From School to War: Growing Up in Hitler’s Germany (Contemporary Nonfiction) Read online

  From School to War

  Contemporary Nonfiction

  Truman State University Press

  Kirksville, Missouri

  Copyright © 2017 Wolf Dettbarn / Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri 63501

  All rights reserved

  tsup.truman.edu

  Cover art: Wolf Dettbarn, age 16; Erwin Dettbarn’s regiment, ca. 1942.

  Cover design: Lisa Ahrens

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the print edition as follows:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dettbarn, Wolf-D., author. | Dettbarn, Penny, co-author.

  Title: From school to war : growing up in Hitler’s Germany / by Wolf Dettbarn with Penny Dettbarn.

  Description: Kirksville, MO : Truman State University Press, 2017. | Series: Contemporary nonfiction

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017017023 (print) | LCCN 2017029749 (ebook) | ISBN 9781612482019 | ISBN 9781612482002 (paperback : alkaline paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dettbarn, Wolf-D.—Childhood and youth. | Germany—History—1933-1945—Biography. | Hitler-Jugend—Biography. | Schoolboys Germany—Eschwege—Biography. | Soldiers—Germany—Biography. | World War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives, German. | Immigrants—United States—Biography. | Columbia University. Department of Neurology—Biography. | Neurobiologists—Tennessee—Nashville—Biography.

  Classification: LCC DD247.D4782 (ebook) | LCC DD247.D4782 A3 2017 (print) | DDC 612.8092 [B] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017023

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher.

  The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

  To my children, Donata and Henning.

  With special thanks to Gini Scott, PhD, without whom this book could not have been written.

  Contents

  Chapter 1: The First Seven Years

  Early Lessons

  School in Berlin

  Breaking the Rules

  A Lesson about War

  Chapter 2: Science, School, and the Hitler Youth

  An Early Scientific Calling

  An Early Introduction to the Nazis

  The Growing Nazi Power

  Chapter 3: The Adolf Hitler Schule

  At the School

  Classes Begin

  Chapter 4: Challenges

  Growing Disillusionment

  War with Russia

  Chapter 5: Slovakia

  Becoming a Leader

  A Fire in the Forest

  Working with Austrian Students

  A New Independence

  The War Effort

  The End of School Days

  Chapter 6: A Bombing Attack in Kassel

  Chapter 7: Joining the Volkssturm

  The “Prussian Miracle”

  Chapter 8: Captured

  News of Hansi

  Camp Life

  Chapter 9: Home at Last

  Chapter 10: Medical Training and a University Education

  Getting to Know Patients

  Learning New Techniques

  Returning to School

  Working My Way through Medical School

  Housing Problems and Cold Weather

  Chapter 11: Training to Become a Doctor

  The Dissection Room

  Exams

  Home, Family, and First Love

  Chapter 12: Clinical Training

  Visits Home

  Chapter 13: Becoming a Scientist

  Chapter 14: New York and Columbia University

  An Emigrant to America

  The International House

  Working as a Research Scientist

  Marriage and Family

  Chapter 15: On to Nashville

  Looking Back

  Timeline

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The First Seven Years

  My family and I lived in Berlin for my first seven years, from 1928 to 1935. My father was a colonel in the army. He came from a long line of Prussian officers. In the summer, my parents and my brother, Hansi, who was a year younger than I, would visit our maternal grandparents near Lingen, in the north of Germany on the river Ems. It was a bike ride away from the Baltic Sea.

  My grandfather was the warden of a minimum-security prison in Lingen, and we would stay with them for the whole summer. The prisoners were there for committing non-violent crimes and, in the early years of Nazi rule, they were mostly convicted for infractions against the new Nazi laws, such as speaking out or writing against the Nazi Party, not attending rallies, or keeping their children out of the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend). Later, as the Nazis became more entrenched, such infractions received much harsher penalties, including incarceration in concentration camps, or even death. Though the Nazis still had minimum-security prisons, they sent the political prisoners to the camps. Eventually, before the war started, my grandfather lost his job as a warden since he wasn’t a member of the Nazi Party. He didn’t like Hitler or his ideas, and in the early years many other Germans agreed with him, viewing Hitler as a bully and a thug.

  The prison was a formidable structure. It was like a red brick box, a few stories high, surrounded by a wall, also of red brick. Each eight-by-ten-foot cell had a small window to let in the light, and though these had no bars, they were like windows in an attic garret, far too small to let a man through. However, the prisoners often communicated with each other by calling out to each other through these windows. They also could talk to each other while they were working in the fields and at mealtimes, when they sat across from each other at long tables that were lined up in long rows from wall to wall.

  Dettbarn family photo, circa 1912/13. Seated, left to right: a great-uncle, unknown, Wolf’s grandmother, Major Friedrich Dettbarn (grandfather). Standing, left to right: Tante Hildegarde, Uncle Rudolph, Tante Erna, unknown.

