To the Great Patriotic War the Germans were our enemies. But meetings took place not only on the battlefield. There were frequent cases of informal and even friendly communication between Soviet and German soldiers.

"Comrades in Misfortune"

Propaganda tried to create an image of the enemy. Our soldiers understood that Nazi Germany wanted to capture them native land and it will end badly both for themselves and for their loved ones. Many had personal scores to settle with Hitler: some had their families killed in a bombing, some had their wives or children starve to death, some had relatives killed by the occupiers. It would seem that in such a situation one could only hate.

But by the middle of the war, the attitude “Kill the German, kill the reptile” began to fade into the background, because most of the fascist soldiers were ordinary people who left families and lovers at home. Many had peaceful professions before the war. And not all German soldiers went to the front voluntarily - for refusing to go fight for the Third Reich they could be sent to a concentration camp or simply shot.

The Germans, in turn, also realized that they were not so much enemies as “comrades in misfortune” and that Hitler, who was the first to attack the USSR, was to blame for this situation of confrontation.

"Ivans" and "Hanses"

If in the First world war There were many cases of front-line fraternization between Russian and German soldiers, but during the Great Patriotic War this was not welcomed and was even prohibited by the Soviet command. And yet, the Germans and ours did not always strive to kill each other.

Often headquarters kept troops in positions for weeks, developing a battle strategy, waiting for the right moment to attack. Sitting idle in trenches or dugouts was a bit boring, but it usually never occurred to anyone to go and just kill the enemies dug in opposite.

Subsequently, former front-line soldiers said that during such periods they sometimes exchanged a couple of phrases with the Germans (especially those who knew German), shared smokes and canned food, and even played football, throwing the ball across the front line. Some called representatives of the enemy side by name, although nicknames were more common - Ivan or Hans.

In war as in war

In May 1944, rumors spread among the units of the 51st Army fighting in the Sevastopol area about an allegedly concluded truce between the USSR and Germany. The Germans were the first to stop firing. Fraternization began, which lasted exactly until the Soviet soldiers received the order to go on the attack. The information about the truce turned out to be a "duck".

From time to time, captured Germans ended up in Soviet hospitals, where they were treated on an equal basis with Soviet military personnel. They wore the same hospital uniform as ours, and they could only be distinguished by their German speech.

Former German officer Wolfgang Morel, who was captured by the Soviets in January 1942 and ended up with frostbitten feet in a hospital in Vladimir, recalled that only some Red Army soldiers were hostile towards him and other German prisoners of war, while the majority shared shag and behaved quite friendly. But all informal relations were forgotten when the order to attack came.

You can only win with Russia.” And the most important tool for bringing this aphorism to life was the recruitment of Soviet prisoners of war.

The goal is to stun

The psychological motives that pushed Soviet prisoners of war to collaborate with the Reich were largely clear. It was like they were disappointed in Soviet power, who could not withstand the hardships of life in concentration camps. The fate of soldiers and officers of the Red Army captured by the Germans was often extremely tragic. Contrary to all norms international law concerning the treatment of prisoners of war, they were doomed to hunger, deprivation and, ultimately, to extermination.

According to the calculations of the German historian Christian Streit, by February 1942, about 2 million Red Army soldiers died of disease and hunger or were killed in German captivity. According to modern data, 18 million Soviet citizens went through the horrors of Hitler’s concentration camps, while the SS killed about 4 million people in the camps located on occupied Soviet territory alone. [C-BLOCK]

Domestic historians have no doubt that German intelligence functionaries had a hand in such a situation with Soviet prisoners of war: after all, it opened up for them the possibility of recruiting a virtually unlimited number of agents.

Talking about recruitment technologies, the Nazis openly stated that the candidates selected from among Soviet prisoners of war first of all had to be intimidated, stunned, and confused. The unbearable conditions of detention, from which many prisoners of war wanted to escape at any cost, prepared fertile ground for further psychological and ideological treatment. The end result was supposed to be voluntary agreement to secret cooperation with the German authorities.

Little agreement

As the first stage of Operation Zeppelin, in which the assassination attempt on Stalin was being prepared, showed, agreement to cooperate with the Reich was not enough. Many of the agents abandoned behind the lines of the Red Army stopped contacting intelligence centers, hoping to evade control, and some confessed to the Soviet authorities.

Having learned the negative experience, the German authorities came to the conclusion that, in addition to extracting voluntary consent, other measures were needed. It was necessary to press a Soviet soldier who was being recruited against the wall - to put him in a hopeless situation.

The meaning of the recruitment tactics was to force the future agent to violate military duty: to force him to provide valuable information about the Red Army and its command staff, which could be interpreted as divulging military secrets. Another method: with the help of provocation, to discredit him, turning him into a source of information about anti-German-minded fellow prisoners, or to label him as a participant in punitive operations against partisans and civilians.

Preparation

Based on the experience of German intelligence schools that existed before the attack on the USSR, the Nazis deployed a whole network of similar institutions in the occupied Soviet territories. In the first months of the war, such schools arose in Riga, Borisov, Katyn, and later in Kharkov, Orel, and Kursk.

The teaching and instructional staff of the schools was formed primarily from Abwehr and SD cadres, who were considered “experts on Russia.” All of them were fluent in Russian and were familiar with Soviet realities firsthand, since they had been in the USSR for many years on intelligence work, being listed as employees of diplomatic and other official missions of Germany.

A special place in the training process was given to the agent's mastering of methods of subversive work in accordance with the profile of his further use. Future saboteurs were taught how to blow up trains, primarily military trains with manpower, military equipment and ammunition, as well as destroy railway tracks, bridges, high-voltage transmission lines and other objects of strategic importance. [C-BLOCK]

There was also a mandatory component of training, which included engineering, topography, tactics, drill training, parachuting, as well as knowledge about the organization and structure of the Soviet armed forces.

Before the drop sabotage groups Those who had particularly important assignments had a meeting between agents and the highest ranks of German intelligence. It was necessary to make sure how reliable and prepared they were for the mission. Interesting details of one of these meetings are provided by the head of foreign intelligence of the Reich Security Service, Walter Schellenberg.

We are talking about a conversation with two Muscovites, former officers Soviet army who were captured in August 1941 near Bryansk. They were scheduled to participate in Operation Zeppelin. During the conversation it became clear that both, despite their negative attitude towards Soviet system, still believe that the USSR will ultimately win the war. “You Germans cannot defeat either the Russian people or Russian spaces,” Schellenberg quotes them as saying. But, since, according to the SD, the reliability of both was not in doubt, these statements were not given serious significance.

As much as possible

In the camps for Soviet prisoners of war, not only future agents were recruited, but also soldiers for Russian volunteer battalions. The command of Army Group Center provided RNNA officers with the opportunity to visit several prisoner of war camps, from where they had the right to recruit personnel.

Various sources, including documents from the Soviet state security agencies, contain information about which camps the recruitment took place in. Thus, a memo from the special department of the NKVD of the North-Western Front dated January 6, 1943 reports on the selection of prisoners of war in the Orsha and Vitebsk camps.

One of the founders and leaders of the RNNA, Konstantin Kromiadi, describes the selection procedure: “The formal side of this reception was simple: the receiver, whoever he was, turned to the commandant of the prisoner of war camp with a certificate issued at the headquarters of Field Marshal von Kluge. The commandant lined up the prisoners, and the receiver addressed them with an appropriate speech. A list was compiled of those who expressed a desire to enter the RNNA, and the people were immediately taken out of the camp.” [C-BLOCK]

If there were not enough volunteers, the recruiter could resort to intimidation: “If you do not volunteer for the RNNA, you will die of hunger and from back-breaking work in the camps.” Often this method worked.

Former RNNA officer Pyotr Kashtanov recalled that during recruitment he personally asked standard questions to prisoners: “What are you going to fight for? For concentration camps and collective farms? “Usually this was enough,” noted Kashtanov.

Special mission

Before the New Year 1943 at section 198 rifle division near Lyuban, Soviet soldiers brought a defector to the authorities. He turned out to be former border guard of the Red Army Joseph Kernes, who was captured in June 1942 near Kharkov and went through several camps in Ukraine, Bavaria and Poland. According to him, he had to establish contacts with the Soviet government on instructions from the German command to discuss the terms of a separate peace with Germany.

His path to becoming an agent was not easy. In the Kharkov prison camp, in order to avoid suspicion of Jewish origin, he decided to pass himself off as a Russian officer of Polish origin. Kernes called himself a representative of a counter-revolutionary organization allegedly existing in the USSR, which consists of the remnants of the Trotskyists.

