"Never again war!"

Otto Duve, witness of the Second World War in Germany and local politician

At 95, he is still engaged in his community. The voters' association he co-founded now provides the mayor of Horneburg, a small municipality west of Hamburg. Due to his experiences in the Second World War, one thing is important to Otto Duve: peace.

Otto Duve ©private

Otto Duve was lucky in misfortune: born in Horneburg near Hamburg in 1929, he was spared front-line service in the Second World War. Indoctrinated as a Hitler Youth, the 15-year-old was able to observe how Jewish forced laborers of the same age were herded from the nearby concentration camp to their workplace.

A few months before the end of the war, Otto is drafted into the “Volkssturm” to dig defensive trenches near Cuxhaven. Nearby is a launch pad for the V1, the first cruise missile used by the military and one of the Nazis' “wonder weapons”.

After the war, he becomes an industrial clerk. At the age of 27, he joins the Social Democratic Party and becomes deputy mayor. A visit from former forced laborers gives him an idea. Together with a group of like-minded people, he has organized a local Holocaust Remembrance Day every year since then.

Here is Otto Duve’s live story as narrated by himself: ¹

My name is Otto Duve. I was born on January 10, 1929 in Horneburg. And I still live in Horneburg, although my birthday was 95 years ago. My mother and father separated before I was born and never married, which is why I have my mother's maiden name as my surname.

After I was born, my mother took a job as a housemaid in Hamburg. And I stayed in Horneburg with my grandparents. Soon we were joined by my aunt, my mother's sister. And I grew up with these three people. My grandfather was a master tailor and earned enough money for the family to live on. In that respect, everything was actually fine.

I wasn't teased because I was born out of wedlock. Only at school there was always the difficulty of having to name my parents from time to time. I helped myself by pretending that my grandfather was my father. Actually, I felt that was quite natural. Grandpa absolutely filled this role.

I didn't know much about my biological father. The family had completely cut ties with him. I only got to know him when my own son was born. I somehow had my father’s address. And then I wrote to him - and he replied straight away. And we've had a very friendly relationship ever since.

I had witnessed Hitler’s seizure of power in the form of my mother, who was visiting us at the time, coming into the room and announcing that it was no longer allowed to say “Heil Moscow!”. Which of course meant nothing to me. I also didn't know that “Heil Moscow!” was the Communist greeting. I only knew that afterwards everyone said “Heil Hitler!”.

I started school in 1935 - and the teachers there also said “Heil Hitler”. It was around this time that young men started coming to my grandfather and having brown uniforms tailored for them - and of course they also said “Heil Hitler”. Then the winter relief organization was established and at some point people in the same brown uniforms brought us a winter relief package, which they delivered to us with a friendly “Heil Hitler”.

On April 20, 1939 - the birthday of the “Führer” - I was accepted into the “Deutsches Jungvolk”. The German Young People was the boys' organization of the Hitler Youth. Well, and then I was a “Pimpf” [a tiny boy]. That's what the members of the Hitler Youth were called until the age of 14. I was on duty twice a week, on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday afternoons - and I loved going. The service was fun. We played outdoor games and went on excursions, with some campfires.

Yes, I even made a career out of it over time. Became a group leader. And I developed a certain pride in this role of a “Jungscharführer” or “Jungzugführer” [a young platoon leader]. In the first village there were only eight or ten boys that I was allowed to command. Later, there were 30 or 35 boys. I was allowed to take them on field games or home evenings. Of course with political indoctrination, which I had also experienced - and now passed on with conviction.

In a nutshell: The “Führer” is always right. Even my fellow confirmands wrote that in the confirmation book. And in our Horneburg movie theater, there were two big banners. One said “The Führer is always right” and the other said “The Führer acts when the time is right”. The German newsreel, which was a pure propaganda tool of the NSDAP [National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Nazis’ Party] and the state leadership at the time, was shown before every movie in the Horneburg cinema, including those we were allowed to see as children.

