Hans Boche My Story (11) Aftermath. I went straight back to Stuttgart with Lotte. I had a conduct pass from the Allies and it was a humiliating journey, especially as we got further South. Arrogant French soldiers would pass us through checkpoints with spittle and curses. We walked and got lifts, but it took two days. What a relief when we arrived and found my home intact and my Parents alive. Only then did I regard myself and Lotte safe from the dangers of the past five years turmoil. I knew at once, as soon as I saw my Parents, that Bernard was dead. He had been last heard of as based with a special squadron at Templehof airport in Berlin, and that was all. Templehof had been over-run by the Russians of course so anything could have happened. Officially Bernard was listed as missing but I can go forward many years now and tell you that nothing was ever heard of him again. At the time I had to convince my Parents not to hope for any miracle. He had undoubtedly died in the holocaust that was Berlin, when the primeval savagery of the Russians cut a swathe through our noble institutions. I had fought the Russians, and killed many of them, and knew how cheap human life was to them. We heard that when Templehof was inspected by the British all that remained was a scrapyard of aircraft. The Fuhrer had died in his command bunker and some other leaders of the Reich took the same route. Who was left for trial, or who was nominally leading the remnants of our occupied Country did not occupy my mind. I had had enough of war and it was better to keep my mind clear of all the events in our submission. Lotte got a job, with the approval of the occupiers, in the Hospital in Stuttgart. She was now an ordinary nurse and had to look after very many poor souls, some of whom were starved ex-inmates of Concentration Camps. This distressed Lotte very much. Many German soldiers were in hospital also having been wounded in the last battles. Lotte was not allowed to show any favour to German soldiers over the others. Some of our soldiers no doubt were hurt at the eleventh hour which seems a very terrible thing, perhaps to last the war all through and be hit with the last bullet or shell fired. I got a temporary job working at my Father's firm, the Stationery Company. Miraculously it had kept going through it all but the ownership had changed in various ways. During the war it had been taken over by A.G.Farben, and after the war there was another takeover which put it in the hands of the Du Pont Corporation of America. We now had products like the sticky tape, called Durex by the Americans, we called it Sellotape. We also branched out into adhesives, which became a major part of the business. Would that it had been possible to stick Germany back together with them. On reflection perhaps that is what was actually happening. To go forward quickly, Lotte and I were married and we lived in a new housing complex built on bomb devastated land South of Stuttgart. I became Manager of the Adhesives Division of our Company. Lotte still worked as a nurse when she could and we had two children, both girls, called Magda and Lena. I shut the war out of my mind for many years. In modern jargon I was 'in denial' I suppose. Now I am putting things down on paper, I look back on it in this way. We did not know what was happening when we were led into such a dire outcome. In 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power, by one vote I believe, he worked miracles. We could all see that. He was in fact and effect a Dictator. It is said that the best form of Government is a benevolent dictatorship, and that is what we thought we had. He achieved so much, we thought he could achieve anything. In retrospect, as everything always becomes clear from that viewpoint, we should have probably questioned his methods and motives. It is the desire of most Germans, except anarchists and foreigners, to have a strong and well ordered society. That was exactly what the Nazi ideology was, so we liked it and acclaimed the man who gave it to us. I can now think about moral questions that I did not give much thought to in my youth. The boundaries of Germany in the 30's were fixed more by the Versailles Treaty than history, though the nucleus of our country remained to us. Of course in a virtually land-locked country, with many neighbours, there will be an overlapping of populations. We became strong under Hitler, and if might is right, we did the right thing in taking back our historically lost land and peoples. But is might right? I now doubt it. Poland was not ours, by no stretch of the imagination could all of Poland be regarded as German. There had always been Poles on our eastern Border. The sore spot was the Sudetenland. That was almost entirely populated by Germans but was in Poland. Should we have taken that and stopped there? Now I don't think you can take and stop just like that. It is like a drug, especially if it is easy. One thing is sure, if we had not marched into Poland with guns blazing and taking what we thought we had a perfect right to, we would not have finished with a devastated land, with flattened cities and a decimated and subjugated population. In hindsight therefore it was a terrible idea, perpetrated by a madman. Those persons who lived outside Germany and were German could have come to the Fatherland, one way or another, over time. An irony is that Germany as it was before 1939 was a big enough country for everyone and could have supported double the population. So 'Liebensraum' was a lie. The old German Monarchies of history would have been proud of Hitler. They were always fighting each other. Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schwerin, Hanover, Teck, and many others had their power hungry Landgraves, never happy unless they were at each others throats. It was not hard in a Palace to channel the warlike factions into conflict. It was the general population who suffered then, exactly as they have done now. I also blame the weakness of other Countries for our terrible fate. If a factious person lives in a Village or Street making trouble for all others, it is up to the rest to put their foot down upon them. So in Europe. When it became clear to countries adjacent to us, and indeed the rest of the world, especially America, that we were becoming very militarised and intended to impose our will on Central Europe, then the message to us should have been strong and unequivocal, to desist. The ineffectual warnings and negotiations with Hitler were far too weak. he needed someone strong to stand up against him, unfortunately there was no one inside Germany itself to do so. What of Otto? He grew in prosperity throughout the war and even increased his wealth and power as the end came. The Allies took little notice of him as he had not been in the Army, neither did they seem to act on information given to them, that he was very much involved in the deportation of Jews and others from the area. Perhaps the Allies were fed up with us all. I can understand that. About three weeks after our surrender Otto was found on a street corner in Stuttgart shot dead. He was wearing his Astrakhan coat and diamond tie-pin and several bullet holes. This sort of thing was common enough in Germany at this time. I did not do it, though I had managed to bring my Luger home. (I eventually buried it in the woods in case my children found it.) I think a Jewish secret organisation which naturally wanted to deal with people like Otto after the war, did it. I suppose Otto had made other enemies as well and we never knew the perpetrators, nor ever will, as the Allies showed no interest in the case. I dare say they just drew a line through his name, having been saved some trouble. I am glad a line was never drawn through my name, though it might have been done many times. I escaped death in Poland, in France, in the North African Desert. I had a charmed life in Russia, and against all the odds came out of Stalingrad. The 'Jabos' might have got me on the Western Front and as the war ended any aggrieved Tommy or Ami, who had lost a mate could have shot me like a dog.
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