Apparently Kernes’ story was so convincing that he was awarded a half-hour conversation in Poltava with Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, to whom he told about sympathizers of the underground organization among Soviet military leaders, including the names of Marshal Shaposhnikov and General Vasilevsky. [C-BLOCK]

And then there was a lengthy letter to the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, and after him to Hitler himself. The “underground worker” claimed that he arrived in the German rear voluntarily, with the task of “familiarizing the Reich government with the goals and program of the opposition, the possibilities of its coming to power, and concluding a separate agreement between Russia and Germany.”

And apparently things worked out. After the war, Kernes was identified from a photograph as an agent of the German intelligence Kertz or Kers, who in the “special team 806” was engaged in collecting intelligence: interviewing prisoners of war, processing information of a political and economic nature received by other agents.

However, the USSR prosecutor’s office “did not establish the intent to commit treason in Kernes’s actions.” The lieutenant colonel of justice proposed to consider Kernes’s appeals to Ribbentrop and Hitler simply “as anti-Soviet agitation.”

In 1946, the court sentenced Joseph Kernes to twenty years in prison. After serving 9 years, in 1955 the prisoner was granted amnesty. And once free, the former German agent began to rehabilitate himself and, first of all, set about restoring himself in the party, which in the German rear he considered to be the culprit of all his troubles.

During the Great Patriotic War, not only different ideologies, but also cultures collided.

For Soviet people, brought up in the spirit of correct life values, the behavior of German soldiers, whom they could observe in an informal setting, was a shock. Close acquaintance Both civilian Soviet citizens and Red Army soldiers became closely acquainted with the Wehrmacht military personnel. According to the testimony of front-line soldiers, sometimes they communicated with German soldiers during the lull between battles - the opponents could treat each other to smoke and canned food or even kick a ball. After Stalingrad, Germans began to be captured more often, some of them were sent to Soviet hospitals.

In hospital attire, they could only be distinguished from the wounded Red Army soldiers by their German speech. The first thing that caught your eye when meeting the Germans, despite the deep and rich origins of German culture, they behaved, to put it mildly, not entirely decently - too relaxed, deliberately rude, sometimes downright vulgar. The framework of decency familiar to Soviet people from childhood was unknown to them. They organized their life not at all like we did. For a long time in German army there were no proper conditions for washing and washing, which gave rise to a high level of unsanitary conditions in the active units.

Coveted on someone else's

If in the first months of the war the German authorities tried to punish their soldiers for theft of property belonging to the population of the occupied territories, then by the end of 1942 these measures were no longer in effect. Moreover, Wehrmacht soldiers increasingly stole from their own colleagues. “Our officers appropriated those intended for us foodstuffs: chocolate, dried fruits, liqueurs and sent it all home or used it ourselves,” one of the German soldiers wrote home. True, soon the entire top of the unit, which was engaged in robbery, was removed from their posts and sent to the reserve. As it turned out, in order for them to be promoted in rank. In the field kitchen, according to the Germans, ordinary army nepotism reigned. Those who were close to the “dominant clique” did not deny themselves anything. The orderlies walked around with “glossy muzzles,” and the orderlies had bellies “like drums.”

Colonel Luitpold Steidle, commander of the 767th Grenadier Regiment of the 376th Infantry Division, told how in November 1942 he found his soldiers stealing parcels from their comrades. In anger, he beat the first thief he came across, but later realized that the disintegration in the army retreating from Stalingrad could no longer be stopped. It should be said that for many, the German invasion of the USSR was akin to a trip to exotic country. But reality quickly sobered them up.

Colonel Luitpold Steidle

For example, already in December 1941, Private Voltheimer wrote to his wife: “I beg you, stop writing to me about the silk and rubber boots that I promised to bring you from Moscow. Understand - I’m dying, I’m going to die, I feel it.”

It's a matter of culture

After the complete capture of the Germans, Soviet soldiers began to come across shocking photographs introducing the time spent by German soldiers in the war. In many of them, privates and officers of the Wehrmacht were completely naked: now they show their butts, now their “manhood,” here they are hugging a life-size doll of a woman, and here they are doing obscene things over a cesspool. According to psychoanalysts, the anal-genital theme is in the Germans’ blood. Thus, folklorist and cultural anthropologist Alan Dundes notes that the scatological question is specific feature German national culture, which persisted into the 20th century. Referring to the texts of Martin Luther, Johann Goethe and Heinrich Heine, the scientist proves that interest in such a base topic was not alien even the best representatives German nation. Take, for example, Mozart’s letters to his cousin, in which expressions such as “lick my ass” or “shit in the bed” appear. The luminary of musical classics saw nothing wrong with this. From this point of view, for a German soldier what is called “spoiling the air” was an absolutely natural action.

