• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 844 0

than most to accept impending defeat, because she had been an ardent Nazi. Brought up in a village near the Dutch border, her family found modest prosperity under Hitler, after much hardship in the 1920s. From 1941 to 1943, she served as a National Socialist propaganda worker in Poland, before coming home to marry a factory book-keeper fifteen years older than herself, and giving birth to a son. In December 1944, they were living near Jünkerath on the Moselle, thirty miles west of Frankfurt. “I was very disheartened,” she said. “I had so much idealism, I had believed so much in Hitler. Now, one could only pray.” They had watched the war come closer by the day. In December, the German armoured columns had streamed past, full of hope, on their way north to participate in the Ardennes offensive. Then occasional bombs began to fall on the town, one of which destroyed the house next door. As her husband August bicycled home from work one day, an American fighter machine-gunned the road. August fled into the forest, and came home full of anger about the cruelty and unfairness of such behaviour. Knowing that worse must come, like many of their neighbours the couple dug a shelter in the woods. By late December, they were spending most nights in it. When American shells began to land near by, the shelter became their home. Maria’s husband left the woods only to search for food.

One night, in the darkness they heard repeated cries of “August! August!” Maria said: “Don’t answer. They want to conscript you again.” They huddled together with the baby, very frightened. Then a torch shone in their faces and a shocked voice exclaimed “Maria!” It was her brother Berndt. His Wehrmacht unit was retreating through the area. The local pastor had told him where his sister was hiding. Now, he began to cry. He had not even known that Maria had a child. He was overcome by the spectacle of his own loved ones cowering in a hole in deep snow. His unit was immobilized for lack of fuel. “You’ve got to get out,” he said, “across the Rhine. This is a battlefield!” Berndt stayed two days with them. He purloined two cans of Wehrmacht petrol to enable them to bribe a passage across the river. One night, somebody stole the stolen fuel. Berndt spent most of their hours together asleep. When at last they parted, he said blankly: “The war’s lost. We’re never going to see each other again,” and disappeared back to his unit, with which he fought until the last days of Berlin.

The family camped in the frozen woods until February, tearing up sheets to make diapers for Hermann the baby, washing in the snow. The artillery fire grew in intensity. A farmer finally took pity and allowed them to sleep in his cellar, giving Maria milk from his cows. Parties of filthy, exhausted soldiers occupied positions close by, bringing lice. Maria was horrified to find the crawling misery upon her baby. They cursed the Americans: “What are they doing here, when they’ve got all the space they need back home?” Some men denounced Hitler. Maria still blamed the Treaty of Versailles. She learned that her home had received a direct hit and was now a ruin.

At last, on 6 March, as she climbed the steps out of the farmhouse cellar to visit the lavatory, she heard the squealing clatter of tank tracks. She felt so overwhelmed by relief that fighting was finished that she fell back down the stairs. “It’s over, it’s over,” she cried. August said more cautiously: “Maybe it’s true that the Americans are here, but the war isn’t finished.” A brusque American voice called down to the cellar for them to come out. They filed out into the daylight, clutching their fears. A U.S. officer lifted aside the baby’s shawl and said something kindly. Maria felt reassured. Later, however, she was shocked by the carelessness with which GIs behaved in the houses. When she saw that men were using washbasins to relieve themselves, she demanded of their sergeant: “Is this how gentlemen behave?” The man laughed and shrugged: “It’s how soldiers behave.” Her son Hermann contracted tuberculosis after his experiences,