Eyewitness: Adolph Hitler—To the Front, October 1914

8 October 1914: Hitler's List Regiment Departs Munich
 for the Front

 

And thus at last the day came when we left Munich to fall in and do our duty. I saw the Rhine for the first time as we were ​traveling beside its gentle waves on our way westward to protect it, the German stream of streams, from the greed of our old enemy. When the gentle rays of the first sun glinted down upon us through the delicate veil of morning mist from the Niederwald Monument, the old Wacht am Rhein roared from the endless transport train into the morning sky, and my breast was ready to burst.

Then came a cold, wet night in Flanders and we marched through it in silence. When day began to break through the mist, we were suddenly met with an iron greeting as it hissed over our heads. With a sharp crack, it hurled the little pellets of shrapnel through our ranks, splashing up the wet soil. Before the little cloud was gone, the first “hurray” came from two hundred voices in response to this greeting by the Angel of Death. Then the crackling and thunder began; singing and howling, and with feverish eyes, everyone marched forward, faster and faster. At last, across beet fields and hedges, the battle began—the battle of man against man.

From a distance, the sound of song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, and jumping from company to company. Just as Death began to busy himself in our ranks, the song reached us too, and we in turn passed it on: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!” (“Germany before all, Germany ahead of everything in the world”.) Four days later, we went back to camp. We even walked differently. Seventeen year-old boys now looked like men. Maybe the volunteers of the List Regiment (The Second Infantry Bavarian Regiment) had not really learned to fight, but they did know how to die like old soldiers.

That was the beginning.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

June 1940: Langemark Cemetery, Flanders

Note: Hitler's inexperienced unit was  part of the assault near Ghelhuvelt Chateau that commenced on 29 October 1914. He was not part of the "Student Battalions" that attacked near Langemark earlier. Hitler did, however, visit the Langemark Cemetery on his June 1940 victory tour before signing the 1940 Armistice.