Fritz Hartnagel in Ukraine: May-July 1942
The Holomodor. Slaughter of Jewish population in occupied Russia. Fritz Hartnagel did not think it could get much worse. He was wrong.
The last week of May 1942, headed for Mariupol on the Sea of Avov, Fritz Hartnagel described his adventure in detail in a chatty letter to Sophie Scholl. It had taken ten days to reach “the southernmost flank of the eastern front.” It sounded like a good assignment, not nearly as dangerous as the march on Moscow would have been. Fritz hoped he could see the Caucasus Mountains and the lower reaches of the Volga River, destinations romanticized by years spent in bündische youth.
The train ride late on May 30 into the early morning hours of May 31 carried him over the Dnjepr River for the third time in his career. Overwhelming vastness, both of land and of sky, caused him to feel distant from anything human. It was the “expression of a genuine elemental force, so that fear would oppress one’s heart.” Awe and terror wrapped up in a single panorama.
Their early morning arrival on the 31st had not gone unnoticed by the Russians. While Fritz and his company unloaded equipment and supplies from the train, Russian planes dropped bombs on the train station. No one was injured, and the day progressed normally.
As company C.O., Fritz commandeered the teachers’ lounge in a school in Mariupol as his personal headquarters. It was a large space that felt even larger because of its sparse furnishings: A field table, camp stool, and his “tropics” bed with mosquito netting.
He knew he would be busy, despite the assignment to the quieter southernmost flank of the eastern front. Nevertheless, he determined he would not ever be too busy for two things: Writing Sophie, and reading an hour every day.
Yet ten days passed before Fritz had enough time to write Sophie another letter. Installation of communication equipment in forward positions closer to the front lines had taken him away from the relative comfort of home base.
A trip to Kharkov had required a particularly exciting flight in a “Stork” – a Fieseler Fi 156C aircraft. First proposed in 1936 and approved and built in 1937, the Stork was well-known and valued for its ability to take off and land on extremely short runways. Only 164’ were required for take-off, and a paltry 66’ for landing.
Fritz’s first experience in a Stork put the tiny airplane through its paces. First, they had to make an emergency landing because they ran out of gas. The navigator became confused by the unscheduled stop and lost his bearings. When they made a second emergency landing to find out where they were, they learned they were off course by about 120 miles and 90 degrees.
Finally on track for Kharkov, they ran into a thunderstorm that was “so bad it made our little bird dance.” It took seven hours to make the 100-mile journey.
While Fritz hated his duties and had more than enough excitement for one day, he was captivated by the beauty his adventure revealed. “I wish I had a camera with me to take pictures of the Dnjepr River from above, or of a typical Russian church with many little twisted towers, or of a Ukrainian village with its whitewashed and straw-roofed brick houses.”
The magical landscape quickly disappeared once he returned to Mariupol. A Russian Varieté performed for his company on June 9. The expectations he’d nurtured of learning more about Russian culture were quickly dashed as the show got underway. Instead of Russian folk songs and dances, he and his men were treated to a bawdy cabaret, something he could have seen in any German city.
“In all the loathsome hours on duty and above all, as I associate with other officers, I feel like I belong somewhere else,” Fritz wrote Sophie.
A week passed. Fritz’s company had moved from in-town quarters in Mariupol, Ukraine to the wide open spaces in the eastern section of the Donets Basin, which Fritz wrongly identified as Russia.
Instead of occupying a large room in a schoolhouse, Fritz lived in a tent. Away from the strict oversight of superior officers, he relaxed regulations regarding the wearing of uniforms, for his men and for himself as well. “Often I will go an entire day without wearing my uniform. Instead, I wear my track clothes.”
As Commanding Officer, he had taken the best spot for pitching his tent, one that gave him daily pleasure. The best spot? Directly next to a large bush of fragrant wild roses. Their scent made him somewhat more hopeful. But only somewhat.
Unlike the unfortunate souls who had drawn the short stick and were marching on Moscow, Fritz’s company had far too much down time. His thoughts became mired in a slough of despair, and his hours were frittered away dealing with rampant alcoholism and oppressive partying. The other officers tried to force his inclusion in their debauchery, worsening his feeling of being an outsider.
Fritz’s unnamed “boy” (as he called him) – the aide-de-camp who tended to his daily needs – provided some relief from the dissipation he could not escape. The aide had also belonged to bündische youth, knew the forbidden songs, and had been “interviewed” by the Gestapo for his participation in non-Hitler Youth activities. Their friendship became an oasis for Fritz Hartnagel.
