This is NOT a translation. It is a re-telling of the story by someone with an elementary- school grasp of German, obtained about 55 years ago.
I ordered an English-language edition of the book. After reading it I came back and corrected several errors.
So here is a page by page impression of what I belive the German version says.
It is followed by a couple of questions that have to do with the reason for giving this book to the German troops in the Netherlands in 1943. That is a considerable mystery to me and will likely remain so forever, although I do suggest a reason.
INTRODUCTION (5 pages)
Hermann Löns had stood in the old city Hall in Munich in the memorable freedoms-hall.
He was looking at the memorial artwork describing the suffering and heroics of the people of the area during the Thirty Years' War when the Germans suffered devastation at the hands of Protestant armies from Sweden and Denmark, particularly, but also from France and the Netherlands and several other countries. Alternating between these Protestant armies there were the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, ranging from local men pressed into service from various Catholic egions and from as far away as Spain. In addition there were maurading bands of peasants and ex-soldiers, and gypsies, all attempting to "live off the land," so to speak.
The longedfor but unfortunate peace agreement was signed in Westphalia, allowing the local princes to determine the religion of their constituents, thus causing, after a little more time and war, the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire wherein religious allegiance trumped political allegiance. That ended with this war, essentially.
Löns also remembered a story by the poetess/novelist Annette von Droste-Hülshoff who chronicles the violent misdeeds of a rowdy village of Christians in another part of the country. Thinking of these things he becomes aware of the contrast presented by the heroism of the pious farmers of this area, who defended their wives, children and farms from marauding bands of soldiers and their camp followers, no matter what that army's allegiance or the farmers' allefiance: all armies were "living off the land" and pillaging, raping and murdering to get what they needed and wanted. The farmers in her story prevailed against great odds.
He filled his mind with these heroic images and decided he would write about this time in German history to remind the common folk of Germany of the way they have defended themselves during times of great suffering at the hands of maurading armed interlopers.
Their homes were destroyed, their farms looted, their wives and children stolen and sold as slaves if not raped and murdered. So they organized for guerrilla action, farmers against soldiers, clearly they were up against superior forces.
They eventually win, in part through bringing the same bloody brutality to the invaders that they had brought to the formerly peaceful countryside.
"Better a foreigner's blood on your knife than a foreigner's knife in your blood." Was a saying of the Wehrwolf band, Wehr meaning to defend, such as in 'brandwehr,' 'fire department.' So this is the story of a defensive guerrilla force, self organized, and forced into bloody warfare by utter necessity.
"We would rather have lived as we did earlier, doing our labors in peace and praising God, but this is just the way things are."
This is a book about living in times of war. The introduction sums it up in these words:
"Shame on the man who cannot defend himself; an emergency (of this nature) has only one commandment and that is: Strike dead!"
FIRST STORY PAGE
Harm Wulf, a farmer, is explaining to a cavalry corporal about how he is not going to allow his horse to be taken from him. The corporal raises two fingers and swears on the two feet he has planted on the ground--while raising one fooot in the air!-- that he'll be damned before he gives the farmer this horse, which is not the farmer's horse at all since he purchased it himself. (Farmer Wolf, the hero in the story, has his back to you).
SECOND STORY PAGE
Wulf and his father in law pass by a vagabond troupe with naked children among them who are sent to them to beg, one thirteen year old girl jumping on the back of Harm's horse and several naked boys pestering his father in law for alms. They push the chidren away thinking this cannot be good and ought not be allowed. He then recognized three cavalrymen at the rear including the corporal to whom they complained the previous day. He gets very suspicious and sends his horse away and hides behind a bush.
THIRD STORY PAGE
At the very end of the convoy he sees the corporal to whom they tried to turn for protection before, seeking his stolen horse, a commodity that can spell life or death to a peasant farmer in certain seasons. He waits until he is sure it is him, burns that face into his memory before he fires his gun and wounds him in the face.
