switched off the lights and ordered the man to jump down into pitch-black darkness. While some of my fellow officer candidates were very hesitant to obey the order, I simply dropped into the pool feet first when my turn came, figuring that our instructors would not seriously endanger the lives of Germany’s future officers.
With these types of training methods the German Army was instilling an unconditional obedience to orders, whatever obstacles might exist or whatever doubts an individual might possess. Such challenges perhaps also made my promotion to Oberfahnrich (senior officer candidate) on March 1 a little more meaningful.
A few days before our training concluded, we learned that Adolf Hitler would personally deliver an address in Dessau to officer candidates from across Germany. Even with my deep discomfort with the Nazi regime, it was impossible not to feel a sense of anticipation during the 100-mile rail trip from Dresden.
The subsequent announcement that the Fuhrer would not be able to attend and that instead Admiral Donitz, the commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine (German Navy), would speak to us was met with widespread disappointment. Even with my childhood interest in submarine warfare, I found his oration uninspiring.
Back at the Kriegsschule, our graduation on March 15, 1944 involved no fanfare. Instead, the academy’s commanding superintendent simply delivered a short, inspiring speech and wished us well. Though the field training had been of little practical utility and could not begin to match what I had learned through years of combat, the theoretical aspect of our instruction had been interesting and helpful to me as I prepared for a new leadership role. If nothing else, it was simply a relief to have several months away from the bullets and shells at the front.
On my arrival in Oldenburg from Dresden the day after graduation, I reported to a captain, who told me to return the following morning. When I finally received my second lieutenant’s shoulder boards the next day, I eagerly headed straight to a Wehrmacht tailor to make the necessary changes in my uniform. Although uncertain what lay ahead of me upon my return to the front, I had at last achieved my long-sought ambition to serve as a leader.
ENGAGEMENT TO ANNELIESE AND FURTHER TRAINING
March 17–May 13, 1944
Receiving a two-week furlough on March 17, I made the short trip from Oldenburg to Hamburg, anxiously anticipating my imminent engagement to Anneliese. She was already in the middle of a month of leave from her nursing duties and was waiting for me when I arrived.
Rather than spending my three nights at Herr Berndt’s house, I again stayed with Aunt Frieda in Winterhude. However, Anneliese and I took our meals back at her home in Wandsbek in order to give me an opportunity to spend a little time with her father and her other relatives who lived there.
On March 18, Anneliese and I placed our newly crafted rings on one another’s fingers at Aunt Frieda’s home. There was no real celebration of the occasion, but we shared the news of our engagement with her father and telephoned my family back in Puggen.
In the middle of a war in which our future together was so unsure, Anneliese and I agreed that we should delay our marriage until peace was achieved. Facing a return to the Russian front in a few weeks time, I did not know if I would even live to see my twenty-fourth birthday. Though it was difficult for me to tie another person to my uncertain fate, her promise to marry me would give me a sense of hope in the dark days that lay ahead.
While our decision to wait was based solely on our concerns about what might happen in the future, we were also aware that we would need to obtain authorization from the army and other government agencies when we did decide to marry. Beyond the normal bureaucratic red tape, we faced an additional complication because Anneliese’s mother possessed the Jewish surname of Salomon.
This had been her mother’s maiden name as a result of her childhood adoption by the family of a Jewish butcher in Hamburg. When the authorities saw the name, they refused to grant me permission to marry Anneliese without further investigation. Challenging such racial restrictions was impossible, though I did not see how the government had any right to interfere with whom I chose to marry, even if Anneliese had been Jewish.
Leaving Hamburg a couple of days after our engagement, Anneliese and I spent the next few days with my family in Puggen. On March 24, she departed our farm to spend a week at home before reporting for duty in Leer, Germany. After obtaining her orders in Leer on April 4, she made the 250-mile trip to her newly assigned hospital in Beverlo, Belgium.
At the end of March, I traveled 60 miles west to Munster, where I entered a two-week training course for company commanders. It included additional classroom instruction as well as field training at a large proving ground nearby. This gave us an opportunity to observe firsthand the performance of new weapons such as a highly accurate 210-millimeter rocket launcher.
Following another two-week furlough from duty in Puggen, I arrived on April 30 for a week-long course at the officer’s riding academy in the town of Soltau, a little west of Munster.