By June 18, 1942, Fritz had not ceased to appreciate his assignment to a quiet sector on the front lines, but he did not especially savor the inactivity. And he’d gotten a rather painful sunburn. In spite of everything, he liked the desert heat and the freedom they knew in the great outdoors.
His dissatisfaction with life among German officers had recently been amplified by meeting up with a brother-in-law named Dieter Daub. Fritz’s sister and her husband Rudi Daub were reliable conversation partners, people even Sophie and Elisabeth Scholl approved of. Initially Rudi had fallen in with the Nazi crowd, but had quickly become disillusioned with Nazi reality.
Fritz had assumed that Dieter Daub shared Rudi’s sensibilities. He was dismayed to see that Dieter “runs around with the officers quite a bit, likely out of habit.” He tried to make excuses for the errant brother-in-law, insisting that deep down he was probably still a good guy. That did not make their frequent meetings any more enjoyable. “We just beat around the bush, whatever we happen to talk about, usually quite self-conscious.”
And with all this free time on his hands, he could not make himself read. He knew he was starving to death.
Fritz wrote Sophie letters on two consecutive days. The first on June 25 involved personal matters. The June 26 missive unquestionably found its way to the budding White Rose friends. Since Fritz sent the letter with a plane that was leaving for Germany that very day, bypassing army mail, Sophie would have received it just as Alex wrote the section of the second leaflet that dealt with the murders of the Jewish population, or shortly thereafter.
And it would have reinforced their conviction that they were doing the right thing.
While complaining (as usual) about having to spend time with drunken officers, accompanied by “vile, filthy jokes, raising hell, and broken glasses,” Fritz narrated a disturbing scene to Sophie. “It was alarming, the cynical coolness of my C.O. as he told of the slaughter of all the Jews of occupied Russia. At the same time, he is completely convinced of the justice of this course of action. I sat there, my heart beating wildly. Oh, how happy I was when I once again was lying on my tent bed and could escape to you and to prayer.”
Thomas Hartnagel said that his father should not have been so surprised by this declaration. One year earlier on the Russian front, Fritz had overheard a conversation among officers regarding mass murders of Jews in the occupied territories. “In the meantime, Fritz Hartnagel had probably repressed the idea that there could be terrible crimes committed by the Einsatzgruppen of the SS, as well as possibly by members of the army,” Thomas Hartnagel wrote. “Now it became a shocking certainty.”
Fritz’s “boy” discerned his boss’s continued status as outsider and tried to alleviate his sense of alienation. He took a horseshoe and turned it into a candlestick holder, so Fritz would have better light for his nightly reading. That small gift touched Fritz and made him feel less alone.
June 28, Fritz described his daily routine in a letter to Sophie. Up at 4 am, in bed by 8 pm, “since it is broad daylight by 3 am, with twilight setting in at 8 pm.” He had gotten into the habit of taking an evening stroll along the creek that bordered their encampment.
He regretted that they were prohibited from swimming in the creek, “because of the danger of an epidemic.” Fritz did not specify which disease infected the waters, only that the prohibition meant he had to take his Sunday bath using a wash bowl and basin.
He’d also had a pleasant assignment that Sunday, one that foreshadowed his postwar career as judge. One of his soldiers had been sentenced to five months in prison for going AWOL. He believed the sentence was unjust. “I really put my heart into it, as if it involved the death penalty.” Fritz pondered the longer-term ramifications of harsh sentencing, and concluded, “Every sentence represents injustice.”
His reasoning: “Because the person is either naturally inclined to such behavior, or unlucky influences from his environment led to his misconduct. Do we as humans even have the right to judge others?”
Two days later, Fritz had already gone to bed when the Russians bombed their position. A quick check of the encampment showed no major damage had been inflicted. His annoyance over the disturbance vanished when someone handed him a letter from Sophie. Mail!
First day of July, Fritz ventured into the forbidden territory of almost writing Sophie a love letter. When Fritz dared to use the word “love” in a letter to Sophie, he could count on back-to-back replies that shot him down. He had learned how to write love letters that would not offend her.
On this day, therefore, Fritz added a bit of trivia about his temporary abode in the Ukraine. His primary delight at the time consisted of the cherry tree in his garden. “Every day after lunch, I sit in the boughs of a cherry tree for half an hour. Even if this is behavior unbecoming to a C.O., I enjoy its pleasures twice as much, since there are no others.”
He should not have gotten comfortable. Two days later on July 3, Fritz advised Sophie that his company would once again be on the move. They were being deployed a few hundred kilometers to the north. He welcomed the opportunity to see more of “Russia,” but regretted that they would be leaving an area he had just come to treasure.
An interpreter helped Fritz get out and about among the populace. He talked to a farmer who hated the Russians (they were still in the Ukraine, not Russia as he had assumed). The Russians were to blame for all their ills. This particular farmer had had two children. One starved to death almost ten years earlier. The other had been shot the same year “in a battle over bread when he and his family were out on a search for food.”
Fritz briefly described what is now called the Ukrainian Holodomor, or “genocide by starvation,” a sore point in 21st century Russian politics. The farmer told him that the Bolshevists had taken away the entire Ukrainian harvest, and half the populace died because of it. The effects of the famine were still being felt in the Ukraine, Fritz told Sophie. “The streets here are filled with nomadic families who will exchange their last pieces of clothing for flour.”
While the outcome of the famine was indisputable – between 3 million and 9 million Ukrainians died of starvation in 1933/1934, long before the German army invaded – Fritz failed to ask the hard questions regarding the nomadic families who exchanged clothing for food. By the time he landed in the Donets Basin, the German military had as much to do with Ukrainians (and Russians) starving to death as any previous “Bolshevist” policy. In subsequent letters, Fritz himself would speak about how well they ate, the bounty of food commandeered from local farmers. He never made the connection between his full stomach, appropriation of Ukrainian housing, and starving, drifting refugees.
Additionally, the farmer he interviewed played on Fritz’s clear-cut religious sympathies by portraying “nearly the entire population” as Lutheran. The Bolshevists had exiled the local pastor to Siberia and closed the Lutheran church. Anyone caught praying? Siberia, the farmer said.
Fritz concluded, “I believe we have been exposed to the lesser evil, in light of this suffering.” He had quickly forgotten his anger at his C.O.’s callous approval of the Germans’ murder of all the Jews in occupied territory.
Note: This does not minimize in any way the Russian origins of the Holomodor, or the plight of the millions of Ukrainians who died due to that horrific famine. It is simply a call to ask the hard questions, the ones Fritz Hartnagel failed to pose.
The next day, Fritz returned to rereading Sophie’s old letters. He must have been in a feisty mood, because he risked challenging Sophie on her unrealistic notions of the perfection of Nature. Where she hated mouse traps for the suffering it caused the poor, innocent creatures, Fritz saw the savagery of Nature, its imperfections and its dog-eat-dog characteristic.
“There is just as much rage and hate, jealousy, evil, envy, conceit, and greed in Nature as is found in humans. And indeed, none of these irrational creatures has a soul. None knows that it has been created.” And he seemed not to care that Sophie would find these words inflammatory.
His mood had been worsened when he had to punish two of his men for reckless driving that had destroyed an automobile. On the front lines, every vehicle was more precious than gold. “It always hurts me to have to be so harsh,” he said.
By July 10, he was writing Sophie from Artemovsk, still in the Ukraine, but still on the move. The redeployment highlighted the inefficiencies of the German military and frustrated Fritz Hartnagel beyond reason. Twelve of the seventy-three automobiles allocated to his company broke down within two days of the advance. Attempts to repair the vehicles revealed that spare parts had not been included in their supplies. Fritz had to send soldiers from his company back 500 km (300 miles) to get what they needed. That brought their progress to a halt.
Fritz used the time to go flying. For once, there was no special reason for the flight, no communications equipment to install, no reconnaissance work. Flying for flying’s sake.
The pilot raced over the fields at an altitude of around fifteen feet. Fritz reveled in the eye contact he could make with women and girls working in the fields. “They always wave at us boisterously,” he wrote Sophie. “I myself could hardly stop waving.”
The adventure brought him an overwhelming appreciation for the Ukrainian countryside he inhabited. Vast sunflower fields, just now blooming, stretched to the horizon. Even the wastelands were beautiful when seen from above, dark blue juxtaposed against bright yellow. “A colorful carpet,” he said.
Despite receiving a letter full of self-pity and misery from Sophie, Fritz Hartnagel relied on her to survive the horrors of war. “It is so odd and comforting when I can turn to you. It’s like a clear, starry night over a village destroyed by gunfire,” he wrote in response to one of her despondent missives.
