A Fatalist at War: the first world war diaries of Rudolf Binding
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Version 0 of 1. In contrast with the large number of British war diaries, many of which are exhibited in the Imperial War Museum or National Archives, relatively few German ones survive. Even fewer have been translated. In A Fatalist at War, reprinted twice in 1929 when it was first translated into English, Rudolf Binding, a German poet and novelist, describes how Belgium was laid waste, from the conqueror’s viewpoint, a hundred years ago this month. He wrote his wry, sometimes philosophical, observations as German occupiers indulged in fine vintages from looted wine cellars but soon ran out of fuel for their tanks. In the last week of October 1914, Binding contemplated on what became a long war of attrition. Encamped in Passchendaele, West Flanders, he wrote: “When one sees the wasting, burning villages and towns, plundered cellars, and attics in which the troops have pulled everything to pieces in the blind instinct of self-preservation, dead or half-starved animals, cattle bellowing in the sugar-beet fields, and then corpses, corpses, and corpses, streams of wounded one after another – then everything becomes senseless, a lunacy, a horrible bad joke of peoples and their history, an endless reproach to mankind … so that one feels that all human beginnings are doomed in this war.” A few days later: “This is the thirteenth day of uninterrupted fighting at the same place … I don’t call it a success when a trench, a few hundred prisoners, are taken. They have always cost more blood than they are worth. The war has got stuck in a gigantic siege on both sides. The whole front is one endless fortified trench. Neither side has the force to make a decisive push. This proves that generalship is lacking … There is no return to Passchendaele. The ruin here is indescribable … In a living room was a dead horse with half its entrails trailing over the yellow silk chairs and cushions; I cannot guess how it got there.” Passchendaele, 27 November 1914: “A terrific struggle is going on for the crossroads at Broodseinde, southwest of Passchendaele. Generals and Colonels are flirting with the idea that to take the crossroads … may mean something in the history of the world.” “Only a month ago this country might have been called rich; there were cattle and pigs in plenty. Now it is empty; not a wine cellar in any town that has not been requisitioned for the Germans. Not a grocer, corn-chandler, or dairy but must sell their goods to the Germans only … I take fifteen bottles of the best claret and a few of old port from the cellars of Chevalier van der B – they only drink wine and milk in this country and gin in the pubs – and do not even tip the butler two francs.” Drywege, 10 December 1914: “We are sitting in the dark … We care little whether an 88 Margaux is to be found in a chateau; what we want to find in the cellar is a barrel of petroleum.” Drywege, New Year’s Eve 1914: “The history of this war will never be written. Those who could write it will remain silent. Those who write have not experienced it.” Somme area, 31 May 1917: “The war crawls along like a car without petrol, a horse without any oats, or a human being without any joy in life … It seems to me as if the world were slaving away at a jigsaw puzzle and nobody could find the right pieces to finish with.” Before the offensive, 20 March 1918 (the Germans launched what is known as the Spring Offensive, a series of failed attacks along the western front that were to mark the beginning of the end for the German Empire), Binding observed: “Our own objective is the area where we lay in January and February of last year.” Aisecourt-le-Bas, 19 April 1918: “It is practically certain that the reason why we did not reach Amiens was the looting at Albert and Moreuil … The two places, which were captured fairly easily, contained so much wine that the divisions, which ought properly to have marched through them, lay about unfit to fight in the rooms and cellars.” “The troops, who moved out of Albert the next day cheered with wine and in victorious spirits, were mown down straight away on the railway embankment by a few English machine guns.” Bivouac among Brushwood, 30 July 1918: At midday yesterday, 30 big aeroplanes, nicely escorted by enemy fighting-planes, and nicely left alone by the German airmen, gave us a regular hail of bombs. The poor horses suffered particularly heavily since they can neither throw themselves flat nor climb trees.” 4 August 1918: “Everyone is tired of the war … In the end, even if an individual nation does not get its deserts, humanity will. This generation has no future, and deserves none. Anyone who belongs to it lives no more.” Binding collapsed with trench-fever and dysentery just before the Armistice on 11 November 1918. |