The Battle of Moscow, and beyond
The Battle of Moscow directly impacted Willi Graf, and indirectly affected Lilo Berndl and Otl Aicher. When Willi left the Russian front in April 1942, he was resolved to do something.
Willi Graf had no idea that Division 7 was part of Hitler’s plan to capture Moscow that autumn of 1941. He also could not have known that a very large number of fighting troops had peeled off to invade Ukraine and no longer marched towards Moscow. Hitler had understood that with supply chain from Germany almost nonexistent, German soldiers needed food. Ukraine had food.
He only knew that the “inevitable victories” their generals had promised had evaporated into Russian mist. Frozen Russian mist. Well, first, boggy, then frozen. Willi could hardly tell which was better. If they tried to walk, they would sink up to their knees, mud stuck in every crack and crevice. But once everything froze?
They were far from idle. To survive the winter, they concentrated on staying close to primitive heaters. A good seat near the furnace was sheer ecstasy. Army rations did not go far enough when the body was subjected to extreme low temperatures. The soldiers scrounged the countryside for additional food to eat.
But primarily, they dedicated themselves to the “hunting ground” their uniforms had become. Fleas, lice, and bed bugs infested wool clothing. They spent hours picking out the vermin, hoping for relief.
Willi tried not to think about the “good comrade” who had been killed, or the days they had come under enemy fire. Instead, he focused on the days they received mail, which had become mini-holidays worthy of great celebration. Cooped up in small houses, Willi learned to rely on men he could not trust, soldiers who had lived through the same battles and could comprehend his troubles. And maybe help him forget. He was way past trying to cope with the nightmares in his head.
He met a Russian girl during this stationary interlude. Her name was Katja. She inspired Willi to buy a balalaika. Every move she made was filled with grace and beauty. How he longed to know her better! But he had to admire her from afar.
By mid-December, when they were supposed to have conquered Moscow and brought Russia to her knees, everything was white. Such peace the snow brought them. Every now and again, they could hear big guns booming in the distance. Willi noted that the white cover had blanketed even the war. Immense peace, non-negotiable.
He asked his friends to send him things to read, things that made sense and would stir his mind. Bodo Schütt, Dostoevsky, Werner Bergengruen, Hans Carossa, Rainer Maria Rilke, writers who had faced similar situations and wrote good and decent words. Decency! Willi longed for that. For now, past, present, and future blended into a blurry collage. He had trouble remembering whether something had happened in the near or distant past, and could not tell whether events would play out in the near or distant future. It did not matter. Time stood still.
Hitler’s renewed war effort – heading into Russian winter! – also meant that Otto Berndl’s three-week leave to spend time with his wife in Munich had been revoked. Before ink had been rationed, Lilo Berndl nee Ramdohr had received a note from her penpal Fritz Rook on the Russian front, telling of a comrade who had been killed only six feet away. She dreaded a similar letter (or worse) from her husband.
When Otto advised Lilo that he would be spending Christmas on the Russian front, it was neither that news nor her fears for his survival that overwhelmed her. Lilo’s husband, he who had spoken so eloquently against the Führer, now wrote that his fighting in Hitler’s war was a “wonderful fulfillment of duty.” His changed attitude gave him “new strength to fulfill every job, every duty that is given me here.”
She was aghast as she read on. When they first met, he had been angry with her for not revolting against her assignment in a military hospital. Now Otto Berndl, who claimed to have seen the “big picture,” said his wife should volunteer for duty before they drafted her again.
Lilo experienced emotions she did not even know existed. To maintain a semblance of normalcy, she set about keeping herself busy, so she would not think about the blackness that followed her husband’s letter. She attacked her pile of unanswered letters with a zeal that would have shocked her correspondents. She welcomed Alexander Schmorell’s unannounced visits, urging him to tell her every detail about his latest efforts at sculpting – his new passion and creative focus. She bought and wrapped presents for the entire Harnack family and tried to devise a way to visit them. And she impulsively headed to Chiemsee to rent a small room at the Bumpererhof farm, where she would be able to store valuables, art projects, and provisions for the certain eventuality of war on German soil.
New Year’s Eve, Lilo once again sat with Falk Harnack and his family, bringing in a new – and dangerous – year. As with prior meetings, neither Arvid nor Mildred Harnack divulged details of their resistance work in Lilo’s presence. Sitting at table, she did not know that they had passed Hitler’s plans for Operation Barbarossa to the USSR. Or that Arvid provided similar intel to the United States.
