Childhood during the war

-Munich 1939 to 1945 - 

(DE) When I was born in Munich on 23 May 1939, the world was on the brink, and very few people were aware of it. 

The year I was born, 1939, was a landmark year for Germany and for the whole of Europe, marking massive preparations for war and, ultimately, the start of the Second World War with the invasion of Poland on 1 September.  

Throughout the year, gradually, the Nazis took measures to prepare Germany and the Germans for war. 

- In January, Jews, from business managers to craftsmen, members of co-operatives and the self-employed, were removed from their posts in all sectors by a "decree for the elimination of Jews from economic life". 

-In March, the German Wehrmacht occupied the remaining parts of the Czech Republic in breach of the Munich Agreement. 

-In April, Hitler instructed the Wehrmacht leadership to prepare for the Polish campaign. 

-In May, Italy and Germany concluded a treaty of alliance. 

-In August, Germany and the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression pact with a secret additional protocol in which Poland would be divided between them once it had been conquered.

-At the beginning of the war, food was rationed in Germany, and ration cards were introduced.   

So, I spent the first phase of my childhood in the war. I knew nothing else. Six years after I was born, in May 1945, when I started school some months later, the world was a different place, a world of ruins, hunger and chaos.

But people had no idea of all this in the spring of 1939 because, as a contemporary, one does not have the overview of a historian and is fully occupied with coping with everyday life. 

Starting a family in the middle of the war

My mother Anna and my father Johann were delighted to have their first-born, me. 

They lived in a small flat on the third floor of a block of flats at Gollierstraße 36 on Schwanthalerhöhe in Munich. My father worked as a hairdresser in our neighbourhood, so nothing stood in the way of starting a family. 

My mother and I.

The Schwanthalerhöhe district, also known as Westend, was originally a working-class neighbourhood developed during industrialisation and railway construction. Even in my childhood, the so-called "little people" lived here in simple-built apartment blocks. 

My maternal grandmother also lived in our neighbourhood, at Guldeinstraße 41, and the fact that she had an allotment just around the corner in Barthstraße was a stroke of luck for all of us. A little bit of nature and some fruit and vegetables certainly helped against the ever-increasing lack of food in the first years of the war. 

Were my parents aware of the threat of war even before my father was called up at the beginning of the war? Probably yes, because my family were staunch social democrats and trade unionists suspicious of the National Socialists' policies. 

My maternal grandfather was sent to the Dachau concentration camp after the Nazis seized power in 1933. 

My grandfather and I (1939)

He was a member of the SPD and an employee at Bayerpost, where he was an active trade union member. The smashing of the free trade unions and the internment of trade union representatives from 2 May 1933, to nip any resistance in the bud, sent my grandfather to a concentration camp. He was not to return home until 1943, wholly emaciated and terminally ill. He died shortly after his release. Unfortunately, I never got to know him.

My mum and grandma were my main carers during those first years of the war. Grandpa was in a concentration camp, and my father was at the front from the very beginning of the war and very rarely came home on leave. 

Nights of bombing and wailing sirens 

Many women had to cope with everyday life alone at this time. It became tough for the civilian population from 1942 onwards, when the bombing of Munich by the Allies steadily increased. I have very intense and traumatic memories from this time, even though I was only three years old. For example, I remember standing stiff and rigid with fear in bed. The wailing of the sirens goes right through me. I instinctively realise that this eerie sound is a warning of something, but not of what. I'm three years old and terrified, while my mum desperately tries to put something on me so that we can seek shelter in the basement like the other residents of the house. Everyone rushes down the stairs, carrying their most essential belongings in bags and suitcases. There are chairs in the cellar corridors. I'm sitting on my mum's lap and am completely numb with fear. Some neighbours are crying silently to themselves. Some children are howling loudly in panic. 

What the adults knew, but we children thankfully did not, was that the residents in this cellar were actually not protected from bombs. This air-raid shelter in our house was not one of the 24 air-raid shelters built in Munich. An ordinary cellar like this was neither deep enough nor did it have sufficient safety features such as reinforced thick ceilings and walls, doors, air shafts and the like. I suspect that this lack of security prompted my mother, during another night-time alarm, to walk with me on her hand along Gollierstraße towards Theresienwiese, where she knew a pub that at least had lower-level or more secure shelters.

My memory of this is still very vivid in all my senses today.

As we run, I hear the sirens and incredibly loud and harsh barking that must have come from giant dogs. It seems to me that we are rushing straight towards them. My instincts urge me to flee from the dogs. But my mother resolutely pulls me onwards until we reach the bomb shelter. 

It was a disturbing, surreal experience for me. 

I only learnt many years later what the barking of the dogs was all about. The anti-aircraft defences stationed on the Theresienwiese fired at the bombers in the night sky for all they were worth. The shots of an anti-aircraft gun really do sound like the rough, angry barking of a pack of big dogs. I can still hear the sirens in my memory. I also remember the air raid sirens day and night. These impressions, these experiences, and this fear are deeply engraved in my memory.  

