azdak

This weekend I went to an exhibition about desertion from the Wehrmacht in World War 2. It was mostly - quite rightly - case studies of individuals who had deserted, or been accused of deserting, or had helped deserters, or had been in charge of the legal system that punished deserters (desertion counted as "undermining manliness" within the armed forces and was punishable by death. "Undermining manliness" was a bit of a catch-all crime - one woman who worked in the kitchens of the Luftwaffe was sentenced to death for "undermining manliness" when she expressed disappintment that the plot to assassinate Hitler had failed. Luckily for her, Himmler commuted it to ten years in prison. She received no compensation after the wwar on the grounds that she had not been systematically opposing the Nazi regime). But there was one particularly fascinating statistic, the figues of executions for desertion amonst various armies in the two world wars. Germany, for instance, shot 49 deserters in WW1 and 20,000 in WW2. Japan did even better, going from 0 executions for desertion in WW1 to 22,000 in WW2. The Americans shot only one soldier for desertion in WW2, and the British a handful more (the figures were purely for serving soldiers executed by the Wehrmacht for desertion. They don't cover people executed for assisting deserters, many of whom were women, nor men who attempetd to avoid the draft altogether).

There was also an interview with one old man who had deserted fairly early on in the war and joined the Allied forces. He described how he had discussed the possibility with his mother when he went home on leave, and how worried he had been that she and his brother, who was also in the army, would be punished if he deserted. In the end, his mother burnt all his photos and letters and said that if she was arrested, she would claim she hadn't had any contact with him for years. He had been planning to cross the enemy lines with a friend, but at the last minute the friend bottled out because he couldn't bear the thought of having to shoot at his fellow countrymen. After the war, he was treated as a traitor by most people he knew, and ended up keeping his mouth shut for years and years - he was evidently fairly bitter about what he called "the second great lie" of the old soldiers, who claimed that they had been defending their country and had fought with honour, disregarding the fact that they had actually been fighting for the Nazis.