Dan Snow's History Hit - Operation Barbarossa: The Lost Diaries

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

Operation Barbarossa saw a clash of arms between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union of unprecedented scale and savagery, but what was it really like to serve on the front lines of the Eastern Front? The historian Rob Schäfer has given History Hit exclusive access to the diaries of Lt. Friedrich Sander, a Panzer officer and one of the 3 million German troops involved in Operation Barbarossa. The diaries are brutal in their honesty openly describing the atrocities Sander was involved in and his opinions about Jews and the Soviet population. They also describe the horror of combat and his doubts about the cause, in whose name, he fights. In this episode, Rob describes how he came into possession of the diaries and why they offer such a unique insight into the mindset of someone fighting for the Wehrmacht. At the end of this podcast, you will also hear extracts from the audiobook History Hit recently released based on Lt. Sander's diaries read by Stephen Erdman. Listen to The Barbarossa Diaries.History Hit has also created what we believe to be the most historically accurate Operation Barbarossa documentary ever made with accurate footage and sound effects from the period which bring this titanic struggle to life. Watch part one of Barbarossa: The Lost Diaries.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan's List History. Now we have just launched a TV show on our television channel, History Hit TV, which has broken all the records. We have been able to source a German diary of a combat officer, a panzer commander, during Operation Barbarossa 80 years ago this year. He's written one of the most candid, one of the most striking diaries of any to emerge from the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. I say we found it, of course. In fact, Rob Schaefer found it. He's a brilliant German military historian. He's been on this podcast many times before. And he found this on an auction site. It was basically being auctioned off like it was just junk, really, by someone hoping to clear

their father's house after his death. Rob immediately saw its value, secured it, and approached us, as you'll hear in this podcast. It really is truly remarkable. We went to extraordinary lengths in our documentary about these diaries, and you're actually going to hear some of the diaries dramatized by the actor who reads them out on the TV show. You're going to hear that at the end of this episode, so please stay tuned for those. But as Rob tells us in this podcast that we recorded a few days ago, these diaries differ from so many other diaries and records of Second World War from the German side. And they do lay bare. They do discuss the war crimes. They do discuss the Holocaust that was unfolding in the aftermath of the German advance. It is truly an extraordinary project to have worked on.

The documentary, Fall It's Earth, we went to enormous efforts to make sure that it was as accurate as possible. We used the correct archive, nearly every single frame. If there was no images available to illustrate what the diarist, who was called Leutnant Friedrich Sander, we borrowed from as near to that period, that year and date as we could. The sound effects are all accurate and we've had a group of military historians who we've used to peer review it to make sure it's as accurate as possible. So please do go and check

this out on History Hit TV, Barbarossa, The Lost Diaries. You go and do that by signing up at historyhit.tv, that's historyhit.tv. You can watch the feature length documentary there. There are two parts of that and we will be making more to mark the 80th anniversaries as the years go on. Lieutenant Friedrich Sander was wounded outside Stalingrad as he attempted to fight his way into Stalingrad to relieve the troops stranded there. So he takes part in many of the most eye-catching moments, the most horrific moments of the war on the Eastern Front. It's a great honour to now have the resources, thanks to you, thanks to the subscribers,

that we can actually learn about things like this, talk to historians like Rob, they can come to us with ideas, they can come to us with archive, and we can act on it straight away without asking anyone's permission. Thank you to everyone who's watched this documentary. Thank you to everyone who's subscribed. I hope you enjoy this interview with rob schaefer rob schaefer thank you very much coming back on the podcast buddy hi then now you have produced

this program that's going bonkers all over history at tv tell me about the diary itself i mean what is the story of this unpublished is it newly discovered what is the story of this? Unpublished? Is it newly discovered? What's the story here? Well, I encountered these diaries about one and a half years ago on a, well, I can't really say the name of the auction platform, but on a famous, quite well-known German auction platform in the small ads section, among other bits and pieces of Militaria. And the only thing I could see about them on the photographs in the auction was the field post number of the author so the coded postal address basically his military address so I decoded that and I saw that the author of these diaries had been serving in a panzer unit and that is the basic reason why I acquired them and when they arrived I was immediately blown away by what the

