FROM PEACE TO WAR
‘For trouble does not come out of the earth, and misfortune does not sprout from the field; rather, mankind is born to misfortune, just as birds soar, flying upwards.’
JOB 5: 6-7
Oskar Gustav Rudolf Berthold, later known as Rudolf, was born at about 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 24 March 18911 in Ditterswind, a village nestled in a forest valley in the part of north-western Bavaria known as Lower Franconia. He was the sixth child born into the family of Oberförster [Chief Forester] Oskar Berthold, who lost his first wife four years earlier. Anna Ida (née Hofmann) died at age thirty while giving birth to their fifth child, who also died.2 For a time, Oskar, still in his mid-thirties, returned to his original homeland in the Province of Saxony, where he grieved and ultimately met and married Helene Stief. She was three years Oskar’s junior and began his second family by having Rudolf. Three other children followed.3
Oskar Berthold proved to be a good husband for Helene. He was the son of a building contractor, but, rather than join his father’s company, he had trained for a career in forestry. In addition to directing timber harvesting and protecting wild game, he also managed and dealt with people; for, in a small community, a man in his position served as both game warden and local law enforcement officer.4 Thus, Oskar Berthold’s talents were put to good use in Bavaria, where he was hired by Oskar Freiherr [Baron] von Deuster, a landed nobleman with a large estate surrounding his Ditterswind residence. The elder Berthold enjoyed considerable prestige, which was reflected in his family’s lifestyle.
The forest and the fields became the Berthold children’s playground and they learned to appreciate the animals and plants under their father’s care and administration. It became a milestone for the children when they were allowed to individually accompany their father on game stalking pathways in advance of Freiherr von Deuster’s hunting parties for various guests.5 On such occasions, Rudolf and his brothers gained an early familiarity with and respect for the rifles that were among the tools of their father’s trade.
In early September 1897, Rudolf Berthold, then six years old, was enrolled in Ditterswind’s werktagschule [elementary school]. Like so many boys that age, he was occasionally boisterous and impulsive, but he stuck to his lessons and advanced through his classes. Young Rudolf developed an early interest in German history and, given to flights of fancy, he saw himself leading ‘a courageous troop, fighting for the Fatherland’. Outside of school, Rudolf’s great joys were sojourns into the forest, competitive sports and playing war games with other boys in the village.6
Oskar Berthold was responsible for the area around the Ditterswind residence of Oskar Freiherr von Deuster. (Heinz J. Nowarra)
Away to School
Following Rudolf’s tenth birthday, in 1901, his parents had to start thinking about his future. At age eleven, for example, he could apply for entrance to the Bavarian military cadet system and receive a good education for the next eight years at state expense and gain the prospect of service as an officer and perhaps a career in the army.7 But, despite his early leaning toward a life in uniform, Rudolf was enrolled as a first level student in the Humanistische Neue Gymnasium [New Secondary School for the Humanities] in nearby Bamberg.
At the time, two army regiments were garrisoned in Bamberg: the 5th Infanterie-Regiment Grossherzog Ernst Ludwig von Hessen9 and the horse-mounted 1st Ulanen-Regiment Kaiser Wilhelm II., König von Preussen. On various occasions, Bamberg’s streets were filled with local infantrymen and cavalry men all decked out in colourful dress uniforms and the school boys joined the crowds to witness the grand spectacle. Rudolf was so motivated by the visual power of row upon row of soldiers that even ‘when he went on vacation and searched again for the places of his early childhood, the ... love of his homeland grew all the more and he took a solemn oath that, when the hour required it, he would be a defender of the homeland, not merely a son of it.’10
During his time in Bamberg, according to Rudolf’s school reports, he displayed ‘good aptitude ... great diligence and orderly behaviour ... [and earned] special recognition for his ... self-control.’11 When asked what his personal motto would be, fourteen-year-old Rudolf, no doubt inspired by his early military interests and exposure to an oft-heard line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace, responded ‘without a moment’s hesitation: “It is sweet and honourable to die for the Fatherland!”’12
Rudolf completed the fifth level at the gymnasium in Bamberg in the summer of 1906. The following September he was one of thirty-seven boys accepted into the sixth level at the Königliches Humanistische Gymnasium [Royal Secondary School for the Humanities] in the Lower Franconian industrial city of Schweinfurt.13 The following year, as Rudolf graduated to the following class, he was joined at the school by his younger brother Wolfram.14 Wolfram had a gentler nature (he went on to study theology at Erlangen University15) and, given Rudolf’s athletic prowess and nearly total absence of fear, Wolfram was well looked after and was not concerned about the inevitable schoolyard bullies.
