THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD
a former German soldier remembers

"If you want to stop wars you must study how they come about"

Last January there was a ceremony at the memorial to the Soviet dead
in the Second World War, which is in the grounds of the Imperial War
Museum.
At the ceremony, former Panzer driver Henry Metelmann, who is now a
peace activist, spoke of his bitter experiences and afterwards gave a
lecture.

This is what he said...
 
HENRY Metelmann began his talk by thanking the Soviet Memorial Trust
for inviting him to speak and introduced himself: "I am working
class, with no academic education so don't expect a full academic
account of the events of Stalingrad.

 "I drove a Panzer tank. It was shot up and I ended up wandering
around in the rubble, in the snow, fighting for my life and fearful
of death. It was so awful, so awful, so awful.
 "I took part in events that caused so much suffering to the Soviet
people, and which I always regret, after being conscripted at 18."
 
a rout

Several times he described the retreat from Stalingrad
as "Napoleonic" - a rout rather than an orderly retreat, with
stragglers running for their lives in temperatures as low as minus 54
degrees centigrade.
 "I took part in many battles," he said, "After Barbarossa on 22nd
June, there were three main directions of attack and I was in the one
that went south, under Manstein, heading for Stalingrad on the Volga
and then south to the oil fields of Baku.
 Henry Metelmann described how he was involved in many battles and
sustained many minor wounds. In 1944 he was wounded seriously and
sent back to Germany. After recovering he was involved in some
fighting on the western front and ended up surrendering to the
advancing Americans, under Patton.
 After that he was shipped out as a prisoner of war to Arizona where
he was put to work among black people and Mexicans picking cotton.
 "Each battle has its own characteristics," he said, "but Stalingrad
stands on its own. We were 360,000 at the start of the battle and the
Soviet troops numbered one million plus.
 "The intensity of the fighting was colossal. The Soviets had no
choice but to fight. We were fighting to enslave them.
 "We had been told that after we had conquered the Soviets, we would
not bother educating them beyond being able to read direction posts.
They would not need to know anything more. They would be our slaves."
 He went on to say that the Stalin government had been tough,
deserters were shot - "but that was the same in our army, or any
other". And he added, "Without Stalin's toughness, I do not think
they would have pulled through."
 Then he described a revisit to the scene 15 years ago. A line of
turrets of Soviet T34 tanks bisects the town, marking the furthest
point that the German advance reached. At one point it is less than
200 yards from the Volga, their target.
 "We thought we were the strongest military force on earth," he
said, "And look what happened to us - the Americans should remember
that. We had come a thousands of miles but could not manage the last
200 yards."
 He pointed out that he was now older and wiser. "This must never
happen again. I saw the destruction of Eastern Europe during our
retreat. We had been ordered to destroy everything.
 "I am fearful that such a catastrophe could happen again.
 "Nine tenths of the German soldiers who died in that war, died on
the eastern front. That should tell us who won the war. If you look
at the American films, you would think they won the war single-
handed. They think they won because they're handsome. It was not so,
I can tell you, I was there.
 "The suffering of the Soviet people was unimaginable. If you want to
stop wars, you must study how they come about.
 "The Red Army faced what seemed an impossible task and yet, as
Churchill admitted, they `tore the guts out of the Nazi war machine'.
 "As we retreated we realised what we had done, burning their
villages, forcing them out into the bitter cold. We knew how much
they hated us. War brings out the worst in people.
 
salute

"Now looking back, I salute the Red Army and what they did in saving
the world from Hitler.
 "They lost more casualties than we did. The Red Army was less
professional than we who had been brought up for this in the Hitler
Youth."
 He remembered is own fallen comrades: "We were all victims of a
historic process. Why is it we were all victims? We must look for the
reasons of why war comes about in the first place.
 "Politicians, religion and so on fooled me and robbed me of the
meaning of my life.
 "I was born in 1922 in Schleswig Holstein. My father was an
unskilled labourer and I had a good youth. My parents were loving but
poor.
 "We saw life from a working class point of view and that is very
different from an upper class or middle class point of view.
 "If you don't see things from a working class point of view, you
don't see life.
 "Hitler came to power when I was 10. He was heaved into the saddle
of government. My parents hated Hitler. He was not elected by the
German people but appointed by Hindenburg.

