Pact with the devil he f.., p.1
Pact with the Devil: He fought for the Führer, page 1
PACT
WITH THE
DEVIL
He Fought for the Führer
Copyright © Jeffrey Scott Steel 2023
First published 2023
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission.
All inquiries should be made to the publishers.
Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia
Phone: 1300 364 611
Fax: (61 2) 9918 2396
Email: info@bigskypublishing.com.au
Web: www.bigskypublishing.com.au
Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions
Author: Jeff Steel
Title: Pact with the Devil: He Fought for the Führer
ISBN: 978-1-922896-49-0
A catalogue record for this
book is available from the
National Library of Australia
PACT
WITH THE
DEVIL
He Fought for the Führer
Jeff Steel
Contents
Genesis
To begin at the beginning
Into the Hitler Youth
Brains, Brawn and Beauty
I learn how the system works
The road to Olympia
Olympic Games, August 1936
Oh, brave new world!
Out of the dark valley, 1937–1940
THAT Sunday afternoon
The road to hell
Into the abyss
The open door
Latvia and Lithuania, August 1941: ‘We are invincible’
Sebesch (I think), August 1941: The going gets tougher
October 1941: The game changes completely
‘Devil’s Island’, November 1941
‘Devil’s Island’ and the ‘Demjansk Pocket’, November 1941
‘Devil’s Island’, December 1941: Deliver us from evil
Pskov, February 1942
Heim ins Reich (Home into the Reich), March 1942
The quiet time, March 1942 – July 1943
July 1943: The game changes
November 1943: Welcome to the bomber war
The English are coming!
15 February 1944
To the Butterfront! 16 February 1944
The Forbidden Zone and the Shadow Language
The invasion!
July 1944: Captivity
Epilogue
Author’s note: The real-world ‘Max’
Select bibliography
About the Author
Genesis
I never wanted to tell my story. No! The feeling was stronger. I positively wanted not to tell my story. Like the thousands or millions who took part, I did not want those things in my head. Those facts, those memories, those horrors had lain forgotten. They were suppressed, submerged under concrete, behind barbed wire, frozen beneath the depths of Mother Russia, beneath the piles of rubble in Berlin and the wreckage of innocent ruined towns in Normandy.
Suppressed and forgotten is where I wanted it – where all of us wanted it – buried forever. After five decades I had made a reasonable job of banishing those memories. I had developed psychological tricks to divert my attention away from the ghosts when they arose. They did arise and, as time went on, with greater frequency and greater urgency. The way a person might emphasise a word could catapult a memory from hell. Or it could be a smell passing a butcher’s shop or a sharp noise in the night. I suppose we lucky few who survived had to develop those tricks. It was important to shift your mind away and slam shut the door on memory. Those who couldn’t were in for a bleak life.
I suppose things began to hot up, oh, six weeks after my diagnosis. My 30-year-old granddaughter Karoline spoke to me. It was a Sunday lunch at the house of Magdalena, my daughter, her mother. There was this television programme on the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (North German Broadcasting) channel about the Hitler time. I had left the living room and gone into the garden to escape. I could not bear to hear it.
Over lunch Karoline blurted out: ‘Opa, why don’t you tell your story? You know I’ve wondered for the whole of my life why every house in the village has a photo of a young man that no one in my generation knew – not even their names. Another thing, when I was a little girl, I found what I think is a medal ribbon. It was in a box under the bed. It was black, white and red. Do you know what it is? Mum said it was a medal for bravery but that I should never ask you about it. There was also a grey shield, but she didn’t know what that was. A lot of time has passed now; is it not time to tell the people in the village what happened?’
‘NO!’ I said firmly.
‘We hear all about the bad things in history programmes on television. But what was it like to be there? Were there any good things? What really happened on the street? I want to know the other side of history. That is probably the most important part.’
I loved Karoline dearly, but sometimes she could be very forceful – in a gentle way. One part of me had to laugh. She was just like Inge, her grandmother, in that respect. One part of me wanted to celebrate that something of Inge was still alive. One part of me wanted to cry. One part of me wanted to maintain a grandfather-like dignity. What happened next was extraordinary. I did not see it coming. The crying won. It all welled up inside me. There were five decades of wilful forgetfulness dammed up in the frozen hinterland of my mind. I had always wondered, down the years, whether that dam might burst in some unexpected way. I could hardly hold it back. Karoline did not understand; how could she? Her simple words had broken through those concrete and barbed wire entanglements, which had walled of those memories. She had smashed into my psyche like one of those bloody rockets in Normandy. It was too much!
It was too much, just too much. Without speaking – and quite honestly my emotions were overtaking me – I stood up suddenly and went through the back door into the garden. The tears came again and again. Oh Christ! My shoulders heaved. It was the faces that were the problem. I could see the faces. In my mind’s eye I could see the faces of all those I knew. There were all the ones that I didn’t know but still remembered. There were the faces of the innocents. I had not even known who they were, but they were the worst, the very worst. That is the trouble. The dead never leave you alone. Never!
