The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945

by Nicholas Stargardt

Three days later, as Moldenhauer’s unit advanced further into Ukraine, he was welcomed into one of the cleanest houses he had yet seen, where he was given milk and shared the family’s meal of baked potatoes, cabbage and meat. After he returned from duty at 8 p.m., his hostess welcomed him back with more milk and pork fat; in return, he produced a bottle of vodka. For the next two hours, while the entire family sat around the large table, he took a good look at the living room, to describe it later to his wife, its table lit by a petroleum lamp, the gilded icons glinting in their glass cases against the whitewashed walls. Moldenhauer felt that the welcome was utterly genuine. ‘And perhaps for that very reason,’ he wrote home to his wife Erika on 17 September, ‘because communism directed its strong, warmongering propaganda against Germany and because they suffered so much under Soviet and Jewish rule. And now the Germans are there and the people can convince themselves again and again that the Germans are nice decent chaps. That demolishes all the enemy propaganda at one blow.