NIWIEM*: I must say, sometimes we didn’t behave too well in FRANCE. In PARIS I have seen our soldiers seize girls in the middle of a restaurant, lay them over the table and…! Married women too!338
Higher-ranking officers, in particular, were prone to condemn the excesses of men under their command:
MÖLLER: I, as “Gruppenkommandeur” sometimes have to take action in connection with venereal diseases. On the day I was shot down one of my best pilots reported sick with venereal diseases. This man had just returned to the “Gruppe” from 4 weeks marriage-leave. I said to him “you are a swine”! He’ll be glad that I did not return from the flight for I’d certainly have held him responsible.339
Complaints of this sort were hardly infrequent. Navy Captain Hans Erdmenger, commodore of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla, remarked bitterly in a 1943 disciplinary report about his unit: “The use of French bordellos has assumed an intensity that violates a healthy development of soldierly personality. Above all, the bordellos are being frequented not just by the younger generation, the 18- to 20-year-olds, but increasingly by lower-level officers. The sense of hygiene, the behavior due toward women and the understanding of the importance of healthy family life for our German people are suffering under this.” Erdmenger, a National Socialist true believer, was shocked when the first thing two of his soldiers did after returning from marriage leave was to visit a bordello.340
Massive sexual violence caused even greater outrage among many soldiers than visits to the local bordello:
REIMBOLD: One thing I can tell you directly, there’s no rumor about it. In the first officers’ quarters where I was held prisoner, there was a very stupid young lieutenant from Frankfurt, a real snot-nose. Eight of us were sitting around a table talking about RUSSIA. And he said: “We got hold of a female spy who was running around in the area. We hit her on the noggin with a stick and then flayed her behind with an unsheathed bayonet. Then we fucked her, threw her out, shot at her and, while she was lying on her back, lobbed grenades. Every time we got one close, she screamed. In the end, she died, and we threw her body away.” And imagine this! There were eight German officers sitting at the table with me all laughing their heads off. I couldn’t stand it. I got up and said, “Gentlemen, this goes too far.”341
Reimbold claims to be outraged by a story he attributes to an external person of reference. Events of this sort of brutality are usually narrated secondhand. Some further examples:
