The practical rules of warfare often established norms deviating from international law. That is why the POWs spoke of war crimes in matter-of-fact terms and rarely showed signs of outrage. What offended them most was the behavior of occupied local populaces. The soldiers thought it was essential to take action against any and every form of noncooperation. Such attitudes prevailed as early as October 1940, as illustrated in this exchange:
URBICH: But there one sees how the Gestapo takes up every little thing. Especially how it is working in POLAND now.
HARRER*: In NORWAY too. In NORWAY they have had a lot of work recently.
STEINHAUSER: Really?
HARRER: Yes, someone told me… (int.)
URBICH: Killed a number of Norwegian officers…
HARRER: I’m certain that even when we have actually occupied ENGLAND we shall not be able to walk about (unmolested) as in FRANCE.
STEINHAUSER: I don’t think so. There will be the first attempts. But when every tenth man in a town is executed it will soon stop. That is no problem at all, ADOLF will use all means to nip any franc-tireur activity in the bud. Do you know how they work in POLAND? If only one shot is fired there is trouble. Then the procedure is as follows: From whatever town or district of a town shots have been fired all the men are called out. For every shot fired during the following night, in fact during the following period, one man is executed.
HARRER: Splendid!145
Reflections about the rectitude or proportionality of such forms of extreme violence against civilian populations do not occur in the POWs’ conversations. The soldiers do not think to question their behavior. Their task is to take care of the necessities: “work,” “extreme measures,” and “retribution.” They focus on achieving results, not finding reasons.
Stories about war crimes were part of soldiers’ everyday communication with one another in the same way that tales of shooting down planes and sinking ships were. In and of themselves, atrocities were nothing unusual. Only unusual actions or individual forms of behavior merited telling. One example focused on the mass executions carried out after SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in Poland:
KAMMBERGER: In Poland the soldiers were excused from duty so they could attend the executions, which were public. After the HEYDRICH affair twenty-five to fifty people were executed daily. They stood on a stool and had to put their heads through a noose, and the one behind had to kick the stool away, with the words: “You don’t need that stool, brother.”146
The appeal of this story for the soldier in question rested not in the killings themselves, but in how they were staged. Soldiers were given time off so they could witness the spectacles, and the executions were accompanied by a ritual of humiliation designed especially for the occasion.
Together with tales revolving around unusual acts of violence, stories concerning individuals who distinguished themselves in some way or another also made for good telling. One example is an anecdote related by Private First Class Müller:
