The Gods of War is Hans Werner Woltersdorf memoir of service with the SS during the Second World War. It starts in 1961, when Woltersdorf and is on his summer holiday in south-west France with his wife Lore, brother Klaus and sister in law Erika. They are travelling near Montboyer, the area Woltersdorf was deployed with the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich to train before the Division was deployed to the Eastern Front. Woltersdorf tracks down the girl Jeanette, with whom he had a romance with and discovers he has a son, Julien, aged 17 years. Jeanette is shocked to discover that he is alive, as she believed he had died in combat fighting the Soviets. The rest of the narrative is split between his time training in France, service on the Eastern Front, recovering from losing a leg on service and trying to evade being identified as a member of the SS after the war and the repercussions of his visit to France in the early 1960s.
Woltersdorf claims he was not impressed by the leaders in the SS. His first commander was Zinsheim who had been ‘demoted for cowardice’ and proved his ‘courage by bullying his subordinates.’[1] He reckoned from his service that he ‘could count on the fingers of one hand the few persons who I acknowledged as authorities and to whom I was prepared to submit.’[2] The one leader he does mention with respect was a leader named Lex who had a ‘sure instinct for judging the situation correctly and always doing what was right. He was one of the few commanders whom I respected, who prepared all his actions from the point of view of obtaining maximum effect with a minimum of losses.’[3]
He also suggests that the Das Reich was no not filled with specimens of German super men. He found that the men he led were ‘a motley crew that made a mockery of any idea of ‘elite’’. His servant Alfons was illiterate.[4] He said that the men who he commanded lived ‘on the laurels earned by its very first volunteers. Those who wore its uniform now had to be aware of their commitment to heroism. Of course, we were scared, but we did not talk about it or allow it so show.’[5]
The elephant in the room that Woltersdorf does not really address are the many atrocities committed by German Forces during the War, and in particular, those committed by his own Division.[6] He also denied any knowledge of the holocaust and persecution of the Jews or that German forces routinely executed captured Red Army political commissars. He claims he only discovered the existence commissars when told about them by Soviet POWs.[7] While his denial about the extermination camps may be credible, the knowledge of the many atrocities committed by Das Reich is hard to believe (see Max Hasting’s Das Reich: Resistance, Revenge and the 2nd SS Panzer Division in France, June 1944 (London: Pan Military Classics).
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Overall, this is a compelling narrative and reads more like a novel than a traditional Second World War memoir by a member of the German armed forces. The unusual structure of moving between the story during the War and in the 1960s works and is fascinating how Woltersdorf, his immediate family, new son and the mother of his child coped with news that changed their lives.
[1] Hans Werner Woltersdorf, The Gods of War (Novato CA/USA: Presidio Press, 1990), p.7.
[2] Ibid., p.110.
[3] Ibid., p.55.
[4] Ibid., p.27.
[5] Ibid., p.104.
[6] See for example. Max Hastings, Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Minneapolis, USA: Zenith Military Classics, 2013); Sarah Bennett Farmer, Martyred village : commemorating the 1944 massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley, USA: University of California Press, 2000).
[7] Woltersdorf, p.214.