During the winter of 1909, Rudolf transferred to the Altes Gymnasium [Old Secondary School] in Bamberg, which offered a better course of study for the military career he was always thinking about. The move proved to be beneficial:
‘As with earlier courses, Rudolf was outstanding in history and in gymnastics, and did well in natural science and in language subjects (except in the French language). He also mastered the prima [senior year examination] diligently and energetically so that ... on 14 July 1910 he received the reifezeugnis [matriculation certificate], which, in consideration of good works, was achieved without his having to take an oral examination. Also during his final year, Berthold ... had the cheerful disposition of youth, which was displayed to the fullest among like-minded people and his peers ... and also did not exclude the beer parties of his student friends; rather, he got to know this ... side of student life from his own experiences.’16
A school chum, Hanns Fiedler, recalled a classroom incident in their final days in Bamberg that portended Berthold’s aptitude for military life. Their much respected and feared teacher was completing a discussion of Friedrich Schiller’s play Wallensteins Tod [Wallenstein’s Death], which should have interested Berthold, as it was about the Thirty Years’ War general, Albrecht von Wallenstein. But when called upon to recite a famous verse, Berthold paused. He could not recall it. Rather than admit defeat, he began with what he remembered, the first few lines:
‘”There are moments in the life of a man,
Where he is closer to the spirit of the world than ever ...”
After that, Berthold coolly improvised lines that somewhat imitated Schiller’s style. Then he cleverly ended with an actual line from the play: ‘Und Ross und Reiter sah man niemals wieder’ [And one never again saw horse and rider], after which his classmates burst into laughter at his daring ruse. By then the teacher was onto the game, but apparently was impressed by his pupil’s poise, self-confidence, courage and ability to think on his feet in a tight situation; he said nothing and continued with the lesson. Fiedler believed that Berthold could never be happier than he was at that moment, having come through such a ‘stormy voyage’ unharmed – and without being made to look foolish before his peers.17
Thus, Berthold’s ‘gymnasium days ended harmoniously. Now nothing stood in the way of fulfilling the dreams of his youth. The passionately desired profession of a military officer was open to him.’18
Entering the Army
By the time that nineteen-year-old Rudolf Berthold completed his public education, the most common way for him to obtain a regular army (vs. reserve) commission was to enlist in a regiment as an avantageur [officer candidate]. After that, he and other graduates of secondary school education in his cohort would spend eighteen months, preparing: ‘for officer rank through the equivalent of “on the job training ... [after which] the officers of [the] regiment voted on their acceptability.”’19
Although raised and educated in Bavarian communities, Berthold decided to begin his military career with a regiment based in Wittenberg, a city best known for its role in the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. In the early twentieth century, Wittenberg was in the Prussian-administered Province of Saxony,20 bordering the larger Kingdom of Saxony. Most likely, Berthold’s choice of a regiment was influenced by its garrison being in his parents’ homeland. His father ‘hailed from Brehna near Bitterfeld, while his mother came from Alperstedt near Erfurt.’21 And he chose a unit with a rich heritage: Infanterie-Regiment Graf Tauentzien von Wittenberg (3. Brandenburgischen) Nr. 20, named in honour of the Prussian field commander whose soldiers wrested the Wittenberg area from Napoleon’s army in 1814.22
It is easy to imagine that Rudolf Berthold would have been keen to add to the unit’s further glory. And it is just as easy to appreciate the following scene, described as occurring in Wittenberg on a national holiday to honour the kaiser, Saturday, 27 January 1912:
‘Today Wittenberg celebrates, like all cities and villages of the German Reich, in the traditional manner the festival on the kaiser’s birthday …
‘A young leutnant of the “Tauentziener” in full dress uniform strides through the city centre’s bustling streets. Brand-new are the shoulder boards on his officer’s overcoat. Happiness and pride radiate in the facial features of the slender manly figure. After [eighteen months’] time as a fähnrich [army ensign], Rudolf Berthold this morning received his officer’s commission from his regimental commander. Now the dream of youth has come true ...’23
Nurturing Patriotism
Shortly before Berthold was commissioned, the German government began encouraging development of a national youth movement. Called the Jungdeutschland-Bund [Young Germany Federation], it became a widespread patriotic activity for youngsters. Berthold supported it enthusiastically, as an expression of his ‘love of homeland in marches and scouting activities ... [as] the first spiritual elements of [a] magnificent German people’s army.’24 Not surprisingly, he was elected leader of the Wittenberg branch.25
As it turned out, Rudolf Berthold’s local involvement with a national youth group became compatible with his military service, as a driving force for the Bund was newly-retired Generalfeldmarschall [Field Marshal] Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz. The sixty-eight-year-old career soldier had served most recently as an advisor to the Turkish army during the 1908 revolution of the progressive, modernist members across Ottoman society known as the Young Turks. According to a contemporary biographical sketch of von der Goltz:
Celebrating his early success, Rudolf Berthold posed for this formal view with his father, Oskar, in autumn 1914. (Lance J. Bronnenkant)
‘It did not escape him that the new [Turkish] rulers lacked practical experience and daily practice in their new professions. But he hoped that their patriotism, their fervour and their intelligence would compensate for it.’26
When he returned home in 1913, von der Golz heard from ranking War Ministry members of their concern that Germany’s youth needed to become physically and mentally prepared for war; to be imbued with the spirit he reported witnessing in Turkey. Consequently, ‘in order to awaken in the ... current generation the spirit of warlike capability and to have it become accustomed to soldierly discipline and toil, he returned to national service and helped to develop the Jungdeutschland-Bund; he became its first chairman.’27
The Bund grew into an umbrella organisation for all groups of young men who were keen on physical fitness training, as noted in its founding statement of December 1911: ‘We need a strong race for the future of our people. Only a militant youth ensures the state and nation of a happy future. History teaches [this lesson] for all times …’28 Ultimately the head of eleven regional associations folded into one national organisation, von der Goltz said that, through the Jungdeutschland-Bund, German children would be raised: ‘in a martial spirit and inspired … from the earliest age with a love for the Fatherland, for which they might have to sacrifice.’29
While leading the local branch of the Bund, Rudolf Berthold further refined his leadership and motivational talents:
‘Every secondary school pupil and apprentice of a similar age ... wanted to join in when his companions marched out to the sound of pipes and drums behind the powerful [symbol of the] black-white-red banner. Every Saturday and Sunday they went out in city neighbourhoods, at first in small and then in larger gatherings. And in the middle of the youths marched the very embodiment of an officer, a leutnant of the Tauentzeiner-Regiment: Rudolf Berthold.
‘From the beginning, leading this group of youths was a well-loved responsibility. To help implant a national awareness in the youth, which was attracted early to a vigorous defence of the Fatherland, that was ... a welcomed and heart-warming fulfilment of the, at times, systematic and tedious service with the troops ... Berthold maintained his stature among the impetuous youths ... He recalled the war games of his youth in Ditterswind and so for him there was no nicer Sunday [outing] than a field exercise with the Jungdeutschland-Bund.’30
The Bund was so effective that, at the outbreak of World War I, it ‘numbered three-quarters of a million members’ – all well-motivated recruits for the army and navy.