  My grandparents’ house sat in the middle of the grounds around the prison, between the outer and inner red brick walls. It was similarly built of bricks, and was three stories high. Just outside was a large patio with beds of geraniums, dahlias, zinnias, and pansies along the walls. I loved to see the explosion of colors when the flowers were in bloom in the spring, like a multicolored quilt. Perhaps this is where I began my lifelong love of gardens and gardening.

  As the warden, my grandfather ran the prison, which had perhaps a hundred prisoners, most of them in their thirties. My grandfather was a powerful man, tall and built like a bear with a big mustache, a beard, pince-nez, and a stern manner. Yet underneath this harsh exterior, he was very indulgent of Hansi and me. For example, after he scolded us for our escapades, he allowed us to roam free again, telling us, “Be good now, and off you go.” He also played cards with us—Black Card was a favorite; in this game the cards were passed around until the loser held a black card at the end of the game. My Opa (grandfather) won every game because he cheated. We could tell because of the way he pulled the winning card from his sleeve or dealt the cards so he got a winning hand, but we were not brave enough to let on that we knew. So we simply let him win, and he smiled with great pleasure when the game was over and he could show us that he had won again. This was his way of displaying his mastery in cards, just as he was a master of his domain at the prison.

  The Conrady family, circa 1920. Left to ri
ght: Opa Conrady, Tante Magdelene, Tante Lotte, Maria (Wolf’s mother), Oma Conrady.

  Perhaps he was so kind to us because his father had died in the War of 1871 and he was sent to a Waisenhaus, an orphanage for the children of slain soldiers, where he grew up. It seemed he now wanted to give us the kind treatment and love he never had. On leaving the Waisenhaus, he entered the civil service as a prison warden, where he had the highly desired lifelong security of a civil servant. But because he didn’t join the Nazi Party, this longtime security was not to be.

  Outside of the prison walls, he was the most important person in Lingen, though he had no official position in the town. Friends and neighbors constantly turned to him for help. For example, when children had eaten poisoned berries or had gotten into some type of trouble with other children, the mothers turned to Opa for advice on what to do. And he almost always had a solution. For example, he knew of herbs and salves to help children overcome their poisoning, and he knew what to say to children to calm their disputes. Whenever people sought his help, he was always very respectful, thoughtful, and kind. Perhaps that is why he didn’t want to join the Nazi Party and had so much trouble with them when they later came to power. He found them too abrupt, aggressive, and uncaring for others, so he didn’t want to be a part of the Nazi way of life.

  When my family came to visit, Hansi and I played under the windows of the prisoners, who enjoyed the diversion of watching us play. Sometimes when they came out to the yard for a few hours of recreation, they helped us with our games. We played tag, hide-and-seek, and cowboys and Indians, inspired by the popular American movies of the time that featured a romanticized image of the Wild West, where the cowboys were the good guys battling the evil Indians. We were also inspired by the books of Karl May, a German author who wrote about the American West, though he knew very little, since all of his information came from a Baedeker guidebook, and he based his stories on the popular myths of the West. In this popular mythology, it was a place of heroic cowboys, wily Indians, and tough sheriffs, who were relentless in tracking down and bringing to justice horse thieves and other villains. However, despite being more fantasy fiction than truth, May’s stories were wildly popular not just in Germany, but throughout Europe.

  In playing these Wild West games, we ran around using toy bows and arrows and pointing our fingers as guns to shoot dead the boys playing Indians, though sometimes we let the Indians beat the cowboys. Sometimes we played a game with dice and small figures of soldiers. We also rode around the grounds on an ancient horse named Brasso, who was too old to work, so Opa allowed us to ride him.

  From time to time, Hansi and I visited the big farm attached to the prison, where the prisoners had to do agricultural work every day, even on Sundays, from early morning to late afternoon, as long as there was enough light to see. They tended the crops grown there—mostly potatoes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and turnips—and they were responsible for tending to the cows and horses that grazed in the meadow, and caring for a few pigs. Other jobs included keeping the fences in good repair so the cows and horses wouldn’t get out, and feeding the pigs the mash made from the crops grown on the farm. Occasionally, one of the prisoners would take Hansi and me out for a ride on a wagon to see the cows and horses who, in their own way, were prisoners inside the prison walls.

  Sometimes Hansi and I rode around with the town baker, who delivered his fresh breads and pastries in a horse-drawn carriage. We sat in the backseat next to the stacks of still-warm bread and would secretly eat some of it. At least we thought this was our secret, but the baker had soon discovered some of the bread was missing and later our grandfather had to pay for it.

  Early Lessons

  One Sunday, when I was five years old and my brother was four, Hansi and I were dressed in our Sunday best—matching blue wool suits and white shirts—which we hated wearing, since the wool itched terribly. But we went out to the pasture as we usually did during the week, when we were dressed in cotton shorts and polo shirts, and after we ran around the pasture for a while, playing tag and cowboys and Indians, our shoes were covered in mud and the droppings from the cows. After we had tried to clean them with our hands, our faces and hands were covered with this muck as well.