Arvid consciously turned the conversation that night to topics he knew Lilo would enjoy. She probably exhibited signs of discomfort without being aware of it. Over champagne and Glühwein (mulled wine), the assemblage talked about Dutch paintings and the great Dutch masters. Felix Timmermans too, the Flemish writer whose happy Pallieter had amused Willi Graf a year earlier in Belgium.
When Lilo later reflected on that night, she noted it was as though the Nazi specter had disappeared from the face of Germany. It was no drug-induced hallucination, nor symptom of mental disorder. Instead, she felt like Good had been so tangible in that place, that for an all-too-brief evening, there was no place for Evil. “The intellectual and spiritual niveau of that New Year’s Eve dispelled the shadows of the time that had become our comfortless existence.”
That same New Year’s Eve, 1400 miles from the safety of Munich, Willi Graf discovered peace in yet another manner. Around midnight, he went outside for a short time into the clear and “unbelievably cold” Russian night. He gazed at the vast sky, a sky like none he would find in Germany. His eye followed moonlight’s glow on endless snow. Before the moment slipped from his grasp, Willi dared to dream about changes that could come in 1942, about aspirations for a better life in an uncertain future. Then he went to bed.
January 3, 1942, the day after his 24th birthday, Willi Graf had to watch the residents of the town where they were stationed pack their belongings in preparation for forced evacuation.
For the next two days, he witnessed the immediate consequences of war. Townsfolk had to decide what they would take with them and what they could afford to leave behind. Violent discussions ensued as German military police confiscated items they wanted. The owners demanded receipts from the Germans. Beauty and serenity became mud and haze.
The “big picture” that Willi Graf saw did not resemble the one of Otto Berndl’s world. Willi grieved for the cat and flowers that ‘his’ family would have to leave behind. He understood that he was eating that family’s livelihood when he was sated for the first time in months. They slaughtered their chickens for a farewell dinner.
When the Germans pulled out shortly before noon on Friday, January 9, Willi nursed a secret hope that the Russians in the village would indeed return safely to their village. And that they would get their belongings back. It may have been a futile wish, but he had to believe in goodness among his own people.
For a split second, Willi thought his furtive wishes had come true. Someone told him the peasants had been allowed to go home. Beautiful Katja danced before his eyes, and he wondered whether he would ever see her again – under better circumstances. The balalaika took on distinctive symbolism as his connection to Russia and to a young girl he had admired from afar.
“Pestrikova is said to be in ashes,” came the rumor half a week later. It may as well have been Saarbrücken. Willi mourned the loss of his village as if he had been born Russian. “May good luck be Katja’s friend,” he intoned. In letters home, he included himself among those who had lost their home when describing the place. We were surrounded on all four sides by a forest, not they.
The next three weeks, Willi’s unit stayed on the move – away from Moscow. Supplies grew progressively scarcer. They were reduced to eating horse meat. Some soldiers protested this practice, claiming it was inhumane. Willi did not go into great detail about the debate, but his praise of the hot meals they finally enjoyed demonstrated which side of the fence he landed on.
From his later observations, it likely struck him as absurd that killing horses for food should spark a discussion about the “humanity of war,” in light of all they had seen. And yet, it bothered him immensely that something as primitive as the good feeling of having enough to eat would make a difference in his outlook on life. He had considered himself above primeval characteristics.
The distress of bitter cold, and hopeless medical conditions, and military setbacks could not affect Willi as much as one simple accident. In all the confusion, his balalaika got broken. He would not let them trash it. He took the shattered pieces and said he planned to have it repaired when he was back in Germany. Even as he spoke the words, he knew that he was holding on to a memory.
“There is no light at the end of the tunnel,” he wrote in his diary on January 28, 1942. To his dismay and cautious pleasure, the Russians were putting up a greater fight than the Germans had anticipated. Willi accepted what he perceived as ultimate defeat, stating plainly that Germany had to bear the consequences.
He did have a serendipitous encounter with an old and most cherished friend, Alois Mauer. Ali led his horse in the direction of Moscow as Willi’s unit moved the opposite direction. It was their second chance reunion; the first was not recorded. They could exchange only a few words, as war did not stop for friendship.
But in that instant, Willi felt a little less alone.
