597. The First World War: The Massacre of the Innocents (Part 4)

At last they came when we left Munich to begin the fulfilment of our duty. For the first time I saw the Rhine as we rode westward along its quiet waters to defend this, the German stream of streams from the greed of the old enemy. The old watch on the Rhine roared out of the endless transport train into the morning sky, and I felt as though my heart would burst. And then came a damp, cold night in Flanders, through which we marched in silence, and when the day began to emerge from the mists, suddenly an iron greeting came whizzing at us over our heads. But even before the little cloud had passed, from two hundred throats the first hurrah rose to meet the messenger of death.

Then a crackling and a roaring, a singing and a howling began, and with feverish eyes each one of us was drawn forward faster and faster, until suddenly past fields and hedges The fight began, the fight of man against man. And from the distance the strains of a song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, leaping from company to company, and just as death plunged a busy hand into our ranks, the song reached us too, and we passed it along. Deutschland Deutschland über Alles über Alles in der Welt.

So I think a very moving passage there, a private in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, remembering his first brush with the enemy in the autumn of 1914, leaving the Rhine behind, coming up to the the mud and the slaughter of Flanders. And anyone who finds themselves at this point brushing away a tear from the eye may be stunned to realize that they've been listening to literally the worst man in history, because that comes from Mein Kampf by a certain A. Hitler. Dominic, the Hitler here is, I mean, he's relatively speaking behaving himself, isn't he?

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