The SS Officer's Armchair by Daniel Lee

Author:Daniel Lee [Lee, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473589414
Publisher: Random House

Gisela’s driving license, 1941

The euphoria of the 25th Motorised Infantry Division ended with the advance on Kiev that began on 12 September 1941. German forces encountered fierce resistance when they attempted to prise the Ukrainian capital from Soviet control. Despite eventually capturing Kiev, victory came at an enormous cost. German divisions suffered heavy losses, with more than 20,000 men killed and tens of thousands of soldiers wounded. The week of 12–19 September was the bloodiest and most deadly of Griesinger’s war, as gunfire, carnage and explosions lasted several days. Griesinger was among the wounded, hit in his right thigh on 19 September, the day Kiev fell.55 As he lay on a makeshift hospital bed, medical staff cut open his blood-soaked trousers. With his thigh exposed, he was probably given injections of morphine to stop the pain, as doctors sought to remove the bullet that had shattered bone and torn up muscle. His injuries were so severe that they ended his experience of front-line combat on the Eastern Front. It took him months to recover.

In the days that followed, Griesinger learned about the atrocity at Babi Yar, the largest single massacre of Jews during the entire Second World War, which took place in Kiev on 29 and 30 September 1941. The collusion and participation of the Wehrmacht ensured such a high number of victims. On the morning of 29 September the Jews of Kiev were forced to assemble close to the city’s main cemetery, from where they began the short walk to the Babi Yar ravine. Wehrmacht soldiers lined the route; there was no chance of escape. In just a couple of days at Babi Yar, 33,771 Jews were shot in the neck on the edge of the ravine. News of the enormity of the massacre, on a scale never previously seen, spread quickly throughout the Wehrmacht and the city. With soldiers writing about the scenes in their letters home, the bloodbath was not even an open secret.56

Despite the initial frustration he felt while serving on the Franco-German border, Griesinger’s experience in the Wehrmacht had not been a disaster. Even though he was eventually wounded, he had not, like so many of his comrades, been killed or captured by the enemy. Instead he returned to a military hospital in Stuttgart, proud of what he had achieved at the front. Not only was he promoted from Wachtmeister to lieutenant during the course of the campaign, but he was also decorated with the Wound Badge for spilling blood for his country, and received the Iron Cross, both 2nd and 1st Class, for bravery in combat. His superiors also put forward his name to receive the Infantry Assault badge.57

Griesinger left the east in 1941, before the severe Russian winter, which turned out to be the coldest European winter in the twentieth century. Amid sub-zero temperatures, German soldiers who remained were poorly equipped to continue offensive operations. Hitler’s hopes for a rapid victory did not materialise, and German soldiers experienced four years of ferocious warfare. But none of this was foreseen at the time Griesinger sustained his injury.

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