Dieter Vollmer: Taking Stock of the First Half of Life
An original translation of "Dieter Vollmer: Bilanz der ersten Lebenshälfte"
Title: Dieter Vollmer: Taking Stock of the First Half of Life [de: Dieter Vollmer: Bilanz der ersten Lebenshälfte]
Author(s): Dieter Vollmer
Page(s): Excerpts, as cited below.
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
The following are excepts from the autobiography of one of the major contributors to Der Weg, Dieter Vollmer, published in 1993. This is my first impression and therefore I cannot offer too much insight, but there are interesting facts and background highlighting the contributors to the magazine between 1950 and 1953.
I have highlighted mentions of Rudel, von Leers, Perón, and the SS.
Source Documents:
[LINK] Dieter Vollmer: Bilanz der ersten Lebenshälfte
1934
(p.14)
In Munich, I lived at that time in the SS student dormitory on Gabelsberger Street, right next to the Reich leadership of the SS. As an active Jungvolk leader, I could live there even without belonging to the SS. The other residents of the dormitory mostly came from groups of the youth movement and had found protection in the SS from persecution by Schirach. In this house, I could also give training lectures to the Munich Jungvolk leadership under Richard Etzel.
1944
(p.52)
Returning from that ineffective short course, I received in Kulm the last deployment order for my company in this war and traveled with two corporals, one of them a driver, and a motorized equipment vehicle to Passenheim in East Prussia, located between Allenstein and Orteisburg. By then, it was mid-October, and our flare signals served almost exclusively the German dive bombers, which were in continuous operation bombing the attacking Soviet tank units, led by Colonel Hans Ulrich Rudel, who alone put over 500 tanks out of action, which is an entire army. (I would later get to know him personally in Argentina.)
1945
(p.57)
So, the two of us marched off in the indicated direction and, still in Bad Ischl, witnessed some impressive events. I cannot vouch for the correct sequence, as my memory only conveys individual images to me, but no temporal order. For example, a young SS man came with a large, black Mercedes car from the vehicle fleet of the Reichsführer SS staff and wanted to refuel. Two older SS ranks, who wore the letters SD on their sleeves (Security Service), brusquely rejected him with the words: “It’s all over.” Since I did not know the context, the developments of the last weeks, this was a severe shock for me.
(p.58-59)
By chance, as we two stragglers continued marching westward, towards the American tank spearheads, a hunting carriage drawn by four magnificent horses overtook us. On the coach box sat a young ethnic German from Transylvania, thus a Romanian German. The team of horses also came from there. Around the carriage marched a group of German soldiers from various branches of the armed forces under the leadership of an SS-Oberscharführer, all without rank and service badges. It was a Werewolf unit that was supposed to organize resistance behind the American lines on behalf of one of the Austrian Gauleiters. From today’s perspective, such an order may seem insane. At that time, it was entirely in line with a dogged will to resist, even beyond a military capitulation. I joined this group and was, with a few words and a meaningful pat on the pistol holster, made aware of the clear consequences of covert combat.
1948
(p.79)
The conditions in “Trizonesia,” the three western occupation zones of defeated Germany, were unbearable anyway, not to mention the Soviet-occupied eastern zone. Primitive, brutal violence of the victorious and occupying powers prevailed. In Landsberg am Lech, SS members were hanged week after week by American soldiers in a barbaric manner. After the trapdoor opened, several of them hung onto the feet of the hanged man under the scaffold to cause a broken neck. And in the penitentiary of Schwäbisch Hall, “returned” emigrants in American uniforms, such as Lieutenant Pearl and Kirschbaum, tortured and tormented nineteen-year-old Waffen-SS soldiers in a sadistic manner, so that the surrounding residents were startled at night by the screams of the tortured, and some of the boys remained infertile as a result of the perverse tortures. In the courtyard of the Hameln prison, under British occupation, a mass grave emerged with bodies of the civilian population, whose cause of death was never clarified. All this and much more was later covered up and hushed up, since the administrative bodies installed by the occupying powers were and remained their creatures and diligent executors to this day.