FOURTH STORY PAGE
Realizing they have no one to turn to for their defense, Wolf organizes the farmers to fight for God and justice and swears to send the interlopers' bodies where THEY will be defenseless: the realm of the worms.
FIFTH STORY PAGE
The violence has escalated, at Harm's farmstead all has been taken, the house is burned down, and =more importantly-- all his relatives and help have been murdered: wife, sister, children, the old parents, everyone is dead!
SIXTH STORY PAGE
One of Wolf's hired hands escaped, he was in the woods gathering firewood. He remebers three men who killed Harm's family members. The farmer, a storekeeper and this farm laborer do the agonizing waiting that is part of guerrilla war, defensing their homes and farms against all comers while always on the lookout for these three murderers. As an army's wagon-train comes through the bog single file on its narrow path. they wait until they are all on the trail so they cannot turn, and shoot them from both ends, and the middle.
SEVENTH STORY PAGE
With some wins under their belts, the locals organize themselves into the Wehrwolves, they take an oath for mutual defense, adopting the famous 'one for all and all for one' slogan.
EIGHTH STORY PAGE
On patrol by the bog Mark hears a woman sobbing over her losses. He comforts the griefstricken woman, whose father has been murdered and who has suffered at the hands of the mauraders herself but escaped at night when her captors were drunk and asleep.
Harm carries her to his home.
NINTH STORY PAGE
A severe thunderstorm's flashes of light and loud booms frighten the battle-scarred woman. Mark comforts her by covering her with a mantle and holding her until the storm abates. Her name is Johanna.
TENTH STORY PAGE
Meanwhile the guerrilla war continues.
The Wehrwolves capture and hang two of the invaders, identified as the killers of Harm's family. They hang them between a pig and a mean dog and put up a sign that says 'here hang two dogs, and two pigs, we can't tell the difference.'
This practice and sign becomes a Wehrwolf trademark.
ELEVENTH STORY PAGE
Riding through town with his Wehrwolves Mark sees a man come out of a bar and accosting a woman. He reaches down and picks the man up by his belt and looks him in his scarred face, it is the man he had shot in the face for double- dealing. He is threatened with being aken to a place where he will remain, permanently, and when totally terrorized they let him go.
TWELFTH STORY PAGE
Mark sees signs of hope for normal life returning to his neighborhood.
THIRTEENTH STORY PAGE
A mass of refugees approached the Wehrwolf defensive line and were met by a Wehrwolf leader who suggested they stay away. Although these were fellwo countrymen and peasants, they were an armed maurading band and a threat.
There is enough room in the world, the Wehrwolf man says in trying to persuade them to go elsewhere, they need not come here. One of the refugee farmers drew a gun and said "So make room for us" and shot him out of their way. The Wehrwolves came out of hiding at this and decimated them and then allowed about a third, the survivors, to go in another direction.
FOURTEENTH STORY PAGE
Open air church services were restored, and everyone wore their best to bring back some semblance of normalcy. The preacher said they need not fear having sinned when they acted in the defense of their families' safety and survival.
FIFTEENTH STORY PAGE
Funerals were the main business of the church now.
Marriages could have no public celebrations with music, dancing and drinking.
This marriage, although simply a ceremony, was beautiful and inspired. It was the wedding of Harm and Johanna. The preacher likened these two finding each other and binding themselves in matrimony, to the future meeting of all those who believe, with their God, never to be parted again.
SIXTEENTH STORY PAGE
A large troop of foreign (Swedish) soldiers meets a small troupe of farmers not realizing they are an advance part of the by-now large Wehrwolf force. The exchange begins, and then the rest of the Wehrwolves come out of hiding and prevail against these professionals.
SEVENTEENTH STORY PAGE
The farmers anticipate a large reprisal, so they built wooden fortifications with a narrow bridge and as the expected larger contingent of Swedish soldiers attack, they are shot before they reach the wall or repulsed if they manage to reach the wall. Then live behhives were thrown at them, shattering on impact. Sounds reaching defenders on the wall were curses followed by cries, and then murmuring and growling. Survivors fled for their lives from both the bees and the Wehrwolves whose signals had called in reinforcements.
