Berlin at War (40 page)

9

An Evil Cradling

Berlin’s Anhalter Station was one of the most potent symbols of the

German capital. Unlike the Brandenburg Gate, the Victory Column

or the Reichstag, it spoke not of military victory, nationalist bombast or

the grubby business of politics; rather, it was a symbol of civic pride,

of German industrial prowess and of the astonishingly rapid social

and economic developments of the nineteenth century.

When it first opened in 1841, it had been a rather modest affair, with

a three-storey frontage, resembling a suburban mansion block, and a

small platform area behind. As its trains passed through the district of

Anhalt, to the south-west of the capital, it became known as the Anhalter

Station. This modest terminus soon proved insufficient for the growing

city’s needs, and in the 1870s a radical rebuild was carried out. When

it reopened in 1880, the Anhalter Station was the largest rail terminus

in continental Europe. Its new façade, constructed in yellow Greppiner

brick, was over 100 metres wide and embellished with Romanesque

arches and elaborate terracotta detailing. Behind that impressive

frontage was the enormous locomotive shed. Constructed in iron and

glass, its curved roof measured over 60 metres in width and 171 metres

in length. Beneath it, six platforms were laid out, which, it was

claimed, could accommodate 40,000 passengers.1

The rebuilt Anhalter Station served rail traffic to the south, initially

in the direction of Leipzig, Frankfurt and Munich, but by the early

decades of the twentieth century it was also serving destinations as

far afield as Athens, Rome and Naples. By the 1930s it was handling

over 40,000 passengers a day, with trains leaving, on average, every

four minutes. It soon became known as Berlin’s ‘Gateway to the

World’.2

With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Anhalter Station retained its

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185

high profile. It was there that Stalin’s Foreign Minister Vyacheslav

Molotov arrived for talks in November 1940, when a Wehrmacht mili-

tary band greeted him with an intentionally fast rendition of The

Internationale. The Anhalter was also the station of choice for Hitler’s

train, a grand locomotive codenamed
Amerika
, and it was there that

crowds would gather to welcome the Führer back to Berlin. Most

famously, it was there that Hitler returned after the victorious French

campaign in July 1940. The station’s halls and platforms were adorned

with swastika banners and celebratory laurel wreaths and crammed

with people, ranging from the excited children of the Hitler Youth to

high-ranking generals and ambitious Party functionaries.

As the war progressed, the Anhalter Station would not only be

associated with flag waving and grand ceremonial, it would witness

countless tearful farewells as soldiers left their loved ones to travel to

the front. In time, some nine thousand Berlin Jews also passed through

the station, en route to the camp at Theresienstadt in Bohemia. Above

all, however, the Anhalter Station would become synonymous with

the evacuation of children from the capital.

Though still minimal in their material effect, by late September 1940

the British air raids on Berlin were beginning to have a substantial

social and political impact. On 26 September, in a week in which

Berlin had been raided on four consecutive nights, Hitler had a

meeting with Baldur von Schirach, the Reich Youth leader, at which

he was persuaded of the possible benefits of an evacuation of the

city’s most vulnerable citizens. The following day, he instructed his

Party secretary, Martin Bormann, to send a secret circular to all

higher Party and state officials, ordering that ‘young people who live

in areas which are subject to repeated air raid alarms’ were to be

sent ‘to other areas of the Reich’.3 The programme was to be known

as the
Kinderlandverschickung
, or – as so many titles were abbreviated

in Nazi Germany – the KLV.

The KLV represented a recognition of the new realities that

Germany faced in the winter of 1940–41. Up until that point, the Nazi

regime had persistently downplayed the domestic effects of the war,

in an attempt to perpetuate the fiction that it could be prosecuted

without undue impact on German society. The RAF offensive now

demonstrated that the war was entering a new phase and the harsh

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berlin at war

realities of this situation had to be acknowledged – if not in public,

then at least among the leadership of the Party and the Reich.

The planning of the evacuation, therefore, contained two significant,

yet silent, admissions. Firstly, it implied that the air raid defences of the

capital and the other major urban centres were insufficient for the task

of protecting the civilian population – a deficiency that was to be rectified

in the coming months (see Chapter 15). Secondly, and more importantly,

it acknowledged that Britain would not be easily defeated – and that the

war was destined to last for some considerable time to come.

Yet though these realities might have been acknowledged at govern-

ment and Party level, they could not be permitted to penetrate the

public mind. Therefore the regime did its best to disguise the evacu a-

tion as a precautionary exercise: a measure voluntarily entered into

rather than forced upon the German people by an adverse turn of events.

To this end, Bormann stressed in his circular that public partici pation

in the operation was to be voluntary. He also emphasised that ‘by

order of the Führer [. . .] there is to be no use of the word “evacua-

tion”, but rather the action was to be described as a “despatch to the

countryside” of children from the big cities’.4

It had been common practice in Germany’s urban centres, from the

end of the nineteenth century, for the churches and the labour move-

ment to send their youngest and poorest inhabitants to the countryside

to recover from the stresses and strains of city life. Thus, when the evacu-

ation was ordered in 1940, it was dressed up to draw on that benefi-

cial tradition; while the word
Evakuierung
– ‘evacuation’ – was avoided,

the clumsy compound
Kinderlandverschickung
– ‘sending children to

the countryside’ – took its place.

The German people were not fooled, however. Within days of the

secret circular, the capital was alive with speculation. As the SS mood

report for 30 September noted:

In all of Berlin the most varied rumours are circulating about an

evacuation of children. The reports say that the rumours are causing

serious and growing disquiet among the population. From almost

all districts, it is being reported that employees of the NSV [the Nazi

welfare association] are going from house to house to discuss the

evacuation with parents.5

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187

The following day, Goebbels complained in his diary about the

serious problems of evacuation of children from Berlin. The NSV has

proceeded very clumsily in this area and has created enormous dis -

content . . . Unfortunately, we cannot clear matters up through the

press. But I hope things will work out, even so.6

For all his anger, on one issue at least Goebbels really could not

complain. The details circulated by the Berlin rumour mill were

absolutely correct.

According to the KLV plan drawn up by Bormann, all children below

the age of fourteen living in the threatened cities were to be eligible for

a six-month stay in the rural areas of the Reich, such as the Sudetenland,

Brandenburg, Saxony or Silesia. Those below the age of ten were to be

placed with families and could be accompanied by their mothers, while

those above that age would be housed in a wide variety of ‘camps’,

ranging from commandeered hotels or youth hostels to monasteries and

rural guest houses, all of which were to be run by the Hitler Youth.

Where possible, school classes were to be kept together and their teachers

were to travel with them, so that ‘lessons can effectively be resumed in

the new locations’. In accordance with his role as the Reich Youth leader,

Baldur von Schirach was appointed to implement the evacuation, aided

and abetted by the NSV and the Nazi Teachers’ League. It was to begin,

it was announced, on Thursday 3 October 1940.7

Initially, the plan was to be introduced in Hamburg and Berlin, both

considered to be the most at risk from air attack. Within days, the first

3,000 children from those two cities left for the countryside. By the end

of that first month, over 15,000 had left Berlin and a further 42,000 were

evacuated in November.8 In early 1941, the industrial centres of western

Germany were incorporated into the KLV programme and the numbers

participating rose proportionately. In January 1941, over 70,000 German

children were sent to the KLV camps and by the following summer over

160,000 children were participating in the scheme.9 Over the course of

the war, over five million German youngsters would follow in their

footsteps.10

In order to qualify, a child would have to undergo an interview and

a short medical examination. Epileptics and those suffering from infec-

tious diseases were excluded; so, too, were chronic bed-wetters, Jews and

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berlin at war

those deemed ‘anti-social’. Once a child had been accepted, his or her

parents would be required to sign and return a pro forma letter of consent.

Berlin schoolboy Heinz Knobloch was adamant that he would not

be joining the KLV. He and his friends simply completed the consent

letter themselves: ‘We three were decided and we wrote the sentence

out in the negative: “I am not agreed that my son should participate

in the
Kinderlandverschickung
.” After all, why should our mothers need

to know anything about it?’12 The ruse worked.

Most children were less inventive, however, and were duly enrolled,

whereupon additional information would be received, giving guide-

lines to the parents and specifying the clothing and personal effects

that the child was recommended to take with them:

Clothing

1 warm set of civilian clothes (girls 1 warm winter dress)

1 winter coat (or an additional raincoat or cape)

1 head covering (hat, cap etc)

2 pairs of shoes or boots

at least 3 pairs of socks

1 pullover or woollen jacket

1 pair of gloves

2 or 3 sets of underclothes

2 nightshirts or pyjamas

Sufficient handkerchiefs

Sport kit (gymnastics shirt and shorts)

Tracksuit (if available), swimming trunks or costume

1 pair gym shoes

Wash kit

2 face flannels, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, comb and brush, nail-

cleaning kit, clothes brush, shoe-cleaning kit and shoelaces

Sewing kit

Writing equipment

Cutlery

Schoolbooks

(according to the instructions of the teacher)11

To help persuade the recalcitrant, the regime mounted a propaganda

offensive. In 1941 a documentary about the KLV called
Ausser Gefahr

an evil cradling

189

(‘Out of Danger’), was shown along with the newsreels. The

following year the feature film
Hände Hoch
(‘Hands Up’) told the

saccharine story of children discovering themselves during the

evacuation. Across Germany, meanwhile, posters were displayed

featuring happy children waving from train windows, with the chirpy

slogan
Kommt mit in die Kinderlandverschickung
– ‘Come with us on

the evacuation’.13

The reality was often rather different. For the vast majority of chil-

dren, it was a journey into the unknown, and for the younger ones it

could be a source of genuine fear and confusion. The parents, too,

were often little better prepared. Though they felt they had a duty to

be stoical and upbeat, many were worried about being separated from

their children in such dangerous times.

Such concerns notwithstanding, participating children were instructed

to board one of the special trains departing from the capital’s main

stations – such as the Anhalter – for the provinces. There they would

gather on the platforms, weighed down with luggage and with a brown

card label around their necks, giving their name, the date of their depar-

ture and their destination. Behind them, their anxious parents looked

on. Ten-year-old Jost Hermand, who was evacuated from the capital to

Posen late in 1940, recalled the maelstrom of emotions:

I see myself . . . leaning out of the train compartment window with

other boys; with my right hand I wave to my mother, who is standing

below on the railway platform, fighting to keep back the tears . . . the

bewildered ten-year-old and his seemingly calm and collected mother,

trying not to show her heartache and smiling bravely so that her child

won’t know she is grieving as he starts out on his journey.14