Hans-Ulrich Rudel: What We Wish For and What We Can Achieve [Der Weg 1951-04]
An original translation of "Was wollen und was können wir?"
Source Documents:
Note(s): This article appears in “Der Weg”, a German-language magazine founded in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the years immediately following the destruction of the Third Reich. See the links above for more information on the magazine and its contents.
From Dieter Vollmer’s autobiography:
“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.”
Title: What We Wish For and What We Can Achieve [de: Was wollen und was können wir?]
Author(s): Hans-Ulrich Rudel
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 5, Issue 04 (April 1951)
Page(s): 310-311
Referenced Documents: None.
What We Wish For and What We Can Achieve
Hans-Ulrich Rudel
What Do We Want and What Can We Do?
Do the gentlemen now speaking of rearmament have even the slightest notion of the German front-line soldiers’ strongest and most beautiful weapon: camaraderie? I doubt it. Otherwise, they would scarcely dare to talk to us of a new military deployment while, across the world, a number of German soldiers are still branded as war criminals, held in camps and dungeons, lying day and night in dark cells, bound in chains. If we were to put on a uniform, we would betray these comrades. It is not some self-righteous urge but camaraderie itself that commands us to demand freedom for all German soldiers, a revision of all “war criminal trials,” and proper reparations.
This demand is modest: we cannot call back to life the comrades murdered in those trials, nor can we ever undo the boundless suffering inflicted on their families and fellows. Yet we can more readily demand a review of these trials, for we see daily in the “free” world’s press a rethinking of the very principles that underpinned our comrades’ death sentences. We read then, and still read now, how in the wars in Indonesia, Indochina, and today in Korea, the mere suspicion of red partisans was enough to set whole villages ablaze; how the suspected presence of red partisans in refugee columns justified lining up any number of “civilians”—children, the elderly, mothers, pregnant women—against a wall and executing them without trial.
One can only shake one’s head at the casual tone in which American—forgive me, UN—warfare reports deeds that cost many of our comrades their lives. “Crimes against humanity,” they called our methods in the red East; today, the same acts by UN troops are deemed “military necessity.” We were “criminals,” “beasts,” when driven to such measures in dire straits. Yet the American public, untouched by the last war’s ravages or the current Korean venture, with no bombs falling on their roofs, hails the UN troops who routinely enact these measures as “brave,” even “death-defying” soldiers.
Why do we not have a chancellor who declares:
“I have no officer who can negotiate rearmament with you, former Allies, while German soldiers are still being convicted, still being extradited, still languishing in dungeons, solely for doing their duty and defending the homeland in its darkest hour”?
It matters not that some of these comrades fought on the Western front; they battled for the same cause, since the West set the pace for the East! Should we not expect such a stance from a responsible statesman? Or whose interests does he serve if he acts otherwise—those of his people?
We want our honor as soldiers restored. There are many ways to achieve this, and it costs our former enemies no dollars—only a measure of self-reflection and an admission of their own missteps. We noted with satisfaction that a man like General Eisenhower, unlike before, feels “no hatred” toward the German people or their soldiers. But we long to know whether this comes from conviction or convenience. It is easy for this general to say,
“Let bygones be bygones!”
—yet we yearn to hear more from him. The weight in the Western world rests now with military leaders. They could invoke the “sincerity” and “brevity” of military speech to restore the German soldier’s honor in words less polished but all the clearer, admitting their own errors—perhaps even laying them at the feet of the “hate-filled” politicians.
Before we sit at the negotiating table, our honor must be restored, and our comrades stripped of their freedom—from field marshal to private—must stand among us once more!
Let no one demand of us old front-line soldiers that we be dictated to about the caliber of cannons or the tonnage of armored vehicles we may use. We have a fair idea of how a force meant to fight the Soviets must be equipped and armed, and what tactical and strategic support from other branches is needed for success. We want to call for air support in our sector, for our unit, without interpreters! Moreover, we proved in war that we can craft quite serviceable weapons ourselves. It was no accident that everything was dismantled, that German property—our inventions, patents, even our scientists—was plundered. We care little whether rebuilding German heavy industry suits this or that global corporation. These sprawling conglomerates have ties everywhere, even to Prague and Moscow, and that is far too shaky for us! It seems best that German soldiers fight, as far as possible, with German weapons. Beyond that, the free revival of our heavy industry can only bring us economic gain.
Do not mistake us: we do not refuse all deployment, but we insist that certain conditions be met, certain demands honored, certain truths acknowledged. Though we are bled dry, though we lost our finest in a heroic struggle, we still wish to defend ourselves against the East and its Bolshevism. God knows we are no cowards; we have never shirked a fight. We stood alone in the battle for Germany and Europe, aided only by brave European volunteer units, whose survivors today’s European governments shot or jailed as common criminals, claiming they “took up arms against our ally, the Soviet Union.”
We believe in our homeland; we believe in Europe. For this belief, we would give the last we have left. But our unity and sovereignty—economic, political, military—must be fully restored. Many of us wore the uniform for fifteen or twenty years and are weary of soldiering, yet we would again rise to the utmost effort. No one, however, may demand our suicide. If a hundred top-tier divisions, backed by proper strategic and tactical air support, stand at our current borders with the red East, we could countenance rearmament under their shield. We go further: with a hundred robust divisions, Europe could not only be held but the remnant strength of the German people could lend this force an added might to crush Bolshevism.
No one hopes more than we that war may be avoided, for no one would pay more in another conflict than us. Yet we must not be lured by “peace at any price,” for peace under Bolshevik rule is akin to death. Nor should we be swayed by naive talk of bolstering Europe for a defensive war. If a defensive war succeeds, it will inevitably become an offensive one. I say this not because I am “militaristic again” or cling to the old adage that attack is the best defense, nor because MacArthur claimed,
“We’d rather and more easily defend America in Formosa,”
but because anyone versed in warfare knows that in a modern conflict, with cutting-edge weapons, clinging rigidly to a line—be it the Elbe, the Vistula, or the Rhine—is unthinkable. Any other notion is sheer fantasy! Above all, we never again wish to see Germany reduced to a battlefield and rubble.
Thus, when we say that German forces could lend the Western military an added offensive edge, we mean it not just because we soldiers know the lay of Eastern Europe and Russia, but because we hold a conviction—met abroad even after the lost war—that our people possess exceptional military qualities. We say this not out of belligerence or some “military aggression” within us.
We are a generation of ceaseless sacrifice, and we know our lot, one way or another, seems to hold little joy in this life. It would be with heavy hearts that we once more tread the path of military sacrifice. We are ready only because we love our people, our land, our Europe beyond measure. Thus, we are willing to forget much, to forgive much. Our people have never been fertile ground for the likes of Lord Vansittart and his kind. But we cannot, must not, and will not forget everything—this must be understood. If foreign politicians refuse to see it, surely the foreign soldiers we are to work with can grasp it.
We bear a deep sense of duty to our people and our continent. From this duty, we steadfastly did our part until the war’s final day; from this duty, we would find the courage to take up arms again. If we can overcome the human instinct for “neutrality,” the ethnic drive for self-preservation, the deep recoil from war and its trappings within us, then surely we may demand from others the fulfillment of our natural, obvious, and attainable conditions.
March 1951
(From H. U. Rudel, “We Front-Line Soldiers on Rearmament,” Writings on the Present, Dürer-Verlag, Buenos Aires, 1951. Price: m$n 7.-)