Erich Kern’s Dance of Death is his memoir of service on the Eastern Front in the Waffen SS during the Second World War. It was published in German in 1947 and translated into English in 1951.
Kern’s saw service in several SS units. In early 1941, he was an NCO with the Reich Division. From June to December 1941, he served with the 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler” in June and then with the Wiking Division in 1942-43. After this, he had service with the 15th SS Division at Narwa spring of 1944, then briefly, 14th SS Division and with 500th SS-Parachute Battalion in the summer and autumn of 1944. He ended the war with the IV SS Panzer Corps.
Erich Kern was the pen name of Erich Knud Kernmayr, born on 27 February 1906 in Austria. Prior to the Second World War, he was a far-right journalist in Austria and imprisoned in 1934 for membership of the Austrian Nazi Party. He then became the press officer for Nazi party boss Josef Bürckel. In 1940, he was appointed the chief of the press office for Nazi party regional bosses across the Reich.[1]
Once in the frontline, his motivation to fight was a combination of virulent anti-communism (more on this below), religious crusade and commitment to the Nazi cause. He believed ‘God had given us [the Germans] a great mission’ in Russia as Bolshevism had destroyed ‘in Soviet Russia of the Christian idea itself.’ [2][3] Coupled with that he had a solid faith in the Fuhrer.[4] On hearing about Hitler’s death, he recalled this moment as a ‘terrible shock. Victory or defeat, criticism or blind faith – he had been the idol of all of us, and we had sworn loyalty to his creed.’[5]
After the war, Kern remained an active Nazi. The dust jacket to the 1951 English edition of his memoir said that Kern ‘was and is today a loyal Nazi’.[6] He also joined HAIG (Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen), an organisation whose name is translated into the ‘mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members’ in 1955. He became a full-time employee of that organisation four years later.[7]
However, despite his ideological commitments his memoir is highly critical of Nazi party and German strategy and occupation practice activities in the Soviet Union. Kern noted that despite German promises to destroy the ‘hated’ collective farms that Stalin had imposed on areas of Russia in the 1930s, officials tried to get them working for ‘German needs’ causing ‘immense harm’ to the German cause. He also said the ‘steady flow of Ukrainian volunteers for the German forces were ignored.’[8]
He believed the reason for that the rigid application of the Nazi racial ideology to the conquered people in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union significantly undermined the German war effort. Kern said that:
‘one day the truth dawned, and I realised that Hitler’s Germany was not going to grasp the great opportunity it had been given in the east. The theory of subhuman races was so strong and was triumphing over all the commands of reason and destiny. We were not prepared to grant the enslaved and tormented peoples the freedom and equality they deserved…the millions of Ukrainians, who by themselves could have turned the scales in the east, were not only being left unused, but were actually being repulsed and disillusioned. Police methods were replacing the great and splendid idea of the liberation of the east…We had taken unto ourselves the ancient regime mentality of the Baltic barons whose feudal world had been drowned in the blood bath of the October Revolution’.[9]
He believed that the German invasion of Russia had effectively finished Stalin as a political leader. It had also made Bolshevism was ‘politically bankrupt’ but it:
‘was saved by the false ideas we Germans had of Russia and by our consequent treatment of the Russian people…By rousing the Russian people to a Napoleonic fervour, we enabled the Bolsheviks to achieve a political consolidation among their wildest dreams and provided their cause with the halo of a ‘patriotic’ war’.[10]
The German occupation created conditions where there was an ‘intermarriage’ the notion of Mother Russia, Russian nationalism and Bolshevism that constituted ‘the most powerful menace to Germany and indeed the whole of Western Culture and civilization which has arisen since the days of Genghis Khan.’[11]
A Russian spoke to Kern at the time and said Germany’s ‘eastern policy has forced on every Russian a terrible choice, between Red Bolshevism or Brown, Russian or German pistols, and if there has got to be torture, suffering and death, why then most Russians however much they hate the Kremlin, will choose the Bolsheviks, because they can at least talk to them in their own language’.[12]
However, despite Kern’s pragmatism his friend Kaul laid out the problem for the Germans. Kern said that:
‘Kaul smiled wanly. “You forget, chum; we’re caught in our own trap. These people are sub-humans…Just ask yourself; sub humans in German uniform. And that apart, there’s always the little matter of granting them rights and status so far denied them.” ’[13]
Kern said that ‘practically all the men to whom I spoke shared my opinion’ and he raised his concerns in an audience with Goebbels.[14][15] He ultimately blamed Hitler for creating conditions in Russia under German occupation that Bolshevism was be reborn as a ‘national Pan Slavonic Force.’[16]
The other remarkable thing about Kern’s memoir is that he reports that both sides executed war crimes such as executing POWs.[17][18] He also recorded a direct order by his Division in later 1941 that ‘that all prisoners captured during the last three days were to be shot as a reprisal for the inhuman atrocities which the Red Army had committed in our sector’ which resulted in the murder of 4,000 Soviet POWs. He also recalled the piecemeal destruction of Ukrainian towns where ‘night was turned in to day by the light of blazing towns and villages’ as they retreated west.[19] However, he rationalises the German atrocities as ‘mistakes’ which had ‘long been paid for and overshadowed by the torture and death of millions of defenceless German men, women and children’ after the war.[20] Men coming back from the USSR reported conditions that ‘have never been matched even in the worst of our concentration camps’.[21]
The real motivation for Kern fighting on the Eastern Front was the destruction of communism. He reports he spends much of his time investigating the nature of ‘workers’ paradise.’ He finds that the ideas of ‘proletarian democracy’ does not exist.[22] He hears many stories from Russian and Ukrainian peasants about the disappearance of their relatives to labour camps or being executed by the NKVD.[23] The political commissar was everywhere and ‘none can escape from it once they are caught in its meshes – and that means every Red Army soldier, every man, is helpless in the face of this chain of spikes and traitors’.[24]
For Kern, hearing reports like these gave him a sense of mission and purpose. They ‘kicked us out of our rut and cured us of any blaseness. It had restored to us the ideals with which we had started. The great was great again and had lost its tarnish; every simplest, humblest thing brought confirmation of our ideals’.[25]
He also believed that Marxism only as a political brought ‘strikes, penal servitude and death’ that ‘were the concomitants of this pseudo-science. In the few decades of its existence it had destroyed hundreds of thousands of human beings, uprooted millions and brought endless misery to misery over the world.’[26]
His major objection to communism was that it mechanised the human souls turning them people into machines. Kern and colleagues:
‘had often wondered at the almost inhuman tenacity with which the Red Army was fighting, the terrible obstinacy with whichever the youngest Komsomol youths…defended their pill-boxes…until one day a Caucasian prisoner lifted the veil from the secret…The simple Siberians and Kalmucks…had been taught all their lives that Europeans were fascists and capitalists who murdered their prisoners under the most horrible tortures. So they went on fighting with the desperation of hunted, cornered animals until overcome by the superior strength of our arms.’[27]
The system ‘knew how to harness every human weakness for its own ends, from its exploitation of the intolerable living conditions…to its incitement of the animal instincts of a mass population…For those hungry for life it provided the legend of the communist state…And for those of little faith it provided the Ogpu[28], the forced labour camps and the shot in the neck.’[29]
For him, the Russians died ‘as they have lived – like machines.’[30] He recalled that:
‘We had seen them die so often, these victims of the Kremlin. Expressionless, their dull eyes fixed into the distance as if, fascinated by the rattle of our guns, they would run into our hail of fire. Frequently, not even the moment of death brought any flash of realisation or shock into their expressionless faces. Again and again they would come, soulless, like puppets of a dreadful marionette, with the same short jerky movements, everything about them was mechanical, without soul. That was perhaps the most horrible of our experiences of the eastern front, this mechanical dying. ‘[31]
This description of a soulless, mechanical and expressionless people has resonances with the Nazi idea of subhuman Slavs. Kern may well have regarded the Slavs in the same way but he did build positive relationships with people Russians and Ukrainians with whom he was billeted. For example, he was friends with a women called Inizia and her family in Taganrog. They had greeted the German forces as liberators but when he went back to visit Iniza he found her daughter was in a local brothel. The suggestion being she was forced.[32] Iniza told Kern that ‘[t]he first they [the Germans] say, were the liberators, the second the enslavers, and the third the hangmen’.[33]
Kern’s book was greeted at the time of its publication in the late 1940s and early 1950s as an attempt to “reevaluate” recent German history. For instance, L. Poliakav suggested Kern’s book it played down German crimes and amplifies Russian crimes.[34] While this may be true, Kern’s memoir is interesting because of the apparent paradoxes he presents.
Firstly, Kern, a lifelong Nazi appears to question the very basis of Nazism, namely the ideology of German racial supremacy over other races and the occupation policies in the conquered areas that flowed from this ideological conviction (such as forced labour, economic and agricultural exploitation, murder of POWs and Holocaust).
Secondly, his hatred of communism is based the police state, labour camps and exploitation of the people appears to be little different from the reality of German occupation of Ukraine and Russia that he described.
Thirdly, as a Nazi he blames Nazis for German defeat in the East; German occupation policies lead turning the civilians who originally supported and welcomed the Germans into partisans fighting for the Russians. Nazi party officials administering the conquered areas were corrupt. He specifically blames Hitler for his failure to Moscow in 1941 and the German treatment of the ‘subhuman’ races that turned the populace against the Germans.[35]
Finally, as a loyal Nazi party member with contacts in the party, he was very derogatory of party members to whom he owed loyalty. During occupation of Taganrog, the rear civil authorities ran away when Russian forces threatened a breakthrough and only returned once the front stabilised. Kern said that he and his colleagues ‘once the worst danger was passed, was the pleasure of welcoming a gentleman from Erich Koch’s outfit.[36] The gorgeous brown political leader’s uniform resplendent with gold braid, looked ridiculous.’[37]
In conclusion, Erich Kern’s “Dance of Death” offers a complex and paradoxical reflection on his experiences and beliefs as a Waffen SS soldier on the Eastern Front during World War II. While deeply committed to the Nazi cause and driven by a virulent anti-communism, Kern’s memoir critically examines the flawed German strategies and harsh occupation policies that undermined their war effort. His observations reveal the disillusionment with the Nazi ideology of racial supremacy and highlight the detrimental impact of these beliefs on potential alliances in the Soviet Union. Despite his loyalty, Kern ultimately attributes the failure in the East to Hitler and the rigid Nazi policies, providing a nuanced perspective on the internal contradictions and brutal realities faced during the war. Finally, as a loyal Nazi party member with contacts in the party, he was very derogatory of party members to whom he owed loyalty. During occupation of Taganrog, the rear civil authorities ran away when Russian forces threatened a breakthrough and only returned once the front stabilised. Kern said that he and his colleagues ‘once the worst danger was passed, was the pleasure of welcoming a gentleman from Erich Koch’s outfit.[36] The gorgeous brown political leader’s uniform resplendent with gold braid, looked ridiculous.’[37]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Kern Accessed 28.9.22.
[2] Erich Kern, Dance of Death (London: Collins, 1951), p.139.
[3] Ibid., p.106.
[4] Ibid., pp.153-154.
[5] Ibid., p.233.
[6] L. Poliakov, Book Review of Flight in the Winter, by Jurgen Thorwald; and Dance of Death, by Erich Kern, Commentary Magazine, October 1952. See https://www.commentary.org/articles/l-poliakov/flight-in-the-winter-by-jurgen-thorwald-and-dance-of-death-by-erich-kern/ Accessed 28.9.22.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Kern Accessed 28.9.22.
[8] Kern, p.103.
[9] Ibid., p.104.
[10] Ibid., p.108.
[11] Ibid., p.109.
[12] Ibid., p.186.
[13] Ibid., p.45.
[14] Ibid., p.104.
[15] Ibid., p.114.
[16] Ibid., p.198.
[17] Ibid., pp.56-57.
[18] Ibid., p.57.
[19] Ibid., p.160.
[20] Ibid., p.246.
[21] Ibid., p.249.
[22] Ibid., pp.32-33.
[23] Ibid., p.35.
[24] Ibid., p.171.
[25] Ibid., p.58.
[26] Ibid., p.40.
[27] Ibid., p.41.
[28] The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; Russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1934. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_State_Political_Directorate Accessed 29.9.22.
[29] Kern., p.94.
[30] Ibid., p.169.
[31] Ibid., p.50.
[32] Ibid., p.115.
[33] Ibid., p.116.
[34] See L. Poliakov, Book Review of Flight in the Winter, by Jurgen Thorwald; and Dance of Death, by Erich Kern, Commentary Magazine, October 1952. See https://www.commentary.org/articles/l-poliakov/flight-in-the-winter-by-jurgen-thorwald-and-dance-of-death-by-erich-kern/ Accessed 28.9.22.
[35] Kern, p.198.
[36] Erich Koch (19 June 1896 – 12 November 1986) was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in East Prussia from 1 October 1928 until 1945. Between 1941 and 1945 he was Chief of Civil Administration (Chef der Zivilverwaltung) of Bezirk Bialystok. During this period, he was also the Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine from September 1941 until August 1944 and in Reichskommissariat Ostland from September 1944. After the Second World War, Koch stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1959 of war crimes and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison and Koch died of natural causes in his cell at the Barczewo prison on 12 November 1986. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Koch Accessed 29.9.22.
[37] Kern, p.103.