Source: SS
Leitheft, Year 8, Issue 2, 1942
An upper office
informs us the roughly 2000 fallen soldiers of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS have
left behind only a little over 400 children. Although many of the fallen were
not yet married, such figures are nonetheless serious. The question of the
replacement of each individual by new life cannot be postponed until after the
war. Decisive are not the difficulties, rather the courage of our wives and
mothers, on whom, despite victory of arms, the final decision depends. We hence
publish today the letter of a comrade on the eastern front to his wife:
My Dear Wife!
Perhaps
you did not expect to hear from me again so soon, but I feel strange: I wish to
continue with you a conversation that we had started at home, but which - you
will remember - did not really flow. But it is so that out here things show
themselves in a strange way; they get a different face, become clearer - and
more concrete.
But wait, my love!
First, I must thank you! No, do not resist; it is now about the eternal. The
front shows everything, even the most intimate, in a new light. I could again be
with you, with you and the children, and spring blossoms around us. It was so
rarely beautiful. Fancy words are not valued much out here, and between the two
of us - how do they belong there? Nonetheless: I have never known the meaning of
our struggle more deeply and more bindingly. You and the children and our common
home: Is it not a small part, a cell of our greater, beautiful, German
fatherland? I want to thank you above all for your still and self-evident
courage, of which I know well that it weighs no less than the courage of the
soldier. My thoughts are often with you, my love, with you and with our shared
past. Oh, I could always be proud of you! Remember that day in the year of
struggle 1932. You then carried our first child under your heart, and you
certainly had reason to spare yourself. But when had you ever spared yourself
when it was about me or the children? Back then it was about me. The Reds were
always after me, and this time it looked like they would get me. I was just able
to reach out house-door, and there they were, a whole pack. I was already
getting ready for the defence, and then the door quietly opened behind me and
you pulled me into the house. You had, as so often already, my good angel, stood
by me; your worry would have not let you rest.
It also does not
let you rest now; I know that well. So much more do I respect your brave,
self-evident fulfilment of duty. It is after all so in this war, that all the
sacrifices, even the most difficult, are to be born by front and homeland in
common. And when you take our four children to the cellar during the Tommy’s
frequent night bombing attacks, then we out here can best judge, what that
means. How often haven we spoken of these things in comrade circle, and I have
also - not without pride, as I want to confess to you - described how
“militarily exact” you have organized this nocturnal “taking cover”.
But I begin to
diverse, and it is probably time that I come to the actual subject. Although all
of that, the sacrifices, the action, the loyalty and the silent courage,
although all of that already belongs to it, for without these things there would
be no future. About the future, however, that is what I wanted to talk about
with you. Has our Ingeborg told you that shortly before my departure she was
with me in her little garden? Oh, she was indeed so proud to be able to show me
her work, above all the little radish plants that she had herself planted. Just
a little piece of earth, nurtured by child’s hand, but with what love and with
what enthusiasm! To me, at any rate, became clear at that moment where our
future and our deepest obligation are to be sought. The child hands of our
Ingeborg dug in the earth; somewhere a weed probably showed itself, that she has
previously overlooked; but I had to immediately make comparisons. I saw the
loose, almost white sand run through the girl’s hands and then saw in my mind’s
eye the thick, black earth out here. A gift from God that hardly anybody uses.
What is accustomed is so easily taken for granted.
But we, my love,
will one day with many other Germans find a new homeland. This beautiful, wide
land, drenched with the blood of so many comrades, holds future for Germany and
hence for us as well. Fertile land for people who cultivate it and pass it along
to children and their children, over endless generations - there you have life’s
final and deepest meaning!
It is not new to
you, of course, what I say here; we have often talked about it, and our four
children are the living witnesses of our affirmation of life and of the future.
But now, dearest
wife, you want to give me a fifth child. Do you understand that at first I did
not understand, when you shyly spoke of it? There is the war with all of its
worries and efforts. From early until late our four soldiers keep you on your
feet, and the bomb nights in the cellar dig into your already meagre rest. No, I
did understand right away, and it required the return to the front and the new
view that the struggle out here bestows. But now you know, why I spoke to you
about life and future in this letter, why I had to again and again thank you,
for it should be said once: I am endlessly proud of you!, and I am happy, that I
may be so! We will have a fifth child, and it will live and prosper like the
others. And one day our children will as free Germans cultivate the land that
their father was allowed to help to win. So will our life be blessed.
For I will come
again, my love; you should not worry about me. Faith and trust have helped us
this far; they will continue to help us. One day a new morning will stand before
our life, too. I am always with you and the children in love.
And now dear
greetings from your Hein.
Heinrich Sternberg