In the Fliegertruppe
Meanwhile, as Berthold settled into his new profession, he became aware of other military service opportunities. One of them was the Fliegertruppe [flying service], which had been under development since 4 July 1910 and became part of the German army organisation on 1 October 1912.32 Berthold was devoted to his family and wrote many letters home, detailing his experiences. But, as an army career itself was a dangerous undertaking, he would not have wanted to worry his parents and siblings further by mentioning a nascent interest in such a perilous activity as flying in a fragile wooden-framed machine covered with fabric. Consequently, he noted only that, in the summer of 1914, he had been given a ‘special assignment’ to a flying school33 not far from his regiment. In fact, Berthold had volunteered to receive flight training.
Berthold’s mother, Helene, seen here later in life, after two of her sons and her husband had died. (Heinz J. Nowarra)
The Fliegerschule der Halberstädter Flugzeugwerke [Flying School of the Halberstadt Aeroplane Works] was an early centre of German aviation activity. The factory produced license-built versions of the Bristol two-seat mid-wing monoplane and the school offered instruction to prospective civilian and military airmen. Among its pre-war pupils was Leutnant Oswald Boelcke, who later became an early developer of air combat tactics and one of Germany’s highest-scoring fighter aces. Boelcke attended the school at about the same time as Rudolf Berthold and described to a friend a nearly idyllic setting for pupils:
‘We are on duty only in the morning; the afternoons are completely free – for playing tennis, lying about in the sun or going to the mountains. One could not think of a more pleasant assignment.
‘If only the duty were not so agreeable and, preferably, we were pestered to do a bit more. Of course, when we have good flying weather, we are awakened at 3:30 a.m. and are supposed to begin work at 4:00 – if only there were something to do and we did not have to stand around endlessly without purpose and wait!
‘We have four instructors here, each of whom has a training aeroplane (... with two steering columns, one ... controlled by the instructor, the other by the pupil) and three pupils whom he instructs one after the other. Our machines are 70-horsepower Bristol-Taube [sic] types, which, for training, have the one good quality of being rather slow. But at times they have a bad habit of not wanting to do anything at all: when the weather is warm or the engine is not quite first-rate, then the beasts cannot carry two men higher than five to ten metres and they only taxi around on the ground, whereby one learns nothing at all about flying.
‘Occasionally the pilot becomes fed up after instructing only one pupil. Thus, at times one stands around for four hours and barely has a turn – and that always makes me enormously angry.’35
At first, neither Boelcke nor Berthold understood the full impact of events on Saturday, 27 June 1914, when the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were murdered in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. During the following weeks, however, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne helped to catalyse underlying conflicts between the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, and the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia. When Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II pledged loyalty36 to his Habsburg counterpart, two of Europe’s oldest royal houses stood shoulder to shoulder. Thus reinforced, the government of Austria’s Kaiser Franz Joseph I imposed harsh demands on Serbia, which was seen as responsible for events in Bosnia, and that move resulted in military plans being strengthened across Europe.
Boelcke remained at Halberstadt without interruption, while Berthold’s aviation training was nearly cancelled as a result of these developments. On 1 July Berthold was recalled to his regiment in Wittenberg, where he noted: ‘For months I had not marched a single step or taken part in a field manoeuvre. Now, sometimes my feet did not want to go; one unlearns how to march too quickly. In aviation service one sits either in an aeroplane or in a car...’37
Berthold was required to take part in two weeks of infantry drills before he could return to Halberstadt – and now he was further behind his peers in the training cycle. But, while some conditions remained the same, the mood among his regimental comrades had changed, as he wrote in mid-July:
‘In the Kasino [officers’ mess] there is only one topic of discussion: war ... This time we all agree that it will come to this. My thoughts race ahead. Will we prevail? Full of confidence, we will confront the future ... We suspect and feel and know that it will explode – and yet everything is so peaceful ... Our drills are the same as every other year at this time, yet everything has an entirely different appearance ... We still use practice ammunition.’38
On Friday, 17 July, Rudolf Berthold was formally transferred from his regiment to the Fliegertruppe. With his service status now permanent, he could concentrate on the true passion of his military life. He poured out his feelings into his diary:
‘I had to return to the flying school at Halberstadt ... I still had to take my first and second pilots’ examinations. Until now I had been trained as an observer. But I wanted to steer the aeroplane myself! I can no longer climb into an aeroplane with anyone else; in my mind, I am steering and become restless when I notice uncertainty in a pilot. Perhaps that comes about because my old training pilot secretly taught me how to fly ...
