FOREIGN OCCUPATION
Until they received the short note delivered by Otto Tepelman, my family still had no idea where I was, or if I was even still alive. In fact, they had received none of the letters that I had mailed since departing Memel nor the Red Cross postcard, so this note would prove to be the first word from me since January.
Though my youngest brother Hermann had been adopted by my Aunt and Uncle Stork, my family was also naturally concerned for his fate as well. Drafted as a 16-year-old about six months before the end of the war, he had been sent to serve with an anti-aircraft battery in the Berlin area. Fleeing west just ahead of the Red Army, Hermann swam across the Elbe River and reached the home of his adopted parents in Luneburg shortly after the end of the fighting.
Even while Otto remained a POW, my family felt comforted knowing that he was at least safe. Interned in the United States, he spent most of his time picking oranges and grapefruits in Arizona and California. When so many German families lost two or three sons and brothers, it is truly remarkable that the three of us survived the war.
Following Germany’s defeat, the victorious Allies divided the country into Soviet, American, British, and French zones of occupation. They also reduced Germany’s European territory on an even greater scale than after the First World War. Under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, parts of the three large agricultural provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia had been transferred to the new Polish state while Alsace-Lorraine went back to France. In 1945, all of Pomerania, Silesia, and Brandenburg east of the Oder-Neisse Rivers went to Poland, while East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union.
Beyond territory, the Russians also shipped whole industrial facilities from Germany to the Soviet Union as war reparations. In one case, a huge steel mill in Salzgitter near Braunschweig was dismantled and shipped to Russia by train. Because the railroad gauges changed size in Poland, all train cargo had to be unloaded and switched over to other trains at the junction points.
When this dismantled factory arrived, the German POWs carrying out the transfer randomly divided up the equipment among different trains heading east so as to make it virtually impossible for the Russians to reassemble the factory. It was but one small measure of resistance against a tide of Soviet looting.
On a much smaller scale, the Western Allies also took advantage of their position at times. For example, the British chopped down thousands of trees in the Luneburg area and sent these back to the United Kingdom by the shipload. Germans were more accepting of the West’s occupation of Germany than they were of the Soviet occupation, but when the Western Allies did something like that people became bitter. “They won the war and now they want to take the rest of what we have.” It was only after the passage of two or three years that most Germans in the west would come to view the Americans and the British as allies in the emerging Cold War against the Soviets.
At the end of April 1945, American troops had occupied Puggen and required all civilians to vacate the village while they used it as a base for further operations. My family camped out in one of the farm’s meadows, eating food they had carried with them and sleeping in our wagons. After ten days, the Americans pulled out of the village, though they remained in charge of the area around it. While no fighting occurred in the area around Puggen, the evacuated homes were in bad shape, mainly as a result of the actions of the Allied POWs who had been liberated.
During this period immediately after the war ended, numerous former German soldiers wandered through the countryside trying to reach home. In an effort to help, my mother frequently provided the men with food and civilian clothes so that they could avoid drawing attention from the occupying armies.
At the end of June, British troops briefly replaced the Americans in the area around Puggen, just ahead of the scheduled July 1 transfer to Soviet control that had been agreed upon by the occupying powers. Everyone in the village was fearful.
Most of the refugees who were living in Puggen chose to head west with the departing British to escape Russian occupation. Many local residents decided to join them, taking only their horses and wagons and leaving most of their belongings behind on their farms. After debating whether to depart for the west, my family finally chose to stay and take their chances.
Immediately after the British withdrew, Red Army troops began to patrol the border between the eastern and western zones, which was initially marked only by stakes. For a bottle of schnapps, they would allow those who had not yet departed to cross over. Meanwhile, those who had decided to stay on their farms awaited the arrival of the Soviets with great anxiety.
As the ragtag Russian Army troops entered Puggen accompanied by small ponies pulling little four-wheeled wagons, they appeared to the residents more like a column of Gypsies than an army. Though the appearance of the Soviet forces who came later somewhat improved, my mother later told me that she felt an initial sense of surprise and disappointment that such a rabble could have defeated the modern and disciplined German Army.
At first, the Red Army attempted to portray themselves as liberators who had rescued the Germans from Nazi tyranny, but Russian animosity toward the German people soon became evident, especially when soldiers had been drinking. The Soviet troops mostly remained invisible during the daytime, but they would come out at night and harass those who had not fled to the west. They would check German homes for weapons and force the families to prepare meals for them using the best food still available.
If Russian troops were present, German women would hide because of their constant fear of being raped. When they made their initial visit to our home, only my mother’s intervention somehow dissuaded the soldiers from going upstairs where my sisters were hiding. Even after the initial period of occupation, females could only move safely around the village and the surrounding area if they had the protection of at least a couple of German males.
While rape had been widely tolerated by the Red Army leadership during the war, some officers gradually began to impose harsh field discipline against troops who violated German women under Soviet post-war occupation. In one case in Thuringen, a Russian officer allowed a German female to identify the soldier who had raped her. He then shot the guilty party on the spot as a warning to the other troops.
Of course, Germans living under Red Army occupation faced other dangers as well. Because the Nazi secret police had searched the homes of anyone suspected of disloyalty to the government, my mother expected the occupying Soviet forces to do the same. Fearful that our family could be placed in jeopardy if the occupiers learned that one of their sons had fought in Russia, she had wisely collected the spare uniform, Walther pistol, and military decorations that I had left at home and tossed them into the outhouse behind the pig barn.
However, she had hidden my officer’s dagger under a mattress in one of the bedrooms, perhaps recognizing its sentimental value to me. When the dagger was discovered in a Russian search of our home, my family was taken for questioning at the local Red Army headquarters in Puggen. They were only released after undergoing an extensive interrogation.
Perhaps the greatest risk for civilians came in situations where they encountered Russian troops while they were alone. Stories circulated about individuals who had been intentionally run down by Soviet trucks while innocently bicycling down the road. The situation was also perilous for those who lived outside the main local village. In the evenings, these families often came into town to avoid risking a nocturnal visit to their isolated farms.
In their absence, however, Red Army soldiers would sometimes plunder their farms, seizing animals and all the property they could haul away. If the animals were too weak to move, the troops beat them. In some extreme instances, they even set the remaining animals loose in an act of sheer hooliganism. In the winter of 1945 to 1946, many stray animals wandered around the landscape.
Every village was governed by a Russian commissar with the assistance of native German Communists who often proved harsher than the foreign occupiers. Under the commissar’s direction, leaflets were printed which specified the provisions that the German farmers were required to deliver. These items included food, clothes, and, most importantly, woolen blankets. If the commissar-appointed German Burgermeister (mayor) failed to fulfill these measures, the Russians would simply go into the farms and seize what they wanted.
After awhile, the confiscation of farms over 100 hectares began. Once the Soviet authorities issued an order
