The protocols contain numerous first- and secondhand descriptions in the period up until late 1944 of executions of soldiers who had supposedly shown cowardice or deserted. As was the case with reports about the executions of partisans, the tales rarely called forth astonishment, outrage, or negative reactions. Listeners were mostly interested in gory or unusual details. Otherwise, the stories were part of the everyday realities of war. Several generals tried to prove their toughness by describing how they lined up soldiers “against the wall” at the front. These officers were by no means fanatic Nazis. Lieutenant General Erwin Menny reported about his assignment in Russia in 1943:
MENNY: I had just taken over a “Division” there, which had newly come from NORWAY, so that it was as yet fresh, and still good. The enemy broke through, simply because a few fellows had run away. Immediately I insisted on fetching the deputy judge advocate general from the Staff at the rear and brought him to the front—his knees were knocking together with fright—and we tried the men directly behind the place where the enemy had broken in and sentenced them immediately and shot them at once, on the spot. That went round like wildfire and the result was that the main defensive line was in our hands again at the end of three days. From that moment on there was quite good order in the “Division.” It acted as a deterrent, at any rate no one else ran away unnecessarily. Of course a thing like that is contagious, it is demoralizing when everyone runs away.
The only response from Menny’s interlocutor, Schlieben, was a question: “Where was that?”695
Of the 17 million men who served in the Wehrmacht, around 80 percent of them were directly involved at some point in the fighting. Nonetheless, not every one of them had the same opportunity to demonstrate heroism, achieve a great victory, or be part of a battle. There were large numbers of radio operators, fuel coordinators, and airplane mechanics—an infantry division even included bakers, butchers, and medical orderlies, who never fired a shot. Their lives were fundamentally different from those of an infantry foot soldier, tank driver, or fighter pilot. Wehrmacht soldiers wanted one thing above all: to be able to do their jobs well, whatever they were. A mechanic who worked on submarines or a sapper in Stalingrad wanted to perform as well as he had in civilian life as a bookkeeper, farmer, or carpenter. And the ethos of wanting to do good work wasn’t the only thing these men transferred to their military lives. They also maintained the same tendency as in any organization to criticize poor working conditions or senseless procedures and orders.
In this sense, Major Alfred Gutknecht complained about administrative inefficiencies that hindered him in his function:
GUTKNECHT: It was the same on the CHANNEL ISLANDS, that was enough to make anyone despair too; there was an incredible number of vehicles there—in the first place there were private cars, on the islands in any case. That’s beyond me, for the islands are only small. There weren’t so many lorries. Then each of them, the army, the GAF, the navy and the “Todt” Organisation, brought their lorries to the islands. So I suggested that they should be combined, that’s to say that armed forces transport pools should be formed, including the “Todt” Organisation. It was not possible, and even Feldmarschall von RUNDSTEDT did not assert his authority.696
