He said it was incredible the way the Russians fought. They let us approach to within three metres and then mow us down. “Can you imagine,” he said, “letting us come right up on top of them. When we capture any of them, we make an end of them at once; we hit them over the head with our rifle-butts.” They (the Russians) dig themselves in in the fields and every inch of the grounds has to be fought for. They used not to do that at first, they used to perch up in the trees and shoot down on our men. He said you wouldn’t believe how fantastically the devils fought. He said it’s appalling what’s going on in RUSSIA.170
In German soldiers’ eyes, there was nothing criminal about their behavior toward the Red Army, even though it, too, clearly violated international law. Soviet misbehavior was justification enough for German troops to execute prisoners, and almost no one, it seems, saw any alternatives.
Thus, within the first weeks of Nazi Germany’s campaign against the Soviet Union, new customs of war that flouted international law were established. The exercise of violence was not static, but rather constantly in flux—depending on structural, personal, and situational conditions. In the fall of 1941, for example, the extreme violence of the summer receded. But no sooner had the Eastern Army been compelled to beat a chaotic retreat in the winter of 1941–42, than they once again began regularly executing POWs who could not be transported.171 Phases of escalation and de-escalation would continue until the end of the war.
The surveillance protocols contain scattered instances in which soldiers describe refusing to commit war crimes against prisoners. An SS Second Lieutenant (Untersturmbahnführer) named Schreiber recounted one such story, including a description of his shock at a prisoner’s murder:
SCHREIBER: We once took a man prisoner and the question arose as to whether we should shoot him from behind. He was 45 years old. He crossed himself and murmured “ra ra” (imitating murmured prayer) as though he knew. I couldn’t shoot. I imagined him as a husband with a family and children probably. I said in the office “I won’t do it.” I went off. I could no longer look at him.172
Significantly, the interlocutor here—Navy Lieutenant Bunge—expects a different end to Schreiber’s story, one in which the SS man does indeed end up “putting down” the Russian POW. Killings of that sort were common in soldiers’ conversations, and it was far more unaccustomed when they did
When I was at RIGA, I needed a few Russian prisoners to clean up the place, I went and got a few—five of them. Then I asked the soldier what I should do with them when I was finished with them and he said: “Shoot them down and leave them there.” But I didn’t do that, I took them back again to where I’d got them from. You can’t do a thing like that.173
We have no way of knowing whether stories of this kind are true or not, but they occur very rarely in the protocols. This fact should not be mistaken for evidence that humane treatment of POWs or occupied populations happened any more or less frequently in real life than it did in soldiers’ conversations. It merely documents that behavior which today would be considered humane played a very minor communicative role among the POWs. Stories relating what we consider inhumane acts, often told in the first person, were much more frequent than ones describing what would be deemed “good” behavior under contemporary norms.
