One should not underestimate it: war can always be deadly for those who are in it!
And those who volunteer for the war will certainly not be at the very back of the troops, but will be sent to the front line.
That's clear. It's clear in my eyes that war has had a lasting effect for generations.
War never lets you go. Even when you're established and have a house and garden, which is what
my parents built in Bonn. It never lets you go.
All snipers, all snipers, when they are back home now, they can't cope with the fact that they have killed people.
Because at night in their dreams, the faces come and they can't get rid of them.
The result is either alcohol or psychotropic drugs or suicide.
And that applies to the entire war. War has very different faces.
But the war that descends on a nation has only one face.
It destroys the people, their history, their self-confidence.
So anyone who still wants to deal with war in any way, or who is an idealist and therefore wants to go there...?
So I have to say, for me that's completely... - I can't even imagine doing something
like that! That's not a movie! That's no fun!
And maybe a bridge is blown up or something - in the movie. But the reality is different.
And every day and every hour is about your own life. And you shouldn't underestimate that.
You can't help someone to be happy.
But I would think twice about it...! You can always say no.
What does war mean? How many people in Germany really know?
Virtual war can be seen in movies or on the news.
The difference is that you are not in the middle of it, but a spectator.
There hasn't been a war in Germany for more than three generations.
NATO countries are now massively arming themselves.
The empty state coffers do not appear to be a problem for the billions spent.
In fact, according to the president of the reservists' association, the Bundeswehr needs replacements for around 1,000
fallen or seriously wounded soldiers per day in the event of war.
That amounts to around 1.1 million in three years.
Since - for the time being - many things are supposed to be voluntary, the Bundeswehr advertises in
schools, at bus stops and during children's programs.
As if it were a well-paid adventure vacation.
But it's about war! It's about killing and being killed! It's about destruction!
These eyewitness accounts are a reminder of what people in Germany experienced who were not bystanders but victims.
Not so-called heroes on any front, but children who still bear psychological wounds today.
I was born in 1932, at the end of the war I was thirteen (years old).
And where were you living when the war broke out?
When the war broke out in Munich, it was very central, not absolutely, but almost in the city center.
So I'm a "sea-born", or born on the coast - in Kranz, East Prussia.
That is the country that has suffered immensely.
And how old was I? When we fled from Kranz, I was about four (three quarters), I was born in February 1940.
My mother then fled in September or took the train out of Kranz because she said the whole thing was falling apart.
After all, we had already heard the booming of the cannons in the distance and saw the burning
Königsberg at night - not us children, but the adults.
The bombers flew over it and flattened everything.
We lived right on the coast - like a paradise, like a paradise!
We were torn out of this paradise, so to speak.
My mother took three children by the hand. We had had a maid.
Only with suitcases, that is, what we had on our bodies, to then take the train to Austria, where her sister lived.
That started in 1943, and then in 1944 there was a lot of bombing, so we had to leave Munich.
Mothers with children under 14 all had to leave.
And if they weren't prepared to do it, then the children were sent off somewhere on their own.
I don't know where, but it wasn't important for us because we left Munich voluntarily.
But it was very difficult to find somewhere to stay.
Normally, nobody who lived in the countryside, that is, outside the city, wanted to move away
from the big city, they didn't want city dwellers.
We were told that they were not suitable for the farm work they did.
Not in the same words, but well, you knew what was meant.
What memories of the war, apart from the thunder of the cannons, apart from the fact that Königsberg - we hardly saw it as
children because we went to bed at night, that there was unrest, that's what they told us. We heard the thunder of the cannons.
But something then emerged that has been with me all my life, so to speak.
This unrest caused by the escape has not simply disappeared, it remains somewhere.
So you never really arrive. You always stay somewhere...
So home, home was something very important for me, and for my two siblings, too.
We talked about our homeland for years afterwards.
I remember that if there was a war, I would have been prepared to go into battle against the Russians as a
young man, to liberate my homeland, so to speak, as a boy.
I remember very well - you probably remember the Hungarian uprising in 1956, when around 80,000 Hungarians lost their lives.
I was 16 years old at the time and I would have been prepared to go to Hungary to fight against the Soviets.
So that's a feeling that was simply there at the time.
Then something else came along that really surprised me.
I saw a movie about the "Wolfskinder". I don't know if you've seen it.
And when I saw this movie, I started crying to an extent that was completely foreign to me. I had never experienced that before.
That was a man crying, but really, I was crying so hard that the tears were flowing.
My wife was completely shocked: "What's wrong with you?"
"I saw a movie here about the wolf children."
And then I realized that there was something inside me that had been destroyed.
Even this suffering, these fears, they have been played up at this moment, so to speak, through this movie.
That was a documentary movie - about these children.
These children appeared and talked about themselves, their lives and how they had been doing.
I met people in Kranz itself, when the Russians had taken Kranz, what they had experienced there was terrible.
The boys - maybe ten, eight years old or a little older - took the bodies from the fences.
That means that people came out of the cellars and then had nothing to eat and then froze to death, clinging to the fences.
And these people then took them to the cemetery, as young people, to bury them.
I also know about rape, for example.
I had... We had a Red Cross nurse... - but it all happened after the war, that is, the experiences of the people.
But there was also, it must be said, a desire for justice, that the Russian Nachalnik or mayor
was quite friendly towards the German children.
There wasn't much he could do. People were starving, they died simply because they had nothing to eat, they froze to death.
I can only tell you what happened in Kranz from what I heard afterwards.
So thousands and thousands of the inhabitants were killed, raped.
I know of one story, for example - if that interests you, I don't know?
A heavily pregnant woman was simply taken from her room, pulled by her legs down the stairs by Russian soldiers.
Or a boy of about 16/15 years old, on whose stomach a Russian soldier performed his dance until his intestines came out.
But I haven't experienced that personally, but I know from people who have, who have told me.
Towards the end of the war we were in the countryside.
And a very poor, rather improperly designed extension - twelve square meters for four people, i.e. three children and mom.
And that was... The farm was facing the road, it went down a slope and we were up there.
And this room, where we lived, was attached.
At the backside of the farm and towards the orchard.
And there was also a narrow road, but it wasn't paved or anything. Just like that...
And we were practically completely isolated.
So nobody went for a walk - at most maybe during the day, they didn't have time for it -
if so, it was someone who didn't have to work.
And at the end of the war, a whole battalion came from the Waffen SS.
I don't know if that tells you anything. It was a special force that also had special tasks.
They weren't actually very public, I have to say, you didn't find out what they were doing. But they were feared.
And the people were scattered all over the village, they had some kind of accommodation, I don't know where. I didn't go there.
But we had lived outside the farm, which was just - this old house that stood there, it was just an extension.
We had to go all the way around the outside of the orchard and then into the courtyard to the toilet.
It was just a very simple one, you could say an outhouse.
And then there were soldiers there, and one of them suddenly grabbed me by the wrist because I had to
go to the toilet and wanted to pull me into the barn.
And I somehow had the feeling that he wasn't up to anything good with me.
And I screamed, murderously, which is not usually my way of coming out like that.
And then, thank God, one of the farmer's daughters came and went straight for him - she was a strong girl - and said:
"You let go of the child! But right away! Otherwise I'll get everyone together and then you'll be in a bad way!"
And he was probably so surprised, I don't know, anyway, he really let go of me, she grabbed me and led me to my mom.
And yes, I just missed the point.
And that happened to me again later, when someone also protected me.
We were back in Munich again.
And it was always the case that there was always no electricity.
So if you went into a house entrance when it was winter, towards evening, you didn't see anything.
So you only knew your way around because you had already lived there for a while.
And I just wanted to go into the house and it was never locked, because it wasn't possible, nobody had a key from downstairs...
And he was standing in the entrance to the house where I wanted to go in.
And then he tried to drag me into it.
