The protocols contain numerous first- and secondhand descriptions in the period up until late 1944 of executions of soldiers who had supposedly shown cowardice or deserted. As was the case with reports about the executions of partisans, the tales rarely called forth astonishment, outrage, or negative reactions. Listeners were mostly interested in gory or unusual details. Otherwise, the stories were part of the everyday realities of war. Several generals tried to prove their toughness by describing how they lined up soldiers “against the wall” at the front. These officers were by no means fanatic Nazis. Lieutenant General Erwin Menny reported about his assignment in Russia in 1943:

The only response from Menny’s interlocutor, Schlieben, was a question: “Where was that?”⁶⁹⁵

Success

Of the 17 million men who served in the Wehrmacht, around 80 percent of them were directly involved at some point in the fighting. Nonetheless, not every one of them had the same opportunity to demonstrate heroism, achieve a great victory, or be part of a battle. There were large numbers of radio operators, fuel coordinators, and airplane mechanics—an infantry division even included bakers, butchers, and medical orderlies, who never fired a shot. Their lives were fundamentally different from those of an infantry foot soldier, tank driver, or fighter pilot. Wehrmacht soldiers wanted one thing above all: to be able to do their jobs well, whatever they were. A mechanic who worked on submarines or a sapper in Stalingrad wanted to perform as well as he had in civilian life as a bookkeeper, farmer, or carpenter. And the ethos of wanting to do good work wasn’t the only thing these men transferred to their military lives. They also maintained the same tendency as in any organization to criticize poor working conditions or senseless procedures and orders.

In this sense, Major Alfred Gutknecht complained about administrative inefficiencies that hindered him in his function: