There are countless tales in the surveillance protocols in which speakers emphasized their own achievements within the overall context of a catastrophic defeat. They occur with roughly the same frequency with which stories about the company or the boss crop up in everyday peacetime conversations. Narratives of this sort do not just document the role played by the ideal of “doing a good job” in the perceptions and interpretations of historical actors. They also show that professionalism was a major factor in how soldiers positioned and saw themselves. Civilian and wartime jobs were structurally and psychologically similar. In their narratives, soldiers cited concrete results to reinforce the proposition that they did a good job. Indicators of military success were the number of POWs captured, as in Major Frank’s story, as well as tanks and planes destroyed, ships sunk, and enemies killed. The head of the German navy’s coastal battery at Longues-sur-Mer, Lieutenant Herbert, waged a hopeless battle against the invading Allied armada on June 6 and 7, 1944. Just four days later, in a POW camp, he encountered Colonel Hans Krug, who had led an army regiment in the same episode of the war:
HERBERT: I should like to report to you, sir, that I have sunk a cruiser.
KRUG: Hearty congratulations!
HERBERT: I am extremely proud of having achieved that before being taken prisoner. I didn’t know it myself. But I have had it confirmed from three sides here.
KRUG: Has the “Batterie” been taken?
HERBERT: Yes, the “Batterie” has gone. They shot up one gun after the other from the sea. But I still kept firing with one gun at the end… I had a splendid Flak “Zug” there. My Flak “Zug” shot down sixteen aircraft.698
In Herbert’s mind the success of having sunk a cruiser, of having kept on fighting down to the last gun, and of having achieved sixteen hits outweighed the fact that the Wehrmacht’s most modern shore battery had not been able to hinder the landing of British troops. Indeed, the battery was destroyed by one British and one French cruiser. We have no way of reconstructing why Herbert thought he had sunk a cruiser. It is possible that the British spread misinformation that the lieutenant gladly used, or he may have just been lying in an attempt to impress his interlocutor. In reality, he had not even managed to hit either warship. In addition, we know from British sources that this shore battery surrendered on June 7, 1944, after barely putting up a fight. Herbert’s claim to have fought to the last was pure fiction.
Through the protocols, the narrative tendency is to describe surrounding conditions as particularly dire in order to make one’s own deeds seem more significant. A Lieutenant Simianer asserts that an irresponsible regiment commander had deployed his battalion without heavy artillery and sent them to battle British tanks in July 1944. Yet although his unit had only four bazookas, Simianer claimed that he and his men had destroyed four tanks, and he himself two—which was no doubt considered a notable achievement.699 The upshot of the story was that, although Simianer was burdened by an incompetent superior officer and insufficient equipment, he still did his duty with aplomb.
Stories of this sort served two functions: to vent frustration with the inadequacies of military leadership and military material while raising one’s own status as someone who had achieved success despite inauspicious circumstances. Such narratives are by no means unique to the military. Similar tendencies of perception and presentation can be found in all work situations.