The Second World War began on September 1, 1939. Food supplies were immediately rationed. Without ration cards, there was no butter, no meat, no bread. Nothing however really changed at school. Well, of course there was talk of the war and of course the war was spoken well about, and the Poles were talked about badly. But apart from that, school went on as normal.

The Reichsluftschutzbund [Reich Air Raid Protection Association] then also became active. The Association was founded in the 1930s, before the war. Its task was to prepare the civilian population for air warfare. For example, people were ordered to a meeting on the market square. And there they were given hand pumps and buckets - and they had to learn how to pump water out of the bucket.

Then the call went out to clear the attics of houses of disposal things so that the attic contained as little combustible material as possible - in case an incendiary bomb fell into it. These were preparations for passive air warfare, I'd say. Meaning: not for dropping bombs, but for reacting to bombs. Of course, it's clear that war was expected when these exercises were organized. In other words, they would go to war - from today's perspective. Back then, the view was different: in case we were attacked by the enemy, we were supposed to have the right weapons at hand to defend us.

As the war progressed, the mood naturally became increasingly depressed because of the many casualties from our community. Also from my circle of friends. This left marks on us. Although the grief was of course mixed with respect for their heroic deaths. But there was a noticeable change in mood towards depression.

And then, in the fall of 1944, the satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp was built in Horneburg. The prisoners were young girls. I was 15 at the time, 16 at the beginning of '45. And the girls who were brought to this camp were the same age, some were a little older. The context was that there were some empty rooms in the Horneburg leather factory, which was no longer used as a leather factory. And the Valvo Radio Tube factory, a subsidiary of the Philips company, moved in there. And the girls had to make the filaments for the radio tubes.

The location of the camp was just outside Horneburg, while the leather factory was in the opposite direction. This meant that every morning the girls were herded from their barracks through half of Horneburg to their place of work - and back every evening. In other words, this funeral procession, I'd say it was sad to watch, was fully visible to the population.

We knew that the girls were Jewish. And we knew - we had of course been taught so at school and in the Hitler Youth - that Jews were, as they said at the time, an inferior race who had already done us harm as a German people and were still trying to do us harm wherever they could. They were also partly to blame for the war. As a result of these teachings, we already had certain reservations about these camp inmates. We had also been taught that Jews were lazy, that they had absolutely no desire to work. And now the girls had to work… Well, then let them work!

Their appearance alone made us feel a little sorry for them, though. After all, it was winter. The camp had been set up in October 1944 and remained in operation until February or March 1945. And the girls had hardly any stockings, wore clogs and they were bitterly cold. We felt sorry for them. Every now and then someone would try to slip them something to eat, assuming, as was the fact, that their food was very poor. Putting an apple on the road at a place where the procession would pass... If however someone from the guards found out, they were given a stern warning. I heard, for example, that the pharmacist in Horneburg, where the girls passed twice a day, once shouted to the guards “You should be ashamed!” or something like that. They then reported it to the police. And the two Horneburg police officers are said to have turned up at the pharmacist's house and warned him to refrain from making such statements in future. Otherwise he would have to fear severe punishment.

We had to leave school in February 1945. Nevertheless, we received a secondary school graduation certificate with a note saying that the certificate was issued without an examination because we had been called up for military service. So we were called up to work in Cuxhaven. We were supposed to spend four weeks there building anti-tank ditches and trenches. All those born in 1929. In this respect, I was lucky that I was born on January 10, 1929 - and not December 31, 1928, because then I would have been at the front.

We were accommodated in a school building. And taken in the morning on a work train and driven back in the evening. I think we left at seven and drove back at 3 pm. Then we had supper. There were often senior Hitler Youth leaders there, proclaiming slogans or heroic songs - and insulting us because we fell asleep.

