One Day in Oradour (6 page)

At first, Otto sympathised with his wife in her anguish. He gave her the time she needed to work her way back from the darkness of her despair. But as the years went by, and no baby came, Otto grew resentful of Klara’s moods and found it harder to hide his impatience. He was tired of trying, weary of keeping up the pretence that all was well in the Dietrich household. His teaching career was blossoming, he had his sights on a headship at the boys’ school where he worked in Freiburg, and he needed a strong wife by his side.

As the country moved dangerously towards war, Otto and Klara enjoyed a degree of shelter from the growing unease that was spreading around their city. As a teacher, Otto’s civilian post was secure, and in the autumn of 1913, his career ambition was fulfilled when he was appointed headmaster. Meanwhile Klara, now approaching thirty, finally seemed to be coming to terms with the prospect of life without motherhood. Her tendency to depression seemed to be lifting and the atmosphere in the Dietrich home was noticeably more cheerful and relaxed.

Perhaps it was because the couple no longer obsessed over the idea of becoming parents; perhaps
it was because Klara was happier; perhaps it was just fate. The cause didn’t matter to the Dietrichs. What did matter was that the spring of 1914 brought with it the promise of new life. Klara discovered that she was, at last, expecting a child.

As if sensing how long his parents had longed for his arrival, little Gustav seemed determined, right from the start, not to let them down. Even as a toddler, all he wanted to do was please Otto and Klara, and he would cry huge tears whenever his father found reason to scold him.

Although he loved his son, Otto was an academic to the core and he treated every day of Gustav’s life like an educational challenge. Every game, every play-time had a learning purpose, every meal was analysed for its nutritional value, every conversation was carefully structured, and every family day out was meticulously planned so that Gustav would return with his head full of facts.

‘He’s not one of your pupils, Otto, he’s your son,’ Klara remarked one day, as she heard him correcting Gustav’s grammar during what should have been a casual conversation over breakfast.

‘That may be the case, my dear,’ Otto replied, rather pompously, ‘but children’s brains are like sponges and
it’s my duty to fill them up. If I can’t teach my own son properly, then what does that say about me?’

Klara didn’t answer.

‘Mark my words, Gustav is going to be the brightest boy in his class when he goes to school.’

In contrast to Otto’s rather austere, formal parenting style, Klara’s approach was to smother the boy with love. She was constantly kissing and cuddling him, tickling him and playing silly games. She would sing to him all the time and snuggle up next to him at bedtime to tell him stories at night. Gustav had become her world and she devoted her days to his happiness.

‘You spoil that boy,’ Otto would tell her. ‘You will make him too soft. He needs more discipline. A tougher backbone and a bit more male company wouldn’t hurt him either.’

Klara wouldn’t argue with her husband, but nor would she listen to him. She disliked her husband’s strict, hands-off, businesslike approach to bringing up their son and was determined to make Gustav feel wanted and loved. So, even when he was in trouble with Otto, she would find a way to sneak him a cuddle, a kiss or a piece of gingerbread to help soothe his tears.

But as Gustav grew older, reaching school age, Klara began to notice that all her warmth and outward displays of love were still not enough for her son. She
could tell that Gustav craved a real demonstration of affection from his father. She sensed how deeply felt Otto’s reprimands were, and she knew that all Gustav wanted to do was please him.

When she lay awake at night, listening to Otto’s gentle breathing, she would turn and look into his face and will him to wake up the next morning and be proud of his son and love him for who he was.

Klara never knew whether Gustav managed to make his father proud, for one day, not long after Gustav’s ninth birthday, she collapsed while clearing the snow from the steps on the back porch.

When the doctor had been and gone, Otto tried to explain to a dazed Gustav why nothing could have been done to stop the bleeding inside Klara’s head.

‘She wasn’t scared, Gustav,’ he said, as he looked down at his son sitting in a state of shock halfway up the stairs. ‘It was so quick. Like switching out a light really. They call it a haemorrhage. These things can just happen, without much warning.’

Even when his own heart was breaking, Otto offered his son no embrace, no strong arm around the shoulders, no shared tears. Only an awkward hand placed stiffly on his knee, and a moment’s pause, before mumbling about needing to make the ‘necessary arrangements’.

He felt sorry for the poor lad, but sentimentality had never suited him terribly well. Otto always kept his emotions under control, locked deep inside him, as if in a secret safe inside his heart, and it was to here that he now banished the strangling grief caused by the loss of his beloved Klara. He was terrified that if he dared open that safe door, even just a tiny crack, in order to let Gustav in, he would never regain control.

In bed that night, Gustav sobbed into his pillow. His father had been so brave all day and he didn’t want to let him down by being a crybaby. But he couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. He felt so alone, so completely lost. He ached for his mother, her gentleness, her kindness and her soothing words. If she were here now, he thought, she would stroke his hair and tell him everything was going to be alright.

Gustav knew that life would be very different from that point on, now it was just Father and him. His mother’s death had left such a huge void in their lives, and Gustav was certain that his mother would have wanted him to try and fill that void with love. But to get close to his father, Gustav believed he had to rid himself of all the weaknesses he knew Otto saw in him.

If he was too emotional, too sensitive, he would become more of a man and join the football team, learn
how to box or take up hunting. And if he was too slow at school, he would concentrate harder in class and spend longer on his homework.

One way or another, he would make his father proud.

By the time he reached his teenage years, Gustav had succeeded in burying the soft and gentle side of his character. Now long-limbed and athletic, he started to discover that he had a natural talent for most physical activities, and because he was good at the sports he played, he was more often than not chosen to lead the team. Having his talents acknowledged, and seeing his team-mates so willing to put their trust in him, was like a shot in the arm to Gustav and he quickly became addicted to this new sense of power and authority.

Out of school, he joined a shooting club, and rapidly became his instructor’s favourite. He was quick to learn how to handle a gun and proved himself to have a sharp eye and a steady hand. To hone his new talent, Gustav saved up his pocket money and bought a second-hand air rifle and after that spent hours on his own in the woods near his home, shooting at rabbits, birds and squirrels. He never took any of his kills home, nor told anyone how many creatures he had hit, but he kept a secret tally in a little notebook in his jacket pocket, and each month set himself a new target to beat.

But Gustav’s sporting successes seemed to count for little in his father’s eyes. What mattered most to Otto was education and academic achievement, and in that Gustav simply could not excel. No matter how much effort he put in, his school results were always disappointing, always lower than average.

At first, his father blamed the teachers, and took it upon himself to give Gustav extra tuition. But as time went on and Gustav’s results fell further and further below average, Otto’s disappointment became tinged with embarrassment. That was when the snide remarks began, the little jokes and quips about Gustav’s lack of intelligence and prospects, which gradually gnawed away at his self-confidence.

Matters came to a head when Gustav came home from secondary school one day to break the news to his father that his teachers wanted him to repeat his sixth year.

Appalled, Otto struck out, using the one weapon that could cause Gustav greater pain than any fist, strap or belt. ‘You are pathetic,’ he said, sneering at his son across the dining table. ‘How can you be my offspring? I am headmaster of the top boys’ school in Freiburg and yet I have a son who has little more intelligence than a slug. It’s a good thing that your mother didn’t live to see this day. She would have been so ashamed.’

After that, the distance between father and son grew day by day. Conversation was reduced to short, clipped exchanges over dinner, after which Otto would withdraw to his office to work, staying there until long after Gustav had gone to bed.

In trying to shut out the pain of his wife’s death, Otto had locked away any tenderness he once had for his son, until he was unable to express anything but bitterness and resentment. It was if he saw Gustav as the cause of everything that had gone wrong in his life, all of which seemed beyond his control, and all his son could offer him in payment for that was disappointment and humiliation.

Lonely, rejected and yet desperate to please, the tall, gangly, teenage Gustav was an eager recruit for the National Socialist German Workers Party. He had long admired its leader, Adolf Hitler, and was wooed by his promises to improve the German economy with things like tax cuts for farmers and protection of food prices. But more than anything, he wanted to belong to something, to feel accepted and to be among people who were like-minded. He felt sure that the Nazi party could offer him all those things – as well as an escape route from his stifling life in Freiburg.

Gustav had no intention of jumping too soon. The Nazis were battling for power with the Communists.
Their violent methods had lost them both popular support and votes, and Gustav didn’t want to ally himself with a losing side. But after the elections of November 1932, when the 43-year-old Hitler was made Germany’s new Chancellor, Gustav knew that the time was right. Finally he could see a way out, he could leave his traumatic school life behind him and head for a place where he would be needed and could have a chance to succeed.

Now a tall, athletic, handsome and imposing figure, the 19-year-old Gustav immediately made a good impression. He was loyal and eager to please and was quick to volunteer for Work Service in Naumburg. While there he applied to join the Special Forces and by 1936 he had been called up to the SS Signals Battalion in Berlin.

Gustav continued to impress his superiors, thriving within an atmosphere, so alien to him and yet so welcome, in which good effort and attitude was rewarded with praise and recognition.

A year later, Gustav was sent to the SS Officers’ School in Bad Tölz where he became an SS Cadet Officer. It took him only four and a half months to complete a platoon leader’s course, and his hard work was repaid with a promotion to SS Upper Cadet Officer in the Germania Regiment.

Another step up, to 2nd Lieutenant, followed later that year and, alongside his men, Gustav proudly marched into the Sudetenland, along the mountainous borders of Czechoslovakia, a strategically important area which had been signed over to Germany by Britain, Italy and France through the Munich Agreement.

‘My leadership skills have been well recognised,’ Gustav wrote in a letter to his father. ‘After leaving the Sudetenland I was instructed to lead a platoon to the Polish front. We had a successful campaign with minimal losses and Herr Hitler saw fit to award me the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Thanks to that I have now been appointed Adjutant of the 2nd Company of the SS Regiment “Germania” which I hope makes you proud.

‘I think of you often, Father, and it is my dearest wish that the news I send of my faithful service to our beloved Nazi Germany brings you some comfort and peace of mind.’

Far from the battlefield, surrounded by books and papers in his study, Otto found it difficult to identify with the experiences his son described in his letters. The ranks, titles and awards he listed meant nothing to him and so his replies to Gustav were brief and to the point.

In May 1940, Otto received another letter from Gustav, who he knew had been fighting in Northern
France. This time, when he saw the Military Hospital letterhead, his heart stopped. His hand shook as he read, fearing the worst.

‘I am in bad shape, Father,’ Gustav wrote. ‘A serious gunshot wound to the lungs. The damned French nearly got me. The doctors tell me that it’s a miracle I survived. But here I still am. I am feeling pretty rough, though, and am finding being incapacitated extremely difficult. It looks as though I shall be convalescing here for a while yet, so if you should find the time to write to me, I would dearly like to hear about life in Freiburg. The house, you, it all seems so far away now. Do write to tell me how you are. Your ever loving son, Gustav.’

Every night, as Gustav lay in his hospital bed, the same nightmare scene crept into his slumber. He saw himself running through the thick mud, shouting to his men to give him cover. Then came the dull thud. The searing pain in his chest… and then the sensation of the cold, oozing mud on his hands, mixing with his own blood as he lay there, struggling to breathe, on the battlefield. As his chest tightened to bursting point, he saw the same, familiar figure standing in the distance. A man, wearing civilian clothes, a grey woollen suit and tie, staring at him amid all the chaos of the fighting. Gustav stretched out his hand, but the figure always turned away, fading into the fog.
Gustav was discharged from the Military Hospital three months later. During the long and tedious weeks he had spent there recovering, he had received his highest award for bravery, the Iron Cross 1st Class, and a promotion to Battalion Commander – but no letter from his father.

The drive from Limoges back to Saint Junien couldn’t pass by quickly enough for Gustav Dietrich. Before he had left Scholz’s offices he had asked the girl on reception to get the leader of 3rd Company on the telephone so he could assemble the key officers for a briefing. They were to meet at the Hotel de la Gare at eleven o’clock sharp.