Today, I know that in 1942, I didn't experience the worst air raids. In 1942, the Allies were just beginning to bomb Munich. The attacks were still sporadic. They became more frequent until July 1944, when the city was the most heavily attacked and heavily destroyed in a continuous bombardment. 

Evacuation - Warngau time 

But by then, we no longer lived in Schwanthalerhöhe; we lived on a farm in Warngau near Holzkirchen. Only my grandmother had to hold out in the town and endure the bombing days and nights. She was no longer a young mother and, in the opinion of the National Socialists, didn't need any special protection. 

My mother and I in grandma`s garden (Barthstreet)

However, young mothers with children were evacuated from Munich from the spring of 1943 onwards, and it was not easy for my mother to give up her home indefinitely and live somewhere in the countryside in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar people. But there was nothing to be done; the safety and care of the children came first. My little sister was born on 4 May 1943. It was almost impossible to cope with shortages due to the war economy and the nights of bombing with a four-year-old and a newborn. So, she resigned herself and left Munich for the south with a heavy heart.

But when, months later, she and the other adults looked towards Munich at night from the hill of the Stauchhof, where we were billeted, and watched the "Christmas trees" over the city, she knew, of course, that she and her children were better off on the farm. The harmless term "Christmas tree" stood for the Allied flares used to mark the targets of a bombing raid. "Christmas trees" over Munich meant that the city would be bombed shortly afterwards. 

However, we were safe at the Stauchhof, about one kilometre from Warngau. Warngau is about five kilometres south of Holzkirchen near Munich. That spring of 1943, my mother, my newborn sister, and I travelled by train to Warngau, where we were picked up in a horse-drawn carriage and taken to the farm. There, we moved into a room on the ground floor, and I know from my mother's notes that she worked on the farm to feed us children. Like everywhere else, I think there was a labour shortage in the countryside, so everyone who could lend a hand counted.

Of course, I wasn't much help at the age of four or five. But I made friends with the farmer's grandson, who was about my age and was also called Hans, as I was. The problems of the adults didn't bother us. We played obliviously, as children do, and proudly helped out where we could do more good than harm—for example, helping with the harvest in the fields. 

And that's where the war caught up with us in 1944.

We saw several aeroplanes flying over Warngau from Munich when one dropped a silver thing right over our field. Everyone stared upwards, mesmerised. But then chaos broke out. The adults shouted to the children to run away quickly and get to safety. What was falling on us had to be a bomb! Everybody was running and screaming. I ran towards the hay barn as fast as my little legs could. I reached the supposedly protective building not a second too soon when the thing hit the ground about 50 metres from the barn and - didn't explode. When everyone dared to breathe again, had calmed down and ventured closer to the "dud", they realised it was not a bomb but a spare fuel tank. At that time, aeroplanes carried such fuel tanks as a reserve to increase their range and dropped them when they were empty. 

Once we had recovered from the shock, we took the tank with the hay cart to the yard, where the village policeman inspected it and arranged for it to be collected later. We were not allowed to keep it.

Father's return before the end of the war 

It should have been clear to everyone in February 1945 that the war would end soon. 

-The 6th Army of the Wehrmacht had already been forced to surrender in Stalingrad in February 1943. -In the summer of 1943, the American 7th Army landed in Sicily. -A year later, in 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy on D-Day, and the Russian Red Army offensive pushed the Wehrmacht further and further back into German territory within the borders before the war began. The war was lost for Germany, especially for the National Socialists. Only stubborn fanatics could still believe in victory through a miracle weapon. And yet it was life-threatening to talk about the end of the war and no longer believe in Germany's victory. Alois, my mother's brother, had been sent home on sick leave in February 1945 to recover from a wound. Given the course of the war, family members and friends pleaded with him on his recovery not to return to his unit at the front as ordered. "We'll hide you", friends offered. But Alois didn't want to risk it because refusing to fulfil your orders was desertion, which was punishable by death. The many death sentences carried out under the law during this period show that my uncle Alois' fears were not unjustified. And so, a few weeks before the end of the war, he went back to the front, not out of conviction, but out of fear of being executed.

For weeks after the end of the war, my grandmother hopefully looked out of her kitchen window in the direction of the Guldein School, where returnees, prisoners of war and soldiers were being released. She hoped for his return until one day when a priest came to tell her that her son Alois had died in a river crossing in Langenargen near Lake Constance a few days before the end of the war.

My father's fate was more fortunate, as he returned to us before the end of the war, injured but alive and full of vigour. Thanks to my mother's field post letters, he knew where to look for us. Not in Munich, but near Warngau on the Stauchhof. 

