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My last story dealt with my grandad's struggle to get his family out of the danger of Allied bombing raids. 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 was friction within the family, with supporters, political foes and non-political people, 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 successes of the German army. So you can easily imagine that sooner or later there would be arguments with his son-in-law, my grandfather. Actually they tried to avoid each other as far as possible. Of course this was a difficult thing to do, because they lived in the same house in different flats.

The conflict between the two came to a head in 1944, when the tide had long turned against the German forces, and the menace of the unavoidable defeat became more and more visible. My grandad — 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 strictly 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 my grandpa. 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 grandad had served his country in 1917-18 as a very young soldier in Romania (as an early radio service man). My grandad 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 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 city became the graveyard of about 250,000 German, Italian and Romanian soldiers, not to forget hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians.

My grandfather 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 its destination. But fortunately one of my grandpa's brothers (a 'soft' Nazi and half-hearted supporter of Hitler) was supposed to take the letter of denunciation 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 for our troops.

Germany's family stories are probably packed with such histories — or even much worse. And - what is important as well — these stories continued within the new GDR, German Democratic Republic, after the end of WW2 (communists, old Nazis, etc). So it is still an interesting question for us: tell me, grandad, 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. 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 into his grave.

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