In the house I could hear Magdalena scolding Karoline. She sounded livid. I was glad that she was telling Karoline of but then Magdalena said something which changed the picture completely.
‘He’s only got six months if we are lucky.’ Those words flipped a switch in my mind.
Back in the house I found a fraught atmosphere. Magdalena was quietly furious. Karoline looked apologetic. Mattias, her partner, looked embarrassed.
‘Well?’ Magdalena spat the words at my granddaughter.
‘Opa, I am so sorry. I know that I should not have asked. I take that question back and apologise completely. I can only hope that you can find it to forgive me.’
Tears were still running down my face. I let them.
‘Liebling [darling] Karoline, grandfathers don’t forgive granddaughters – they dote on them too much.’ I pulled her to me and hugged her gently. Still cuddling Karoline, I said to her: ‘Listen, Karo, I will tell the story, but you have to pay a price.’ Karoline was clearly happy to be back in my good favour (in reality, she had never left it).
‘Opa, you must only tell the story if you really want to.’ I looked at her pointedly and nodded. She kissed me on the cheek as her mother looked on aghast. ‘And what is the price, Opa?’
‘You see these tears on my face?’
‘Yes,’ she said and smiled quizzically.
‘The price is that you have to wipe them away.’
‘What?’ She looked at me in blank incomprehension.
‘Just do it.’ I gave her a grandparental smile. She looked quizzical but wiped my tears away with a tissue, which she kept up the sleeve of her cardigan. The loving way in which my granddaughter did it was so beautiful. Oh Christ! She was just like Inge. She was just like Inge. It all started to food back. I had to pull myself together.
‘Let us put our cards on the table face up. Now, you know I have only six months ….’ She nodded, her eyes filled with tears, and I felt her body stiffen as I held her in my arms. She nodded again.
‘Well, for the rest of your life, never forget these tears. When you have the story – and there is a lot of it – you will understand that such a story can only end in tears. I want you to always remember that it was to you that I gave the privilege of wiping them away. That is to be your connection to this story. I have to tell you that I never thought I would tell it. But the time is right.’
‘Dad, for goodness’ sake,’ said Magdalena, ‘you do not have to do this.’ Magdalena looked worried.
I looked at Karoline. ‘I do, Magda, I do. The slight problem is that I am not a literate sort of man, so how do you propose that I go about telling this story of mine?’
‘That’s where I might come in,’ interjected Mattias. ‘I could sit with you and ask you questions; I’d record our conversations on my voice recorder and then write it all down.’
‘These days people have voice
‘What, now?’ said Mattias quizzically.
‘Is there something that you would rather watch on television?’ Magdalena asked, clearly trying to divert me from embarking on this unknown but painful journey.
‘No, I would rather start now. It’s funny though, because television does come into this story in a strange way.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Mattias.
‘Don’t worry, that will come out at the right time. OK, let’s start.’
To begin at
the beginning
Well, the first thing to record is that my name is really Martin. I have to laugh when I say that. Everyone knows me as Max and always has done. It was because of a schoolyard fight. Someone said I punched the other kid like Max Schmeling the German boxer. I don’t remember what the fight was about in that schoolyard or who the other kid was, but the name stuck.
The story starts on a dark and gloomy night. I have to laugh again. Quite honestly, that is a dreadful way to start a story, but I have to start it there because it happens to be true. The start of this story is baked very clearly into my mind. We didn’t live here in Bremen in those days. When I was 14, in 1936, we lived in Haldensleben in the Reich province of Magdeburg-Anhalt. On that particular dark and gloomy night – it was a Thursday – I went with some friends to our weekly meeting with the youth section of the Lutheran Church.
Some unexpected people awaited us. We were normally welcomed by the pastor and a couple of lay brothers, but they were not there that evening. I think we were all surprised to find Mr Haller there. Mr Haller was the Nazi Blockleiter (neighbourhood warden) and he was there with three men in the adult leaders’ uniform of the Hitler Youth movement. I should explain about Mr Haller. He was a jovial, likeable chap and I shared many jokes with him. But in the streets of our neighbourhood, the word was out: don’t trust him. His role as Blockleiter meant that he was a Nazi Party official and, rumour said, had ties to the Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police), the Gestapo.
The Gestapo were ruthless and violent, charged with the spirit of National Socialism. A sensible person did not want anything – nothing at all – to do with them. Reputedly, Mr Haller kept flies on every household within our small area. He would pop in for a cup of coffee or friendly glass of schnapps and engage us in conversations designed to show how supportive of the party we were. He would quiz us on the contents of this week’s Völkischer Beobachter (the People’s Observer), the official Nazi newspaper. Did we have a portrait of the Führer on the wall? Were our attitudes ‘suitable and compliant’?
