February 25, 1942

Conditions and Events Prior to Vitus' letter of 25 February, 1942

Vitus states in his letter of 25 December, 1936, that he may have to serve in the army in the coming year, eight to ten weeks, and again in his letter of 22 May, 1938 that he will probably have to join the military shortly. It appears that at this time he did not hesitate to mention the possibility of being called for military training, if such information might have been subject to censorship (Reichstag Decree of February 1933). But in his letter of ___ June, 1933, he states that he is sending Dad a history book and that he may mail it from Switzerland “because of the strict customs regulations.” Also, he had not mailed post cards before but there are two, 5 October, 1934, and 3 November, 1935. Whether he intended this to be “open'” correspondence I do not know.
There is no political comment in letters after 14 May, 1933, except that he mentions restless conditions, and several times his concern at living so close to the border. Once he states they are 1000 meters and in another letter, two kilometers from the French border. Possibly he means 1000 meters (.6 mile) to the Rhine and two kilometers (1.2 miles) from Haltingen across the Rhine to French soil. In this letter of 4 August, 1939, he mentions fear of war. But by this time Hitler had been mobilizing for some years and the Austrian Anschluss took place March 11-12, 1938. In May Hitler was taking bits of Czechoslovakia and in March 1939 entered Prague. September 1, just 27 days after this letter, Hitler invaded Poland. September 3, England and France declared war on Germany – a month after this letter. This is the last letter we have until that of 25 February, 1942. If he wrote, the letters have been lost.
Then there is the letter of 25 February, 1942. Germany had declared war on the U.S. December 11, 1941, so it would not have been possible, or wise, to try to mail a letter out of Germany to the U.S. He was certainly taking a risk even mailing this from Switzerland to tell Dad that he was “leaving,” and after all of his letters to Dad, I realize he must have felt a devotion to an uncle he had never seen and felt emotionally compelled to write what might be his last letter to him – and was. Dad died January 23, 1944, before the war ended. Sometimes, after reading the history surrounding a letter, its contents his me with an emotional thud. One can not dismiss the closeness of family ties, even so remotely removed from each other.
As to the historical events preceding this letter, Hitler's delayed attack on Russia on June 22, 1941, met with resistance and conditions he did not anticipate but should have learned from history: the attempt by Napoleon in 1812 and of Charles XII of Sweden in the winter of 1708-09, against determined Russian troops and the severe Russian winters. Meeting disaster in Russia, being bombed repeatedly by the British Air Force (and all this time Hitler was stating that Britain was defeated but just would not admit it), the sudden attack by Japan at Pearl Harbor precipitating war between Germany and the U. S., Hitler evidently needed all the manpower he could get, regardless of age, so Vitus, approaching his 39th birthday, was called into service.

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