The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-WarCurtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
History
The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War
Curtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
I expressed a desire to seek only one more thing, the church on the
road to Friedland which had been destroyed by the Russians after
the sixty maidens had been driven into it. We went to it, but,
alas! it had not been disturbed in the least. I somehow felt that
my guides saw the lack of destruction with genuine regret. The big
man with the black beard was at a loss to reconcile the story he
told me at Konigsberg with the actual facts found on the spot.
"Somebody must have made a mistake," was all he said.
My last view of Allenburg was from across the river with the long
rays of the setting sun burnishing the ruins of the once beautiful
church, the church I saw months later on the screen in the London
display room, the church that has been shown all over the world as
evidence of Russian methods in war.
I went all through East Prussia studying first hand the effects of
the great campaign. My luck increased from day to day. I secured
a military pass to visit all hospitals in the XXth Army Corps,
which aided my investigations not a little. The prejudice which I
had against the Russians died in East Prussia. It was buried
forever the following winter when I was with the Russian Army in
the memorable retreat through the Bukowina. In East Prussia I was
in an entirely different position from a man investigating
conditions in Belgium, for I was in the German's own country after
he had driven out the invader. I tried to see some youth whose
hand had been cut off, but could not find a single case, although,
everybody had heard of such mutilations. The fact that no doctor
whom I questioned knew of any case was sufficient refutation, since
a person whose hand had been cut off would need something more than
a bandage tied on at home.
When the Russians entered the province they struck yellow and black
posters everywhere announcing that it was annexed to Russia. In
view of this the Russian officers were instructed to restrain their
men and to treat the natives well. Isolated cases of violence, for
the most part murder and robbery of the victim, had occurred where
men had broken away from restraint, but they were surprisingly few.
After I returned to Berlin I met an American correspondent who was
in East Prussia when I was. His sympathies were pro-German, but he
was an, open and fair-minded man, who, like me, had left Berlin
with a deep feeling against the Russians, thanks to the excellent
German propaganda. "I went especially to get some good stories of
Russian atrocities," he said. "I thought that every mile would be
blood-marked with evidence, but I came back defeated. Some petty
larceny and robbery, a Red Cross flag torn to shreds by a Russian
shell, two old men murdered and robbed by Cossacks, and a woman in
the hospital at Soldau, who had been outraged by five Cossacks, was
all that I could find, even though I was aided by the German
Government."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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