film

by Kathrin Matern

Hitler had long declared the annihilation of Bolshevism to be one of the main ideological and political goals of National Socialism. With the attack of the Soviet Union, a surprise attack without a declaration of war, he defies the so-called Hitler-Stalin Pact, the non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, and all legal conventions. The attack on June 22, 1941, with the German-Soviet War as part of the Second World War, opened a real power-political and racially ideologically motivated extermination campaign. Hitler’s plan: the conquest of the Soviet Union – through the extermination, murder and expulsion of many millions of people.

War experiences recorded in personal documents

Wilhelm Venherm probably never spoke about his war experiences – but documented the time in photos and films.

Much of what the soldiers really experienced in World War II has remained untold to this day. Above all, what the war did to them, how it changed and marked them. Pitt Venherm from Klein also knows about this many people in the Mecklenburg Lake District. From a father at the front who never talked about it, but documented the war meticulously: in letters from the front, photos and films.

Only now, after almost three decades, has Pitt Venherm discovered these legacies of his father, of which he had no idea, in the attic of his house in Klein Many. And with this find he was to get to know his father in a completely different way 30 years after his death. “That was very touching,” says Venherm, visibly moved. “And it also gave goose bumps when we thought about it: What can we expect there now? What is written there in the letters? What is in there? What did he really experience?”

How Much Do You Need to Know About Father’s Past?

30 years after the death of his father, Pitt Venherm found his records from the Second World War.

Venherm leafed through a large notebook with the inscription “Feldpostbriefe, 30 December 1942”. How much do you have to know about your own father before you can guess who he was? Pitt Venherm has asked himself this question again and again since the discovery. His father Wilhelm Venherm received the draft notice in August 1939. Son Pitt didn’t know much more than dates, he says.

When Pitt Venherm was born in 1947, the war was over. “My whole upbringing had nothing to do with war. Nor was there any talk about the war,” he recalls. “Probably because you couldn’t talk about it either. Everything was still very close. The atrocities were there and everything that had happened.”

Documentaries of the war on film – and lasting questions

Based on his father’s recordings and letters, Pitt Venherm can trace his change of mind during the Second World War.

The old tin cans with rolls of film would have surprised him the most. In it: films without sound on which his father Wilhelm, known as Will, documented the war. At the time, Will Venherm was a telegraph pioneer, pulling the strings for the transmission of messages and for eavesdropping on the enemy. According to his draft notice, he was present in the attack on Poland in 1939. He still believes in the propaganda spread by the National Socialists: that the Polish army attacked the German armed forces and that they were therefore “shot back from today”. This is what it says in a letter Pitt’s father, Will, wrote to his wife Elli in September 1939:

“My dear Elli-Frau, we all had faint hope that it would go on like this, at least we all hoped that when the Polish megalomania was overcome, the struggle would have to end.”
Felpost letter from Wilhelm Venherm to his wife Elli, September 1939

Son Pitt puzzles about what really happened to this day: “Well, you only see the pictures, he was always behind the front lines. But was he also involved in slaughter? Was he involved in small battles, in gunfire Did he shoot himself, did he kill? I don’t know any of that. “

Hitler recordings: “He was probably surprised himself”

When Pitt Venherm discovered his father’s recordings of Hitler, he was initially stunned.

When Germany extended the war to all of Europe, Wilhelm Venherm came to France in the spring of 1940 via the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The western campaign, also known as the French campaign, led within a few weeks to the defeat and occupation of the previously neutral states of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. When German troops occupy Paris without a fight, Adolf Hitler visits the city to thank the soldiers.

And the social democrat Will Venherm films how Hitler walks the line of soldiers in the French capital. Pitt Venherm still can’t believe that his father Wilhelm took these pictures: “Because my father was stationed there, just ran around there with his camera and the pictures actually look as if they weren’t,” says Venherm. “He wasn’t a court reporter either. I think he was surprised himself when this Adolf Hitler marched past him. I can’t explain it any other way.”

The fear at home: The world war is also sitting at the table

Making gifts for the children on vacation at the front – this photo of his father moved Pitt Venherm deeply.

But the war is always at home, in the Westphalian town of Rheda-Wiedenbrück, at the table. Will Venherm’s wife Elli lives there and hopes that nothing happens to her husband, that he comes on home leave. Wilhelm writes to her almost every day. When he finally arrived, in the winter of 1942, they made Christmas presents together for “their little people”, as Will calls their children. Son Pitt has now also found photos and film recordings of this that have moved him a lot – especially the question marks such as “if I will get home leave” or “if I will still be alive” that resonate in the documents. “Yes, in 1943 or 1942, ‘What can I give my children?'” He quotes. “And then just make drawings and work out ideas, get a piece of wood and carve a village, saw it out and paint it”, Pitt Venherm tries to imagine the situations at that time.

On the Eastern Front: How much more total can the war get?

To this day, the family does not know whether Wilhelm Venherm himself had to fight in battles and where exactly he was on the Eastern Front.

In 1942 Wilhelm Venherm also had to go to the Eastern Front. He is no longer allowed to write exactly where he is. In the letters from this period there is often no exact date, only the month. His photos show the life of the Russian and later the Ukrainian population: women with headscarves, old farmers, children.

In the midst of exhausted soldiers marked by war, Will Venherm experiences how Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had his so-called after the defeat of Stalingrad and the increasing bomb attacks on German cities Sports Palace speech of February 18, 1943 wants to lighten the mood. And wonders how much more total this war can get.

To this day, the family does not know whether Wilhelm Venherm was also involved in the so-called Donets Basin operation on the German-Soviet front in August and September 1943. Not what he has seen, experienced or possibly done himself. But he survived – unlike the nearly 3.5 million German soldiers who lost their lives for the megalomania of the Nazi regime on the Eastern Front.

Life after the end of the war is still “pretty brown”

The children carry on the legacy of the war generation. Two of Pitt Venherm’s siblings emigrated.

From 1943, Will Venherm was employed by the Telefunken company in Berlin. There he experienced the end of the war. But the war goes on in people’s minds for a long time. Pitt’s older siblings experience the same. His sister Hedda is the first to emigrate in the 1960s. His brother Wilfried follows later. “I think life was still pretty brown. It was shaped by the fascist era and they couldn’t stand it,” sums up Pitt Venherm.

He himself is politicized by the Vietnam War. In the old Federal Republic he is doing community service number 573. His father Will is proud that Pitt refuses to do military service. Years later, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pitt Venherm moves to Kleiniele, in the Mecklenburg Lake District. In his luggage: the boxes with his father’s letters, photos and films. But Wilhelm Venherm will never get to know his son’s new home. He dies in 1991.

The legacy of the father: “I have that in me”

As a photographer and cameraman, Pitt Venherm was able to achieve what his father always wanted.

“I think I am a large part of my father,” says Venherm today. “I have that in me.” He became a cameraman – and with it he achieved what his father Will always wanted to be. Before the war intervened. “That I am a photographer, that I have made or am still making films. All of this clearly comes from my father. “

Sometimes Pitt Venherm goes upstairs to his room and puts in his father’s films. Look at the old recordings. That show his parents how he never knew them. More than 80 years ago, before the war took the father to the front. His father Wilhelm Venherm, called Will, would have turned 115 in May.

additional Information

In 1933 the National Socialist Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor. From now on, the Nazi regime asserts its absolute claim to leadership – with the help of terror and propaganda. more

The Second World War begins with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Years of fighting cost the lives of more than 50 million people worldwide. more