Excerpt from Chapter 3:
My brother missed all
the excitement of the fire as he had left the
Kloster a few months earlier to enrol at the
Gunzburg Gymnasium - the equivalent of an
English Grammar School. My good times also came
to an end at the beginning of the winter
vacation in 1932 when I left the sheltered
surroundings of Algasing to sit for my entry
examination to Gunzburg. I had just turned ten.
Sheltered was the right description as in the
real world outside life was pretty rough. The
power struggle for Germany's survival was coming
to a climax, a struggle that had been going on
since the end of World War One, when the Allied
powers had done their best to destroy Germany by
means of the Treaty of Versailles. The
outrageous reparation demands brought the whole
of German industry to a standstill. Idle
factories were dismantled, the forests denuded
and the timber transported by rail at the rate
of one train per minute crossing the Rhine into
France for stockpiling.
With a reparation
cost of hundred and thirty two billions to be
paid in goldmark, with the lion's share of 52 %
going to the French, 22% to the British Empire,
10% to Italy and Belgium a mere 8%, the
remaining 8% to be split among the rest. In
actual fact about 70% of the total was going to
end up in Uncle Sam's coffer anyway. The people
who imposed the conditions were well aware that
debt could never be paid, so, the French simply
marched into the Ruhr and Rhineland to occupy
and exploit those German territories in 1923.
The German currency
had completely collapsed, with the Mark at
18,000 to one American dollar. By the end of
that year it stood at 4 billion to one dollar.
Life indeed was hard for a German family.
Unemployment was at its highest. To buy a loaf
of bread required a wheelbarrow full of money
and sometimes even more, so Dad always told us.
Communism was getting the upper hand so troops
were used by Gustav Stresemann the then head of
the newly created Weimar Republic to depose the
left wing coalition of socialists spartacists
and communists.
Germany was slowly
recovering and actually started to prosper but
with it came a permissive period - the Roaring
20s - with its perversions and vulgar
entertainments and I'm not surprised my parents
sent we boys to a Catholic boarding school. In
1929 Germany again was hit badly by the Wall
Street collapse and by 1930 unemployment was
once more counted in millions and by 1932 the
whole economy was in ruins. Among the apparently
well-off were the Jews and they took advantage
of the situation by lending money at exorbitant
interest knowing the borrowing could not be
repaid under their terms. This did not create
too much sympathy for the Jews.
The new National
Party led by Hitler made tremendous advances in
the political field in rallying the people
behind it. Hitler was trying to get rid of the
corrupt and irresponsible Weimar Republicans and
also to put an end to occupation on German soil
by foreign powers. He pledged to recover all
territories taken away from Germany under the
Versailles Treaty and given to France and Poland
(Blueprint For A New War) and above all to put
an end to the exploitation of families by the
unscrupulous usurpers. In 1931-32 came
elections, when rival parties battled on the
streets, with bloody clashes between the Rot
Front and the Nationals. In the forefront of
such battles were the SA - Sturm Abteilung
(Brown shirts) with the newly created SS -Schutz
Staffel (the then Hermann G"ring's police units)
giving them protection.
Such skirmishes
happened quite frequently and Offingen with its
factories once again idle saw a number of them.
The grounds of the paper mill with its empty
halls and alleys were a perfect venue and were
used for election campaigning by all parties,
Communists and Nationalists almost side by side.
My brother and I were strictly forbidden by our
parents to go near this place but brother Willi
who was in his 12th year was already secretly
attending some meetings of the Jungvolk and one
afternoon he took me along. Some people in brown
uniforms were there plus quite a few of Willi's
schoolmates. I had little idea what it was all
about but we had a good time generally and made
sure we left before any skirmishes began. Willi
became acquainted with them because not all
afternoon trains from Gunzburg stopped at our
station so he often took one which stopped as
near home as possible then walked, taking a
short cut through the disused factory grounds
where the meetings were held.
I passed my entry
exam and also started at Gymnasium. We both left
on the 6.30 a.m. commuter train, just hopping on
as it pulled into the station. Coming home was a
little more complicated; we could either wait in
Gunzburg for the 5.30 p.m. which brought us to
the front door, or, as previously described,
take the earlier one and walk the rest.