1950
(p.140)
When I began working at Dürer-Verlag, the second volume of Wilfried von Oven’s With Goebbels to the End was just being published there. The author had been one of the closer collaborators of the Propaganda Minister and described from his own perspective the man and the atmosphere he had spread around himself and his activities, right up to the last months. Also in progress were the books Focal Point FHQ by H. Schwarz and The Last Word on Nuremberg: Facade and Swamp in the War Criminal Trials by Mark Lautern. H. Schwarz was a pseudonym. The author was named, if I remember correctly, Kremer, and Eberhard Fritsch told me that no further book was to be expected from this man. Focal Point described the conditions and events in and around the Führer headquarters in a suspenseful and highly committed manner. Particularly gripping was the appreciation of the French Waffen-SS men who had literally defended the surroundings of the Führer bunker to the last man. The book remains significant in terms of war history and has rarity value due to the small print run. We published Mark Lautern’s work as a special issue of our magazine Der Weg (El Sendero). It described—also from closest personal observation—the absolutely undignified and corrupt background of the famous International Military Tribunal (IMT) trials in Nuremberg, the entire disgusting and precisely because of that so characteristic atmosphere against which this show trial took place.
(p.148)
None other than Colonel Hans Ulrich Rudel, bearer of the highest bravery award ever bestowed, which he earned as a dive bomber pilot under unimaginable conditions, became the spokesperson for our passionate outrage over this all-too-transparent imposition. He wrote in the October issue of Der Weg under the title “Let us save the substance,” among other things:
“…”
With this article—reproduced here only in excerpts—began my editorial work specifically for Hans Ulrich Rudel, which culminated three years later in Villa Carlos Paz near Córdoba in daily collaborative work on the second part of his famous book Trotzdem (Between Germany and Argentina). (During a visit by Rudel to Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, it received the latter’s linguistic appreciation.)
(p.156-157)
We in the Dürer House noticed little of the occasional coups and revolts by mutinous officers of the army, air force, or navy, who found the daily garrison routine too boring, even if they occurred just a few street corners away. For instance, an aerial bomb meant for the Casa Rosada, the seat of President Perón, instead struck a fully occupied bus on the square in front of it. Neither the vehicle nor its occupants left any significant remains. Perón himself was little disturbed by such incidents at that time (1950). He was still firmly in control and easily handled the situation on similar occasions. From the fact that we could carry out our work undisturbed, we recognized his invisible protective hand. Especially Colonel Rudel was in his favor. He was a man after Perón’s soldierly heart, and Perón enjoyed hearing from him about his various sporting ventures and expeditions.
During Perón’s first term, Argentina experienced a relatively calm development phase for South American standards and attempted to break free from North America’s financial stranglehold. This was, of course, poorly noted in New York and Washington. When the US ambassador repeatedly complained to the president and became increasingly arrogant, Perón one day threw him down a small staircase leading from the president’s office in the Casa Rosada directly to the street. At the same time, Perón’s wife Evita, as social minister, forced American companies in Argentina, such as Bemberg, into bankruptcy through excessive social charges. In the long run, Argentina naturally had to yield in such a policy. The financial dictatorship of Wall Street was no longer to be shaken off.
(p.159)
Our publishing director and chief editor Eberhard Fritsch wrote a brilliant, fundamental assessment of these connections and called for a new alliance of strong hearts, for a comradeship of those bound by fate. Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer directed an appeal particularly to the leaders of the youth, and Hans Ulrich Rudel encouraged and urged physical fitness instead of a new conscription, which he consistently rejected under the circumstances in divided Germany at that time. I framed his contribution, which was also a wake-up call to natural physical joy, with two sculptures by Georg Kolbe, one of a woman and one of a man, which were inherently convincing and could vividly reinforce Rudel’s encouragement.
1951
(p.161-162)
The most momentous encounter of 1951 was with Professor Johannes von Leers of the School of Politics in Berlin; I still vividly recall how Eberhard Fritsch and I fetched him from the ship at the port of Buenos Aires. There he stood at the railing, clad in a trench coat, a small black beret perched on his head, spotting us at once and waving with lively enthusiasm.