I screamed terribly again, and then luckily a young man came out of the neighbour's
house, I knew him, he was a bit older than me.
And he knew him, too, and immediately approached me, snatched his hand away and said:
"And if you ever approach that girl again, she's my girlfriend, I'll beat the living daylights out of you!"
And then he disappeared without a sound. Thank goodness!
So my father came back, I was the first to see him - completely emaciated.
He probably, I don't know exactly, he never said anything about it, escaped from the Rhine meadows, so he
must have had the opportunity. He was totally emaciated.
And he didn't actually say much about what he had experienced and about the National Socialist era.
The ones that came back from the war, either they were wounded or they were traumatized, basically almost all of them, unless
they somehow had a special job that I don't know about now.
A childhood friend of my mother's, who once visited us, who was imprisoned in France, he also told us that the
prisoners who were there, I think it was somewhere near the Mediterranean, there was a prison camp.
And then they were given cucumber soup every day instead of food and then about half the camp had dysentery .
And then they died bit by bit, logically enough, because nobody can stand it.
It was also a way to finish people off.
He didn't say very much about himself, but he died a year later after visiting us. I don't know what he died of.
But as I said, they were all sick, all of them.
Because with "nutrition", in quotation marks, you won't survive.
Then he probably didn't even tolerate the food when he was back home with his wife. So even if he didn't get much.
And I don't know what it was like, whether they took into account the fact that they had been in captivity for a long
time, that they were perhaps given more food vouchers or...
I don't know, so I didn't know anything about that and I haven't heard anything.
But all of them should normally have been examined in hospitals. Was that done?
I believe they lacked the materials, the people, and the equipment; it was all a state of emergency.
There's a story. My eldest sister - a man came to us, knocked on the door and asked: "Haven't you got any bread?"
And then my mother said: "No, we don't have any bread." - We needed the bread ourselves.
And then my eldest sister screamed and said, "Mom, you can't just let that man go like that."
And then my mother relented and gave the man a loaf of bread. That was the time back then.
And my mother did it as well as she could.
And we also had to see for ourselves how we got the food.
My parents were then given a piece of garden land by the town of Alfeld and had to cultivate it themselves.
We would then go stubbling in the fields with our mother .
And we also stole turnips and of course had to make sure that the field guards, who were armed, didn't catch us.
Of course they wouldn't have shot us, that's quite clear, but they would have chased us away.
to steal turnips in order to make syrup from them.
My father wrote in his diary that we were all undernourished.
We were so malnourished that we got intestinal diseases - roundworms and so on and so forth.
And then I myself, because I got TB , a hilar gland TB , I had to go to Kleinwalsertal, in Austria, to recover.
That's how it was. Then, above all, I remember the so-called cornbread very clearly.
I don't know if you've ever heard of it.
So instead of grain, there was corn from the Americans.
It didn't taste good at all, we didn't like it.
In the first year or two, you had to come to terms with it.
There was no butter either, that's quite clear, there was margarine.
There was no honey either, there was artificial honey.
We were surrounded by blocks of flats and ruins.
In Essen, for example, we also used to cut bricks.
I don't know if you know this term.
So you fetch bricks from the rubble, hammer them into shape and so on.
Or collecting scrap metal, for example, and then using the money to buy milk. I did that as a boy, of course.
To help feed the family, if you like.
That's how it was. We even went so far as to smash the downpipes of the gutters with a hammer to get at the
cast iron, because the cast iron was particularly valuable.
We were given food vouchers at the beginning of the war - that's what they were called.
And for everyone in the family - so children under six got more, babies got a bit more and also something
else - but whether that was baby food, I can't say.
Yes, and the adults, it was really spartan. It was never filling.
Potatoes were only available if someone was selling potatoes somewhere.
You were never sure where you had to go to get something. So as long as we were staying in Munich.
It was just as difficult in the countryside. The farmers didn't want to give anything away.
So you had some things to swap that they liked, then they gave you something, but then the next time you didn't have anything.
Because at some point, all supplies become obsolete.
