JUST FIVE YEARS AFTER the Second World War ended for me on that destroyer, the ominous specter of a new war with Russia haunted my thoughts and dreams.
I knew what war meant. Relentless heat and dust in summer. Bone-chilling cold in winter. Bottomless mud in fall and spring. Insatiable mosquitoes and incessant lice. Sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion. Bullets whistling through the air. Shells and bombs shaking the earth. Stench from rotting corpses. Constant fear of capture or death. The agony of losing comrades. Numbing brutality. Painful separation from my loved ones.
As the tensions between the Soviet Union and the West increased during the late 1940s, war again darkened the horizon. Having barely survived my years of combat in Russia, a return to soldiering and the battlefield weighed heavily on my mind. As a still young veteran who had served as a junior officer in the Wehrmacht, it was almost certain that West Germany’s Bundeswehr would call me back to duty if another war broke out, but I wanted no part of it.
Confronted with the prospect of a new military conflict in Europe and the still grim economic conditions in post-war Germany, my wife and I debated whether to leave behind our families and Fatherland to seek a better and more secure future abroad. The decision to emigrate from Germany was one of the most difficult and momentous choices of my life. In retrospect, it was the turning point when I put Germany and war behind me to begin a new life, first in Canada and ultimately in the United States.
Yet, as I grow older, the past increasingly draws me back. They say that the older you get, the more you remember what happened long ago. Perhaps that is true. Even after more than a half-century, memories of my childhood in Germany, the years of soldiering in the Second World War, the struggle to survive in post-war Germany, and my first years as an immigrant remain vividly and indelibly etched on my mind.
My generation was brought up differently than are young Germans today. The family was at the center of German society and worked together with the schools, churches, and the government to reinforce the social order and conservative values. In Germany, families and schools taught my generation a respect for our fellow men and for authority that is absent today.
This respect for others was perhaps best manifested in the basic courtesy that we were taught. If a man was riding a full bus or train and a woman or an elderly person boarded, he gave up his seat. If a man came into a house, a church, or a school wearing a hat or cap, he removed it. When a gentleman met a lady, he lifted his hat from his head and made a slight bow to her. He always escorted a lady on his right arm and opened the door to allow her to enter first. Such practices may appear quaint today, but they were the reflection of deeper values of society in Germany at that time.
The society at large accepted and respected authority because we grew up with it, particularly in the more conservative rural areas away from the big cities. There were strict rules for social behavior and official permits for everything from marriage to a change of residence. Public protests were uncommon and were generally small affairs in comparison to the frequency and scale of those today.
When demonstrations did occur in the 1930s, they were limited to the large cities and organized by a political party like the Nazis or the Communists. Most German citizens would never have considered going into the streets to march and chant for any cause. The amount of protesting and demonstrating in modern Germany would be unimaginable to my generation.
Long before the Nazis came to power, Germany’s military had internalized a culture of respect for order and authority that was rooted in every social institution: the family, the schools, churches, the law, and everything else. When training for the army, our instructors drilled discipline and obedience into us. We obeyed the commands of our officers without question, regardless of the casualties we might suffer.
The German people at home, in turn, had long given their respect and patriotic support to the military, much like the esteem that Americans today feel for the U.S. armed services. During the war, the speeches and rallies, propaganda posters and films, collection drives for precious metals to make weapons and munitions, the hardships, and even the Allied bombing reinforced the sense of unity between the German population at home and the German troops fighting abroad. This was the social fabric that made Germany so strong during the Second World War.
I grew up in a farm family.
Although my maternal grandfather, Gottlieb Matthies, originally trained as a schoolmaster and taught in a one-room schoolhouse, his life changed when he met my grandmother, Luise Schulz. Luise’s parents owned a farm of about 200 to 250 acres that had belonged to her family since the 1700s. When my grandfather and grandmother married in 1889, he stopped teaching to run the farm because Luise’s father was ready to retire and there was no male heir in her family to inherit the property.
My mother, Margarete Matthies, was born to them in 1896. She, with her older brother and younger sister, grew up on this farm in the small village of Püggen, typical of the small towns and villages that dot Europe’s landscape. Located among the rolling hills of the Altmark agricultural region, midway between Hanover and Berlin in north central Germany, the village’s roughly 200 residents lived between a pinewood forest to the north and meadows to the south.
As in other German farm villages, the homes and other buildings in Püggen were clustered in a central location surrounded by the farmland. The closest train stop, stores, and policeman were located in larger neighboring villages, the nearest being a couple of miles away.