diaries contained because I've never ever seen anything like that before. What is the context, though, in which it was being sold? Was it being sold just like it was someone clearing out an attic? Were they known about? No. I had to piece all that together afterwards. When I began researching the diaries, I went back to the dealer and asked, where do they come from? What are the connections? And he didn't know much. He just knew that it had come into his possession in a big box with all kinds of other things like photographs and other documents, paperwork. And he split that all up, as so many dealers do, and sold it all over the world. I was lucky enough to get the diaries. I have since then made contact with a few other buyers. So I have managed to rehome about 400 photographs of that man, of the author of the diaries.

And I also know where several other folders of loose documents are at the moment, which I'm trying to somehow get my hands on. But that is not very easy. The story, as far as I can piece it together, was all sold by the son of Sander in the 90s already to a dealer. And since then, these items have been making the rounds in the collecting community until they ended up here on my desk. Give us a sense of the extent of this diary. Well, they comprise of about 12 volumes

and quite an extensive amount of loose paperwork, now disbound, probably once bound. And they cover a period between early 1938 and late December 1943. It's not a continuous diary, so there are indeed breaks in the storytelling. So the diary starts in early 1938, then ends in December 1938, and then picks up again where our production starts at the beginning of Unternehmen Barbarossa in June 1941.

Then it continues up to about January, February, March 1942. Then it ends abruptly and then picks off again at the end of that year, November 1942, ends again in December 1943. And the rest just remains in fragments. And I don't know if other diaries once existed or if he only kept diary in certain periods of his life, the author. I don't know. I can't say. So talk to me about this man, Leutnant Sanders, to the realist background. Well, there's not much I know, but there are some things we can deduce from the diaries themselves. So he was born in 1916 in Graudenz in what was then West Prussia.

He comes from quite a stable, I wouldn't say wealthy, but well-off family of merchants in Graudenz. And for some reason, after finishing grammar school, so he had a grammar school education and an abitur, but he didn't go to university, but was for some reason sent to the west of Germany for a merchant apprenticeship, which is quite an odd change, really. So going into business with a merchant somewhere in Osnabrück. I know that in 1937, like so many others, he joined the Reichsleber Service. At about that time, we know that he also joined the National Socialist Party. And he was also a member of the SS, so of the Allgemeine SS, not of the Waffen-SS later. So with that background, he volunteered for service in the Wehrmacht in 1938, trained as a radio operator in an armored unit, then quickly

rose through the ranks. And the first diary ends when he is getting his officer's commission. That is at the end of 1938. And did he survive the war? Yes, he survived the war. He died, as far as I know, in 1986. And his son sold his possession? His son didn't want to be associated with anything his father ever did or wrote. Through contacts in Germany, I have now learned that Sander remained. And basically, his Weltanschauung never changed. So his Weltanschauung in 1986 was still very much that that he held in 1941. And as such, the son wasn't entirely sympathetic to his father.

And after his father's death, instead of burning it or throwing it all away, he decided to sell everything. Is this a common story for this generation? In Britain, we have memoirs. People both publish diaries or write memoirs. Subsequently, we have, as we all know, thousands of memoirs of people who serve in war. Is this something that isn't true of Germany? Well, that is entirely true of Germany.

There's a wealth of published ego documents like memoirs and diaries and letter collections. The difference between these and what we have used here for the documentary is that all these post-war creations of German ego document writing are somehow either written with an agenda, so they are looking back at the war through rose-tinted glasses, and they are not honest. They are apologetic in many ways, and very often the early ego document literature in the 1950s and 1960s is also very much glorifying the deeds of the wehrmacht and there's this white washing of the wehrmacht as such of the german army in comparison to the waffen ss

nothing that i have ever read or seen and i dare to say i've seen read quite a lot compares to this set of diaries because it's the first time and it was shocking in many respects to me as well because i have never seen anything like that either it offers this immediate and unfiltered view into the head of this highly politicized young man young officer of the german wehrmacht how he sees his world how he puts everything that he encounters everything he sees from the people to the animals in the field into his weltanschauung and how everything is judged and evaluated by his political standards everything absolutely everything is from the goats lithuanian goats he says are far more effective and efficient than Latvian goats, for example.

That's one of the lessons I learned in this set of diaries. Everything is shocking. It's in many respects utterly shocking that he's unable to say anything without judging or evaluating it. Also, his friends and comrades, people he talks warmly about, are also judged according to his views all the time. Are they politically plus? Are they politically minus? Are they thinking in the way I'm thinking? If not, should I still have them as friends? Even his girlfriends he talks about, all his romantic encounters, are judged in the same manner as the goats in Lithuania.

It is incredible. Well, you know me, it's one of these things that really matter to me, that is these ego documents and reading letters and diaries, collecting them, evaluating them. And I have read thousands and thousands of letters and hundreds of diaries, and I've never seen anything like that. It's absolutely incredible. Obviously, some people have already said, you know, is this ethical? Is this a good idea to just sort of quote extensively from a German, highly politicized, highly motivated member of a panzer unit? Do you end up developing sympathy for what was a kind of astonishing genocidal invasion? I think the answer is no.

I mean, the way he talks about Jews, the way he talks about killing on the battlefield, it's astonishing. It is impossible to get a lasting sense of sympathy for him. There are bits in the text, especially when you look at the full text, which is about 200,000 words strong. So if you have the full diary, there are indeed sections where he's very funny and very openly talks about life in the unit and social interactions in a very humorous manner.

But before you can even develop any sense of sympathy for him, he's back to being who he is. He's executing prisoners of war. The diaries are full of anti-Semitic remarks. They are raw. They are very, very raw, direct, and they don't need commenting. Zander tells you very, very openly and very directly how you need to understand him. He doesn't pull any punches. And when you read the original text, you understand that they don't need any further commenting. We don't need to tell people what to think about Sander.

Sander tells people very openly what they need to think about him. Listening to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about the remarkable diaries of Reutnant Friedrich Sander. More coming up. Hello. If you're enjoying this podcast, then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the history hit warfare podcast. From the polionic battles and Cold War confrontations to the Normandy landings and 9-11, we reveal new perspectives on how war has shaped and changed our modern world. I'm your host, James Rogers, and each week,

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There are new episodes every week. what do the diaries show in terms of the progression of a young man hugely motivated believes that he's on the winning side the right side of history as he goes through the horrors that develop on the eastern front what do you think his experience can teach us about what it was like for them well what they can teach us what they taught me again, and in a very, very unique manner, is that this is clearly a man, if you had met him then during the war, possibly even after the war, would have been a very warm, funny, sympathetic kind of person. He appears very jovial. He's very eloquent. He would probably, if you have met him now, nowadays as your neighbor in the garden, you probably take a liking to him.

I learned that later in his life, he had a big rose garden in Germany. But the frightening thing is that this man who appears at the first glance very jovial and very friendly and like a good mate and a good chap is a rabid Nazi, a murderer, an anti-Semite, a racist. That is what the diaries teach us, especially in the full context. The frightening thing about this is this is a Wehrmacht officer. This is not a Waffen-ass soldier. This is an officer of the German Wehrmacht, an officer of the army, and he is a crusader for the National Socialist Cause. He is a political tool. He's fully behind what he's doing.

Although I have to say, it doesn't sound very easy, actually. The interesting thing for me was at the start of Barbarossa, you think it's all going to be Germans advancing. It sounds like there was brutal fighting and very stiff resistance all the way through. But as that war descends into kind of unimaginable, attritional horrors, does his outlook change through the diaries?