By late February, that medic was on his way to becoming a student-soldier. The unbelievable was becoming reality. His superiors told him another medic would be flown in shortly, and he could go home and study. When his replacement arrived on March 1, he could not grasp his great good fortune. And yet, neither could he shake the nightmares that plagued him. Memories of Katja and a burning village were all it took to bring him down. The throbbing from an infection in his right thumb didn’t help matters any.
As Willi waited for transport back to Germany, he sensed that the thoughts he had long stifled would now have to take front and center until he could figure out how to act. Before he did anything, he needed to talk to people he could trust. Friends in Bonn, they would understand. They knew the difference between right and wrong and could walk him through the deliberations he could not handle on his own.
One of those friends struck a raw nerve when she commented that she hoped Willi would return to them without having lost his youth. Sore thumb and all, he dashed back a reply – but of course he had lost his youth in Russia. How could one see and hear all that he had seen and heard, and retain the innocence she had known in him?
She had also recorded a comment made by his favorite professor in Bonn, Dr. Lützeler. What we have experienced does not have to be suppressed somewhere, but rather must be unspoken and unspeakable. What a paradox! It made sense and it made no sense at all. Yet it expressed precisely how Willi felt after nearly a year on the Eastern front.
A letter Willi wrote that same week to his sister Anneliese had a remarkably softer tone. The effects of life on the Russian front were unmistakable. He acknowledged the difficulties of the winter he had just survived, but emphasized that one day he would comprehend the meaning of everything he had witnessed.
“Even the winter in Russia, including everything I had to see and experience, has a deep meaning. One still cannot determine what that meaning is, but I am certain that one does not simply vegetate even if life requires more effort than anything that has gone on before. Rather, one allows his inner self to grow. One ages in general, not just on specific days.”
Yet privately, alone with his thoughts, Willi embraced all the goodness that life offered. A diary entry in mid-March noted that one must simply live without knowing how good things are, and one talks about the future without knowing what it will hold.
Before Willi could leave the Russian front, he submitted to a series of evaluations by his superiors. Dr. Webel, Chief Medical Officer of Division 7, said that Willi “showed himself to be an intrepid medic who never thought about his own safety.” Webel rewarded Willi’s efforts by ensuring that he received a distinguished service medal, second class with swords, before he left the Russian front for Munich.
A second medical officer, Dr. Krone, echoed Webel’s praise. He assessed Willi’s personality as follows: “He fulfilled his duties above and beyond the call of duty, quietly, conscientiously, and dependably – carefully and modestly.”
Surprisingly, it appears that over the course of March 1942, Willi Graf changed his mind about returning to German soil. His military records – but not his letters home – noted that his superiors had to order him to resume his studies, that Willi did not request the transfer.
Easter 1942 wore different faces for people that year. Otl Aicher experienced it on his way to the Russian front. Willi saw it on his way home. Easter was merely the Brest-Warsaw-Poznań leg of his journey, and the delightful feel of a good delousing (first bath in months), nothing more.
Lilo Berndl nee Ramdohr mourned, afflicted without tears as she absorbed the news about her husband’s death in Russia. She had cried herself dry when he switched loyalties in December. His death shortly before Easter left her numb.
Fritz Hartnagel? He went into Easter 1942 an angry man. The orders that had rescued him from marching into Ukraine, that had sent him back to the safety of a German military base on German soil? Rescinded.
Forget Africa and General Rommel. All of Fritz’s hard work putting together a brand new signal corps unit had been for nothing. He was to select some of the men from his existing platoon, ship out with them to France, and then continue rebuilding the division, with an ultimate destination of the Soviet Union.
Russia. How he hated that place!
In researching Willi Graf’s movements in Russian 1941-1942, I could not find Pestrikova. Was that hamlet rebuilt after the war, or has it disappeared off the map? If anyone has information about that place, please contact us or post in comments below.
This post stitches together excerpts from White Rose History, Volume I regarding Operation Barbarossa and those whose lives the invasion affected. Next post will cover Otl Aicher’s experiences on the Russian front, as well as the five White Rose friends who fulfilled their medical internship on the Russian front in the summer of 1942. If you have read about this event in other histories, be prepared for some surprises.
If you are curious about supporting documents for this Substack post, check out our White Rose History, Volume I, 1/1933-4/30/1942 © 2002, along with primary source materials. As always, if you have questions or private comments, please contact us. If you find errors, please contact us, or post a comment below.