 my weapon, and I did not want to become a murderer.”
While in Berlin, I had a chance to talk at some length with a former border guard named (for present purposes) Rudi Hermann, who defected last March and now drives a delivery truck for a West Berlin department store. Rudi came to my hotel room one evening and, over coffee and cognac, told me how he had happened to flee to the West. A sturdily built young man who stands about five feet seven, he has blond hair, light-blue, half-hooded eyes, noticeably white and regular teeth, and a manner that is assured. He was wearing slacks, a short-sleeved sweater, loafers, a gold signet ring, and a handsome wristwatch that tells many things besides the time of day. The watch, he said, was the only thing of value that he had been able to bring across the border with him. After he had sat down and lighted a cigarette, he told me that he was twenty-three and was born in a rural district of East Germany. His father was killed on the Eastern Front in 1943, and his mother was killed two years later by the invading Russians. “They tried to rape her,” Rudi said. “She resisted, and they shot her. I had an uncle, and he took us in—my three sisters and me.” The uncle, Rudi went on, was then in the S.S. and is now a fairly important functionary in the S.E.D. Rudi said that his mother had been a religious woman but that the uncle had forbidden the children to go to church and had also made them join the Young Pioneers and, later, the F.D.J.—the Freie Deutsche Jugend, or Free German Youth. At sixteen, Rudi went to work in a factory; eight month later the young employees there were canvassed for “volunteers” for the Vopos, and he joined. “It was not what you might call voluntary duty,” Rudi said. “You are expected to join. You are told that it is your duty to join, to protect the country from the imperialist warmongers, and, of course, to save the Frieden [peace]. Everything is for the _Frieden_. Besides, you know if you don’t join you will get no promotions where you work. Or, say, you like to study and want to go to the university. You are told that if you serve your two years, you can go to the university later. If not, you do not go.” Rudi was unusually well qualified. Besides having received training in the Communist youth organizations, he had the advantage of being an orphan. “Orphans are very popular with the regime,” he said. “The authorities think you are reliable if you are an orphan, because you never had parents to give you any ideas.”
Like other recruits, Rudi received three months’ basic training. Many of his senior officers had been in Hitler’s Army, and the discipline was strict. The recruits put in a ten-hour day, of which four hours were devoted to studying the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. “At the end of each week is the examination,” Rudi said. “You repeat what you learned, and if you succeed you get a certificate. If not, you have to devote your spare time to studying and take the examination again. If you miss the second time, you are made to appear before the F.D.J. You have to stand up before the youngsters while your political instructor tells them what a Dummkopf you are. You are stupid, he says, you are lazy, and so forth. The system is to make you look silly and want to do better. You have to promise before the Jugend that you will try to improve.” Though questions from students are not encouraged in the political-education sessions, an unenlightened recruit occasionally asks one; if he asks very many, he is watched. The political instructors themselves have several key questions, prepared by the Central Committee, that are designed to uncover any recruits who are not, as Rudi put it, a hundred and fifty per cent for the regime. One of the probing questions asks why it is necessary for soldiers to fire on people trying to cross the border. The answer expected by the instructor is, briefly, that such persons are criminals. A recruit may then ask, “Must I also shoot at children trying to escape?” A recruit who asks that question, Rudi said, will not be put