European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I had to organize this by taking the alarm post together with two reliable men.

Convalescent soldiers from the military hospital were used for that and there we got the fuses.

A few days later, in Benghazi, a quarter of the biggest ammunition depot the Rommel-army kept in Africa was blown up.

With this a difficult problem emerged:

Six Arabs and one German soldier were shot dead,

who had not participated at all and now the question came up:

“It is your fault that innocent people got shot by the ‘Wehrmacht’!”

It had to be weighed up: Which side has to take the higher blame?

If you don’t do anything against this criminal regime,

if you join in silently, how much are you then to blame?

War costs so many deaths - don’t you have to consider

that even innocent people loose their life in the fight against fascism?

That is already a difficult question in civil life, it was the same under war conditions.

We said the fight against the fascist regime had to come before anything else;

a very difficult ethic decision.

Well, the question of desertion was obviously discussed between all the people who were active as anti-fascists.

Only in Africa there was no front which’s lines could have been passed.

In Africa warfare was mobile.

You could only change fronts if a unit was enclosed by the English.

Then it was possible to say: “I would like to run over”. Or to say: “I’ll run away”, then you avoided captivity.