My Family of World War Two Scofflaws: On Inspired Disobedience

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“Hitler is always right.”—Rudolf Hess

“Human history began with an act of disobedience—it is likely to end with an act of obedience.”—Erich Fromm

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—8/15/11—Shortly after World War Two ended, the American eugenist, General Frederick Osborn, paid Gertrude Stein a visit in France. What, he wondered, could the Allies do to educate the Germans so that another war would not be fought over the same blood-soaked territory? Stein answered, “Teach them disobedience. Make every German child know that it is its duty at least once a day to do its good deed and not believe everything its father or teacher tells them . . . .”

I was four when Stein issued that radical prescription and, except for the time I ran away from home, I don’t think I ever seriously considered disobedience before my testicles began pumping testosterone. For 13 years, I was closer to Sid Sawyer than Tom, and my “running away” on a fenced-in military base was more a getting lost than a violation of my parents’ rules. However, the German family I would eventually become part of was well into its first over-the-counter bottle of Stein’s noncompliance pills before the war ended.

Aunt Elfriede, a baker’s wife who lived at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, was the first of these scofflaws.

Before the war, she and her husband ran a small bakery in the village of Vienenburg. During the conflict, they did their best to continue running the business, despite the heavy loss of clientele. In 1943, Uncle Albert was called to serve in the Wehrmacht despite the fact that he was 60 and in declining health. Elfriede, however, decided to continue the shop’s operations, so she could qualify for the flour allotment her neighbors depended on.

One day, she received a letter from Ilse Barmwater, a niece living in Wolsdorf, a village about 50 miles to the north. The letter from my future mother-in-law told of her desperate attempts to feed herself and her two children after her husband had left for the Eastern Front in 1939. Elfriede knew it was impossible for her to travel to Wolsdorf or send something as large as a loaf of bread by parcel post so, when her customers made a purchase, she struck their ration stamps with her knuckle as she palmed the rubber stamp. At the end of the day, she taped a few of the uncanceled stamps to a piece of paper, folded it in two, placed it in an envelope, and sent it to Ilse. Every few weeks, she risked her family’s livelihood so that her niece’s family had enough to eat.

Meanwhile, Ilse was not just writing letters. She worked for every village farmer who would hire her to plant, weed, and bring in a harvest. For her labors, she was paid with a small share of the bounty. She shook milk in the dead of night to make contraband butter, bartered for food with garments sewn from a parachute her husband had sent home, and slaughtered an illegally purchased sheep to make mutton sausage. She also stole sugar beets from one of the local farms when the owner told her, “The law won’t let me sell you any beets, Ilse, but I cannot stop you from stealing some.”

My favorite story of Ilse’s disobedience dates from just a few weeks before the war ended in May of 1945.

The BBC, which Ilse’s father had defiantly listened to through most of the war, predicted that British infantry would soon be arriving on their way to Berlin. As Allied bombers flew overhead without being challenged by the Luftwaffe, the enemy’s version of events seemed closer to the truth than German radio reported. As the rumors mounted, the staunch Nazi mayor of Wolsdorf rose to the challenge and ordered every able-bodied person to fill sandbags and stack them at the narrow intersection near the Schulenburg Tavern on the road leading east.

As the women filled canvas bags, the talk naturally turned to sabotage when they realized that a sandbag barricade was not going to stop a tank, and their homes might be shelled by an irritated foe. They agreed, therefore, to return late one night. Armed with kitchen knives,a dozen women slit the bags, turning the barricade into little more than a speed bump. The mayor was furious, but what could he do—he had no suspects, and the tanks were already in Warberg, the next village to the west. When the Allies came, they barely slowed down.

Two and a half years after peace had been declared, my father-in-law returned home from the south of France, where he’d been held as a POW. It didn’t take him long to see that the deprivations his family were suffering were worse than they had endured during the war. Being unemployed, he couldn’t do much about their finances, but he could relieve the firewood shortage.

With his young son and daughter beside him, he pulled a wagon he’d built into the Eitz, a state-owned forest about a mile away from Wolsdorf. The law, which dated to the 17th century, forbade the gathering of any wood except what disease or the weather had caused to fall. Unfortunately for Otto, the forest was picked clean, and there was this fiddly forester who made random inspection trips. But, as the Germans say, there’s more than one way to pluck a goose.

With Ingrid stationed a hundred meters to the north and Rolf to the south, Otto felt safe pulling down dead branches with a rope tied to a brass weight. The law requiring the branches to fall naturally made no sense: most of that wood was so porous it was worthless for heating or cooking. The family needed the fuel now, and he took it. What he and the children could not pile onto the wagon for the nocturnal trip home, they hid beneath leaves until they could safely return.

My wife learned her lessons in principled disobedience from the silent hands of her family. When the law or the lawgiver was clearly wrong, she felt no compunction violating the rules, though she never stepped so far over the line as her parents had because it wasn’t necessary.

When Ingrid was 15, she was one of the top sprinters in the county. At track practice late one day, the ex-Nazi track coach insisted that the sprinters kneel on the cinder track even though some of the girls’ knees were bleeding. Ingrid quietly gathered herself a wad of grass from the infield and placed the cushion under her right knee. When the coach discovered this violation, she struck her star sprinter across the shoulders with the drum stick she carried to beat the tambourine in rhythmic gymnastics. When she threatened to strike again, Ingrid dashed out from under her and shinnied up the sport-ground flag pole. Her perch was hardly comfortable, but she stayed there until the bell rang a short while later and the coach left.

To a former Nazi, the peremptory clang of a school bell had the force of law. To Ingrid, it just meant practice was over.

After World War Two, the reformed German government abolished the judge advocate’s division, which meant that if a Bundeswehr soldier goes AWOL, he or she is tried in a civil court. Furthermore, German soldiers are expressly required to defy orders which one of ordinary intelligence should know violates the criminal code.

Gertrude Stein’s advice, it seems, had been taken to heart.