While we were in Cuxhaven, we once saw a V1. There was a launch pad not far from there. We heard the noise every day when the rocket took off. And one had probably gone off the rails and was circling over Cuxhaven. It looked like an airplane with a rocket engine. Although the German air force also had jet fighters. I saw one once, around the turn of the year 1944/45, and I was amazed. It flew at about the speed of sound. In other words, by the time I looked to see where the noise was coming from, the plane was long gone. That fascinated me back then. The whole time I was there, we only saw two enemy planes, two U.S. Mosquitoes flying overhead. We ducked down a little. But they didn't take any notice of us and flew back to England, I guess.

So we dug there. And then after a fortnight we were sent home because we were supposed to go to weapons training. There we no longer used spades and shovels, but practice hand grenades and bazooka. We did that for about 14 days - and then I got a call-up order to the Wehrmacht. And so did my friend Hermann. He was training to be a roofer. But because there just had been a bombing raid on nearby Stade his foreman said he was indispensable: he was supposed to help repair the bomb damage. So Hermann stayed at home - and I went to Walsrode alone, by train.

That is, not quite. The Soltau train station had been bombed, so we couldn't go any further. And then I had a strange experience. A few guys in plain clothes were on the train who had boarded in Hamburg, also about my age. “Where are you going?”, one asked me. “I have my call-up order.” “What's wrong with you?” Then to his friends: “Come here, look at this idiot! He's got a call-up order - and he's off!” And to me: “If we get something like that in Hamburg, we throw it away and say it was lost in the bombing.” That was another blow to my certainty of the “Endsieg” [Hitler’s proclaime final victory]… At some point, a railroad official came and asked where I wanted to go. I said, “To Walsrode.” “You don't need to go there. That's where the English are.” So I stayed on the train. They said we were going back to Hamburg. And I was back home after three days.

We were then strongly adviced by our superiors, all of whom were war-disabled non-commissioned officers, to volunteer for immediate deployment with the Waffen-SS [a military branch of the Nazi Party NSDAP]. The promise of double food rations served as a lure. That was what the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Günter Grass, fell for, for example. He was born the same year as me. He went to the “Waffen-SS”. That was the thing he was critized for afterwards: “So big here as an anti-fascist - and that time in the Waffen-SS!” None of us signed up. We didn't want to go to the front straight away. Our love of our country didn't go that far.

Then the bridges in Horneburg were blown up, by the German Wehrmacht - to stop the advance of the Allies. But prior to that, the Horneburg administration ordered the town to be evacuated. Horneburg was declared a fortress. So the residents emigrated to the neighboring villages. We put our old grandpa, who was now disabled, on a handcart, Aunt Henni and I pulled. We were billeted with a farmer we knew. But in the evening, the Horneburg municipal servant came around: “Back! Horneburg is being handed over!” And we all went back. Then the British kept up a barrage of tank fire all night. But the shells flew over Horneburg and into the moor. Some of them hit. There was one casualty in Horneburg. Some buildings were also damaged. But measured by what they fired, Horneburg would have been bombed to smithereens if they had all hit. We were feeling a bit shaken.

The next day, the British actually moved in - and the war was over for us.

I then trained as an industrial clerk at Maschinenfabrik Witz in Horneburg, a medium-sized machine factory. Because the company wasn't that big, I wasn't just trained at the desk, but also at the workbench. I learned to file, and a bit of electrical engineering. I passed the commercial assistant exam in 1949.

My boss, Hermann Witz, had socialist leanings. We went to the Leipzig trade fair once [that time still East-Germany, German Democratic Republic, GDR]. We had some contacts with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Neustrelitz [GDR], who had also organized the invitation at the time. This led to the fact that one day Hermann Witz was contacted by the State Security. Because... oh God, what a strange story that was.

There was a locksmith called Holthusen, he once had worked for Witz. And he went to the State Security and said: “There are conspiratorial connections going on!” And then the State Security came! I was working at a company not far away at the time - and they came for me too. What I knew about it.... That was 1963. I was quite relaxed about it because I didn't know anything about conspiratorial efforts. I could only say that there was nothing to what Holthusen said.

Hermann Witz had once employed a communist. My friend Hans-Heinrich Knappe. I only got to know him through Witz. But then he was imprisoned. That was when I was still with Witz, in the 1950s. It was forbidden to be a communist that time. So they locked him up. Our pastor from Horneburg always visited him in prison.