So I already know what hunger looks like - and how it feels ...
I can certainly confirm that.
So my father had to see that he kept the family alive.
And then he spied for the Americans and British in the East. That gave him the money for the family.
This is clear from his diary and how difficult it was for him.
He couldn't travel by car, he had to cross the border and so on, and then somehow spend the night in the train stations.
So it hadn't been that easy for him.
He later had an office in Munich and also in Berlin.
So the Allies were very pleased with his reports - he could write very well.
And the rapes were always reported.
And we also got to know people we lived with.
For example, in Essen in the block of flats where we were later housed.
My parents then moved to Essen because my father had taken over the business desk of the "Neue Ruhrzeitung" newspaper there.
We children knew that, we knew that. And the women's faces had never been happy again.
That has stuck in my mind. An aunt of ours was deported to Siberia.
Dozens of young Germans died in her arms. She also wrote poems about them.
They are all facing west, she said.
They always wanted to look to the west, where the sun sets, where Germany is.
This life with the Russians was incredibly hard.
This post-war period was, I say, we as refugees from the East were not particularly, I say,
welcomed by the local population. That didn't exist.
We had to share things with the locals.
Sharing living space, sharing clothes, sharing food and so on and so forth.
One of the worst situations was this bunker, this air-raid shelter in Nockherberg.
A cellar vault in the mountain, built for drinks, mainly wine early on and then beer later.
And there was an alarm and - the whole thing was already pretty close, you knew that - and then we just went in, my
grandmother and I, there were only two of us, and then there were, I found out afterwards, 3,000 people.
And when the alarm went off, people panicked and ran for the exit.
And there were about ten or even more, I don't know exactly, people trampled - literally...
And of course that was terrible! We only heard about it afterwards.
And the air was so bad in there that some of them fell over, of course, not quite far onto the floor, so the others
walked away a bit and then they fell onto the floor and then they didn't climb over them, but probably onto the people.
I can't imagine what it was like any other way.
Yes, that's not a nice thing to happen at that time, when I was only eleven ...
I think that was 1943, when it really got going.
Then phosphorus bombs were dropped, which burst when they hit the ground and all the
phosphorus ran out, and it burned immediately.
And then the whole street where we lived was on fire and the flames were already leaping up.
And then everyone, my older brother and I and my mom, we had to go to the windows and put out the window frames, because if the
flames had gone up, then all our window frames would have been burnt and the panes would have
shattered and then there would have been nothing left.
And that's no longer particularly pleasant, because you didn't get any windows.
That was the most you needed, if you didn't get something as a present from someone or had relatives who had something
like that, then yes, you just had to live as it was, whether you had window panes or not in winter, it didn't matter ...
We even lived in an apartment without windows after the war, because you didn't get anything. And there were no windows.
So I think they sold them on the black market, but in real life you couldn't get a window pane anywhere that someone bought.
And did you have the impression during the war that the war took children into consideration?
I didn't get that impression.
Because when we were still in the countryside, we had to take out potatoes and turnips when all the
refugees came from the East so that they could be fed.
And that's when the planes fired at us. They went so far down that you could see the men's heads in the cockpit.
They weren't aiming directly at us, but you don't know that as a child. You just think he wants to shoot me.
I was running for my life, so I thought I wouldn't make it.
And once, that was during the war, I had to go to the dentist.
I wouldn't have been able to walk to the next town because it was so hot.
It was pretty hot in the summer and as I said earlier, 30 degrees was nothing special.
I had to have a tooth extracted. And then I cycled back again.
We still had a bike, but they stole it from us later.
And then another one came down in a plane.
The cornstalks were quite tall, so I just walked straight into the field, threw myself onto
the stalks and simply tossed the bike aside.
And then he shot at me again.
And a third time it happened, there were a whole lot of people, because that was the harvest from the hop poles, where
the hop cones come down, so what you need for brewing beer.
And that's when the planes came. And that's how it was, this hop garden was quite close to the forest.
