I Survived Six Years on the Eastern Front

War, military, history, anti-war, German perspective June 22, 1941. 3:15 a.m. The bombardment began. The shockwave tore through the half-track’s chassis and slammed into my chest. My mouth hung open, but it felt as if someone had seized the air in my lungs. That was how the war on the Eastern Front began. I was twenty-two then. I had been in the Hitler Youth. I had fought in Poland and France. I believed the Führer was right, that Germany needed living space, and that the war would be over before winter. Everyone said so. Later, no one said it anymore. Because most of the people who had said those things were dead. Those of us who remained, myself included, learned to keep quiet. Six years on the Eastern Front. From the Baltic to the Caucasus, from the frozen outskirts of Moscow back to the Dnieper. I lost toes to frostbite in Leningrad, chewed moldy bread in the ruins of Stalingrad, and was shaken deaf for three days by shellfire at Kursk. I watched the men around me fall, one by one. The veterans died, and new recruits took their places. The recruits became veterans, and the veterans died too. In the end, I stopped remembering their names. I couldn’t remember them. There was no point in trying. In 1945, the war ended. Our company had begun with 220 men. Only 37 of us were still alive. I was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. A year later, I was released. In 1949, I returned to Königsberg. I stood outside my mother’s apartment and heard the radio playing inside. I didn’t knock. The six-year war on the Eastern Front had finally drawn to a close within me. Was this what winning meant?