Satisfy needs

Brothels were an integral part of German army life. They were created not only in occupied Europe, but also on the territory Soviet Union. Solution to streamline sex life personnel was accepted after almost every tenth German soldier had syphilis or gonorrhoea. In organized brothels, prostitutes received wages, insurance, benefits, and proper medical care. According to surviving documents, it is known that there were similar establishments in Pskov, Gatchina, Revel, and Stalino. A significant proportion of the contents of parcels sent from Germany to the front were condoms.

In addition to the brothels themselves, contraceptives could be purchased in buffets, kitchens or from suppliers. However, the Germans, not concerned with sexual problems, complained that for the majority of hungry and exhausted soldiers, many of whom were destined to die, “rubber products instead of bread were tantamount to sending hot coals to hell.” “Waste material” What was more shocking, however, was that brothels also operated in concentration camps. So, in June 1941, Heinrich Himmler ordered the organization of a “house of tolerance” in the Mauthausen concentration camp, which could serve the SS men. Prisoners of the camp were used as priestesses of love, contrary to the racial policy of the Reich. Many of them, in conditions of mass hunger and high mortality among prisoners, voluntarily agreed to such “work.” But this only temporarily eased the lot of representatives of the “lower races.” Several months later they returned to the barracks, often pregnant or sick with syphilis. The authorities did not care about the fate of prostitutes. Most often, their suffering was ended by a lethal injection.

Illustration copyright Fred Ramage/Getty Images Image caption

A book recently published by a Berlin publishing house contains memoirs of the “Kriegskinder,” “children of war,” Germans whose childhood was spent in Nazi Germany. One of the authors of the book, photographer Frederica Helwig, tells how these people remembered war time and what they prefer not to remember.

Their memories bear a touch typical of childhood - they are fragmentary, sometimes vivid, sometimes blurry. Reading them, it’s as if you find yourself there, in those years, in that environment. Next to the text are photographs of elderly people whose childhood we have just touched upon.

In German they are called Kriegskinder, or “war children”: during World War II they grew up in Nazi Germany.

“One day I was walking by a small pond in Berlin,” recalls Brigitte, who was born in Dortmund in 1937. “There was a dead woman floating in the water, face down. Her skirt was inflated, and the wind was blowing her body across the pond like a sailboat.”

Illustration copyright . Image caption Brigitte was born in 1937

Similar stories, along with 44 photographic portraits, are collected in the book Kriegskinder. Photographer Frederika Helwig photographed these people, and Anna Waak recorded their memories.

Some of them spoke about that time for the first time: much of what children’s eyes saw was terrifying in its ordinariness.

The problem with stories like this is always that the culprits are someone else.

Another smoking cigarette butt, pebbles that are thrown into the mouth of a dead person, two tomato bushes on the balcony of a bombed house... Small details that are unconsciously imprinted in the brain and offer a new vision of what has already been described by historians more than once.

“This topic was revealed to me emotionally, and not through history or statistics (what they did, how they did - in general, everything that we grew up with and that we already know), - Helwig told the correspondent. - The problem with such stories is always "The fact is that the culprits, the criminals, are someone else. We tried to figure out how this could happen - after all, this happened in almost every German family."

Illustration copyright . Image caption Niklas, born in 1939, wrote Shadow of the Reich, a memoir of his father Hans Frank, governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland from 1940 to 1945.

One of her heroes, perhaps more than others, did more to deal with the past.

Niklas Frank, born in 1939, is the son of Hans Frank, the Nazi governor-general of occupied Poland, one of the main organizers of large-scale terror against the Polish and Jewish population of this country (after the end of the war, Hans Frank was arrested and sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials. - Note translator).

In the highly acclaimed documentary My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did, Niklas Frank traveled around Europe with British human rights lawyer Philip Sands (Sands's grandfather, who narrates the film, lost most of his Polish relatives in the Holocaust. - Note translator).