People who had been indiscreet in conversations with him had – possibly by co-incidence, you understand – visitors at their doorstep at four in the morning. They were thugs in Nazi uniforms, accompanied by salivating German Shepherds. They took the unfortunates away to the castle at Lichtenburg for some weeks. On their return they seemed to have aged ten years – and they had suddenly become very ‘suitable and compliant’ advocates of Adolf Hitler and everything to do with him.
Mr Haller was at his jovial best that night.
‘Sit down everyone, pull up a chair and we’ll get started.’ He beamed and chuckled as we gradually organised ourselves.
There was a scraping of chairs as some 30 of us, half boys and half girls, looked quizzically about us. We knew instinctively that we could not sit down until instructed.
‘Heil Hitler!’ Mr Haller began. Whether or not we wanted to give ‘the German greeting’, with our right arm stiffy out in front of us, it was not optional. If we did not say ‘Heil Hitler’ and, what’s more, enthusiastically, then our parents could be carted of to Lichtenburg. We did not want them to experience its dark awful cellars where some unspeakable depravity was visited on the disobedient. The Nazis were clear about demanding obedience.
‘Heil Hitler’ we replied. ‘Heil Hitler!’ shouted the true believers: those few boys in our neighbourhood who already wore their Hitler Youth uniforms.
‘You may now be seated. You are all here for the regular meeting of the Lutheran Church youth organisation. As your local representative, I am here to tell you that the church youth club is alive and well,’ he beamed as he looked around, ‘and it will carry on. Now, however, it is part of the Hitler Youth organisation. Mr Schmundt will be your troop leader – and I know that he has prepared a lot of exciting games and excursions and lots of other things for you all.’
We looked at each other. I have to be honest about this. The majority of us were glad that this was happening. The church youth club was certainly quite good. We had country hikes and sang folk songs. We put on plays at Christmas. But if I am honest, it was all a bit uninspiring. In our impressionable early teenage hearts, we boys had looked enviously at the Hitler Youth boys with their brown shirts covered in badges for excellence in one pursuit or another. The girls had looked even more enviously at the uniforms of the League of German Girls with their stylish dark blue skirts and white blouses, set of with dark blue neckties and red lanyards. To our eyes the members of the Nazi youth organisations wore inspiring uniforms. Moreover, both the Hitler Youth and the League had wonderful excursions, which they talked about with such enthusiasm when they came back. There was no question both organisations had wonderful esprit de corps.
In some ways, I have to admit that the Nazis had great ingenuity. They had seen that in between childhood and maturity there was a vacuum. Between leaving childhood at, say, 14 and becoming an adult at, say, 18 there was a no-man’s land where young people pretended to be adults but really weren’t. Twenty years later the world would invent the idea of the teenager. But that was still a long way of. The Nazis filled that vacuum with organisations that were fun to be in, addressed all the angst of those vulnerable years and, most of all, gave their members important things to do. The Hitler Youth and League of German Girls made their members feel wonderful. The allure of the Nazi organisations was threefold: fun, the feeling of belonging, and that inspiring sense of taking part in a movement bigger than yourself. They simply outclassed the staid old Lutheran Church.
To understand the clever way in which the Nazis marketed their hundreds of movements throughout society, it is vital to understand the key driving force. Every last German man and woman felt they had been cheated after the armistice of 1918. It was personal. It was burning. Every German was furious. Germany had laid down its arms for an armistice. It was supposed to be an honourable cease-fire – not an abject, disgusting surrender. Our enemies did not lay down their arms, and we lost the war. We were cheated, sold down the river, deceived by the hocus-pocus of the victors.
At the Versailles peace conference, Germany and Austria were outraged that traditional lands had been stripped away from them and given to other countries. What were we to make of these new countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia and so forth? They had no right to exist. It was beyond belief. The victorious nations blamed us for starting the war. Germany didn’t want the war at all, but we were threatened by France and Russia. We had to attack or die. The victors made us pay reparations – huge ones. The victors called it the Treaty of Versailles. In Germany we called it the Decree of Versailles. Let me assure you once again that every man and woman in Germany, of whatever political persuasion, felt an incandescent anger about it. Now, in 1936, some 18 years after the end of the Great War, Germany was back on its feet again and on an upward swing. We all wanted to take part in that rise – and for us young people the Hitler Youth gave us a channel to let our pent-up feelings explode.
My parents, like many in Magdeburg-Anhalt, had forbidden their children to join Nazi organisations. They loathed the crude, uncivilised behaviour that characterised so much to do with the ‘Nazischweins’. In those days in Germany, you did what your parents said. If your parents said that you could not join, then the matter was closed. You could not join. Haller and Schmundt’s coup at the church youth club gave us a wonderful way out. We outsiders could go back to our parents and say, ‘We didn’t join the Hitler Youth (or League of German Girls), they just took us o v e r. ‘