‘I believe that very few are really aware of how beautiful flying is. With a little pressure on the control column I guide the aeroplane and compel it to do my will, within the forces of nature, and to dare to do battle with those forces. I envy the pilots who, completely trained, have their aeroplanes.
‘Very few of them truly make the best use of their domain; they are satisfied when they have made some circuits around the airfield during calm weather and are gazed at as dashing fellows by the crowd. My fingers itch to be at the controls: I want to fly high, far away, where no one sees me, alone with my bird. I want to leave all the pettiness behind me, I want to be free and surpass the birds in flight ...’39
Three days later Berthold was back in Halberstadt. He viewed the, by now inexorable, path to war with widely-mixed emotions, at once seeming not to comprehend what was going on and, in the next moment, eager for it to happen. He wrote:
‘The training aeroplanes were out on the airfield. A peculiar feeling came over me: Patched up in every spot, they did not look really ready for war. There were few pupils here ... One flew especially well: Boelcke. He was ready and waiting to be recalled to his aviation unit. One look at him shows that he flies because it makes him happy. Boelcke has already passed his second examination; however, in the event of mobilisation, I will definitely be an observer ... What a shame that out of consideration for the equipment, in fear of every crack, it was flown so little. That makes me sad ... if only I were away from here!’40
Mobilising for War
Berthold got his wish following the defining event on Tuesday, 28 July, when the government of Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Allegedly, the action was taken to exact retribution for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but it only gave Russia a reason to mobilise. In turn, Germany also militarised, which filtered down to effect Berthold by ending his plans to become a pilot, as he wrote in his diary:
‘The situation has become serious. We have just received the mobilisation order. All of the officers have been recalled to their regiments by telegraph. Boelcke and I depart. I have my orders as an observer ...
‘I am supposed to report to Grossenhain. I stop on the way at my garrison in Wittenberg ... The streets are swarming with people ... My regiment is to move out the next day ... I can stay only a few hours. I bid farewell to all.
‘Who knows if I will see any one of the dear, old comrades again ... All are so happy at the prospect of victory! I love flying and, yet, what I would give if I could move out with my old, dear regiment ... The glass of Sekt [sparkling wine] that I swiftly toss down at my comrades’ departure tastes quite tart, as a few furtive tears have fallen into it ...’41
Germany supported Austria by declaring war on Russia on Saturday, 1 August, and on France two days later; on the latter date, erstwhile German-Austrian ally Italy proclaimed its neutrality. Germany’s subsequent violation of Belgian impartiality was one stated reason for Great Britain to declare war on Germany and Austria-Hungary on 4 August.
During all the commotion of that first day of war, Rudolf Berthold continued his hectic train ride to the Royal Saxon Air Base at Grossenhain.42 There he would be assigned to one of the squadrons being organised to bring the new dimension of aviation to Germany’s military might.
Berthold was by nature an emotional person and, at times, had to work hard at self-control. His diary entry for 1 August showed that his jumbled feelings were finally settling down, as his firm sense of military orderliness took over:
‘The farewell in my garrison still had me trembling as I arrived in Grossenhain. The journey was terrible. The general state of war affected everything. The train leaving Wittenberg was overfilled and I had to stand. How I longed to be back with my comrades. But a sense of duty dispelled all soft feelings; now I had to be firm with myself!’43