Born in 1892, my father grew up as the second son of the Lübbecke family with one older brother and seven sisters. They lived on a large farm of about a thousand acres dating from the 1700s. It was located in the village of Hagen, which is now part of the city of Lüneburg. Because the law of primogeniture at that time dictated that the oldest son received all the family’s property when the father passed away, my father eventually left Hagen to train as a manager on several different large farms in northern Germany.
During the Great War of 1914 to 1918, later called the First World War, my father was drafted into a cavalry unit, as was customary for members of the landed gentry. He joined the 2. Hannoversche Dragoner Regiment Nr. 16, based in Lüneburg. Meanwhile, as part of the national effort to support the army at the front, my mother helped ready Christmas packages to send to troops. Upon receipt of a parcel prepared by my mother, my father wrote a letter back, initiating a correspondence that would eventually lead to their marriage.
In late 1917, my father suffered a foot wound that led to his discharge from the military. Though the injury forced him to wear a special shoe for the rest of his life, he soon recovered enough to return to work, taking up a position managing a large farm of a couple of thousand acres in Dromfeld, located near Göttingen in central Germany. My father also recommended that his employer hire my mother to run the household, which of course gave him an opportunity to get to know her better as well.
While my parents’ situation was somewhat unique, it was then a common practice for young German females who grew up on smaller farms to leave home to work at a larger farm for a couple of years. Beyond improving the skills necessary to run a household of their own, it also gave young women a chance to meet eligible males outside of their community.
Arriving to work at the farm in Dromfeld, my mother met my father for the first time in person. While their relationship was a natural partnership, they also fell in love. Within about six months, they became engaged.
Following their marriage in October 1919, they came to live on the Schulz/Matthies farm in Püggen. Because my mother’s elder brother had died from an illness while serving as a soldier in Russia during the Great War, she was in line to inherit the farm as the oldest living heir. With my father’s experience as a professional farm manager, my grandfather immediately allowed him to begin running the farm.
Because my father was raised on a sizeable farm and then managed even larger ones, he found it somewhat difficult to adjust to running the much smaller farm in Püggen. Although it was common for small farm owners in Germany to perform the hands-on labor alongside the hired help, he was not accustomed to doing this type of manual work, despite being a physically large man.
Adapting to this new role was a challenge for him, but he was a good organizer and had the freedom to run the farm as he saw fit without interference. Usually, he and my grandfather agreed on decisions relating to the farm and maintained a good relationship. In his dealings with the neighbors, my father sought to help out whenever he could, though he could be a difficult man to get along with and preferred to operate independently whenever possible.
Because my birth on June 17, 1920 came just eight and a half months after my parents married, my father’s family kidded him lightheartedly about my early arrival. As their first child, I received the same name as my father, Wilhelm Lübbecke. Following my birth, my parents had a son, Joachim, and a daughter, Elisabeth, but they both died at a young age from illness.
My twin brothers Otto and Hans were born five years after me, followed by my brother Hermann in 1928. My sister Marlene was born in 1930, almost exactly ten years after me. With the birth of my sister Christa in 1934, my parents did not plan to have any further children.
It was therefore a surprise when my mother became pregnant with my youngest sister, Margarete, in 1937. I felt embarrassed and angry. I was seventeen years old and already dating. Even after my parents made me her godfather, it was hard for me to accept that my mother could still be having children.
In our family, my six siblings and I were closer to our mother, who was very loving and affectionate with all of us. Unlike my father, she possessed a deep faith in God and set aside a daily devotional time for Bible-reading and prayer. Her outgoing personality made her the friend of everyone in the village where we grew up. In every task she pursued, my mother was determined and diligent to ensure that it was properly done. For every task she accomplished, she was humble and uncomplaining about her labors. While she was a nurturing parent and played the largest role in shaping our values, both of our parents taught us to stand on our own feet and take care of ourselves.
Fond memories of my family’s life in Püggen fill my mind, but life on a farm was not easy. Chores frequently occupied my time after school. During busy periods on the farm, my days off school often revolved around work, broken by a series of meals from six in the morning until eight in the evening.
Lacking trucks, tractors, or indeed any form of automotive vehicle, we did everything with manpower and our eight horses. During normal operations, we had two or three hired employees to assist us in the fields and in taking care of our livestock. In the fall, my father would hire more help or obtain assistance from our neighbors in order to provide the five to ten additional workers needed to harvest our crops of wheat, barley, rye, potatoes, and sugar beets.
While we had to dig the sugar beets out of the ground by hand and swing scythes to harvest the barley, rye, and wheat around the edges of our fields, we employed the forerunner of the combine to harvest most of the crop. Pulled along by horses, the combine cut the grain and spit out bundles. Following along behind it, we stacked about 15 or 20 bundles into upright piles about every 20 feet or so.
Feeding the fifteen or so hungry people gathered around our dining room table at mealtimes during the harvest also meant a lot of work inside the kitchen. Everything we cooked came straight from our fields or gardens. About twice a month the house was filled with the smell of bread baking in our clay-brick oven. After heating the large wood-fired oven for about half a day, my mother would shove in a dozen big lumps of dough, usually made from rye. Despite weighing about six to eight pounds each, these loaves never lasted very long with so many hungry workers around the farm.
Although most of our livestock were raised to be sold, some were retained for our own use. To this end, my family butchered a portion of our cattle once a year and several of our 100 to 200 pigs three or four times a year. Due to the lack of refrigeration, we had to preserve the majority of the meat by making it into sausage and bacon or by curing it.
In the meadows surrounding our village, we grazed our 15 to 20 cows. Some of our cow pastures had fences, but in other unfenced fields the cattle required monitoring to prevent them from wandering onto a neighbor’s property. When I reached the age of ten, my father began tasking me with the boring but simple job of keeping an eye on them. Though I took no pleasure in watching the cows, it was better than the monthly cleaning of the manure from their barns.
On one occasion, just after harvesting one of these unfenced pastures, we let the cows out to graze and I took up my post at the edge of the field. Lying back on a cushion of two-foot-high grass under a cool breeze, it was easy for me to pass the time staring up at the drifting clouds. This would last until five o’clock, when a three-engine Junkers passenger aircraft appeared up in the sky on its regularly scheduled flight, signaling the end of my day.
On this particular afternoon, my daydreaming in the grass turned into napping. As I snoozed, the unattended cows crossed into our neighbor’s pasture, a serious offense in a farming community. When my father learned of my negligence, he scolded me severely, “How could you let that happen? Now I must go talk to the neighbor.” Being a ten-year-old was no excuse.
In addition to our gardens, fields, and meadows, my family also possessed a couple of large apple orchards. Following school or during school vacations, I would climb up in the trees to pick apples. Munching the fruit and singing songs as I worked, life seemed pretty good to me. Only later did I realize the constant stress my parents endured in trying to operate our farm as a successful business.
While many Germans were Catholic, our family lived in a Lutheran region of the country. In my youth, religion was, however, more of an obligation than a source of spiritual fulfillment for me. Although my faith and involvement in church were not nearly as significant in my youth as they became later, they still played a more important role in my life than they did in the lives of most Germans.
My father’s family was not very religious, but my mother and her parents were involved in the Lutheran Church and possessed a strong Christian faith that shaped our spiritual upbringing. Although infrequently reading or studying the Bible when we were growing up, my siblings and I did receive a religious education at home and in our confirmation classes at church. We learned to follow the Bible’s teachings to tell the truth, and to work hard. We were taught to always consider the needs of those around us and remember that we have an obligation to them.
Because the local Lutheran pastor served several other villages at the same time, he only held services in Püggen every second Sunday. On these Sunday mornings, my family dressed in our best clothes and walked over to the small fieldstone church in Püggen. Seated in our family’s pew, we joined thirty or forty other people from six or seven local families in the community for an hour-long worship service. On special Sundays we would sometimes attend church in the nearby village of Rohrberg.
After the church service, our family would sit down at the dinner table for a formal family lunch, our largest meal of the week. We would refrain from eating until my mother sat down and recited the prayer, “Thank the Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever.” Similarly, we waited to leave the table until she gave another prayer or otherwise dismissed us.
Over food, we would talk about the farm gossip in Püggen or politics, but there was not much banter unless it was of a very socially acceptable type. When the meal ended, my father would sometimes hitch up a couple of horses to our family’s open-air buggy. Our family would then pile into it for a drive around the fields or the nearby pine forest. Sundays were relaxing and enjoyable for me, but I never looked forward to the next five days of the week once I started my schooling.
At age six, I began my education in Püggen’s one-room schoolhouse, located on the first floor of a two-story building right across from our farm in the center of the village. Our teacher, Herr (Mr.) Künne, lived in the rooms next to and above the classroom with his family and taught perhaps 30 to 40 local children.
When Herr Künne entered the classroom, we would all immediately stand at attention behind our desks until he said, “Good morning boys and girls. Please sit down.” Because the pupils in the large classroom ranged from first to eighth graders, he would then have to give separate lessons to each grade, though everyone would, of course, hear it all.
In running his class, Herr Künne maintained strict discipline and none of us ever dared to challenge him in any way. While he was always demanding, his dictations proved especially difficult. Depending on the number of errors a student made in copying his dictation, he or she might receive a spanking with a switch in front of the entire class or have to remain after school to complete additional assignments.
Although maintaining only average grades in all subjects, I was generally able to avoid Herr Künne’s punishments. When school let out, I would return to our house to do my homework. Afterward, my time was spent on farm chores or playing with some of the other children in the village.
Early on, I became friends with several of the boys my age in Püggen: Otto Werneke, Fritz Dampke, and Otto Tepelman. Among my peers, I tended to be a more reserved and private person, like my father. For me, friendship was less about camaraderie and more about exercising leadership and cooperating with others to accomplish some purpose.
Upon finishing fourth grade in 1930, I left the village school in Püggen and spent the next eight years attending a larger and better school in the town of Beetzendorf, located about six miles from our village. Like many upper level schools at the time, this school required the payment of a small tuition, which helped support a dedicated and professional staff.
Every morning around 7:30, I would set out on my bicycle for the 30-minute trip to school, even if it was raining or snowing. This journey was often miserable in the cold and snow of winter, since I was dressed in the short pants that most of us wore year-round. A pair of knee-high stockings provided my calves with a little warmth, but my knees were often red and numb by the time I reached the school.
While we remained together with the same group of male and female students throughout the day, our teachers would circulate among the school’s classrooms to provide us with an hour or so of instruction in history, German literature, science, mathematics, English, and French.
The school offered more engaging give-and-take discussions between the instructors and students, but my academic struggles persisted. A couple of times, my parents had to read me the riot act when I received a note from the school informing them that I was not doing well in my classes. Such letters bothered me deeply because of my parents’ disappointment, but my performance never greatly improved.
It was rare for children from Püggen to attend the school in Beetzendorf. Children were only required to attend school through the eighth grade and most either apprenticed to learn a trade or began working full-time on a farm or in some other employment after that. As part of an extended family that included teachers, doctors, and lawyers, my parents perhaps placed a higher value on education than most other families in our farming community. This commitment was also demonstrated by my father’s willingness to pay my tuition in the midst of the Depression.
When outside the school buildings during recreation periods or after class, the boys would wear caps with colored bands identifying their class year. While discipline was strictly enforced inside the school building, there were occasional full-scale brawls right behind it. Typically, these slugfests resulted from disputes among boys of different class years or from different villages around Beetzendorf. In one instance when another student began calling me names, I engaged in one of these fistfights, but I generally tried to avoid such crude behavior.
On most days, I rode my bike straight home, where I would work on my homework assignments and help out around the farm. Despite the many hours spent completing my farm chores and schoolwork, I generally enjoyed a carefree youth and often found time to pursue other interests and activities.
Probably more curious and adventurous than most other kids, I always wanted to explore my surroundings and learn what was going on around me. At the same time, my father and mother were especially strict parents and disciplined me sternly if I misbehaved. While they accepted my independent spirit, they also taught me responsibility and respect for authority.
One summer afternoon when I was about ten years old, I was playing soccer with some other local kids in a sports field just behind our farm. Feeling the urgent call of nature, I opted not to take the time to run back to our family’s outhouse and instead headed into a nearby field of rye about five feet tall.
Unfortunately, a neighbor saw me and informed my father that his son had trampled another farmer’s field, an almost sacrilegious act. When I returned home that evening, my father gave me a forceful lecture on respecting a neighbor’s crops. Though I tried to explain the urgency of the moment, my father dismissed my pleas and reinforced his point with a severe spanking with a wooden switch.
About this same time, I joined a group of other boys from Püggen who wanted to play a prank on an elderly man in his seventies who regularly walked down the sandy road that ran between our farm and the pastures to the south. There was some debate over what we should do, but everyone eventually agreed on my scheme of outfitting myself as a ghost in order to scare him.
While the boys remained behind in the woods to watch, I went out to the road covered by a white bedsheet as our victim approached. Though hardly able to see anything in the darkness through the sheet, I knew he was coming closer to me so I began making what I thought were creepy noises.
Much to my surprise, my supernatural appearance did not produce the desired alarm. Instead of cowering in fear, the old man began whacking me repeatedly over the head with his cane. With my plan gone awry, I attempted to make a run for it, but could only manage to stumble away blindly. Alas, the identity of the culprits behind this fiasco was obvious in a small village like Püggen. On reaching home that night, my father made me pay a visit to the gentleman and apologize.
Being athletic, I enjoyed playing a number of different sports when growing up, especially soccer. In the winters we played ice hockey on a frozen pond located about a half-mile from the school in Beetzendorf as part of the school’s physical education class. Often lacking enough players to have a game, one of the teachers would occasionally join us. To express our gratitude, we took every opportunity to knock him onto the ice. Those games provided a rare opportunity to ignore the normal social rules that demanded respect for those in authority.
Equestrian sports were not a hobby of mine, but I often rode on horseback and developed into a competent rider. Most nights, I would take the horses down to our pasture on the south side of our property, and then in the mornings lead them up to the farm where we would put them to work. Additionally, my father gave me the responsibility of taking our mares to visit a nearby stud farm about four or five times a year.
When I was about 15 years old, I began participating in our region’s annual equestrian competition. Riding our horses bareback, we would maneuver a long spear in an attempt to snag a six-inch diameter ring hung about 15 feet above the ground. I never won the contest, but the riding skills I developed later proved very beneficial in the army.
Having an independent nature, I was content to do things by myself and spent many hours reading history, especially about the recent battles of the Great War. While fascinated by the stories of the fighting at places like Verdun and the Dardanelles, as well as by U-Boat operations and naval battles, I never expected to see a war myself.
Intrigued by all sorts of technical devices, I spent much of my teenage years experimenting with lights, electrical motors, and radios. I was absorbed for endless hours determining how various mechanisms operated and conducting my own hands-on experimentation in our family’s barn.
When my family needed a light to help illuminate the central area among the barns so that we could unload our wagons at night, I volunteered for the project. Stringing a wire from the house, I installed a light on the barn and placed the switch next to my father’s bed. In addition to allowing us to work outside after dark, it permitted my father to light up the area with the flip of a switch if he heard any suspicious noises at night. As he himself was not technically inclined, he greatly appreciated my accomplishment.
At this time, my family had to grind our harvested rapeseed by hand in order to obtain canola oil for cooking, and I became determined to figure out something better. Finding an electric motor, I attached it to the wheel of the press. It worked like a charm. My mother was particularly grateful to have such a labor-saving device and used it for years.
Despite my successes, some of my projects did not turn out so well. Quite a few times, I was knocked off my feet when I touched the wrong wire. Gradually, through trial and error, I learned what and what not to do.
My fondest memories of our family life come from the Christmas Eves that we shared together. Wearing a big fur coat, my father would load up the whole family in our large, black horse-drawn Landauer (coach) and drive us to Rohrberg for the special evening church service and the singing of hymns.
Once we returned home, my father and mother would lock the doors to the living room. While my siblings and I impatiently waited outside in the hallway and pounded on the door, they decorated a freshly cut spruce tree with wax candles and set out our unwrapped gifts around it, as was the German custom. Finishing their preparations, they allowed us to enter the room in single file from youngest to oldest. After the excitement of Christmas Eve, we celebrated Christmas Day the following afternoon with a big dinner of goose, potatoes, and other special dishes.
Just before the Easter holiday, the residents of small rural communities in Germany would often construct large 20- or 30-foot-high bonfires from logs and other flammable materials on a hill near their village. On the Saturday night before Easter, the bonfires were lit. As we watched, the horizon would be illuminated with the bright glow from 10 or 15 fires burning in the neighboring villages. It was an unforgettable spectacle.
The following morning, my siblings and I awoke to Easter baskets stuffed with treats and boiled eggs before attending a special worship service at our church. Later that day, my parents held an Easter egg hunt in the garden for us. Afterward, my father would come out to the yard with a boiled egg hidden under his jacket.
Squatting down, he would loosen his jacket and let the egg drop down to the ground under him. My young sisters would squeal with delight at the presence of a real Easter Bunny. Though my father was generally a serious man, he also possessed a sense of humor and enjoyed teasing us in a good-natured way, especially my sisters.
Weddings were always major celebrations in Püggen. Everyone in town would ride flower-festooned horses or drive decorated carriages in a large procession over to the farm of the bride’s family to pick her up for the trip to our small church. Following the marriage ceremony, it was customary for the bride and groom to jointly saw a log into halves, which would serve as the legs for a baby cradle. According to the tradition, this assured the couple a family with many children.
While such happy occasions with our families and community did not cease to take place, life would become much more difficult during the Great Depression.