There is no way to know how Sophie reacted to the comparison to a clear, starry night over a village destroyed by gunfire, but clearly that kind of language had become part of German vernacular in 1942. Too many soldiers returned home on furlough, relating gory tales of bloodshed and mass murders – some to listeners who thought it good, some to friends and family who reacted with shock.
Matters had not improved much for Fritz Hartnagel as his company struggled to make progress toward the Russian front. He flew the 500 km (300 miles) back to their old location to check on the twelve defective automobiles that were being repaired. As they landed, the tail skid of the plane broke off, putting the aircraft out of service as well.
The mechanics told him that one of the cars was ready – only one – so at least he could make it back to his men. They drove through the night, lights off for security reasons. And at 3 o’clock in the morning, that car broke down again. Fritz had to hitchhike back to his company.
July 18, Fritz’s company was once again on the move. He wrote Sophie from a location east of Luhansk in the Ukraine. The Germans had captured that town the day before and continued to press eastward, toward Stalingrad.
They encountered rain and flooding, the likes of which they had never seen. Fritz had been relieved that he could fly to an appointment on the 17th. Relieved, that is, until a thunderstorm whipped the little aircraft around. “We would rather have been on solid ground, as muddy as that was.”
The Germans were ill-equipped to handle mud. Cars could only travel a foot at a time. Thousands of vehicles attempted to transport troops closer to the front lines. But on the 18th, they finally had to call a temporary halt and set up camp.
With no place to pitch tents – the ground was too soaked – the Germans had to live and sleep in those gridlocked vehicles. As an officer, Fritz had less of a problem with his private accommodations. “It is such a cozy feeling when the rain beats down on my roof and I am sitting here dry.”
Fritz’s letter dated July 27, 1942 was more disjointed than usual. The pressure of hurrying to Stalingrad had taken its toll on him and his company. Shuttled from one airport to another, they had not been allowed to set up shop in any single location. Everything seemed confused and excited, and not in a good way.
He assumed that they had made it about halfway to Stalingrad. His company was still east of Luhansk, Ukraine, about ninety miles from the easternmost curve of the Donets River.
Like Sophie, but for entirely different reasons, Fritz found it hard to pray. He told Sophie he tried to make a daily habit of it, “admittedly usually out of a sense of duty instead of heart’s desire.” It wasn’t that God felt distant. There was just so much noise, too much activity, and everywhere, emptiness.
Three days later, Fritz’s company came to a standstill. Russian resistance had become fierce. His signal corps unit handled communications and military intel, not tanks and cannons. So they pitched their tents and waited for the fighters to clear the way.
Fritz’s “boy” took special care in the setup of his boss’ tent. He hung Sophie’s sketch of little Dieter Rennicke on the wall and placed the Newman book that Fritz had been reading next to his bed. As Fritz unpacked his ink and penholder the night of July 30, he told Sophie how that attention to detail moved him.
Although not yet alarmed by his observations, Fritz noticed that the further east they traveled, the less vegetation they saw. No trees or bushes anywhere, he said, and gardens with food could only be found in the immediate vicinity of towns – towns that were a good eighteen to twenty-four miles apart. Between the villages, there was only wasteland.
Finding a source of drinking water had become a problem he could not ignore. “The nearest usable well is about 20 km [12 miles] from here, which means we must often ration water.” Factor in the scorching heat, and his men could barely function.
Still, Fritz took time to explore the desert, fascinated by varieties of insects, spiders, and birds he had never seen before. To this point, time served in Ukraine had not been all that bad. More of an inconvenience than anything else. Surely it would end soon.
I had initially intended to dedicate only one post to Fritz Hartnagel’s service on the “Russian” front in 1942. But there are so many echoes of the current war on Ukrainian soil that I did not wish to short-change his service before he reached Stalingrad.
Fritz’s letters to Sophie also stress how much information about the war was getting back to friends and family at home in Germany. Uncensored. Detailed. Together with his explicit comments about the German slaughter all Jews in occupied Russia, it is no wonder that Alexander Schmorell penned those “guilty, guilty, guilty” words in reference to anyone who read the leaflets. People in Germany knew, because people on the front lines were telling them what was happening.
Next post (long, but critical): Fritz Hartnagel and Stalingrad.
This Substack post is a summary-excerpt of content in White Rose History, Volume II — Journey to Freedom. Substack post © 2002, 2007, 2023 Denise Heap. Translation of excerpts from Fritz Hartnagel’s letters © 2007 Denise Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. Please note that everything in this post is fully documented and footnoted in WRH2.