The Front Soldier

 

Source: Command and Obedience: SS Leadership Guide by Alfred Kotz

 

War is the father of invention. A Greek wise man already said that more than two thousand years ago. It was like that in ancient times and it will probably be that way in the distant future, too. Much has been written about what the World War meant to the front soldier, but the final word will never be said. Experience shapes a man. The previously never suspected world of the horror of mud and filth, raining iron, blazing fires, wildly pounding blood, deprivation, hunger and thirst gave birth to the patrol leader, the assault group leader, the infantryman as the ruler in no-man‘s land, the military engineer in bunkers, Richthofen, Bölcke and Immelmann. This world and its bright lights also revealed its abominations. It lifted the brave to lofty heights; it made the heroes immortal. Whatever was small and pitiful melted in its furnace into nothingness. It was not the crushing force of the material battles that shook the front soldiers of the world war. From the height of his clarity he often looked down with a shudder at the abyss of human inadequacy, which gaped like a gorge next to the lofty towers of mighty accomplishment and splendid nobility.

 

He kept his eye for the contrasts after the cannon fell silent. He saw a great law in the fact that the proven warrior later, too, carried on the fight against evil, against everything hostile to the fatherland, wherever he met it, but also acted with goodness toward people and things wherever possible. It was so very necessary and so decisively important that this bearing did not perish.

 

Such a way of acting cannot be commanded or forced by external measures. It can only be the expression of inner clarity and decency. To prevent the bad from happening, as essential as it may be, is no substitute for the good that can be done. Compulsion does not encompass everything. One could often simply leave the good undone and nobody would say anything; one could be comfortable or tired or cowardly; one could avoid encroachments or violating jurisdictions, but for the man who has served his folk by risking his life a hundred times, there is no question about whether he will live his life so as to simply obey the law or whether he will do good even if nobody sees it, even if it takes effort or even if it becomes uncomfortably conspicuous.

 

How the war changed men cannot be portrayed. Each experienced that for himself. One fellow became a complainer and slave; the other became a hero and a master. Every unit, however, that underwent the baptism of fire on the front got its own uniform mark, which nobody could escape. 

 

The front never again let us go. Even later after the cannons had long fallen silent; we lived according to its law. That‘s why we find hurrah patriotism so disgusting. That’s why we hate braggarts. That’s why any kind of bureaucracy turns our stomach. That’s why the crazy self-importance of people without personality makes us sick. That’s why we are overcome with laughter when we see people frantically trying to make up for something they failed to have the courage to take care of earlier when the time was right.

 

That’s why we are repulsed by the way some people suck up to us after the rise to power, who now put on an act to draw attention to themselves and their suitability for open positions.

 

The true front soldier has nothing to do with all of that. He has become a unique type. His kind does not tolerate the half-hearted. For him it’s about the „either-or“, the clear „yes or no“. The front separated two worlds: one of cowardice and wretchedness, and one of courage and the deed. The front soldier had stood in the great furnace of the nation. He saw the mass death of men. That burned out anything unmanly in him. That’s why he would rather perish than become a slave.

 

He was always where the action was. Adolf Hitler, the front soldier, forced a decision in Germany. That’s why front soldiers were his enthusiastic followers. That’s why the armchair generals who prefer compromises to decisions hated him.

 

The soldier front strove unerringly for his goal. The thought on the goal determined the actions of each individual. Each acted just as the comrade in the same situation would act and each knew he could totally reply on the other. Any other bearing would be dishonorable and unworthy of the front soldier; unreliability would threaten not only the sure success, but also honor and life of the community. The behavior of the front soldier falls under sacred commandments, which are affirmed and fulfilled from the inside, from the depth of the soul. Disloyalty is alien to the man of the front.

 

The war taught us hard necessities, which we hadn’t known at first. Due to this ignorance we made many mistakes; the greatest was that we had not deeply enough comprehended the seriousness of soldiery.

 

When we put on the uniform in peacetime, and after we overcame the unaccustomed, a colorful, active life began. Despite drill and compulsion our heads were still always full of notions. A maneuver was great game, a little romantic and a lot of fun in quarters and in bivouac. During assembly one eye still searched for blonde locks in the village. We didn’t grasp the seriousness.

 

We saw cannons fire. The thunder was magnificent!

 

But then came the sight of the first dead comrade! Oh, how did the terror of night watches grow, how did everything fall away from a man which was no longer solid on the grade between life and bottomless, flaming depth. How tiny did the Self become, how terrible, how horrible did the realization come: It is about the existence or non-existence of our folk!

 

The youngsters among us learned this seriousness! Tell them the full truth! Show them no sugarcoated pictures! A maimed man does not look nice. A leader and a following must suffer immeasurably for a holy idea before it is fulfilled. Only whoever knows that and still stands by the flag passes the test of history, for he himself forms it. Teach the comrades this sacred seriousness so that they can complete what started with us! The pounding of the front hammered it into our soul. We will preserve it for the sake of everything that matters to Germany.

 

We who know the horror of war have never more earnestly yearned for anything other than that the reason of nations avoids it. We have ridden through days of glorious victories and would have more easily believed in reason if we had been spared nights of deepest mourning and unspeakable shame. What happened to us made this clear to us: our passionate desire for peace could never mean that we would impotently bow to unreasonableness. We had for a while become unarmed, but we did not want to become dishonorable. God knows there was never a lack of good will and readiness to participate in an enduring peace. But if it was to be enduring, then it had to be based on justice. It had to give us our due.

 

Whoever has no instrument perishes in the concert of power. But even the listener who masters his instrument can distance himself from the disharmony surrounding him. Fate taught us the great lesson that strength, not weakness, maintains peace.

 

The greatest son of front soldiery, Adolf Hitler, drew the consequences from this realization. Within the German heart, as the seal of honor, remained the vow: Rather dead than slave!

 

From this spirit the Führer created the new Wehrmacht, and the nation followed him enthusiastically. What was accomplished during this rebuilding through devotion, loyalty, sacrifices and sweat was already a quiet victory, before unreasonableness made it necessary for the old front soldiers and their young comrades to again be called to arms.

 

We do not know what it will mean in the mirror of coming events that the military commander led his young Wehrmacht to lightning victories against a world full of enemies, to victories the likes of which history had never seen. Only later generations will be able to fully appreciate the service of the man who created a new German defense amidst a world of chaos to preserve the honor of the German folk and to create and secure an enduring, joyous peace.

 

We had often worried that front soldiery would die-out, that with it would be buried things that people later on could no longer comprehend. We knew it was still about the existence or the non-existence of the German folk.

 

Hence it was easy for us to maintain the bearing of the front soldier during peaceful work for folk and fatherland, to keep ourselves healthy and clean in mind and spirit, always ready for the day the Führer could again call us.

 

The teachings of front soldiery have not been bought at a senselessly high price, neither by our sacrifices nor by the precious blood of our fallen comrades. A young team has already formed solid battalions behind us. And again as before we see how youngsters ripen to steel manhood in days. Our old front soldiery celebrates its re-emergence in the victories of the young comrades, in everyone’s faith in the Führer of the Germans and in a joyous German future.