The End of the War

In August and September, the symptoms of moral disintegration increased more rapidly, although the enemy’s offensive was not at all comparable to the frightfulness of our own former defensive battles.

In comparison with this offensive the battles fought on the Somme and in Flanders remained in our memories as the most terrible of all horrors.

At the end of September my division occupied, for the third time, those positions which we had once taken by storm as young volunteers. What a memory!

Here we had received our baptism of fire, in October and November 1914.

In July 1917 we set foot for the second time on what we regarded as sacred soil.

The older ones among us, who had been with the regiment from the beginning, were deeply moved as we stood on this sacred spot where we had sworn ‘Loyalty and Duty unto Death’.

Three years ago the regiment had taken this position by storm; now it was called upon to defend it in a gruelling struggle.

With a 3-week artillery bombardment, the English prepared for their great offensive in Flanders. There the spirits of the dead seemed to live again.

The regiment dug itself into the mud, clung to its shell-holes and craters, neither flinching nor wavering, but growing smaller in numbers day after day. Finally the British launched their attack on July 31, 1917.

We were relieved in the beginning of August. The regiment had dwindled down to a few companies, who staggered back, mud-crusted, more like phantoms than human beings. Besides a few hundred yards of shell-holes, death was the only reward which the English gained.

Now in the autumn of 1918 we stood for the third time on the ground we had stormed in 1914.

The village of Comines, which formerly had served us as a base, was now within the fighting zone. Although little had changed in the surrounding district itself, yet the men had become different, somehow or other. They now talked politics.

The young drafts succumbed to it completely. They had come directly from home.

During the night of October 13th-14th, the British opened an attack with gas on the front south of Ypres. They used the yellow gas whose effect was unknown to us, at least from personal experience.

I was destined to experience it that very night. On a hill south of Werwick, in the evening of October 13th, we were subjected for several hours to a heavy bombardment with gas bombs, which continued throughout the night.

About midnight a number of us were put out of action, some forever.

Towards morning I also began to feel pain. It increased with every quarter of an hour;

At 7am my eyes were scorching as I staggered back and delivered the last dispatch I was destined to carry in this war. A few hours later my eyes were like glowing coals and all was darkness around me.

I was sent into hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania where I had to hear of the Revolution.

In the first instance I thought of a strike similar to the one which had taken place in spring. Unfavourable rumours were constantly coming from the Navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment. But this seemed to be a fanciful creation of a few isolated young people.

At the hospital, they were all talking abut the end of the war and hoping that this was not far off. But nobody thought that the decision would come immediately. I was not able to read the newspapers.

In November the general tension increased. Then one day disaster broke in upon us suddenly and without warning.

Sailors came in motor-lorries and called on us to rise in revolt. A few Jew-boys were the leaders in that combat for the ‘Liberty, Beauty, and Dignity’ of our National Being. Not one of them had seen active service at the front.

Through the medium of a hospital for venereal diseases these three Orientals had been sent back home. Now their red rags were being hoisted here. During the last few days I had begun to feel somewhat better. The burning pain in the eye-sockets had become less severe.

Gradually I was able to distinguish the general outlines of my immediate surroundings. And it was permissible to hope that at least I would recover my sight sufficiently to be able to take up some profession later on. That I would ever be able to draw or design once again was naturally out of the question. Thus I was on the way to recovery when the frightful hour came.

My first thought was that this outbreak of high treason was only a local affair. I tried to enforce this belief among my comrades. My Bavarian hospital mates, in particular, were readily responsive.

Their inclinations were anything but revolutionary. I could not imagine this madness breaking out in Munich; for it seemed to me that loyalty to the House of Wittelsbach was, after all, stronger than the will of a few Jews.

I could not help believing that this was merely a revolt in the Navy and that it would be suppressed within the next few days.

The rumours grew more and more persistent. I was told that what I had considered to be a local affair was in reality a general revolution.

In addition to this, from the front came the shameful news that they wished to capitulate! Was such a thing possible?

On November 10th the local pastor visited the hospital to deliver a short address. And that was how we came to know the whole story.

He told us that the House of Hohen-zollern should no longer wear the Imperial Crown, that the Fatherland had become a ‘Republic’.

Everyone cried including me.

So all had been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations, in vain the hunger and thirst for endless months, in vain those hours that we stuck to our posts though the fear of death gripped our souls, and in vain the deaths of two millions who fell in discharging this duty.

During the following days my own fate became clear to me. I was forced now to scoff at the thought of my personal future, which hitherto had been the cause of so much worry to me.

Was it not ludicrous to think of building up anything on such a foundation?

Finally, it also became clear to me that it was the inevitable that had happened, something which I had feared for a long time, though I really did not have the heart to believe it.

Emperor William II was the first German Emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not suspecting that they were scoundrels without any sense of honour.

While they held the imperial hand in theirs, the other hand was already feeling for the dagger.

There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It must be the hard-and-fast ‘Either-Or.’ For my part I then decided that I would take up political work.