  Then, having given up on doing any more cleaning, we went down to where the prisoners were loading the cows on trucks to take them to the slaughterhouses. At the time, we had no idea where the animals were headed and none of the prisoners told us. Had we found out, we would have been very angry and upset, and we would have protested, since the cows had become like family to us. We only figured out what was really happening when we were much older and learned that the cows were being raised for their meat—not just their milk.

  One of the overseers watching the men work was Gustav, a good friend of my grandmother’s, who was very stout and looked like a cartoon character in his blue uniform with golden buttons, blue bowler hat, and large cigar hanging from his mouth. As we walked toward him, he looked at us, his mouth wide with surprise at how we looked: like dirty, disheveled street urchins. Then, catching his breath, he admonished us: “Your grandmother would be very unhappy to see you in this condition.”

  I was still trying to decide what to say when Hansi wobbled over on his bowlegs and said to me, “Mensch Wolfie, what does he want? Mensch Wolf, hit him in the face!” Gustav smiled and then burst out laughing. He walked over to my grandfather and told him what Hansi had said. My grandfather broke out in a laugh when he heard the story and told Hansi, “Go back to Gustav and apologize. You have been very rude, and you can’t talk to an adult like that.”

  Hansi hung his head in shame and then apologized. “I’m so sorry,” he said, to which my grandfather replied, “That’s all right now. Just don’t do it again.”

  After Gustav and my brother made their peace, Hansi and I ran toward town, first along a dirt road and then over the cobblestones, toward the middle of the town, where the streets were lined with trees and the old houses along the roads were made of timbers from the surrounding forest.

  Since it was nearly noon, we knew that the church would be letting out any minute; we saw some young girls walking toward their house with milk for their father’s breakfast. We thought it would be a funny joke to stop the girls, so we blocked their way and would not let them pass to bring milk home. We stood side by side in the street, and every time the girls tried to move, we moved in front of them. At first the girls thought it was funny, but then they got mad and started whining. “Come on. Please let us through,” they said.

  But we just laughed, and each time one of them darted ahead, we moved in front of her to keep the girls on the road, while they became more and more frustrated and angry. At last, after a few minutes of this, my grandfather received a phone call from the girls’ father, who saw us blocking the girls. He told my grandfather, “Please collect the boys from the street, because they stopped the girls and won’t let them pass to bring the milk home for breakfast.”

  At once, my grandfather came running out of the house toward us and called out, “You should never do this and must apologize to the girls.” We reluctantly went up to the girls and said, “We’re very sorry. Let’s shake hands,” though we just said this since that’s what our grandfather said to do, not because we were sincerely sorry. At least the girls went along with our request, and after shaking hands, they went on to their father’s house so finally he could get his milk.

  Later that same day, Hansi and I went into the house where our grandmother was having a kaffeeklatsch. It was, and still is, the custom in Germany to have coffee and cake in the late afternoon, and my grandmother had invited the ladies to join her. It was a huge, three-story house that had a big kitchen with a long table, large stove, and china cabinets. The kitchen was always warm, often filled with the steam of bubbling pots on the stove, and always smelled good. Next to the kitchen, the dining room had a large oval-shaped table and enough chairs to accommodate twelve people. At meals, my grandfather presided from t
he head of the table and, since my grandparents were fervent Protestants, they always said grace before eating and left an empty chair for the Prophet Elijah so he would continue to bestow his blessings on the family. Just beyond the entrance, there was a small parlor and upstairs, five bedrooms.

  On that particular Sunday, about ten ladies from the town, dressed in long black silk dresses with ruffles, some wearing the matching hats with tall crowns they had all been wearing upon arrival, were at the dining room table waiting for their coffee and kuchen (cake). My Oma (grandma) usually served streusel cake, a delicious cake made with apples and cream. As the women sat around the table, they discussed the usual topics following the same order they always did—first they commented on the weather, then the happenings in the village, and finally they spoke about their children.

  After Hansi and I said some quick hellos, we saw some of the women’s hats on a hat rack. We grabbed a bunch of them and headed into the bathroom, just beyond the cloakroom. The hats looked like big boats because of their tall crowns and small brims, which was the style at the time. We thought it would be fun to see if their hats could float. So we plopped them into the bathtub, which we had filled with water. We enjoyed watching their hats float briefly but as they absorbed water and became heavier and heavier, one by one they sank.

  One of our aunts, Tante Lotte, who was still in the dining room talking with the other women, became suspicious because she couldn’t hear any noise coming from our direction. So she went looking for us and heard a little noise in the bathroom, which was near the cloakroom. She quietly opened the door and she gasped at what she saw—three hats floating on the water, since the others had already sunk.

  “Mein Gott! What is your Oma going to say?” Tante Lotte cried out. Immediately, she closed the door and ran back to the party where she told her mother, our Oma, what had happened. My grandmother flushed red with embarrassment, while some of the women with the floating hats were horrified at the loss of their new hats and ran into the bathroom to save them. Others laughed so hard they had tears running down their faces. So for the third time that day we had to apologize, this time to the ladies and to my grandfather.