The German attack on Russia on June 22, 1941 radicalized World War II into an unprecedented “war of annihilation.” The struggle with the Soviet Union was not just a conventional great power conflict, but an ideological crusade against communism that sought to extirpate the “red menace,” as the infamous “commissar order” reveals. Hitler, Nazi leaders, and volkish intellectuals had long dreamed of conquering “living space” in the East—a racist fantasy that required the ethnic cleansing of most of its Slavic population. Moreover, the invasion of Russia also added further Baltic, White Russian, and Ukrainian territories with heavy Jewish populations to the Nazi sphere, leading to the culmination of anti-Semitic persecution in the “Holocaust by bullets” that inaugurated systematic genocide. By blurring any real distinction between combatants and civilians, this racist imperialism expanded warfare beyond the front and cost millions of innocent lives. Already during the fighting, the anti-Slavic repression and anti-Semitic genocide began, because Hitler’s New Order had no place for Russians or Jews.
The invasion of Russia also clarified Konrad Jarausch’s military future, since he was sent to Dulag 203 in the central front on August 11. After a transfer to Stalag 204 in France had not worked out, the need for experienced personnel to guard the hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners prevented his reassignment or release from service. The Durchgangslager were the initial reception camps that operated fairly closely behind the front in order “to hold and guard” the prisoners who had been captured in the fighting, and to sort them for shipment as laborers to Germany or killing by the SS as ideological enemies and racial inferiors. Dulag 203 was attached to security division 286, which was supposed to protect the advancing tank and infantry units by maintaining their communication lines and preventing partisan attacks. Since young soldiers were needed for the push to Leningrad or Stalingrad and the offensive toward Moscow, “securing and ordering the towns crossed during the fighting” fell to the older comrades in the reserves. Hence Jarausch was sent to Dulag 203 in Kochanowo and later on moved to Kritschew in Belarus.
Once again he was fascinated by his encounter with the unknown East and sought to make sense of his conflicting impressions of Russia. While the landscape somewhat resembled northern Germany, the culture and politics appeared fundamentally different. Daily contacts with POW helpers and translators led him to admire the Russian people’s immense capacity for suffering, especially among the women, and made him gradually see them no longer as enemies. The visible remnants of Old Russia he found congenial, since the villages with wooden houses seemed inviting, and signs of deep religiosity among the peasants intrigued him. In spite of encountering newly built train stations, schools, and factories, he remained critical of “the Bolshevik system” due to drastic tales of human suffering from the Stalinist transformation into the modern Soviet Union. But the more he found out through conversation and reading, the less he believed that “the Russian could be completely defeated in the few weeks that separate us from winter.” Moreover, he worried about the material and spiritual destruction of Europe that would leave a trail of bitterness, clouding the future.
His letters also reinforce the impression that the Dulags faced a near impossible task under the chaotic conditions of the fall and winter of 1941/42. The rapid initial advance produced so many prisoners that the collection camps were simply overwhelmed. When 20,000 POWs crowded into a facility designed for one-tenth as many, disorder and hunger were the result. Guarding such a large number with 150 soldiers required the repeated use of force. The basic decision to feed the prisoners with what could be collected in the occupied territory itself put them at risk, since too little was left on the scorched earth. Part of the problem was also a lack of transportation, as the retreating Red Army had destroyed roads, bridges, and railroad tracks. Another part was the inclement weather, because rain transformed the dirt roads of the Rollbahn into groundless mud, while early snow froze trucks in their tracks. Moving with the front, the Dulags could never stabilize their infrastructure and had to improvise constantly. Finally, due to their own food problems in October the Wehrmacht leaders reduced POW rations to below the minimum requirement, callously ignoring their likely death.
In this mess Konrad Jarausch was put in charge of one of the field kitchens of Dulag 203, covering an entire subcamp. Trying to reconcile a sense of duty with human compassion, he attempted to feed the fluctuating number of POWs in his charge as best as he could. That meant constantly having to fight with pursers about receiving adequate supplies, such as edible potatoes, flour for bread baking, and very rarely some scraps of [horse]meat. It also required finding large enough kettles for cooking a watery soup and then getting bowls for the POWs to hold their limited ration. Moreover, it necessitated scrounging up wood to heat the stoves or ovens and organizing both a handful of soldiers and a dozen prisoners to get the cooking done. Racist SS officers objected to these efforts, and cynical nationalists simply told him to forget helping Slavic subhumans. A Christian sense of charity nonetheless compelled him to intercede personally to maintain order, beating back the ravenous, even firing shots so as to be able to give the weaker prisoners their share. When there were only a few hundred in camp this task seemed doable, but when thousands suddenly arrived, it became impossible.