Leers had endured the years of internment in a camp run by the occupying powers with tolerable health and emerged brimming with vigor. His knowledge spanned an extraordinary range of fields—he was as much at ease with ancient history as with the present day and commanded six or seven languages, including traces of Indo-European and Arabic. His contributions to our editorial team were beyond price. He penned his pieces under various pseudonyms, most often as Euler, the owl being his personal emblem. The two years I had the privilege of working side by side with him, drawing from this ever-flowing wellspring of wisdom, were a gift—one that would serve me well a quarter-century later as I labored on my six-volume Political Events of the Twentieth Century (K.W.-Schütz Verlag). This work delved, above all, into the hidden currents shamefully glossed over in official histories: the often pivotal roles of secret societies allied with international high finance. It was (and remains) a deeply layered subject, one my predecessor, Juan Maler, had already explored with thoroughness and depth. Professor von Leers, alias Euler, proved himself a true master in this realm as well.
With astonishing speed, the young Erwin Neubert also immersed himself in these intricate webs. A late returnee from Soviet captivity, he had only just arrived, yet he quickly became a vital asset to our editorial staff. Before long, he had so thoroughly grasped the tangled kinship ties among New York’s leading banking houses and press dynasties that he could recite them from memory. Colleagues from the editorial teams of Buenos Aires’ Freie Presse and Argentinische Tageblatt—the city’s two German-language dailies—sometimes ribbed him about it: those at the Freie Presse because they failed to see its import, and those at the Tageblatt (under editor-in-chief Aleman) because they understood it all too well.
Neubert pored over the Congressional Record each day, a subscription that delivered the verbatim proceedings of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, complete with every speech given. Whenever he stumbled upon something that seemed significant to us, he flagged it for von Leers, who deftly sorted and assessed its value. We also kept informed through Common Sense, a U.S.-published magazine that, from a Christian lens, exposed the non-Christian undercurrents of American domestic and foreign policy—particularly the favoring and fostering of communism—and through the Williams Intelligence Digest, a press service that tackled the same issues from a national American perspective with keen expertise (its founder, Williams, being a former counterintelligence officer). From our vantage in the south, we gained a clear view behind the curtain of the United States and the institutions entrenched there. From Europe, by contrast, one saw (and still sees) little more than the polished facade, the “makeup.”
(p.167)
The book reviews, in any case, formed a cornerstone of our journalistic endeavors. They offered a vessel for much we wished to impart to our readers worldwide. Here too, Professor von Leers played a pivotal role, bolstered by his wide-ranging and profound expertise. From my review of Ernst Jünger’s Gardens and Streets, two telling sentences stand out:
“The stream of experience trickles thinly through these streets and gardens, just as all things slip through the fingers of the overly refined beholder. There’s a tragic air about those shattered poets who’ve outlived themselves, now sifting the dust of their ruined homes through a sieve to salvage lost silver!”
(p.172)
Under the pseudonym Gordon Fitzstuart, Professor von Leers penned three installments drawn from his deep well of insight into these matters. He tapped a trove of sources scarcely accessible to others. I can’t quote them at length here, but thankfully, the issues of Der Weg from those days endure. A few of my friends know their whereabouts.
(p.173)
Not all of von Leers’ writings resonated with me inwardly. The notion of a “European Empire,” which he ardently championed in the works of Giulio Evola and Ulick Varange, remained alien to me. There, as with Primo de Rivera, it’s about the “pure idea of the fatherland”—something wholly spiritual, set explicitly against a “romantic, sentimental, and naturalistic view of the nation.” The ethnic state, rooted in shared biological heritage, is thus outright rejected, even scorned.
(p.175)
Marie Hamsun sent me one of her cherished children’s tales from Norway, a gift of delicate wonder. Henning Meincke, federal leader of the Hamburg “Bund,” offered a spirited and discerning essay on the theme “Tasks of German Youth,” dismissing each of its three parts as a mere dictate, embracing it only in the bloom of spontaneous conviction. From my own earlier writings, I wove in “Noch und wieder,” where I likened the unstudied grace of a Russian peasant boy feeding livestock to one of Kreutzberg’s most refined dances—a harmony of instinct and art. Johannes von Leers, in his piece “The Ancient Light,” bound the early roots of the Christmas festival to the warm, familiar glow of home in Northern Europe, evoking memories of family celebrations in the homeland.