EIGHTEENTH STORY PAGE
What most thought was impossible became reality. Peace! Farmers hung their guns back over their mantles if they still had a home, and if not they rebuilt, good as new.
Here and there plowing and planting resumed.
There had come about a real change in the world!
UNANSWERABLE
QUESTIONS
It is obvious why Hitler loved this story, he was a peasant, and heroic in his own eyes.
Hitler named his eastern front bunker the Wehrwolf in honor of this story.
Himmler was using the name of the story's guerrilla force, the Wehrwolves, to set up his own after-war resistance movement when it looked like the Germans might actually lose this war.
So, this story is about the right- ness of armed resistance to anyone trespassing with evil intent, and making supply- demands that could lead to your starvation. This begs the first historically unanswerable question:
"How could this book possibly bring encouragement to a German soldier in a land where he is the interloper stealing food and other supplies from the local populace and brutalizing them if they fail to cooperate fully?"
The person giving this book to them must have known it would cause them to question their cause. Unless this invasion of the Netherlands was really seen as a defensive action by the German rank-and-file soldier. That seems unlikely to have been the case for all soldiers. Maybe for some, yes, but certainly not for the person who commissioned this little anti-war book, he was intelligent and against the brutal reprisals ordered against the Dutch populace, by Himmler, as response to an increasingly active Dutch underground.
Himmler was cruel but not stupid. He must have seen the potential of this gift to the soldiers occupying the Netherlands to cause them to see themselves as bloody and cruel interlopers. This book could cause them to have sympathy for the peasant farmers they were stealing from. It could cause them to be sympathetic to the Dutch people practicing the same type of guerrilla warfare as described in the story, against ALL comers.
The Swedes in the Wehrwolf story, after all, were in the larger scheme of things seen as liberators for northern Germany, saving them from domination and forced Catholicism by the Holy Roman Empire's attempt at domination. But liberators or not, their army living off your land meant you and your family's starvation, and their undisciplined forces spelled rape, murder and being sold into slavery for private gain on the part of the army's leaders!
THAT WAS THE FIRST HISTORICALLY UNANSWERABLE QUESTION, BUT IT HAS A COROLLARY:
"Was the overseer of the Dutch occupation, Herr Schmidt, purposely doing the opposite of what he said he was doing? Was he discouraging his troops by giving them this book as a 'Führer's-birthday present'?"
Did he really think this story would actually encourage his troops?
In the same year this book was given to the German occupying soldiers, there was big Dutch Resistance push-back against the German occupation. The German reprisals were tough, cruel and bloody. Schmidt objected and was called to face Himmler.
Schmidt then commits suicide by falling off a Germany- bound train, rather than face his angry superior(s)?
I suspect that Schmidt was feeding this sad tale to his soldiers to make them more sympathetic toward the people they were there to oppress.
He knew facing Himmler over this, and over his objections to the cruelty and harshness of the reprisals against the Dutch population to punish the Dutch resistance, would lead to his death: objecting to orders from the high-command was as good as treason.
But we'll never really know.
END OF UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS
NOTE that this story-line has been corrected some after my reading a professionally- translated English-language version.
NOTE also that the story relayed above is a rather severe abridgement of the whole story as told by Hermann Löns.
If the larger story interest you, I recommend
(1) purchasing the book The Warwolf, A Peasant Chronicle of the Thirty Years War by Hermann Löns, translated by Robert Kvinnesland (Westholme, 2006)
(2) reading my review of this book (click here to go there) with a retelling of the parts of the tale that I believe show that giving a reminder of this very popular story to a German force of occupation was an act designed to discourage, not encourage, that soldiery in their oppression of their charges.
Go to the pages on an English translation of the Wehrwolf book
Go back to Introduction page
Go back to 2011 Yearbook