Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1942-12-03
Dead Letters from
Germany
D.. Mn-: u;n,J,.
By Maurice Hindus
(WNU Feature-Through special arral
with American Magazine)

These letters, an arnful of them,
fell in my lap with rustic like
windblown leaves. "Fresh from the
'front.'" said my host, a widely known
Russian writer. I am in Moscow,
hunting for news.
These letters had been gathered
from German dead on Don battle
fields. The paper was ragged, but
the decorative envelopes were of va
rious colors, white, blue, and pink.
All were written in Gothic script,
many in pencil.
On top of the heap lay postal
card, shiny with two large drops of
blood. It was from mother to son.
The writing was scarcely legible, but
from the few words I could make
out, the soldier and his mother loved
each other deeply. The blood indi-
Gated that the soldier had carried it
close to his body.
There was something spectral
about this postal card, about all the
letters. They seemed like voices
from the dead. But they weren't.
They were voices from the living
inside Germany.
Russians Collect Letters From Dead
The Russians have collected hun
dreds of thousands Of such letters,
and also diaries, from the German
dead. These have been read, digest
ed, put away. In the absence Of
direct relations between the United
Nations and Germany, they are the
only authentic source of information
about Germany and the German
people that we now have.
The letters are intimate and per-
sonal-from parents to son, from
brides to grooms, sisters to brothers,
wives to husbands. They are as
good mirror as we have today Of
Germany, of the conditions of life
and state of mind of civilians and
soldiers.
IS Per Cent of Letters Ignore Politics
The outstanding feature of this
correspondence is that IS per cent Of
all the letters completely ignore poll
tics, rarely mentioning the fuehrer
or other Nazi chiefs, or referring to
Nazi doctrines or practice.
Perhaps this is why military CEN
sorship is so lenient. Seldom are
there any deletions, even when the
writer's speak frankly of hardship
and sorrow, or of such delicate SUBJ
jects as the deterioration of the
morals of German women.
An Italian named Giovanni Volpi,
working in Kufstein, Germany,
writes to an Italian soldier at the
Russian front: "I'll tell you frankly,
German women have lost all control
of themselves. They have gone out
of their minds"
German Women Loose
So while Germans by the thou
sands die daily for the supremacy
of their race and the purity of their
blood, their women at home, despite
Nazi theology and Gestapo vigilance,
indulge in no small amount of race
defilement. That's one reason, no
doubt, why German mothers and
fathers show increasing anxiety and
bewilderment at the "foreigniza-
ton" of Germany through the pres
ence of millions of alien laborers
and war prisoners.
"You ask me-" writes father to
his son, chow Berlin looks these
days. Dear Fritz, Berlin has be-
come an international city-you can
hear every language in this street"
Vienna is no better. Bette Schum-
mer writes her husband: "Life is
hard in Vienna. The city is crowded
with foreigners In the trolleys
you hear only Italians, Spaniards,
Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks,
Greeks, Bulgarians. Viennese are
hardly seem"
Religious Folk Air Complaints.
Most of the letters are filed with
complaints. Religious people feel
hurt because the church bells have
been melted into cannons. Now and
then there's letter about the treat
ment of elderly people which tells
most by what it leaves unsaid. There
are endless complaints of hardships.
The information in letters found
on the German dead, intimate and
personal as it is, leads to some strik-
ing deductions. The people inside
Germany hate the war and want it
to end. They are tired of hardships,
sick of sacrifice. They lament the
moral disintegration of their young
women; they shudder at air raids;
they weep over their dead.
But nowhere do they betray the
least suggestion of German guilt or
regret for horrors Which the Ger
man armies perpetrate.
Hard as is their life, they know
neither starvation nor desperation.
Nor do they expect Germany to lose
the war. To expect them at this
time to revolt against Hitler is as
futile and puerile as to expect the
fuehrer to live up to his promises
or the treaties he signs.
The Allies airman has made him.
self very unpopular in Germany. He
is to Germans the supreme villain
of today. They hate him.