Thousand Days: Fragments of a Soldier's Life of 1939 and 1940 (part 4 of 6)

How to accidentally join the Waffen-SS

read part 1 here, read part 2 here, part 3 here.

At the end of February I was given leave for the second time, the remaining six days. Everyone in Berlin was amazed that I was back and on leave again, everyone praised the life of a soldier and explained with a wistful expression that they themselves were unfortunately “indispensable”¹ and had conscription-exempt status. I spoke to many acquaintances and the six days went by quickly. Among other things, I met a man from the Ministry of the Interior who I knew casually and who was a senior government councilor or something similar at the time. We talked about impressions of the war and reporting on the war, and I told him my thoughts about it. I added that I had not experienced the real war yet, but he was still very interested and respected my journalistic experience. I had the idea that he might be able to get me to be given a certain amount of freedom or a special position in the battalion and to let me report on the deployment and performance of the police battalions in the East.

The next day he called me and actually came back to this conversation. He asked me to get in touch with a group of writers and journalists who had already been selected to be deployed outside of the war correspondents companies of the Wehrmacht units, but in a similar way. He said I should just go to Lichterfelde, which was actually just a stone’s throw from my apartment, to the LAH (Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler²) barracks, which I was taken aback at the mention of. He probably noticed this and added that the accommodation there was only for guests because they did not have any rooms. I went there. I tried to go that afternoon through the gate that I had passed often and as quickly as possible in peacetime, behind which the eternal drill step and loud commands sounde, through which the red brick buildings of the former cadet college shone and through which Field Marshal von Hindenburg had already passed as a cadet. However, I did not succeed, but a guard stopped me, sorted me out very kindly and leniently from a height of two meters and referred me to the watch.

At the station I was asked a series of questions, again from a height of two meters, and I now had the clear awareness that I was in the LAH. A man led me into a side wing, pointed me to a corridor and showed me a door that said: KBK³. This did not make me suspicious yet. I entered and asked for the name I had been given: First Lieutenant Junge. A non-commissioned officer, SS-Unterscharführer, looked me over, I stood in front of him in civilian clothes—it was cold, I was wearing a thick Harris tweed and had my felt hat in my hand—then he said: There is no First Lieutenant Junge here, there is only an SS-Obersturmführer Junge⁴. This made me suspicious. I was brought before a very brisk man, to whom I explained that I was coming at the instigation of an acquaintance to find out what was happening here. He asked me if I was a journalist, and when I had filled this gap in his education and briefly told him about the conversation with the man from the Ministry of the Interior, he became very animated and assured me that everything in best order, and so that I should join his company and come as soon as possible.

These thoughts were a little too quick for me. I reminded him that I was a soldier in the East, whereupon he waved me off lightly and assured me that it would not be any trouble. He then suddenly became very formal, very militarily, and said: “Well, Fernau, the matter will be sorted out. You go back to Poznan to get your things and then report to me here in eight days from today.”

I thought little more about this conversation in the red walls of Lichterfelde because I was sure that Mr. Junge and I would never see each other again. I was not a civilian who could be drafted, I was already a soldier. I returned to Poznan. I climbed the familiar stone steps of the seminary again and also took a look at the notice board to see what was new. The guards were still on duty, the evacuations were still in progress and the course was still running. As I walked past the clerk’s office, the door opened and the first sergeant wanted to step out. When he saw me, he quickly disappeared, then looked out once more and closed the door. Then he screamed my name from inside, which nailed me to the spot, I turned around and entered. He spoke to the company commander, and when I entered, First Lieutenant Neuenberger beckoned me to follow him to his room. The young, modest and always calm and level-headed Neuenberger was quite excited, and a minute later so was I, because he read me a radio message that had been sent to the battalion by the Ministry of the Interior during my leave. It was probably the first time that the Ministry of the Interior sent out a radio message about a private. It read: Private Fernau is to be instantly sent to Berlin. He is hereby transferred to the War Correspondent Company of the Waffen-SS. He must report to his office in Berlin immediately.

I was so astonished by this radio message that at first I could not respond at all. “I regret that you are leaving my company,” the company commander began, “but you are a journalist, aren't you?” I replied: “Yes, sir, first lieutenant.” “Then how did you get into the SS? Have you endeavoured to do that?” “Me,” I blurted out, “no.” “Are you in the General SS?” “No, sir, first lieutenant.” “But you are in the party?” “No sir, first lieutenant.” He gave up. He said goodbye to me very kindly and comradely and called the first sergeant in.