1952
(p.183)
Thus, we could not regard the 'ambassador' sent by the West German 'Federal Government' to Buenos Aires as a representative of Germany. On April 4, 1952, President Perón returned the building of the former German embassy to this 'ambassador' in a solemn state ceremony, during which a military band played the Deutschlandlied. In his speech, he expressed his gratitude in moving words for the instruction and training assistance provided by the 'old comrades of the German army,' who had 'helped to make military service a real profession in this country.'
(p.186-188)
In July 1952, Eva Perón, the president’s wife, died after a long, serious illness. Seven years earlier, she had not only freed Perón from prison through a popular uprising she organized but also significantly helped him attain the presidency, which enabled the country to have eight years of relatively calm development for South American standards (and allowed us to do our work). She had taken over the social ministry and, in the spirit of 'Justicialismo,' an Argentine nationally conscious socialism, strongly advocated for the poor, often by rigorously pressuring large companies into exceptionally high social 'donations.'
Naturally, she was immensely popular among the people, and the grief following her death was heartfelt and unfeigned in the initial days. Despite pouring rain, the line of those wishing to file past her coffin stretched for kilometers. I observed a young man who knelt alone on the street pavement, lit a candle, and prayed. New people continually harnessed themselves to the gun carriage transporting the coffin. Later, state propaganda took over the “organization” of the people’s mourning. And at that very moment, it became kitschy.
We devoted the August issue of our magazine to North America, enriching it with a double-page map sketch tracing highways, mineral wealth, armaments, and atomic test sites. Friedrich Damok penned the sharply critical lead article, “From Freedom to Massification,” laying bare the irreconcilable rift between American liberalism and the true liberty of individuals and nations. Professor von Leers portrayed the plight of American Negroes, descendants of the enslaved, while an excerpt from Severin Reinhard’s “Spanish Summer”—freshly issued in its second edition by our sister press, Prometheus-Verlag Buenos Aires—cast light on the commanding sway of predominantly Jewish banking houses over American politics. The “Portrait of the Month” honored Dwight D. Eisenhower, and our youngest editor, Erwin Neubert, dissected the lingering effects of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” on America’s economic course, drawing from meticulously gathered figures. He also crafted the detailed commentary accompanying the map.
These careful researches understandably attracted attention—at the height of the 'Cold War'—from the Soviet embassy in Buenos Aires, where people might have wondered where Neubert got his such detailed material from. The Soviets’ interest became even more lively when, in the next but one, i.e., the October issue, we published an equally carefully prepared map sketch of the Arab states from Morocco to the southern regions of the USSR, again with precisely detailed information, based on sources from the USA. During these critical months, it became noticeable that Perón quietly held his protective hand over our work. Otherwise, we would probably have had to expect acute disruptive actions, with agent and sabotage operations.
This thematic issue drew its vitality from the deep and varied expertise of Johannes von Leers, who lent it distinction with three contributions under different names. Fluent in several Arabic tongues, he knew Egypt and Saudi Arabia through lived experience and study, with a particular intimacy for the Palestinian question. Through his efforts, we secured the “Portrait of the Month” featuring the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Haj Amin el-Husseini, lending the issue a bold pro-Arab resonance.
1953
(p.196)
Eberhard Fritsch scaled back his travels to resume the magazine’s editorship, bolstered by the steadfast support of Professor von Leers and Erwin Neubert, whose value grew ever more apparent. Neubert not only authored the monthly “World Events,” a rich and knowing survey of political tides across all continents, but honed a keen focus on America’s inner workings—especially the tight weave of dominant banking houses with influential newspaper publishers. His January piece, “The Rule of the Speculators,” adorned with vivid portrait caricatures, revealed the depth of his immersion and mastery in this realm.