And the further away you were from the forest, the longer you had to walk.
They also went down again, so I thought they were about to crash.
Because back then hops were hung up with wires, which is completely different today.
And these poles that held these wires were quite high.
And after the planes were so far down and you could already see the heads of the crew members in there, we
thought, for God's sake, they're not going to fall down there.
We ran like madmen, everyone made sure they got into the forest.
And then they just shot up and down, back and forth.
We were so scared, it was crazy!
I never want to experience something like that again! So, I think now it will hopefully never happen again.
Today they also have other weapons and stuff. But that was a bad thing.
So as a young theology student I was also in an orphanage, we also had to visit an orphanage.
I had been part of a group of theology students.
And we listened to everything and so on, went home again, and a young guy arrived, maybe about eight or nine
years old, put his arms around me and said "Dad" to me.
And that went through my heart - like a knife! You can't even imagine.
And I said at the time that if I ever got married, I would adopt two children. And that's what I did.
So you know, this sadness when you play with children, outside in Alfeld for example, or in Essen for example,
and they don't have fathers, there's something missing!
The mothers can't compensate for that, of course they did, it's quite clear, but that's very important.
And this grief touched me very, very deeply, including this embrace.
The ruined properties. The foul smell, for example.
I remember when we came from Kranz, we were first in Alfeld, that's right, and I had
to go to Hanover for an X-ray examination.
And then I saw a destroyed city. That was a shock for me.
You can't even imagine that. These are my experiences.
And the cripples on the streets, yeah, sure.
But that was different. As far as the cripples were concerned, we had defended ourselves.
That's why he lost his arm, that's why he lost his leg, that's why he became a mouth painter, or a painter with his feet.
We respected the people.
So this feeling that the whole social fabric is falling apart.
After the First World War, we also had those ten years, the Weimar Republic, as you know, how people
were gutted and the whole moral decline that set in.
Of course, this also existed after the Second World War in a certain sense, but not as strongly, in my opinion.
I couldn't live near the airport, it would put a strain on me.
It's not just the noise, but the memories.
And those were terrible memories. So after the war, it was already a few years where that was present every night.
That then dissipated somewhat over time, thank goodness.
But when I hear a lot of powered airplanes, which there sometimes are at times, and if they're just flying
advertising or something, that's extremely suspicious to me.
I don't like that. It reminds me of those times, and they were anything but nice.
And that was when the first phosphorus incendiary bombs came down, they fell right into a
coal store. That was twice as bad, of course.
And the house on the other side, well, the street wasn't that wide, and of course the flames – the
phosphorus – went over there and then the whole house burned.
And that's when people died. That was it...
Yes, and then they just put them in the coal cellar.
And we wanted to get something to heat us, because it wasn't necessarily - it was in the fall,
but despite all that, it was already pretty cold.
And the children went over there and wanted that, it wasn't far away, and they each had a bucket in their hand.
And then we stood there and didn't know what to say.
We didn't cry, but it was a real shock!
And what would you say to young people or current decision-makers from your experience that they should consider
before they start advertising and arming for war again?
I would just advise everyone not to get involved with war if at all possible.
You can't describe something like that. I can tell you about it, but you don't know the feelings and what you
have to experience, whether you'll survive it at all.
When we were still in Munich, we had to go down to the cellar every night because the bombs were always coming down.
So you never had a night where you could sleep through the night as a child.
It's a real drama, you can't imagine.
And those who are then out in the field, who have practically no opportunity to say, I don't like this, I'm leaving.
That's impossible! They'll be shot. That was quite normal...
I can only say one more thing, because I'm talking about shooting.
After the war, at the end of the war, when it was already one hundred percent certain that the war was lost in any case and
that there was nothing more to be gained, they gathered together all the old people, i.e. those over 60, who were the old people
for Hitler, and the young people over 14 for the "Volkssturm".
And then they still had to try to stop the "enemy" - in quotation marks.
You can imagine how a 14-year-old feels when he is equipped with a rifle to defend the so-called homeland.