What these people talk about is interesting. But what they don't talk about is also interesting.

Frank's memories in the book "Children of War" refer specifically to the Polish period in the life of his family. He tells how he went shopping with his mother and nanny to the Krakow Jewish ghetto.

“We drive around the ghetto, my mother buys furs and scarves, paying as much as she decides. I’m standing in the back seat of a Mercedes, my nanny Hilda is sitting next to me, my mother is in the front seat next to the driver,” he recalls. “I’m wearing a black and white suit.”

“People look at us sadly. I stick my tongue out at some boy older than me. He turns around and leaves, and it seems to me that I have won. I laugh triumphantly, but the nanny silently puts me in the seat.”

Although these are childhood impressions, now they cause not tenderness, but anxiety. "Most of the memories in this book are scattered fragments real life, says Helwig. - What these people talk about is interesting. But what they don’t talk about is also interesting.”

Illustration copyright . Image caption Werner was born in 1936

Many of them describe someone else's death only as a child could see it. “There was a hanged man in front of our house. A German. He tried to hide from the war in a destroyed building, and they hanged him on a lamppost,” says Werner. “When he died, the rope was cut. He lay there for several days with his mouth open, and we children , threw stones at him."

"In the end, he was removed and buried on the side of the road. But since there should be no dead people on the city streets, trucks came, dug him up and other bodies and threw them into the back. We children watched all this. After that we went to lunch. On lunch was corn porridge, but in my head there were only these bodies in torn clothes and with protruding bones. I couldn't eat, I was sick."

He lay there for several days with his mouth open, and we children threw stones at him.

Events of the past return in "Children of War" with all the smells, sounds and tastes of that time.

“Many still remember how they were hiding in a bomb shelter, the sounds of air raid sirens, air raids, fear on the faces of adults, dead bodies, wounded, hanged, suicides, bombed houses. They remember how they played in the ruins,” writes in the preface to "Children of War" Alexandra Senfft, granddaughter of a Nazi criminal (Hans Elard Ludin, German Ambassador to Slovakia, responsible for the deportation of 70 thousand Slovak Jews to death camps. - Note translator) and the author of the book "The Long Shadow of the Past" (about what she had to go through when she learned the whole truth about the atrocities of her grandfather).

“Memories - clear or vague, with pictures of flight, with the “Russians”, with a feeling of hunger that is still felt, with the taste of chocolate that was distributed by American soldiers ...”

Illustration copyright . Image caption Anneliese, born in 1938: “I hear it like now: above, in the blue of a clear sky, bombers - silver, in formation, high, high and deafeningly loud.”

“Recognizing that the perpetrator was your father or your mother, and somehow reconciling this knowledge with the love you felt for them... This creates ambivalence and unbearable tension,” writes Senfft.

“Often hidden crimes of the past weigh so heavily that it breaks the psyche of descendants. It is impossible to digest: how could a beloved and loving father be a murderer at the same time?”

“A small part manages to somehow separate the criminal and the beloved parent in their souls, keeping both separate. But the majority either denies the crimes committed by the relative or renounces him.”

Many years have passed since the war, but it has not disappeared from family memory.

“What the Kriegskinder could not cope with, they passed on to us, the grandchildren,” writes Senfft. “Psychologists found that many grandchildren made their grandfathers’ experiences part of their own lives, even if the Nazi period was never talked about in the family.”

Helwig began to think about all this when she herself had children.

“The idea for this book came about when I was talking with friends about how we could teach our own children about the history of our country, how to make it interesting for them, and how to teach them the responsibility for what happened, the responsibility that comes with knowledge of the past."

“And from those conversations, an understanding arose: the oddities that we sometimes saw in our parents showed that they grew up during the war. And this opened up new opportunities for us to dialogue with them.”

This was her main goal - to start a dialogue. “Every German knows about the Holocaust, we are taught about it at school, a lot of documents have been published... But what has never been talked about in German families is what exactly your great-grandfather did and what happened in connection with it. This is still something like a taboo."

Not necessarily because children of war don’t want to talk about it. "That generation long years carried this knowledge within itself, and most of those with whom we spoke spoke quite freely on this topic. But they added that many were not interested in their stories.”

Illustration copyright . Image caption Karl, born in 1941: “Since the end of the war, two prisoners of war from Silesia worked for us, husband and wife, about the age of my father... We always prayed before dinner.”