put there

 "My father had a good understanding of politics. He told me, `Hitler
has been put there to do a job by those who are afraid of a
revolution. He is a leader of a party less than 10 years old. Hitler
was a corporal, a vagabond with no education yet he has become
Chancellor, head of state, supreme commander of the armed forces.
Yes, he was put there. He was put in charge to clamp down on the
German people by the establishment: the landowners, the
industrialists, the bankers, the aristocracy and the church.'
 "This is how Hitler became Chancellor.
 "He started off by setting up concentration camps. Then one of our
neighbours disappeared. As far as I know he was not a member of any
political organisation but he knew a bit more than most of us. He was
the sort of person you would go to for help and advice if you had any
problems with the authorities.
 "That's the one thing the Nazis didn't like, a clever worker. After
that the man's family was ostracised. Everyone was a bit afraid to be
seen to be friendly with them.
 "My father regarded Hitler as no more than a dog on a long lead.
 "When I left school I was apprenticed to be a locksmith. I joined
the Hitler Youth as everybody did. Whenever you applied for a job,
they would ask you, `What did you do in the Hitler Youth'. You
couldn't get a job any other way.
 "I loved it in the Hitler Youth. We had good food and good clothes,
many of us for the first time in or lives. And we had new history
books - all the old ones were thrown out.
 "We had camps and sports and military activities. We were encouraged
to rough and tumble, to fight, to harden us up. We were also taught
how to survive if lost in the wild. We though we were the greatest.
 "Then I was called up. I was a locksmith so I was sent to the
Panzers." This was in 1941, just before Barbarossa.
 Henry Metelmann described his first posting in France, after the
invasion, consolidating the occupation.
 "I drove my tank to Cap Gris Nez. From there I could see England and
thought it would be only a matter of time before we would be over
there."
 Then he was transferred to the eastern front, to Russia, deep snow
and bitter cold. He went with Army Group South, under General
Manstein, through the Ukraine as far the River Dneipr and then south
to Crimea.
 
realised

"At one stage we went through an old battle scene. There were many
ruined Soviet tanks and one burnt out Panzer tank, just like the one
I was driving.
 I wondered how on earth the driver would have got out, from right
down at the bottom of the tank. Then I realised, he didn't. He
couldn't have. I suddenly realised that could have been me."
 He told of how he had been billeted on a poor Ukrainian peasant
family. They had a daughter, Anna, much the same age as Henry.
 For the first time in his life, he felt attracted to a young woman
but nothing could come of it. "You are the enemy," she told him, "and
I wish all the Germans dead and out of my country". "Even me?" he
asked.
 His confidence was receiving a few dents. Then came an incident that
troubled him a lot. During a battle, a Soviet soldier was trying to
surrender to his advancing tank. His officer ordered him to carry on
regardless - it is a cardinal rule of tank warfare that a stationary
tank is a sitting duck - he was ordered to carry on straight over the
man.
 "I remember once, after a battle, they had a thanksgiving service. I
could see dead bodies all around, from both sides. I thought, if they
are thanking God for that, this is not my god. I never had much time
for religion after that."
 He continued: "From Kharkov we drove towards the Volga. On the
whole, we were victorious as the Russians withdrew. Some Germans were
killed by Russians - violence is the right of the oppressed - but we
hated them for it. We burned their villages.

burning

"At one point I saw a young woman dragging two little children out of
a burning cottage. They did not want to come; perhaps they had a pet
or a special toy left inside. My mate lifted his machine gun and dt-
dt-dt, there were three little heaps in the snow.
 This is how thin the veneer of civilisation is. It's what war does
to us. I was shocked but I never even went over to check if they were
dead or not. One of them might have been alive, I don't know. Even if
I had found one alive, I haven't the faintest idea what I would have
done about it.
 "Nineteen-forty-two was a good summer for us, it seemed. We tried to
catch the Red Army in pincers but they always withdrew. We though
they were cowards but it was not so. The Russians are the best chess
players in the world.
 "In the Don Bas region we came to a town where there were lots of
factories. The Soviets had stripped it bare and moved all the
machinery east of the Urals. That is where they mass-produced the T34
tank - the most successful tank in the history of the world. The
production of the T34 turned our hope of victory into defeat.
 "Along with our army we had some economics officers, they wore green
uniforms. They went into these factories and I saw their faces drop
as they saw they had bee stripped. They had counted on seizing that
machinery.
 "We also had some Nazi party political officers with us. They were
supposed to boost our morale with pep talks. One evening as we were
resting one asked a group of us, `Why are we here?'
 "Most of us kept quiet, we didn't want to stick our necks out. But
one bright young soldier replied, `For the glory of the fatherland'.
 "The Nazi replied, `That's all rubbish, we're after oil. When we're
finished here, we head south, to Iraq. At the same time Rommel will
head from Africa, through Saudi Arabia and we'll tie up with him in
Iraq. We want the oilfields'.
 
repeating?