(p.204-207)
Meanwhile, bookseller Schmidt had returned from Germany, and my task at the Librería El Buen Libro was fulfilled. The second half of the year took me from Buenos Aires into the interior of the country. Colonel Hans Ulrich Rudel, the successful dive bomber pilot who was the only one in the war to earn the Golden Oak Leaves with Swords and Diamonds to the Knight’s Cross, invited me to assist him in composing the second part of his book Trotzdem, Between Germany and Argentina, and to serve as his secretary simultaneously. He offered me a decent fee and free accommodation at his “Chalet Mary” in Villa Carlos Paz near Córdoba. Naturally, I gratefully accepted, left my belongings with the Krügers in Adrogué, and traveled to Córdoba with minimal luggage.
To briefly recall, Rudel had, on the Eastern Front, disabled over five hundred Soviet tanks with his dive bombings, thereby liberating many encircled German troop units during the retreat, and in the final weeks of the war, also rescuing cut-off refugee columns. After being shot down in the Russian hinterland, he had, despite his injuries, made his way on foot back to the German lines. After an anti-aircraft hit on his aircraft resulted in the amputation of his lower leg, he climbed back into his Ju 87 long before the surgical wound had healed, with his leg stump still bleeding, for new combat missions. And when Hitler, upon awarding him the highest decoration ever bestowed and because of his severe injury, intended to withdraw him from the fighting front, Rudel refused, standing eye to eye with him, and succeeded in returning to his Immelmann squadron to continue flying until the very last day of the war, in continuous service.
After his release from first French, then American captivity, he initially set up a successful transport business with two comrades from his squadron and only emigrated to Argentina in 1948—via Rome—where President Perón showed him great sympathy and offered every possible assistance. Rudel obtained a position at the modern aircraft factory in Córdoba and began documenting his war experiences and insights, which were published in the first volume of Trotzdem by Dürer-Verlag.
The second volume was now to portray the post-war period in Germany and Argentina. The work on it developed into a routine where Rudel, in the evenings after he had already retired to bed, would freely narrate from memory onto a tape recorder until he fell asleep. A hearty yawn signaled the end of each recording session, which I transcribed the next morning on the typewriter into print-ready German. I was granted complete freedom in this. Rudel was entirely free from the authorial vanity that one often encounters as a publishing editor. I was even permitted to weave my own experiences and impressions into the text, such as the entire Chapter II, “The Plight of German Youth,” where I compared, based on my own observations, the misery of the immediate post-war years with the vibrant life of the pre-war youth movement, as vividly as possible. The work was exceptionally pleasurable.
Rudel was very intent on maintaining physical fitness. He did not smoke, drank no alcohol but milk, and practiced several rigorous sports: tennis, mountaineering, diving, and downhill skiing. For each sport, he had a special leg prosthesis crafted by a specific Tyrolean prosthetist. When he traveled frequently, it was often reminded during packing: “Don’t forget my tennis leg and my water leg!” Once, during practice climbing in the Sierra, a poisonous sand viper bit into his mountaineering prosthesis, much to its misfortune. And the ski prosthesis broke during a downhill run in dense fog, causing a single ski with a foot on it to emerge from the mist, followed shortly after by the skier balancing on the other ski—to the horror of the onlookers. Such anecdotes were plentiful.
My role as “secretary” occasionally took place in the passenger seat of Rudel’s Ford car. On winding roads, it was not always easy to balance the small portable typewriter on my knees and, being thrown between the gearshift and the door, to strike the correct keys. Rudel dictated his business correspondence to me while driving, and his driving manner sometimes suggested that he believed he was still at the controls of his dive bomber. Presciently, he had the chassis frame of his car reinforced with steel I-beams, and this proved fortunate on a trip to Mendoza. However, Rudel himself was not driving. Yet, one could not hold the driver responsible for the fact that the road first ran along the right side of the railway tracks—and then suddenly and without warning continued on the left side. Our driver managed the first right-angle turn across to the other side of the tracks, but not the second one to return to the direction of travel. It carried the car out of the curve. It first uprooted a road marker buried one and a half meters deep in the ground and then smashed through a telegraph pole, leaving its upper half dangling from the wires. The car landed on its side at the roadside embankment, allowing rushing passersby to pull us out, one by one, upwards. Only Rudel in the passenger seat was injured. He had gone through the windshield with his forehead and bruised the knee of his intact leg.
