Kettenhunde*

(Source)

"Feldwebel Lang, do you know how old that kid was, the one the SD hanged two days ago?"

Feldwebel Fritz Lang looked up at Gefreiter Joachim Taube, "You really need to be careful what you say Joachim."

"But do you know? That Landser they caught on the road with no papers, the one who claimed to be visiting his girlfriend, couldn't have been a day over seventeen!" Taube was obviously upset about that. He'd been in the Army for four years now, all in the Feldgendarmerie. He drove the motorcycle, he obeyed the rules, and acted as if he believed all the things his superiors told him.

"He was nineteen, I know, I checked his paybook after they hanged him." Lang looked off into the distance, it had not been the first time he had seen harsh discipline in the field. But those had been men who stole from their comrades, who ran away from battle. One man they had shot by firing squad in Russia had actually killed his lieutenant. The officer had been unpopular, but all the same, you didn't take matters into your own hands.

"Doesn't that bother you Fritz?" Taube had leaned over and hissed that at Lang.

"Are we on a first name basis now Gefreiter?" Lang spoke with some annoyance, it seemed that discipline in the Army was eroding faster and faster every day.

"Sorry Feldwebel Lang, but..."

"I know Junge, I know. It was wrong and the SD are thorough-going bastards. We would have at least court-martialed the man, then shot him."

"Really? Just like that? How can you..." Taube was nearly spitting mad.

"Calm down, the lieutenant might hear you, he's not as understanding as I am." Lang began to climb out of the sidecar, "Wait here."

He walked over and spoke briefly with their lieutenant. He gestured down the road to the south, they spoke some more, then Lang nodded and returned. He climbed back into the sidecar.

"Come on laddie, road patrol." Consulting his map, he said, "Head down this road, then take your first left."

Puzzled, Taube did as he was commanded.

Grenadiers Jürgen Jäger and Steffen Krämer had both been crewmembers on one of 5th Company's SdKfz 251/21s, the halftrack which mounted three 2 cm cannon. They were, respectively, the loader and gunner on the vehicle, one of those which had had to be abandoned on the other side of the Rhine. They had argued for staying and fighting, as Jäger had put it, "The Führer has demanded that we defend the Rhine to the last man!"

His vehicle commander, Obergefreiter Leon Berger, had told him to "Shut up and get in the barge or I will shoot you right here, right now!"

Berger was now an assistant squad leader in 1st Platoon, Jäger and Krämer were now simple riflemen in the hastily put together 3rd Platoon. To be honest, both men felt belittled. To go from crewmen on a fighting vehicle to being a simple riflemen? It wasn't right.

Now Krämer had told Jäger of a rumor he had heard when checking for mail at the company headquarters. Jäger was aghast.

"Are you serious Steffen, some of the men want to surrender? That's treason!" Jäger had managed to keep his voice down, he felt that many of his comrades were defeatists if not outright traitors and he didn't quite trust them.

"I knew you'd want to hear about it, your father is in the Party isn't he?"

"Yes, he's been a National Socialist¹ since 1922. One of the Old Fighters²! He would be horrified to hear such talk! We must report this, at once!" Jäger was seriously agitated.

"But to whom? The rumor has it that von Lüttwitz and Sauer are both in on this plot."

Jäger looked horrified, he idolized Leutnant Sauer, and Major von Lüttwitz was something of a minor legend in the Army, at least in the West. If they were considering surrender, the situation must be worse than what they were told. Which meant that Dr. Goebbels was lying, it also meant his father was lying. That couldn't be.

"What do we do Steffen? We must tell someone!" Jäger was in earnest, he felt it was his personal duty to the Führer to root out defeatism and treason and report it when found.

"I have an idea..." Krämer whispered.

Feldwebel Lang had Taube stop the motorcycle-sidecar combination as soon as they were out of sight and sound of the roadblock they were assigned to. Lang dismounted and invited Taube to do the same. Then Lang loaded his pipe, tamped it down, then lit up.

"You've never been a smoker have you?"

"No Feldwebel, the taste upsets my stomach."

Lang drew on the pipe and released a cloud of smoke with a contented sigh, "Real tobacco, picked it up in the Ardennes from an Ami supply truck. I'm almost out, that will be a sad day."

Lang smoked for a few moments more, obviously savoring the experience, Taube thought the older man was probably ruining his health.

"So, Joachim, do you think we will win this war? Speak freely, that's an order."

Taube hesitated, when Lang nodded and drew on his pipe again, Taube managed to stammer, "No Feldwebel, anyone can see that we are defeated. We have been retreating since June, with one or two defensive stands along the way, but we always collapse and we retreat again."

"So, do we fight on to the last man? Do we go out fighting so that generations of Germans can forget us as we have forgotten those who fell in the first war? Or do we survive to return to our wives and sweethearts? What's it to be, laddie boy, die for the Folk, the Reich, and the Führer? Do you think Fat Hermann or that club-footed baboon Goebbels will join us on the front line? Do you think Hitler will join us in repelling the invaders?" Lang spoke harshly, then he took one last puff of his pipe, then tapped the ashes out on the sole of one of his hobnailed boots.

"Well?"

Taube looked sheepish and embarrassed, his sergeant had a point, and quite frankly, Taube didn't want to die for anyone, especially not the Party and especially not those strutting idiots in Berlin.