Helwig hopes her book will help change that. "These stories give rise to emotions. And emotions give rise to curiosity and a desire to ask new questions, to have the frank conversation that is necessary to appreciate the time," she says.

"It's not about placing blame on an entire generation. It's important to try to encourage different generations to have open conversations."

Kriegskinder’s book ends with a quote from Israeli psychologist, psychotherapist, researcher of collective memory of Nazism and the consequences of the Holocaust, Dan Bar-On: “Armed conflicts lead to the emergence of zones of silence in society. The actions and responsibilities of the perpetrators are hushed up, as is the suffering of the victims, as well as the role of outside observers … This silence is often passed down from generation to generation.”

What is kept silent within the family inevitably breaks out and penetrates society and politics.

“The book is a reminder of something that happened many years ago - but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen again,” Helwig emphasizes. “When we started working on it in 2014, the world was a completely different place.”

“When I told my German friends that I was preparing a book about children of war, they reacted something like this: “Oh, interesting. But do we need to talk about this today? Look at Germany."

“Those were the years of Merkel and Obama - and suddenly, just two years later, completely different possible scenarios were revealed to Germany, Europe and America.”

In his introduction, Senfft points out how contagious collective silence can be.

"Research shows that trauma and severe stress can be passed down through generations. And what isn't dealt with gets passed on to the next generation."

And this goes far beyond the individual family. “What is swept under the rug, what is kept silent within the family, inevitably breaks out and permeates society and politics.”

) and I’m posting interesting photos for you from 1941-45

Today I found a disk with photos from satellite fishing. I saw this folder about how the Germans had fun during the war, after the battles. The funny shots will surprise you, I think. Of course, there are photographs that many will think: well, he showed this here on the forum... But I think history is not a shame or falsehood, history should be impartial, the same as captured by the photographer of that time!

By the way, what is satellite fishing? It's free to rob from a satellite. I did this for a while, I got carried away. Someone is downloading this via satellite Internet, and I wedge myself into the stream and download it for myself too! I set catch jepeg, avi, dvd from zero to infinity (file size catch). It was great, but tiring... During the night I “stole” 15-20 gigs in total. It took an hour and a half to sort and look. You quickly get fed up with pleasure... Someday I will tell you here what satellite fishing is and what you need to do at home in order to download for free from any satellites.

I reduced the photos for you and posted them here in this thread. Photos of fascists having fun after battles, laughing, making fun of their friends - it’s so interesting to see all this 60 years later! Of course, Germans are people too, and all people tend to joke and have fun in their free moments from fighting. After all, to survive and enjoy every day when you are alive is immeasurable happiness...

Take me for a ride, buddy! A fascist sits on a baby stroller, barely able to fit his seat

The German is trying something, apparently the cook. And his friends grin when they see his sour expression

Interesting photo shoot of naked Wehrmacht soldiers! Helmets, machine guns in hand and grins, like we can’t do that yet...

Like a Hercules with a cigarette in his mouth at war!

Apollo, your mother, covered the most secret things with a “fig leaf” (burdock). A knife-bayonet on the side, always ready for battle...

The hunt was a success... Apparently, north. Perhaps where is Murmansk or where is the Kola Peninsula.

And we don’t care about military service! Long and short. The photographer clearly makes it known that German army honorable to serve. And after more than 60 years, this is funny to us. Imagine for a moment, the trench dug by the tall soldier on the right is too big for the short one? How to get out of it in battle and run into the attack with everyone???? Imagine for a moment his attempts to get out of a deep hole?

And now it’s the other way around! Fat and skinny! At first I thought that Hitler was standing on the right as a child) But I saw the insignia, this is clearly a soldier wearing a mustache ala Fuhrer Hitler! Imitates, so to speak. A covert parody of the opposites in the German army. Do you think this photo shows us the essence?

Russian bear and the German conquerors. Please note - the sign shows that Leningrad is 70 km away

Impatient... A shitting fascist with a cigarette in his mouth) The photographer caught good timing the wrong side of war...

Cultural performance for the Germans after the battle...

Soon this little pig will go into the pan and feed all the German pilots...

Faithful friends

Touching the squirrel

We must drink to the successful invasion... The soldier is clearly posing with a bottle in his hand, sitting astride a bust of Stalin.