Making reference to the passion of Christ, the letters from Dulag 203 provide chilling descriptions of the “quiet dying” of Russian POWs. Their detailed accounts of the mass death as well as their sympathetic perspective are unparalleled in Western literature. His reports indicate that many prisoners were already half-dead on arrival at the camp, since they were dejected, exhausted, and starving, having marched long distances. After they reached transit camps, many did not receive adequate shelter in the stables, factory buildings, or schools that had been converted for this purpose, but had to sleep on the wet ground. Their rations were grossly inadequate and nutritionally unbalanced, since they were only fed twice daily, generally with two helpings of soup and a chunk of bread. Finally, the breakdown of transportation and the lack of guards slowed efforts to move them on to better facilities. Crammed together with inadequate sanitation, prisoners deteriorated quickly and dozens passed away each night. In disregard of the Geneva Convention, more than two million of the about 3.3 million Russian POWs, captured during 1941, appear to have died during the marches and in the camps.
Konrad Jarausch was deeply shocked by this “boundless suffering” because it took place under his own eyes and he was helpless to alleviate it. In order to assuage his conscience, he sought out some educated prisoners who also helped him keep order, thereby seeing them as individual human beings and establishing a level of mutual trust. In order to communicate better, understand the kitchen help, and talk to other POWs, he began to take Russian lessons from an interpreter. Such efforts also led to human encounters, in which POWs would recount their suffering under the Bolsheviks and each would exchange pictures of loved ones at home. During Christmas 1941 several POWs gave him little gifts to express their gratitude and an opera singer also performed selections from the repertoire, Russian folk tunes and orthodox hymns. No doubt, some of these contacts were not entirely disinterested, since they would improve survival chances for the prisoners. But on the whole, he judged them genuine and began to sense a deep solidarity beyond enemy lines. This feeling of shared humanity made him question the conflict’s legitimacy, since it had become “more murder than war.”
In spite of his relatively privileged position, he ultimately paid with his life for his involvement in this atrocity. In order to improve morale, the command of the central front had issued extra rations of food and spirits for the holidays, and his working and sleeping quarters were somewhat sheltered from the cold. But the breakdown of order as a result of defeat had created an epidemic of typhoid fever in the Russian population that also spread to the POWs. Since the disease was transmitted through lice and washing facilities were limited even for the guards, there was no effective way to prevent contagion. Normally the disease resulted in a high fever that dehydrated the body, wasted the flesh, and made the sufferer sink into a coma. While most young men survived, over forty-year-olds with a heart condition were particularly at risk because the army had no effective medicine against it. On January 11, 1942, Konrad Jarausch was transported to the field hospital in Roslawl where he struggled until succumbing on January 27. While there was a bitter logic in suffering the same fate as the POWs, his death was nevertheless tragic, because he had just turned against the war.
These letters from Russia shed some light on the complexity of individual or collective involvement in wartime atrocities. As a Prussian patriot, Jarausch participated in the nationalities’ struggle by selecting prisoners and helping refugees, even if he did not physically take part in ethnic cleansing. As a volkish nationalist, he knew of but did not personally assist in the killing of communists, the decimation of Slavic elites, and the genocide of Jews, for whom he felt some pity. But as a master sergeant, he was directly involved in the mass death of Russian POWs because he was unable to provide them with the necessary food in spite of his efforts to mitigate their suffering. Stemming from chaotic circumstances, racial prejudice, and political design, this killing behind the battlefield was the result of a new kind of Vernichtungskrieg (war of extermination) that broke the norms of modern civilized warfare. Jarausch’s experience suggests that neither the apologetic “myth of the clean Wehrmacht” nor the critical accusation of the Holocaust culpability of the entire army are quite correct. Instead, his fate demonstrates how annihilationist warfare could turn doing one’s duty into becoming an accomplice of crime.
Konrad Jarausch’s correspondence from the Soviet front therefore raises troubling moral questions about which values should predominate in wartime—a sense of national obligation or a commitment to transnational humanity. In spite of some personal idiosyncrasies, the letters are representative of the attitudes of many decent, cultivated Germans who supported the Nazi program of national renewal, only to find themselves embroiled in another world war. Throughout them the author is torn between his support for the war effort and his distress over the suffering inflicted by conquest. The stark evidence of Nazi brutality in the mass death of Russian POWs sharpened this conflict of conscience between his wish to belong to a national and military community and his feeling of compassion for the many victims of Hitler’s hegemonic dreams. In the end, Konrad Jarausch resolved this dilemma by overcoming some of his nationalist enemy stereotypes and choosing solidarity with the suffering POWs. Starting out as a cautionary tale about the evil consequences of NS complicity, the letters eventually tell a more encouraging story of the possibility of recovering a shared humanity.
Stationing in Russia, 1941–42