And the 60-year-olds weren't exactly at the top of their game either.
And then at the end of the war, when the Americans marched in on us, they noticed that some boys, 14-year-olds, wanted to flee.
They no longer wanted to stand up to anyone, they were afraid and wanted to go home.
They caught them and hung them from the nearest tree... It doesn't get any more brutal than that!
I have spoken to two officers, high-ranking officers.
I visited one of them in his barracks. I told them that:
"You must not release your recruits for foreign missions!
Keep them at home! Tell them to stay at home!"
It's voluntary anyway. They have understood that.
And when you see all these traumatic injuries that these soldiers are receiving, who have now been injured by this Afghan deployment
and elsewhere, then you can say, guys, it's your own fault!
You have to ask, what is the motive for these boys? There are three motives.
There is a youthful idealism that is innate.
But this young person is then seduced. He thinks he's doing something good, but it's nothing good!
This war in Afghanistan has also shown that.
Then there are the young people who don't care about anything anyway, they're not interested at all.
And then there is the one who does it out of a thirst for adventure.
So he sits in a tank or has a gun in his hand and feels powerful - a master over death and life. That is also a seduction!
And then there are other young people who say to themselves, well, if I join the army now, then I don't need to worry.
I have a permanent job, I get my salary and at some point I'll have my pension. That's it.
One should not underestimate: War can always be deadly for those who are in it!
And those who volunteer for the war will certainly not be at the very back of the troops, but will be sent to
the front line. And it's always life-threatening there!
It's not fun, it has nothing to do with any movies or other things you might read somewhere for fun or something.
War is a very hard and, as I said, life-threatening thing.
I can't recommend anyone to go there - and "defend the fatherland", as the saying
goes - you can also think a bit selfishly.
In my eyes, it's clear that the war has a lasting effect for generations. The war never leaves you.
Even if you're established and have a house and garden, that's what my parents built in Bonn.
It never lets you go. You keep coming back to it, that's quite clear.
And if anyone now thinks that there are reports about it, I have also heard some of them from people.
I also have an archive at home - traumatization of Bundeswehr soldiers in Afghanistan. They can't cope with it.
First with their injuries, but then also because there is no one to honor them for giving
their lives. For what? What's this nonsense?
Then it's like this, and this is also very important for young people to know: There are snipers, trained snipers.
They are soldiers, normal soldiers, they are also part of an army.
All snipers, all snipers, when they are back home now, will not be able to cope with the fact that they have killed people.
Because at night in their dreams, the faces come and they can't get rid of them.
The result is either alcohol or psychotropic drugs or suicide. And that applies to the entire war.
But even those who... - even the German snipers, the American snipers - the German snipers who had defended the Fatherland and
had defended it well, they couldn't cope with it. That is clear.
They won't be able to cope with the other things either.
When you see a comrade burnt to death in a tank and so on, all these terrible images, young people
never let go of them, not for the rest of their lives.
I heard that from the teacher, from the one teacher, didn't I, who had his brains splashed into his face, so to speak,
in Russia, during a Russian mission, where a grenade blew his comrade to pieces. And he told me about it at school.
Of course, there were also some who thought that was quite good. So both are possible.
At which front distance you stood, whether it was successful or not, depending on the situation.
War has very different faces.
But the war that descends on a nation has only one face:
It is destroying the people, their history, their self-confidence.
Yes, there are now drones that are impossible for a normal person to assess.
You will definitely fall by the wayside.
You don't need anything special anymore. All the equipment that was there before is now obsolete.
And now, either nuclear bombs or drones are also destroying humanity.
So if you still want to deal with war in some way, or if you are an idealist and want to go there...
So I have to say, for me that's completely... - I can't even imagine doing something
like that! That's not a movie! That's no fun!
And maybe a bridge is blown up or something - in the movie.
But the reality is different, every day and every hour is about your own life!
And you shouldn't underestimate that! You can't help anyone to be happy.
But I would think twice about it... You can always say "no".
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