To be honest with you, that is another thing that is completely devoid in this diary. From the very first day, he makes it very clear that this advance through Russia is not a walk in the park. His unit, they are equipped with ancient tanks. They are advancing at massive speeds and they are encountering an enemy who fights for the defense of their motherland like no enemy has done before. There are two extremist worldviews colliding there in Russia, and he makes it very clear that this is unlike anything he or any of his comrades have ever experienced. All these later accounts you read and I read, which describe this campaign as some lightning advance in the first weeks and the big battles of encirclement where nothing can stand in the way of the Wehrmacht, that is not present in this text. Here you see an army which is constantly being harassed under fire,

has got huge casualties, makes enormous mistakes, seems in many cases very little organized. It's the complete opposite of what you usually read in Söder's memoirs of that campaign. That is another thing which is special about these diaries. He describes these things so openly that if anyone had ever seen what he writes into these diaries, he would have been in severe trouble, even though he's a stout party member and believes in National Socialist ideas. That did not stop him from portraying the advance and the war there as a total shambles, of bad-mouthing superiors, of questioning

the tactics, and quite early asking openly the question, can we still win this? This is probably one of the only times where I've seen, even in late 1941, he is already saying there's not much we can do anymore. If the Russians hit us any harder, they'll soon be in Berlin and then we'll be in deep trouble. And yes, as the war progresses and as it gets more violent, his outlook changes, but it does not change because he becomes more sensitive to his surroundings or he becomes a more humane being. It's when it hits him personally, when it hits his comforts when his life is in danger when the temperatures drop and his freeze turn blue when he has got nothing to eat then we see these changes in outlook where he says well i'm not sure if we should continue this it's getting really dangerous here now and maybe we are not doing the right thing and there's just one piece in the entire diaries where he's openly

asking or questioning his political ideas and what he's fighting for. This is in December, when the Russians launched their winter offensive, throwing the German army back, sometimes up to 200, 250 kilometers. They received the orders to burn Russian villages on their withdrawal. It's the application of scorched earth tactics. And there's one particular day where he is ordered to burn down a Russian village with outside temperatures being minus 45 degrees. And he describes the wailing women and the old men who are standing there shivering in the cold and they are burning their houses. That shakes him. That is something he comes back to again and again andivering in the cold and they are burning their houses that shakes him that is something he

comes back to again and again and again in the later diaries that this is something he would never have thought he would be asked to do or ordered to do you can see that because as i said he dreams about it he writes half a year later he's still dreaming about it that is the first time where he's basically saying we are behaving like the Vikings or like the Swedes that in Germany in the 30 years war or like the Russian army did in East Prussia in 1914. And he can't understand that. And he doesn't want to do that. That is the only time in the entire diary. What do you think the reception will be for this in Germany?

We know his son didn't have any interest in his father because of that generational process that was going on in Germany. What do you think about a new generation, people our age and below? To be honest, I don't think I can be the judge of that. But I do see that this particular set of diaries and also the history of production is causing quite great interest among my German friends and colleagues. I can see that. I don't think that it will change anything in the general perception, the general connection of German people to this immediate part of their history and quite important part of their history. But we'll see. Maybe it needs a German version on history in Germany. Germans all speak such good English. That's the problem. I mean, you guys are all so

unbelievably talented. We should just quickly say he's involved in the fighting outside Moscow later in 1941. He's involved in the fighting outside Moscow later in 1941. He's involved in the operation to try and break into the Kessel at Stalingrad, and he's wounded there. Yes, he's wounded in late December 1942 in the outskirts of Stalingrad.

Actually, first of all, the wound seems to be quite superficial, so he's quite sure that he'll be back at the front two weeks later, but then it turns bad, gangrenousous and results in several operations and in a very, very long hospital stay. And he never returns to the front. He's classed unfit for frontline service. That much I could find out that at the end of 1943, he's put in charge of an infantry combat school somewhere in Serbia. So he's training troops of the german allies like bulgarian troops in infantry warfare for a year or one and a half years and then it turns black

i don't know what he did after that sadly his officer's file in freiburg is not existent anymore so the archives don't have his file that's lost i don. Knowing you, I expect you're going to find out. That's all I'm saying. I would back you, Rob. Thank you. It's going to be fascinating. This story is still developing and there may be other things

to that initial cache that you may be able to find around the world and bring it all back together. I hope so. Well, good luck with it, man. Thank you very much for coming on the pod to talk about it. Thank you.

