Soldiers’ military value systems, their faith in technology, and their immediate social environment were the main factors forming their wartime frame of reference. Yet this does not mean they were completely unaffected by daily events in combat. Even when individual soldiers were not directly involved in them, victories and defeat were constantly present, be it via newspapers, radio, and tales told by their comrades, and soldiers paid keen attention to reports of distant battles, if only because they themselves could always be transferred. Nonetheless, their own direct, personal experiences of war heavily influenced how they interpreted the pivotal events of the conflict. This section will examine how soldiers saw the general context of what they were doing against the backdrop of their frame of reference.
The militarization of the German people and in particular German soldiers was one of the most important goals of both the Nazi and Wehrmacht leaderships and went hand in hand with rearmament. Yet notwithstanding their considerable success in instilling the idea that Germany was in dire need of defense from external threats,417 few Germans reacted with unrestrained enthusiasm at the start of World War II in September 1939. It took the quick victories over Poland, Norway, and especially France, which no one expected to be vanquished so easily, to unleash true euphoria. The intoxication of victory was then consolidated by German successes in Africa and the Balkans.
The mood at this point was especially positive in the Luftwaffe. Conversations between POWs recorded in summer 1940 are dominated by expectations that German troops would soon land in England and free them from captivity. Nearly everyone was certain that ultimate German victory was imminent: “In a month or 6 weeks the war here will be at an end. I definitely believe that the attack will take place this week, or on Monday next.”418 “I believe the war is already won,” said another POW,419 while a third added, “The chances look very rosy that it won’t last long.”420 One Luftwaffe first lieutenant, who’d been shot down early on in the conflict, even started discussing how, after the German conquest of England, he’d like to have some new suits made by fine English tailors.421
Even as German losses mounted, the Battle of Britain was lost, and German invasion plans had to be postponed, most captured German pilots remained obsessed by visions of their own country’s might. In spring 1941, political and military expectations were still very positive, and Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union did nothing to change the mood. On the contrary, most POWs expected a quick German victory on the Eastern Front, after which a somewhat more intense struggle would bring ultimate victory in the West as well. In 1941–42, very few flying units were transferred back and forth between the two fronts, so the numbers of airmen in British POW camps who had served in the East was very small. The surveillance protocols represent an external view of that theater of war. The Wehrmacht’s massive losses in the Soviet Union, German troops’ complete exhaustion in fall 1942, and the murderous following winter are hardly reflected in POWs’ conversations.422
Strategic expectations thus remained constant in 1942, as a statement by Sergeant Willi Zastrau, a W/T operator in Wehrmacht Bomber Wing 2, makes clear:
ZASTRAU: RUSSIA is done for. They’ve got nothing to eat now, since we took the UKRAINE. It won’t be long before we make peace with RUSSIA; then we can go for ENGLAND and AMERICA.423
Only in 1944, when masses of German infantrymen were captured in Italy and France, do the protocols provide valid information about expectations among German army soldiers. A few army troops had been captured as early as 1940, but their numbers were too small to be representative of a specific view of the war. The views that were recorded on tape basically conform to the picture researchers have reconstructed from other sources. Unlike in the Luftwaffe, the euphoria produced in the army by early military triumphs was seriously shaken in 1941–42. Nonetheless, in February 1942, the German military leadership believed that “the dip in troop morale” had been overcome. Examinations of letters sent home had suggested soldiers believed they had “gotten the job done.”424 Surviving the first hardships on the Eastern Front had apparently created a new confidence among “Eastern fighters,” who continued to believe in their own innate superiority to their Soviet enemies.425
