My Background
Martin Luther King Jr. once said: ‘One of the most persistent ambiguities we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal, but among the wielders of power peace is practically nobody’s business. Many cry: ‘Peace! Peace!’, but they refuse to do the things that make for peace … One day, we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars?’
This brings me back to my own life. I was born at the end of September 1937 and, therefore, was almost two when the Second World War broke out and seven and a half when it finished. For the first twenty-eight years of my life, I lived in a small provincial town in the Sauerland, one of the most beautiful parts of Western Germany. My home town lies near to the Rhine and Ruhr area, which was then and still is of great economic importance. In close proximity, there are whole chains of industrial centres, starting with Dortmund, Bochum, Essen, and Duisburg. As far as I recall, in Cologne and Leverkusen the pharmaceutical/chemical giants Bayer and Hoechst were dominant. In those days, among their many products was synthetic fuel. Düsseldorf and Solingen were close by. In Oberhausen, Bottrop, Gelsenkirchen, Recklinghausen, together with Bochum the main focus was on coal mining, an essential aspect for the survival of any industrial nation in those days.
Essen was the seat of the Krupp combine, the all-important iron and steel manufacturer. To give you an idea of its significance to the German war effort, here is some information about its activities. During the war it built submarines, trucks, locomotives, and warships, in addition to artillery and munitions. The owner was Alfred Krupp who after the war was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials, specifically for the employment of slave labour. On top of all that the company had also been guilty of plundering property and plants in the occupied countries. Under the terms of an Allied decree of March 4, 1953, Krupp was ordered to sell about seventy-five percent of the value of the concern. As no buyers could be found, by the early 1960s Alfred had restored the prosperity of his company and its value exceeded US$1,000,000,000.
In July 1965, I married an Englishman and moved to the United Kingdom. Soon after my arrival, on the 11th November to be precise, I was for the first time confronted with the British celebrations of Remembrance Day and the custom of buying and wearing poppies. On every street corner and in many shops, from early in November, red paper poppies are sold on behalf of the British Legion, an organisation that supports the survivors of both world wars. When this time came round again in the year 2006, I found myself wondering about the wisdom of writing a small article to explain how I came to terms with Remembrance Day and the poppies in Britain. I will attempt to do so, in the hope that it may help those living on the former opposition side towards a somewhat better understanding of what then went on within Germany.
By the time the Second World War was over, although so young, I vividly recall many of the hardships we endured. As I start writing, gradually more of them come to mind, for example the Allied Forces bombers flying their lethal missions to the above mentioned cities. As our town was situated immediately in their flight path, we could hear them roaring over our house to unload their deadly cargos somewhere. Anything that was left of their loads was – intentionally or otherwise – indiscriminately discharged later, somewhere on the return journey.
As the war efforts accelerated on both sides, the frequency of the bombing raids increased. There came a time when wave after wave of aircraft flew overhead every night, so that eventually our family had to spend each one crouched in the cellar of our house. This created the illusion of a measure of protection, but if a bomb had dropped on our roof, I do not believe there would have been any survivors. Because there was a great deal of light industry in our town, it was fully expected that the raids might be extended to our area. Only by the end of the war did it become clear that fortunately this was not the case.
I had two sisters older than myself and one younger brother. As the middle sister and I were born only eighteen months apart, we grew up like twins and were very close. During the time we spent every night in the cellar, this sister went down with a severe attack of jaundice; she almost died and our doctor diagnosed the cause as fear. No-one doubted that; all I can recall is how terrified I was of losing her. After a while, she also became ill with diphtheria and scarlet fever, which in those days frequently had fatal consequences. When it became known that she had to spend many weeks in the isolation ward of our hospital, I recall standing behind the door – we children were not allowed into the room to see her – and hoping that I would also catch the disease, so I could go with her. Had I already known how to pray, that undoubtedly is what I would have asked for.
Visiting her was heartbreaking; it was only possible at certain times and through a huge thick pane of glass. She would neither smile nor wave; maybe she did not even recognise us. Desperately ill as she was and at a time that tried the adults to the limits of their endurance, she could not even stay in her familiar surroundings. For the whole family and worst of all for my sister that truly was Hell on Earth. How much damage such things cause to the spiritual wellbeing of human souls does not bear thinking about. Not surprisingly, my sister’s constitution always remained very fragile; at age fifty-two she died of lung cancer.
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This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’