He was in a military hospital in the Czech Republic with a shot wound in the thigh at the beginning of March 1945, when the hospital was closed because the Red Army was advancing unstoppably. The danger of being overrun could no longer be denied. The orders were given to flee as quickly as possible to avoid becoming a Russian prisoner of war. For a man with a shot through the thigh, escaping on foot was, of course, not really an option. 

My father later told me that he was probably saved from being taken prisoner of war by an officer who gave him a lift in a military vehicle to Rosenheim. From there, it was 36 kilometres to Warngau, about nine hours of hard marching. With his injury, that would hardly have been possible. But he was able to hitchhike his way to the Stauchhof.

Of course, my mum was delighted that her husband was with her and was in relatively good health. But the man was only well known to my mother and was a stranger to me. It took me a while to realise how important this man was to our family. Alongside my mother, he provided protection and security for us children as a father. In those days of chaos, uncertainty and shortage, this was not that easy. 

My father was in a very precarious situation as his status was unclear. 

Not because of his wound. The wound healed quickly and didn't hinder him. But the fact that he hadn't been officially discharged from the Wehrmacht due to his escape from the military hospital, i.e. that he didn't have a corresponding stamp in his military service record book, could well cost him his head. Because without a discharge stamp, he was actually a deserter.

But even if he had not fallen into the hands of any of the fanatical Nazis of the last days of the war, he would not have been able to accept any official work without this stamp. The risk of being hanged by the SS or not being able to feed his family because he couldn't work was too great for him. The offence of "forging documents" seemed less severe to him. So, he made a stamp to certify his discharge from the Wehrmacht. Problem solved! While still in Warngau, he pursued his trade as a hairdresser at the Kienzle barbers. 

My father's ability to act consistently and decisively ensured a certain stability in our family. But there was pure chaos all around us.

The chaos of the last days of the war 

On the Berghammer farm, no more than 100 metres from the Stauchhof, a Wehrmacht unit that had been billeted there was disbanded in the war's final days. There were rumours that it was a Waffen SS unit. The soldiers could no longer be correctly identified, as they removed their uniforms and all signs and symbols of their military affiliation. Just threw them away! The once proud Hitler supporters didn't want to be seen as Nazis by the Americans. But apparently, they still had better supplies than the rest of the population, at least with cigarettes, which were very expensive then. I know this because I sometimes had to get cigarettes for my father there, which I managed to do.

Scattered soldiers kept turning up at the Stauchhof farm, not knowing where to go in these confused times. The Stauch farmer's wife gave them makeshift accommodation in the hay barn, where they had to hide from the SS and wait to be liberated by the Americans. Not only did the soldiers wait for the Americans, but the entire population of Warngau looked toward Holzkirchen, where they knew the Americans had already marched in. The atmosphere was extremely tense, and the adults waited anxiously for what would come.

When a car drove along the country lane towards our farm at the end of April, the time had finally come. The war was over!

But I, not quite six years old, was disappointed. Not because the war was over. I couldn't understand that at the time. I had never known a time of peace. I hadn't experienced that in the first six years of my life. 

No, I was disappointed with the Americans. I had been so curious to see what they would look like, these Americans that everyone constantly talked about. But they looked just like us! Almost like the German soldiers! I found that quite irritating. I also didn't really understand why the German soldiers in our yard had to get on a lorry shortly afterwards and be taken away. But even the adults didn't know what would happen to them.

I sensed the insecurity of the adults, of course, and I instinctively suspected that big changes were in store for us. I indeed overheard my parents' conversations in which they made plans for the future and planned my return to Munich, taking into account my school enrolment in September 1945. But, of course, I didn't really understand what it was all about. This new world, this new life, was not a continuation of my previous life. It was a new beginning with all kinds of unknown circumstances. Today, parents ensure their children are prepared for a possible move and the start of school. Back then, this was not common practice and perhaps not even possible.

Returning to Munich by bike 

The first big change in my life was that I was taken away in the summer of 1945, away from my mother, my little sister, the Stauchhof, my friend, and everything else that had been my life until then. 

My father packed me and a few things onto his bike, and we cycled on the motorway from Holzkirchen to Munich. My mother and little sister stayed behind on the farm for the time being.

I remember we stopped at forest aisles to inspect the German Luftwaffe aeroplanes parked there, which were unguarded, for anything useful. My father dismantled one of the radios, but what for, I don't know. Perhaps he needed it to barter for food on one of Munich's black markets. 

Munich was a sad sight then: destroyed houses and rubble in the streets. Many people were busily walking around among the ruins, either to clear the roads of debris or to look for food sources or usable living space, to queue outside shops or to barter for something on the black market. 

My father took me to my grandmother's house at Guldeinstraße 41. The front building, where my grandmother lived, was thankfully undamaged. But the rear building was in ruins. So, at the age of six, I was the first member of my family to return to Schwanthalerhöhe, which meant that my post-war school days soon began. (HB)