Soldaten полностью

This excerpt is an extraordinary document. Adolf Hitler—or the “leader,” as he is termed throughout the surveillance protocols—is simultaneously deemed Germany’s great benefactor and its grave-digger.

How could these two contradictory positions coexist? Were the POWs schizophrenic? Most certainly not. On the contrary, this short dialogue illustrates the diverse aspects of Germans’ faith in the Führer. Wöffen and Vetter’s conversation took place in March 1945, when it was obvious Germany was crashing to defeat. Doubts about Hitler’s military acumen had been growing since 1943. Nonetheless, despite Germans’ dissolving confidence in final victory, their belief in their Führer and the cult of personality surrounding Hitler remained intact for an astonishingly long time. Not even the imminent demise of the Third Reich could shake this quasi-religious faith. This may seem incomprehensible, but it can be explained if one considers what were perceived as Hitler’s enormous triumphs in Germany and abroad. That fed into the stylization of the Führer as a divine savior who negated the perceived injustice of the Treaty of Versailles and allowed (non-Jewish) Germans to once again feel proud of their country.

On March 7, 1936, slightly more than three years after becoming German chancellor, Hitler held a speech in the Reichstag in which he claimed that in the short time of his reign, Germany had regained its “honor,” having “rediscovered a faith, overcome its greatest economic crisis and finally begun a new cultural renaissance.”⁴⁷⁹ In an election twenty-two days later, the Nazi Party received 98.9 percent of the votes. Even though the polling was by no means democratic, there was no doubt, as historian Ian Kershaw writes, that the majority of Germans stood behind their Führer. Even today, people who experienced Hitler recall the prewar years of Nazi Germany as a “good” or “pleasant” time. And the concrete, palpable achievements credited to Hitler were indeed impressive. Kershaw writes: “To most observers, both internal and external, after four years in power the Hitler regime looked stable, strong, and successful.”⁴⁸⁰

POW Vetter was referring to precisely these qualities. The fact that the Third Reich was collapsing did not automatically diminish Hitler’s status. He remained the primary figure with whom Germany identified precisely because they distinguished him from National Socialism and the other party elites. Vetter articulated the entire emotional power carried by the Third Reich—everything non-Jewish Germans saw in the National Socialist project and were prepared to invest in it emotionally. Germans’ faith in their own greatness, which Hitler personified, seemed to pay dividends even up until the final days of World War II.

Vetter and Wöffen weren’t the only POWs to judge the historical achievement of the Führer independently of Germany’s defeat and collapse. SS Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer, for instance, proclaimed: