In the summer of 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Arno felt the urge to join in the struggle. If there was a chance of defeating and disposing of murderous Bolshevism he was up for it; to defeat the sworn enemy of tradition and faith, this was a noble task to Arno. He had seen the ravages of the red hordes in eastern Finland in a pamphlet. What struck him was the devastation of churches. Arno really wasn’t a church attender, but he liked to have temples around. They must be defended against Bolshevik nihilism, he thought.
This made Arno ready for war in the east. Also, he wanted to test his strength in earnest – to endure hardships, experience hostile fire, see the whites of the enemy’s eyes, “meet the elephant” as they say. Go and see if he could make it through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Arno wanted to go to war.
Around the same time the German Waffen-SS began recruiting in Sweden. Arno heard about acquaintances who joined the German war effort this way. He considered joining up that way, but in the end Arno didn’t choose that path. But he also heard that to enlist in the Waffen-SS you could go to Oslo, Norway and he made a mental note of this way of reaching Das Reich. Arno wanted to go to war.
Then, in September, 1941, a thought came on a whim: maybe he could enlist in the Finnish Army? At this time a Swedish Volunteer Battalion grouped at Hanko, was fighting against the Russian occupation of this peninsula next to the Finnish capital, Helsinki. Nothing came of this either, but Arno still wanted to go to war.
Finally, fate decided the matter for him. One day in early December 1941, Arno received a brown letter, graced with a German eagle gripping a swastika. It was a call-up to the German Army, Deutsches Heer, Standort Hanover, Waterlooplatz 8, reporting date January 29. It was, as he had more or less expected, because of his dual citizenship. Arno’s father hadn’t withdrawn his German citizenship when he moved to Sweden, so his son automatically received German citizenship, running alongside with Swedish citizenship.
The whole thing was a bureaucratic grey area, but the gist of it all was that the German Army considered itself entitled to call him up. So Arno inquired with the Swedish Army authority about what he should do. It was war and he was currently on standby; the Swedish Army was on a war footing and he could at any time be called up into the ranks of his Field Regiment.
Ever since September 3, 1939 the alert level of “Attention” had been operational for armed forces personnel and Arno knew it. So he phoned the Military District HQ in Skövde and asked what he should do regarding his pending German military service. The response from the officer on duty was to forbid him to go to Germany and enlist.
But Arno ignored the order and went anyway. He resigned from his hotel job, quit his lodgings and carried his personal belongings to his parents’ home. Then he took leave of his parents, Tora and Horst. He packed the essentials in a suitcase of pressed cardboard, took his passport and German call-up papers and boarded a train to Norway. By this time, Norway had been occupied by the Germans; there was a German military authority where he could report and get further transport.
The Norway trip took place on January 20, 1942. The border crossing went well. Arno played the “Imperial German” to the customs officer, adopting a haughty attitude, waving his call-up papers and saying that he had orders to report to the German Army. Kommandosache!
This made an impression on the young customs officer, a submissive rookie. Once in Oslo, Arno reported to the office of the local Military Commander. Soon he was lying in a berth in a troop ship bound for Hamburg, and thence to be forwarded inland to Hanover.
2
Stalingrad
Arno travelled to Germany in the bosom of the German Wehrmacht. By this time, January 1942, the fighting on the Eastern Front had been raging for over six months. Germany had tried to conquer Russia with an all-out, armoured drive to the east. But by November and early December the offensive ground to a halt before the gates of Moscow. Hitler’s ambition to crush the Soviet Union in 1941 was thwarted. A Russian counterstrike drove off the German units from the outskirts of Moscow – and the city was never threatened again during the entire war. In 1942, Hitler therefore planned to attack to the south, heading for Stalingrad and the Caucasus.
This had happened in Germany’s war with Russia as Arno Greif began training to be a Deutsches Heer infantryman in Hanover in January 1942. Arno told the Army authorities that he had done Swedish military service, specifically, as Ration Team Leader. They noted this. But for some reason he didn’t continue his career as a supply soldier. And the fact that he had been Team Leader was completely ignored.
The fact was that his spoken German was lousy. He wasn’t used to speaking the language; he could read and understand rather advanced texts but when it came to expressing himself verbally on the spot, he did poorly.
So he became a Private. This he could endure. To serve in an army at war was a momentous task in itself, even though he had long lived with the war sentiment and knew the soldier’s life from his Swedish military service. But now it was more serious. Now it was expressly about life and death, and so a start from scratch could be a good place to begin.
The battle was raging in the East. Arno took part in the fighting soon enough. It was a bitter war, this was no tea party. No quarter was asked or given. Arno acknowledged the realities of the war and acted accordingly: when in the combat zone, combat. This was his motto during the whole war and it kept him alive. This was no hands-up war.
In Hanover Arno was placed in a barracks at Waterloo Platz, a city square completely surrounded by barracks. The different elements of the training essentially offered nothing new to him. But, as already noted, he had to learn the language properly: Gewehr, Maschinenpistole, Granatenwerfer and a thousand other words. And German syntax, to be able to speak the language fluently and form error-free sentences. After a while he got along pretty well, because he was talented. And as a reader he knew the language, having read some German books. And now, on a daily basis, he practiced German by forming sentences, so he eventually got a good grasp of it all. The goal was to master it almost perfectly. Otherwise you could never advance above the level of a Private, a mere Schütze. This he realised. Even the simplest Squad Leader must have a reasonably good command of the language, of the relevant phrases and commands and be able to lecture his troop on the art of shooting, laying mines and so on. Arno’s initially poor mastery of the language became a reason for the others to tease him. For instance, about a week after beginning his military service he was out on the town, he and some friends having some hours leave. In a Kneipp they drank beer and chatted up the girls. One of Arno’s comrades, a certain Ludwig Hofer, in jest said to the two women:
“This is Arno, a half German. But he doesn’t speak any German at all.”
Arno quickly played along, saying:
“Das strimmt, ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen. Aber Sie vielleicht können es mich lernen…?” (= “That’s right, I can’t speak German. But maybe you can teach me…?”)