The office manager during my apprenticeship and therefore my direct trainer was Lothar Hofmann. I found him to be an extremely amiable person. It was almost comradely. It wasn't a master-apprentice relationship, but more of a friendship. Even though he called me by my first name - and I addressed him as “Mister Hofmann”. That wasn't unusual for an apprentice. Sometimes apprentices were still slapped in the face back then. And we in the contrary had a really human atmosphere here.

While I was still training, Lothar Hofmann left the company and Germany and went to Denmark. He got married there and I visited him twice, once with my wife. When he went to Denmark, we were still on a master-apprentice terms. And when we met up again, we hugged each other and were both on first-name terms. And he said: “Wow, Otto, you've become a really valuable helper for my friend Hermann Witz.” Because I still worked at the company for 13 years after my apprenticeship.

I then applied for a job at a well-known machine factory in Hamburg and spent the remaining 29 years of my working life there. Partly in field service. I lived here in Horneburg and that was my area here. I became an authorized representative and thus rounded off and completed my professional life. I got married in 1956 and was able to support my family and build this house with the proceeds of my work.

Otto Duve ©private

Then one day the then chairman of the Horneburg local association of the Social Democratic Party approached me and said: “Otto, would you like to run for election to the local council with us - with the SPD?” “You think so?” “Yes, your friend Hans will do so too.” And then we both decided to give it a try. They immediately put us on some of the top places on the list - and we were both elected straight away. And then we enjoyed it and stuck with it. Hans-Heinrich then became mayor after a few years. And I was his deputy for a couple of periods.

40 years for the Social Democratic Party. Then I left the SPD. Not because of the big line, but because of quarrels here in the village. But then I founded a voters’ association that now provides the mayor: the Horneburg voters’ association of “Active Independent Residents” [Aktive Unabhängige Einwohner]. The AUE, for short. Our river is called Aue. I thought that was a nice play on words. Aktive - Unabhängige - Einwohner. The first letters are AUE.

In 2000, two former inmates of the concentration camp who were now living in Israel visited us here in Horneburg. They had the idea of visiting the place of their former suffering and approached the community with this idea. Lea Schnapp and Erika Weiß came to Horneburg with relatives and were warmly welcomed. They had the opportunity to talk to the local council, the local people and school classes. We then walked the path together a few times that they had to walk as prisoners in the war.

Sporadic actions had already been taken, for example a memorial stone had been erected in Horneburg near the camp. And then interested people joined forces and formed an action group. We call ourselves the “Action group against forgetting, for more tolerance”, which seeks to come to terms with the past and organizes an annual commemoration on 27 January, the so-called Holocaust Day.

I blame the Social Democratic Party for a few mistakes. Especially those people who now want to move “from Finland to the Black Sea - eastwards” again. We made ourselves ready for war once. That's not my style. Not just because it ended badly, but because I think that being ready for war is far less useful than being ready for peace. This tendency prevailed in the SPD when I joined in 1956. Of course, that was also what prompted me to become active in the party - its particular committment to peace policy. And that was exactly my direction. Not least because I had experienced the war that had just ended, not as a frontline soldier, but with all its consequences.

And even more so, of course, because of the details I learned about what had happened in the so-called Third Reich. I didn't want that to happen again under any circumstances. That's what I wanted to stand up for. “Never again war!” Instead: willingness to make peace, willingness to compromise, diplomatic efforts to avoid military conflicts because they cause immeasurable human suffering.

And there are still people who make money from it! That reminds me of the saying: “The rich supply the weapons, the poor supply the corpses”.²

1. For a better understanding of German terms, I have translated or paraphrased them in square brackets. I have also added a few details where I felt it necessary for understanding.

2. In German it rhymes: "Die Waffen liefern die Reichen, die Armen liefern die Leichen."

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This text is a transcripted translation. If you speak German, you can listen to the original radio story narrated by Otto Duve himself and edited by me.