"I wonder now, is history repeating itself with the Americans?
 "Our group reached the outskirts of Stalingrad and then we were
pulled back. We used our allies to protect our flanks, the Hungarians
and Romanians and so on. We didn't quite trust them, they were not as
professional as we were."
 Henry Metelmann then described how the fighting got very tough. "The
Russians were not cowards at all. They fought like mad. They had to
fight or become slaves.
 "On the 19th of November 1942, there was deep snow. We were some way
outside Stalingrad. I was not I my tank at the time, we were dug into
an earth bunker, waiting.
 "The Soviets started a massive military bombardment. We guessed it
was the overture to some action. When the noise died down we could
hear T34s approaching in the distance. We looked out, there were
masses of them coming in a wave after wave.
 "As they came closer, they had to cross a ridge just in front of us.
As they did so, just for a moment before they turned down, their
vulnerable under-bellies were visible.
 "We fired like mad and we put some out of action. But there were far
too many, they just came on and on. I hid in a corner of the bunker
where I guessed it would be least likely to collapse and kept my head
down until it all went quiet.
 "When I crawled out, I saw that all my companions, every one, had
been crushed as the T34s rolled over. That was the army of Marshal
Vatutin, springing the trap that closed on Von Paulus and the 6th
Army inside Stalingrad."
 
amazing

Henry then described how, with amazing presence of mind, he collected
the food rations of his dead colleagues, made himself a meal and
settled down to sleep.
 On waking, he gathered food, clothing, boots and weapons from his
fallen mates. He had to judge carefully how much he could easily
carry and what would be most useful for bargaining if he should make
contact with Romanian forces in the area.
 The Germans and Romanians were on the same side, but in a situation
like that; their help was not something to take for granted.
 After that, Henry Metelmann became a straggler, isolated and
desperate. "The training they gave us in the Hitler Youth came in
useful there. I was able to navigate by the stars. At any rate, I
could identify the pole star and I knew if I kept that on my right, I
was travelling westward, towards home."
 He made contact before long with another German straggler and
eventually ended up in a group, travelling westward as fast as they
could, through no-man's land, trying to make contact with the German
army.
 He described how this was a Napoleonic rout. From time to time
enough stragglers came together to make some sort of fighting unit,
and would then be blown apart again.
 They followed their orders to burn everything as they went, forcing
villagers out into the freezing depths of winter.
 "In one village, we were setting fire to everything, I was told to
go and clear one cottage. I went in and it was packed with people,
refusing to budge. I did not know what to do so I seized an old man
holding a young boy.
 I put my gun to the man's head and told the people to leave or I
would shoot him. The man then calmly told me I would have to shoot
the boy as well. I was stumped.

horror

 "An officer came to see what was taking me so long. He just pulled
me out and set fire to the building anyway. The people soon came out
then. My illusions were being shattered all around. There were many
instances of horror like that.
 "At another time, I was with a group of stragglers, we were running
along a road when a Stormovik Soviet plane came up behind us, machine-
gunning as it came. A Stormovik doesn't just fire ordinary bullets,
they fire cannon rounds this big," he said, indicating about nine
inches.
 "We all dived for cover but one of my mates was hit. He was
screaming in agony. What could we do? We were on the run and had to
move fast. We couldn't carry him and we couldn't just leave him like
that to die slowly.
 "We had a brief discussion. Our only option was to put him out of
his misery. I had to do it. I stroked his head and told him
everything was going to be all right while I hid the gun and then
shot him in the back of the head. War makes us do terrible things."
 Henry went on to say that eventually he too was wounded fairly
seriously but was lucky enough to be transported out by the Luftwaffe
back to Germany.
 
experiences

"That was my experience of Stalingrad," he told the audience, and
then answered questions, about his experiences as a POW. How after
the war he had gone back to Schleswig Holstein to find his family and
everything he remembered gone and how he came to end up living in
England because of an offer of work on a farm.
He now lives in Surrey and has spent his life campaigning for peace.
In informal discussion before the lecture, he told the New Worker
that it was when he was a cotton-picking POW in Arizona he witnessed
the extreme exploitation of the blacks and Hispanics. "I began to
understand the evils of the whole capitalist system then.
"And I came across a few communists who were fighting for better
conditions. I had always been taught that communists were the devil,
the ultimate evil. But when I found out their aims were to take power
and wealth from the rich and hand them over to the workers, I thought
what on earth is wrong with that?"

new worker

28th February 2003 

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