Then I went to my room, where I was already expected and looked at in amazement. Strangely, as I gathered my few things from the nooks and crannies, I felt almost wistful about leaving these things and my first companions of the war. I made it short, I went back the same day. On this journey I saw a man from the Waffen-SS for the first time with awareness and curious interest. He was sitting across from me. He was obviously going on vacation. He was a simple man of about forty, wearing a silver skull and crossbones on a black mirror on his collar. He had a cap on, a worn gray uniform and looked nothing like a Waffen-SS. Over the course of the trip he told me the life stories of many people, his own, those of his family and his acquaintances, and I kept waiting for some sound of the outlandish or the unheard-of. But he was only outrageously average. And so I came to the conclusion that the unit he came from, which called itself “Totenkopf⁵,” was a Waffen-SS guard unit made up of older men. In my memory, the names Leibstandarte and Waffen-SS-Verfügungstruppe had a different, more uncomfortable and incomparably grand sound. My ideas were a bit hazy. The train guards went through the cars and checked the Wehrmacht tickets and the pay books. That is when I saw for the first time that my pay book had a note: discharged from military service with the German police by order of the Ministry of the Interior.

In Berlin I took my time and only went out to Lichterfelde on the third or fourth day—a civilian in a goatee and Harris tweed. This innocent Harris tweed is so worth mentioning because, when I first appeared, it made such a provocative impression on the eyes of my future superiors, who were only used to trench coats and military overcoats, that in their memories it was transformed into a defiant camel hair coat, which they often reproached me for later and for which never forgave me. It took me years until I became wiser and realized that I should have given everything away on my meagre journey from my apartment to Lichterfelde, I should have given away everything: my coat, my beard, my Parker pipe that was stuck in my mouth, and my sports car which I drove out to the barracks. In order to report to Obersturmführer Junge, a man from the office had to fetch him out of a room where he was teaching theoretical lessons. The six men sitting there could just see me through the door. With one or two exceptions, they were all harmless, petty bourgeois gentlemen, on whom I consequently also made an indelible, bad impression. Junge came out, I registered as a corporal, whereupon he snapped at me and assured me that I was trash. I am no longer a police-soldier, but a Waffen-SS, which of course was not on par with the black SS, but I had to realize it nonetheless. I heard this with astonishment and dared to object that I had probably only been transferred for the purpose of carrying out the suggestion I had made at the time and reporting on the deployment of the police battalions. “The structure of our company,” he said, “is completely different than you seem to imagine, and so are our tasks. We have tremendous tasks. Tremendous, I tell you.”

Then he looked at me, pointed to my beard and said: That is disappearing, and to the hair on my head and said, that will be short, very short. What he said were actually relatively harmless things. But as I stood in front of him in the bare hallway, I felt worse and worse. I looked out the window and saw not a street, a house or a garden in front of me, but a sandy, bare barracks yard. My somehow vague dream of soon being a civilian again and like the others who now walked through the streets outside the barracks, as if in another world, almost as if in peace, carefree and completely their own master, talking, greeting, riding the tram, writing , painting and holding their arm for a woman, this nonsensical but so much hoped-for dream had now receded into the distance, and I discovered that everything else suddenly seemed darker and drearier to me, and that it would be incomprehensible to anyone how people could walk around the streets so impassively and cluelessly, how they were able to laugh at all and not see the seriousness. I felt as if I had been sold into the Foreign Legion.

I suddenly felt the need to give myself another deadline and told Junge that I had to go back to Poznan to get some things because I had not been aware of the finality of my transfer. I also had other things to do and asked for a period of eight days. He looked at me with displeasure and then finally gave his consent. I hurried out of the barracks, and got into my car and drove home. But the deadline was in vain: I realized that I was already in a fix and nothing pleased me any more. I did not even know what I could do now. Eight days later I moved into the barracks for good. Without a goatee and without a car. It was a dark, stormy evening. At the last moment, the minutes had become precious and precious to me; I only arrived a quarter of an hour before curfew. I went to the office where, behind a dim light, the deputy of a deputy sat while everyone else had left and gave me the room and bed number. I walked down the long, echoing corridor again, found the room number and entered. It was a large, old, austere barracks room with six beds, three cupboards, six stools and a table. Two men my age were sitting there eating like animals. I can’t call it anything else. They had torn open all the available boxes and cans and were hastily stabbing into everything and across like xylophonists with their forks and stuffing it into their mouths, one of them reading a book about Russia entitled “Sleep Faster, Comrade.”