"No Feldwebel, I want to live."

"So it's all right for us to kill those who feel just like we do, but don't have the self-control to stay with their units?" Lang was nearly barking at his corporal.

Hanging his head, Taube began to answer Lang, when the sergeant said, "Hello, what's this?"

Grenadiers Jäger and Krämer came around a bend in the road and saw a Feldgendarmerie patrol up ahead.

"There you go Jürgen, we can report this to the Kettenhunde! They'll know what to do!"

"I hope you're right Steffen. But we're away from our unit, with no papers, what if they don't listen?" Krämer was starting to get nervous, the both of them could, technically, be charged with desertion. Now the idea of reporting the rumor he had heard didn't seem like such a good plan. He hoped the Feldgendarmerie would listen.

Taube looked up at the two soldiers swaying in the slight breeze as they hanged from the tree Lang had picked out. Lang had made the signs around their necks from scrap cardboard in the sidecar. Both signs bore a single word, "Überläufer.³"

"What have we done, Feldwebel? Those men claimed to be reporting a treasonous plot to surrender their unit." Taube was very unsure of himself, it had been obvious that the two soldiers were both fanatics of the "fight to the last man" school of thought. One claimed that his father was a Party member.

But when the other one had exclaimed, "Do you not want to stop this Jewish conspiracy!!?" Taube had shaken his head in shock. He had been constantly chided about his name being Jewish since he'd joined the Army. Of course he denied it, and he had the papers from his hometown in Austria to prove his Aryan ancestry as far back as the year 1565.

But those papers were based on a very clever forgery his father had purchased in Vienna two years before the Anschluß in 1938. His father had seen the writing on the wall and had decided to take precautions. Though his father descended from a long line of Baltic Germans, his mother did not. Her maiden name was Horowitz, she was a Polish Jew his father had met, fallen in love with, and married during the first war, back when the Austro-Hungarian Empire still existed. His father had been a captain in the Army, his mother a nurse.

Now, at least on paper, his mother's name was Horváth, and she was Hungarian, rather than Polish. As his mother, like many Poles, spoke multiple languages, she could easily pass for Hungarian, or Austrian as her German was also excellent.

But the use of "Jewish" as if it were something offensive and criminal had triggered something in Taube, when Feldwebel Lang had arrested the two men, he went along with it. When Lang had determined to mete out summary justice to the two men, he went along with it. He had had a last minute urge to stop things when the ropes were put around the men's necks (the sergeant had that in the sidecar as well) but when one of them called him a "filthy Jew lover" the last line had been crossed.

The two men had screamed and begged for mercy before they were hoisted aloft, using the motorcycle to lift them while Taube covered them with his MP-40. Taube had vomited when the two men began to kick and struggle. Eventually their struggles ceased.

Taube had been sick again, then he turned to Lang, "Feldwebel Lang, why do I feel sick about this. I've witnessed executions before, but..."

"You've never had to actually perform an execution, have you?" Lang asked.

"No, I haven't."

"That's why. You get used to it I suppose."

Then Lang asked a blunt question, "Are you Jewish?"

Before Taube could answer, Lang held up a hand, "It makes no difference to me if you are. The Nazis took one of our neighbors away one day. An older couple, very nice people. She used to give me cookies when I was a boy which she had baked herself. I asked my mother why they were taken away, she told me it was because the Nazis were evil but we had to tolerate them for now. Our neighbors, as you might have guessed, were Jewish."

Taube protested, "I'm not, my mother just likes the name Joachim. She's very Biblical. A good Catholic like my father." Taube tried to be matter of fact about it, but he somehow knew that Lang saw through it, and also that Lang could care less if Taube was Jewish.

"Come on lad, we need to get back and report this to the lieutenant. Did you get their paybooks?"

"Yes Feldwebel."

"Good, can you imagine the gall of those two traitors, claiming that Major Jürgen von Lüttwitz, the Tiger of France, wanted to commit treason? I mean, the man holds the Knight's Cross for God's sake! Utter nonsense." Lang shook his head as he walked back to the sidecar.

As Lang climbed into the sidecar, he looked at Taube, who was still staring at the two dead men, "What are you waiting for Gefreiter? Do you have qualms about this? What we've done here by executing two traitors to the Reich?"

"No Feldwebel, it's just unsettling." Taube mounted the motorcycle, started it up, and the two Feldgendarmes returned to their duty post, the paybooks of Grenadiers Jürgen Jäger and Steffen Krämer in the tunic pocket of Feldwebel Fritz Lang.

As far as Lang was concerned, they had just executed two sniveling cowards who were trying to desert. Who had then tried to besmirch the name of a German war hero to cover that desertion.

No doubt he would have been stunned had he known that the two were actually telling the truth.

* Literally "chained dogs," German Army slang term for the Feldgendarmerie, the Wehrmacht's military police. (In the opening photo, note the gorgets suspended by chains on the two Feldgendarmerie.

¹ The Nazis didn't like being called "Nazis," as Nazi was a derogatory term for a backwards peasant, being a shortened version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria, the area from which the Nazis emerged. (Source). "Nationalsozialisten", National Socialists, was the preferred term and what they called themselves.

² In German "Alte Kämpfer," those who joined the Nazi Party before 1930.

³ Defector/deserter

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