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My last story dealt with my grandpa’s struggle to get his family out of the danger of Allied Bombers, bomb raids, respectively. As I mentioned before, he was a clear Nazi opponent. But of course it would be a lie to say that all members of my mum’s (or dad’s) family had been opponents of Hitler, no, there were strong supporters as well. As in many German families there were frictions and fractions right through the families, supporters, political foes and non political folks, who did not care about anything but survival.

My grandma’s father, a member of the „Reichsbahn“ (railway authorities), was a strong supporter of his ‚Führer und Reichskanzler’. A huge picture of Hitler hung in his living room and he was proud of the early impressing successes of the German Army. So you easily can imagine that sooner or later there would be arguments with his son in law, the husband of his daughter (my mother’s mother). Actually they tried to avoid each other as far as possible. Of course this was a difficult thing to do, they saw each other once in a while, because they lived in the same house in different flats.

The conflict between both came to a a critical stage in 1944, when the tide had long turned against the Germans on the fields (and in the air) and the menace of the unavoidable defeat became more and more visible. My grandpa — and especially my grandmother — used to listen to a British broadcasting service which gave information about the next targets of air raids in the Reich. Our sector was called Otto Richard and Richard Paula (coordinates of the Reich; O — R and R — P). It was stricly forbidden by the authorities to listen to the ‚Feindsender’ (enemy radio station), although the knowledge of the new targets undoubtedly saved loads of civilian lives.

Anyway, one day in 1944 my grandpa and the father of his wife had such an extraordinary quarrel that the latter decided to do something against the husband of his daughter. He wrote a letter to the authorities, accusing my grandpa of having insulted his beloved ‚Führer’ and having offended the honour of the German Army. It is important to say that my granddad had served his country in 1917/18 as a very young soldier in Romania (as an early radio service man). My granddad obviously had a very clear understanding of the military situation and he did not believe in the effectiveness of all the ‚Wunderwaffen’ (V1, V2, Me262 and the like). He knew the fact that the russians under no circumstances were ‚erledigt’ (done for), as Hitler trumpeted arrogantly in late summer 1942 (when he announced that he would take his time to conquer Stalingrad to avoid a ’second Verdun’. In fact this turned out to become the graveyard of about 250000 German, Italien and Romanian soldiers, not to forget hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians). He had fought against them and he knew that they had one thing at least: masses of soldiers, huge Armies in which the German Landsers sooner or later would drown. He knew the vastness of the Land by stories of friends who served in Hitler’s Army, he knew that they were no underdogs — ‚Untermenschen’ - but brave fighters with good skills and reasonable equipment defending their Mother Russia.

Anyway, my grandpa honestly would have got into the biggest and deadliest trouble if the letter had reached his destination. But fortunately one of my grandpa’s brothers (a ‚soft’ Nazi and half hearted supporter of Hitler and his ‚gouvernment’) was supposed to bring the letter of denounciation to the post office. He „smelled“ the danger - so to speak - and he carefully opened it over a steaming kettle, read it and threw it — appalled - into the oven. In the same year my grandma’s father died, still firmly believing in a glorious victory of our Troops.

Probably Germany’s family stories are packed with suchlike — or even much worse — histories. And - what is important as well — these stories continued within the new GDR, German Democratic Republic, after the end of WWII (Communists, old Nazis, etc.). So it is still an interesting question for us: tell me, granddad, what did YOU do during the war??

Maybe the question arises what my dad’s father had done during the war. He was a mechanic serving the Luftwaffe on an Airfield near Duesseldorf, he mended together what was left of all the Me109ers and 110ers after their meetings with Allied fighters or rear gunners of their bombers. He was one of the above mentioned non political soldiers, he left the war unharmed and he never had to fire a single shot. He never spoke about his (more or less boring) job with me and when he died, he took the secrets of his thoughts (if there were any…) into his grave. Some other members of my family had some tougher stories to tell. More to come soon.

p.s.: Hitler’s portrait was smashed and burned before US troops entered my hometown.

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