I want to tell you about the 716th Static Infantry Division. The 716th Static Infantry Division was made up of elderly Germans and conscripts from occupied countries. Germany was already starting to totter; the Eastern Front had already consumed most of Germany's "men of military age," as they say. So after scraping together what Germans they could to staff their new division, they filled its ranks with conscripts from their conquered territories.
Recruiting soldiers from among peoples recently conquered might sound strange and even dangerous, but it is a pretty common imperial practice. The Romans used to raise auxiliaries in one region then move them to another, far from home, confident that the unfamiliar terrain, alien language, hostile populace and complete dependence on the state for food and shelter would keep them in line. And generally it did.
And so it did for the Ostbataillonen, the modern day auxiliaries conscripted by Hitler's empire. Many of them came from lands that had been horribly abused by Hitler's forces- Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia- but snatched from their homes, given nothing to wear but a German uniform, and set down in an alien land where anything wearing a German uniform was hated and feared, they had no one but each other and no source of food, shelter and survival than the Reich.
Their masters knew better than to concentrate them in one place. Even a polyglot crowd of frightened slaves might get ideas and try to escape their bondage if they realized their strength, as the Romans themselves learned in the Third Servile War, against Spartacus. The Ostbataillonen were spread out all along the Atlantic Wall, the bulwark Hitler built against an Allied landing. Their officers were German, their food came from the Germans, their clothing came from the Germans, and the Germans promised swift and certain retribution should they disobey. Their families remained in German hands as well- a fact that could not have been far from their minds.
So it was that frightened, enslaved young men from conquered nations, led by elderly German conscripts, came to face another group of terrified young conscripts, this time from across the sea. Here I must tell you the dirty secret of war. One of war's many dirty secrets, actually, but a dirty secret all the same. When you are a young man, and other young men are trying to kill you, who they are or what they want does not cross your mind. Thoughts of home don't occur to you, noble visions of flags flying or eagles soaring don't come up at all. The only thought- if it can be called a thought at all- is the most abject, shattering terror you can imagine. And so you try to kill them. Not for country, for cause, for God, for religion, for freedom, or for whatever other stupidity fills our movies and our nostalgic reminisces. You try to kill them because you yourself are young and so very afraid. You kill them because you don't want to die.
And so enslaved Poles and Ukranians shot at American farmboys on French beaches for their German masters. Not because they were Nazis. Not because they hated freedom, or loathed America, or loved Germany. Far from it. The men in the fearsome Stahlhelms manning the MG42s in all those old movies were really frightened young men, dragged from their homes, who simply, desperately wanted to see their homes again.
So take a moment to remember the men of the 716th Static Infantry Division. They were victims of war just as the American dead were, just as the dead of the camps were, just as the incinerated children of London, Dresden, Stalingrad and Hiroshima were. They were not bad men. They were frightened, alone, and far away from their homes. And remember too that in wars, there are no heroes, and only a few villains. The villains create the war, but the war creates only victims.
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