Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Wien

2008-04-29

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1936

Already in June 1936 Hitler gave the order to re-militarize the left bank of the Rhine river. According to the peace treaties and also later to the treaties with the German Reich the 100,000 soldiers of the German army were prohibited to occupy this area to the left of the Rhine with garrisons. And in July 1936 Hitler declared the treaties of Versailles for null and void, also cancelled all the other treaties and moved in. I remember very clearly that there were some people in front of our shop who were arguing with my father and my father said: "If the English" ? we never said "British" then, always "English" ? "if the English and the French accept this then we'll have war in three years." He was mistaken by one or two months and a few days. But he was convinced that it couldn't end well. And then, when the Soviet Union agreed with the Germans ? with Hitler ? that was a setback. My father said: "That won't last." So it was interesting. He held on to his convictions. Of course many people said: "Well, everyone is for it, and they're winning and winning..." Then the occupation took place: We always thought the Maginot-line would hold. When it suddenly fell, because of France's internal decay ? it was completely surprising ? mainly from a military point of view, that they had weapons to break the stronghold and so on. Of course we got the impression that any kind of resistance against National Socialism could only fail. Later that changed. Especially at the time of Stalingrad. Because ? at the time we heard through the underground that losses in the east were gigantic and ? there was underground news that the monthly losses in the east were higher than the 100,000 soldier limit. Those weren't only deaths but also the wounded, but, the army at the battle front was losing 100,000 soldiers, or more! In hindsight ? today we know that it was even more, almost 300,000 soldiers were withdrawn from the front, every month due to death or being wounded. And they had to be substituted somehow and so on, so for many people it became clear that it wouldn't work out, that is just logical. From then on we had more opportunities ? only, organising the groups ? we tried ? when I was with the reserve battalion in Innsbruck after being wounded ? we tried to organise groups. The difficulty was that people were deployed to other positions. So the first thing we did was to try to postpone these transfers to be able to keep a cadre in place.