This particular walk
was quite enjoyable. We always had company as
several other students were with us. Actually
Willi had quite interesting schoolmates. One was
the son of the owner/ director of the felt
factory and his sister who was my age sat next
to me in class. On wet days, or any day those
two didn't want to walk a beautifully
upholstered four-wheeled carriage drawn by two
equally beautiful horses with bells and colored
ribbons woven into their tails, and a liveried
Kutscher (driver) was sent to collect them and
so we were usually offered a lift with them.
Sometimes their Mother was there in her Mercedes
- or was it a Daimler Benz - I'm not sure any
more. All I know it was huge and a convertible.
We were driven through the town and delivered
right to our doorstep in absolute style.
Baron von und zu
Riedheim's son was another of my brother's
friends and the castle he lived in, just outside
Gunzburg, was as big as his name was long, and
the younger brother of Graf Claus Schenk von
Stauffenberg, was another. (Stauffenberg being
the officer who placed the suitcase bomb under
Hitler's table at Rastenburg, for which he was
executed). The Stauffenberg's ancestral castle
is in Burgau, two stations down the line from
Offingen. On several occasions Willi was invited
to both friends' 'humble abodes' and I also had
a few so-called upper class friends, though not
so grandly titled. One was called Musselman and
his parents had a large country estate near
Offingen and when he invited me to his place for
the weekend it too was done in style with a
horse and buggy and chauffeur. Come to think of
it, with such a name he could have been a Jew. I
couldn't see much difference between a German
and a Jew. Father had a tailor friend in
Gunzburg where he bought all our school clothes
and he was a Jew and I don't think that bothered
Father at all. All in all we had quite an
enjoyable time in those days.
I remember when
Father bought a wireless - a 'Volksempfunger'
(people's receiver), so named because the
authorities regarded ownership of a radio an
essential commodity. It had only two stations,
Berlin and Munchen and one of the first things
we heard about was the burning down of the
'Reichstag' (German Parliament) on 27 February
1933. The police arrested a Dutch communist
named Marinus van der Lubbe who confessed!! and
was subsequently tried for arson and
conveniantly executed.
The subsequent
general elections gave Hitler almost half of all
seats in the Reichstag, making the National
Socialists the powerful ruling party. Hitler was
made Reichskanzler (chancellor) by President von
Hindenburg. Things then began to improve and
unemployment was reduced from 10 million in 1933
to a labour shortage in 1938. It became
compulsory for all boys and girls from the age
of 10 to 18 to join the youth organization, so
in 1934 I was enrolled in the Jungvolk. My
brother had already reached the rank of
'Fuhnleinfuhrer' that meant he was in charge of
a Fuhnlein, a group of 100 boys and I was in
that group.
Looking back I only
have pleasant memories of that time contrary to
what the foreign press was frothing about, the
British in particular. Saturdays were officially
declared State Youth Days with supervised
emphasis on field and track or water sports and
soccer. Wet days were spent on indoor activities
such as model making, sketching, painting and
reading, all under strict supervision and
discipline, with no alcohol or smoking. I can
only say it was an enjoyable, clean and
disciplined way of life which some historians
have contradicted. According to them it was evil
and sinister and German youth corrupt and
encouraged by the authorities to inform on their
parents. It was not so. Under Hitler the family
was the mainstay of the nation and the children
had a proper home with Mother and Father living
together in a married relationship and not the
'cult' of single parenthood as practised today.
But then those historians were not in the
Jungvolk or Hitlerjugend and their information
comes mostly from books written by the victors
of World War II with plenty of distortion woven
in. The young people I write of were brought up
with better values and principles than we see
around in today's society all over the western
world and that includes today's Germany.
In 1936 my father was
posted to Gabelbach station, still on the main
line Ulm to Augsburg and as a consequence I was
taken out of the Gymnasium. Since I was pretty
good in woodwork and model making my parents
decided I should go into cabinet making. To be
admitted to a technical college I first had to
get my high school certificate, which I obtained
in Jettingen, near Burgau and a subsequent
successful examination by the apprenticeship
board secured me a place with the cabinet making
firm of Alois Weckerle in Augsburg Oberhausen.
My brother was in his
last year at the Gymnasium so he remained there
to finish and sit for his exams which he passed
with credit ensuring him a place at Munich
University to study for an engineering degree
though before starting his studies he had to do
one year of practical experience with an
engineering firm. At that time the autobahn
network was underway throughout Germany with a
huge bridge under construction outside Gabelbach
so he had no problem getting a job with a firm
working on the project.