The mood was dark. As I entered, the two of them looked up from their hasty meal and called out my name with their mouths full, in a tone that sounded like, oh, look, oh look! I did nog know either of them. They choked down their bites and then greeted me, where I realized that I knew them by name. They themselves had long since been informed about my coming. They were among the six who had already seen me through the crack in the door. Now they felt my chin and joked about my goatee. I have to say, I was very surprised. They were the same age as me, about thirty, one was Mungo Schuster, a journalist and academic who was quite well known under a pseudonym, the other was the illustrator and humorist Waldl Hofmann from Hitler’s birthplace Braunau, a man with a Ferdinand Hodler and Egger Leinz head on high, broad shoulders, who I later learned to appreciate and respect very much. But that evening they were ghostly figures for me. They immediately began putting away their cans and cups, covering the entire table with paper, and then frantically wiping their boots. While I put my suitcase away and spread my blankets on my straw bed on the top bunk, they began dusting with cloths and rags under the cupboards, on the edges of the tables, on the windowsill and on all the boards. Then the forty-year-old Mungo rubbed the window panes with paper. He then took off his clothes, let the wind blow and climbed into the upper bed opposite me. He jumped up with a very youthful leap, but he hit his shin terribly. The alpine human model Waldl Hofmann followed him into the adjacent upper bed. I also undressed and went to bed. At that moment two more roommates came in who were completely new to me: one, who went by the name Schmidt, had come to us as a photography- and camera-assistant at for some Berlin business. He was a phlegmatic man, which must have been good for him, because he soon needed all the equanimity he could get. On the first day of his combat mission, the French shot him in the spine, leaving him paralyzed. He knew nothing of this at the time, however, but seemed to be enjoying a cheerfully spent day and thinking about the next. He rummaged around in a large leather suitcase in which cameras and lenses were safely stored, and then went likewise to bed. His companion was a short man of about thirty, with the appearance of a forty-year-old and the disposition of a twelve-year-old. His name was Kumrov, and that was exactly what he was⁶. Ever since, I have associated this name with the idea of an extremely simple, but at the same time very foolishly self-confident and boastful peasant face with protruding ears and red cheeks. He kept what he promised. He came from a village where, as a one-eyed man, he was probably king among a lot of blind people. He constantly compromised us with an obnoxious enthusiasm for cleaning and drilling, and developed many unpleasantly rude qualities that were previously found in non-commissioned officers. At the same time, he was basically self-conscious and good-natured, and I would certainly not give him so many bad attributes if he did not have to be punished for not enlisting in the artillery from his farming village, as God had destined for him. He had experience repairing radios and did a little plumbing. Given the complete vacuum of good specialists, all of whom were already in Wehrmacht’s war correspondent companies or “indispensable” [conscription-exempt], this seemed for everyone to be sufficient training to become radio technicians in the SS-War Correspondent Company. This principle was used very frequently over the years and was one of the worst cancers of the propaganda troops of the German armies.

I did not need to know which bed belonged to Kumrov, and he did not need to stand in front of it for so long, adoring and complacent: it was the best, the most correct, the most immaculate. The blankets and pillow were dead straight and as if ironed. Stiff as a board, I thought. Then Kumrov reached in and actually pulled out two boards over which his pillow and comforter were stretched. I had a bad impression. I asked myself the question: Why?, and this question had a very special justification because I knew that what Kumrov was doing was forbidden in the life of a soldier.

Outside, the wind beat the branches of the trees against each other and whistled around the corners. There was a draft through the two high windows. I crawled a little deeper under my snow-white blankets and remembered that I could probably endure what Paul von Hindenburg had endured. At the stroke of ten the trumpeter’s curfew call sounded, which we had often heard over the roofs of the city in peacetime. “Soldiers must go to sleep...” It aroused wistful feelings in the lonely man in the upper bed by the window. The trumpet had died away when the door opened and a stocky, medium-sized, rather small figure with a somewhat bullish neck and a broad face with Slavic cheekbones entered, wished everyone good evening and then saw me in bed. The figure was apparently not prepared for me at all, didn’t know me well, but had known me for a long time from a publishing house, and uttered sounds of extreme surprise and joy at having found a person from the other world again. This man had once been an advertiser before his passopm for higher things broke through and he proved to the press chamber of the Third Reich that he was worthy of becoming an editor by writing and copying countless short stories, some of which had quite gruesome outcomes. The war tore him away from the preliminary stage, his position as a volunteer and editor-in-training at the staid farmers’ and huntsmens’ newspaper “The Green Post,” where greater minds such as Bruno H. Bürgel had already made their fortune. That same evening, lying in the bed beneath me, he told me his story and I learned how he had been drafted into the police, then assigned to the vice squad and given for six months the task of arresting homosexuals. That was his military service until he was also discovered during the search operation on the occasion of the founding of the SS-War Correspondent Company and was drafted as a remannt of specialists who had not yet been assigned. He was neither a party member nor warlike in any way. He later proved this several times at the front. We were taken out of his story by a Sturmmann, whose demeanor and steel helmet showed me that he was a corporal from the service. He was an old active member of the Leibstandarte, on loan to the War Correspondent Company, a gaunt fellow with a bad character. He had barely set foot in the room when he started shouting and raving, ran his finger under the stove and found dust there, and then got the person who was on room duty, Mungo Schuster, out of bed and had him clean the whole room again. I rested my chin in my hand and was watching him from a height of two meters. When he noticed this, he shouted at me that this wasn’t a circus, but that it was already curfew and I had to sleep, and that he was going to poke my nose. I took my hand away from my nose and pretended to be asleep. I often did that later.

TO BE CONTINUED…

read part 5 here.

1. to the war economy

2. 1st SS Panzer Division

3. War Correspondent Company

4. i.e. “this is not the Wehrmacht, this is the SS”

5. 3rd SS Panzer Division

6. I wasn’t able to find the etymology of the surname “Kumrow”, however there are places called “Kummerow” in Germany, or possibly it is an allusion to Kummerow which was also the name of fictional village in a 1937 best-selling novel “Die Heiden von Kummerow” which depicted the lives of the village boys.