Admittedly, one must exercise the utmost precision for this, but anyone who has ever experienced an inspection conducted by a German non-commissioned officer knows all about this precision, which takes notice of every speck of dust on the barrel of the rifle in order to withhold Sunday leave from someone. To perform deeds in the belief in things that stand above life and death, to learn to force oneself into actionโthat is part of that โother.โ The second, however, is life without a mask. All posing, all pretense fell away, and only the naked man remained; either a brave and good comrade, or a piece of misery. Here one could play the brave neither with sleight of hand nor with bravado, while only fear reigned; no bribery with trifles from packets from home or with hoarded cigarettes was able to mask an absent sense of camaraderie. This struggle in the East taught us something else: We lack everything that a civilized person needs, beginning with a spotless envelope and extending all the way to underwear without lice. When the kitchen and the supply wagon stay away for a few days, only two possibilities remain: to be lazy and suffer hunger, or to exert oneself and search until one has gathered the necessities for a meal. Letting others work for oneself is possible at most once or twice. For the rest, one is left to fend for oneself. Anyone unwilling to participate can at most disappear into a hospital with feigned rheumatism. Either one complains about the bad food, the little mail, the cold, windy guard posts where the ears and feet freeze, the lice and fleas, the deceitfulness of the Russians, or one gets through it all, manfully and without grumbling. It was probably the same during the World War. Even he who has lived for a long time in the tropical jungle knows this: from faraway places one first learns to appreciate culture and civilization at their true value; things that are quite ordinary, such as a clean bed or a good book, become moments from a better life. In short, one would wish the spoiled โjaded youthโ of democracy a period of military service. But not only that; one knows that this represents their only salvation. War is not the destroyer of life, as our humanistic-pacifist upbringing has always led us to believe; on the contrary, it is only in the field that we become clearly aware of the value of this life, and only there can one fully learn to understand National Socialism as a philosophy of life.
Source: Germaansche Overtuiging, "Brief van den SS-Schรผtze Smits", UITGEVERIJ โSTORM" AMSTERDAM p.10-11
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