It was a pleasure, as always. coming on the pod to talk about it. Thank you. It was a pleasure, as always. Tuesday, 9th of December, 1941. At Voronino near Klin. 4 a.m. Since yesterday,

I feel a great amount of compassion for the great Napoleon, who, undefeated as he was, had been forced to withdraw from Russia. I have now lived to a similar withdrawal, a smaller version maybe, but one that can't have been much worse in his days. My mother used to tell me stories about the French and their allies, how they had been forced to wrap rags around their feet, and how they had put on women's skirts just to keep warm. Well, now I had the same experience myself. Yesterday, we had been morally defeated,

just like Napoleon's victorious troops had been. We had been forced to retreat. We, the former panzer men, had been sent from Kshatsk to this place. To cover our retreat and to torch villages. Yes, we have turned into proper murderous arsonists. Bloody hell, I've had enough of this. But one thing after the other. This time I can't even calm my anger through writing. On Sunday we were relieved during a fierce snowstorm. At about midday we were ordered to prepare the village for burning and to make ourselves ready to withdraw to Voronina,

a distance of more than 20 kilometers which we would have to cover. I only realized in the afternoon that it was Sunday, and it felt like mockery when I informed the men about this. Rogachevo and the villagers in front of it had changed hands several times in the previous night. Now they were still defended by our rearguard. All vehicles we couldn't take with us anymore were blown up, and all houses were put to the torch. In school we have learned about the Vikings, how they had put whole fishing villages to the torch.

We have learned about the Thirty Years' War and the suffering of the population whose cities, towns and villages had been burned by unhuman, marauding soldiery. So many fires that the whole night sky was illuminated by their blood-red glow. In East Prussia, the people still remember how the Russians burned down the villages during the World War. All that we have now lived through ourselves. We have seen the horrified faces of the wailing women and heard the miserable cries for help of the old men. We have seen the livestock running around in fear,

heard cattle and horses screaming in terror. We have seen mothers with their children too terrified to even speak. And now we know how a German soldier feels when he, according to the hard laws of war, is forced to commit such brutalities himself. Monday, the 22nd of December 1941. Rzyszcz. As we stomped through the snow,

which was already lying at knee height, we came past another group of men, wrapped up in their coats, bracing the freezing snow with gritted teeth, just like we were. We shouted over to them, loudly cursing the snow, the roads, and the whole war in general.

First they didn't reply. But then one man among the group shouted back, Now we realized that these comrades in suffering, deep in the snow on the other side, were Russian prisoners. This march gave me ample time to again think about the reason why there are always, always two groups of men cursing and execrating the war moving through the world.

On one side we now have kolkhoz farmers, metal workers and butchers. On the other, fitters, farmer sons, merchants and craftsmen. Both sides share the same amount of suffering and grief. And every day it is this or the other group which has to bleed more. I tell my men that this is about the reshaping of Europe,

the creation and protection of German Lebensraum, the absolute defeat of Bolshevism, the enemy of the people. But have I myself really taken these slogans to heart? Am I myself convinced by what I try to convincingly explain to my men? Again and again it is damn hard to get my own head around the fact that everything we are being ordered to do here is right and for the benefit not only of our people. It is true that such a war is an eye-opener. Had already been through the same kind of crap himself, which didn't make a lot of sense then, on the face of it, it's all quite obvious,

and from the perspective of the beer-table strategists, those deferred from military service, and Ortsgruppenleiter, all this here makes sense. But ask a serious man, one who doesn't just repeat the slogans, and who has repeatedly put his own neck on the line, if he at times didn't have the same thought, as far as I can tell, all of them did so. Funny, am I really such a little philistine that the experiences here are turning me into a pacifist? And even in the face of all these great role models, the Prussian lieutenants and the Federation feinrichs, who all knew how to die so nobly, this isn't my idea.

A hero's death? That is a fraud. A hero's life? That's what it should be. There's nothing heroic in death. Only life, lived until the final beat of the heart, can be heroic. Dying is the easiest of things. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. We've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake. Appreciate your loyalty. Sticking through to the end. If you fancied doing us a favour here at History Hit, I would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating,

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