The Cost of War

This photograph, dated 1940, shows the effect of the wartime draft on the Berlin District priesthood. Note the ages of the men. With the exception of the few service members in uniform, present for the picture because they served locally or were home on leave, everyone is either too old or too young for the initial call up into the army. Those missing from this picture are already at war. The picture comes from a Wehrmacht veteran I interviewed, who served first in the Nazi labor corps and later in the army on the eastern front. Quite a few of the men shown here did not survive the war Hitler instigated, the age range for military service being greatly increased after Goebbels called for "total war" in the wake of the disaster at Stalingrad.