Yet, we were able to continue the journey to Mendoza the next day in the repaired car and enjoyed an extraordinarily merry evening there in the wine cellar of a French former company commander of the Waffen-SS Division Charlemagne. Even Rudel was exceptionally persuaded to drink wine and was soon in high spirits.
(p.208)
Among the preparations I still shaped: at Dürer-Verlag, the Rakowskij Protocol by Josef Landowski (Mauricio Carlavilla), rendered into German by Professor von Leers; and at our allied Prometheus-Verlag, led by Wilhelm Keiper, a fresh edition of “Spanish Summer” by Severin Reinhard, alias Rene Sonderegger. The Rakowskij Protocol, first published in 1950 by Editorial NOS, Madrid, within Sinfonía en Rojo Mayor, preserves the verbatim exchange of an interrogation in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison on January 26, 1938, between the Trotskyist and former Soviet ambassador Kristjan Yurevich Rakowskij and GPU officer Gabriel G. Kuzmin. Therein, Rakowskij unveils “THEM”—the titans of American high finance—and their deliberate crafting of communism as capitalism’s foil, aiming for the final synthesis of a “One World” dominion. For the cover, I selected A. Paul Weber’s drawing “The Bank of England,” depicting a shattered edifice crowned by a vast vulture, a carrion bird signaling the shift of global financial power from London to New York. (The 1987 reprint by Faksimile-Verlag, Bremen, preserved this striking motif.)
(p.213-214)
When I was back with Rudel in Villa Carlos Paz two weeks later and was working on the final chapter of the book Between Germany and Argentina (Trotzdem, Second Part) using the tapes he had recorded, he departed for his second expedition to the highest volcano on Earth, the 6,900-meter-high Llullayllaco. Erwin Neubert, who had climbed alone in the mountains of Tierra del Fuego the previous year, accompanied him. And there, in the early days of December, the dreadful occurred: After immense exertions during the ascent without oxygen gear, taking breathers after every third step, just below the highest peak of the crater rim, Neubert slipped on a steep snowfield, began sliding, was unable to stop, and hit his head so violently against a rock outcrop far below that he was killed instantly. Transporting him down was unthinkable. With their remaining strength, Rudel and two other expedition members built a stone pyramid over the deceased.
When Rudel called me in Villa Carlos Paz and informed me over the phone of what had happened, I felt, in addition to grief and sorrow for the so amiable comrade, an immense anger. For Neubert had long become absolutely indispensable for our work at Dürer-Verlag and the editorial staff of Der Weg. His life should never have been put at risk for a sporting endeavor. His expert knowledge of the situation in the USA, particularly in New York around Wall Street, including ties to the major newspaper publishers, was irreplaceable. He had also delved so thoroughly into the parliamentary session records using the daily Congressional Record, to which we were subscribed, that it seemed as though he were present and participating in the sessions himself.
(p.215)
In the final days of December, I prepared in Adrogué for my return to Germany, which was to commence on January 13 with a ship of the state-owned Dodero Line. These preparations also included the unavoidable acquisition of a passport as a citizen of the West German Federal Republic, which had been showcasing a facade of sovereignty since 1952. When going to the “embassy” of this construct in Buenos Aires, I felt like a traitor, a traitor to the whole of Germany, to which I truly belonged. At the same time, I recalled the conclusion I had given to the Rudel book, which Rudel himself was very happy with, as he assured me:
“… it seems to me like a confirmation of these conversations (in Munich) when I arrive in Landsberg the next morning with Rösch and Hack, this city where so many martyrs of upright Germanhood stood bravely and composed under the gallows or are still imprisoned in the fortress today. Do we not already owe it to these men to finally overcome all that divides us and see only Germany?
Rösch shows me from outside the place where the gallows stood, where in 1951 seven victims of a belated victor’s vengeance died with exemplary bearing. We stand for a while and speak not a word. But since my return home, I have felt closer to Germany nowhere else than here.”
