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 on border duty with another soldier who is considered in any way doubtful. “The instructor has the answer ready,” he added. “He says that anybody who is trying to cross the border is a criminal, or else he is working for the C.I.A. The capitalist countries are all warmongers, and they are so bloodthirsty they make spies out of children, six, eight, ten years old. And, of course, they give them arms. So if you see one of them trying to escape, you have to know that he is armed. He may shoot you—therefore you have to shoot first.”
Off duty, Rudi went on, the recruits spent most of their time playing soccer and other games. Their pay was the equivalent of thirty dollars a month, at least a third of which they “volunteered” to put into so-called Reconstruction Savings, a government savings plan that pays interest of two per cent. “What was left went for cigarettes and drink, and those things are expensive,” Rudi said. “Some things are cheaper there—movies, sports events, books—but not food and drink.” Still, the life, taken as a whole, did not seem too bad, Rudi continued. He had never before been away from the region around his birthplace, and he enjoyed seeing new sights. As a recruit, he didn’t have to worry about food or clothing or a place to live, and he found it easy to meet the various requirements. In the final examinations, he scored high on both military and political questions. If a recruit fails the political examination, he has to repeat the entire three months’ program; if he fails a second time, he is given a routine job, like guarding a shoe factory somewhere in the interior.
After basic training, Rudi was transferred to a unit in a suburb of East Berlin, where he was assigned to border duty. Starting about four months before his enlistment was due to end, he was called almost daily by his company commander, who urged him to reënlist. After he had been promised a chance to take a course in passport control, he decided to stay on. On completing this training, which took three months and included the 