My Life During Wwii and Beyond

By Louise N. Hatcher

Though the Allied defeat of Germany was a momentous victory for the world, it also had a profound effect on the families and communities left to rebuild their broken lives in the wake of war. For one German girl who survived the bombings of her homeland and endured the hostility of political conflict, rebuilding her life would take her across the Atlantic in a search for something more.

In My Life during WWII and Beyond, author Louise N. Hatcher shares the chronicle of a life marked by war but defined by a commitment to hope and to faith. From war-torn Nuremberg to the farmlands of Idaho, Louises journey is beset with challenges as she is captivated with her new American culture while she learns English and assimilates to life on the farm. But with her new country she is able to forge a new life of family and faith, becoming a wife and mother as she seeks her own professional and individual ambitions.

Whether as a refuge of war, an immigrant, and later a citizen, Louises story is one of hard work, determination, and faith, and she was able to overcome many difficulties. Join her as she shares her blessings and achieves a fruitful life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Jun 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489712226

Louise N. Hatcher

Louise N. Hatcher was born in Germany, and she came to America as a teenager for marriage. Her early life in America was tumultuous, and as soon as possible she became a US citizen. Living much of her life on a farm in Idaho, Louise has raised four children. Divorced and single for nineteen years, Louise was finally able to marry the love of her life.

Book preview

PART ONE

Prewar

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(1) Nuernberg before the war—a view from the castle.

PREWAR LIVING—

EARLY CHILDHOOD

E veryone has a pivotal moment when life changes for him or her. Mine came in September 1939. Up until that time, life was normal for me. One of the highlights of the year was my birthday, which was in August. With that birthday, I turned seven. Then came September. I remember so clearly the day we were visiting elderly friends of my parents whom I called Oma and Opa; those are endearing names for Grandma and Grandpa.

Opa was sitting there reading the paper, and he announced, We are at war with Russia! I asked him what war was, and he tried to explain it to me, but I could not comprehend the explanation.

Almost every year in late summer or early fall, we would go to Forchheim (about twenty miles north of Nuernberg), my mother’s hometown, for the Anna Fest. This is a festival that was celebrated yearly in late summer and lasted about two or three weeks. We and our relatives would hike up a forested hill, where there were restaurants with many long tables and benches inside, as well as outside under large trees. It was a day of feasting and drinking. Some bands were there and played beautiful music. It was a truly happy time. After eating, we kids would run wild over that place and have a lot of fun. We were given some money to buy whipping cream in a shell (this was the same material as an ice cream cone, except it was in the form of a shell or a little boat). How we enjoyed that day, and we looked forward to this event every year. As I remember, 1939 was one of the last summers we did this.

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(2) My family at the Anna Fest celebration.

Our lives seemed to go on normally, as if nothing had changed—until we were told that ration stamps would be issued and nothing could be bought without them. All at once, life became very different. Our food supply was getting somewhat short, and because we had to use stamps, the amount was limited, but all in all, we were not suffering. One thing I missed especially was fresh fruit, like oranges and bananas.

Shortly after that, both my brothers enlisted in the navy. My brother Willi, who was my elder by ten years, was assigned to a submarine (U-boat). My brother Fritz, twelve years my senior, was assigned to a destroyer. It was very sad to see Willi and Fritz go to the military, and it left a big hole in our family. In time, however, life went back to some routine again.

We lived in a high apartment house of five stories. It was a very large rectangle complex, where different apartment houses were joined to each other, like row houses in America. The houses went all the way on one side of the street from north to south on the eastern side of the complex, joining the southern street and houses, and then to western the row of houses up to the northern row of houses and close the complex. On the north side, the row of houses closed the big square of apartment houses. It was a big complex, and each apartment house had its own courtyard, which was paved with square, flat stones like large tiles. In the center of the big square was a fenced grassy area with clotheslines, used to hang washed articles for drying. The children could not go there to play. I do not know how many people lived in this complex, but I would guess several hundred or maybe a thousand people.

OUR DAILY LIFE

A little side note as to what our living quarters were like. We did have running water—that is, cold running water. Our stove was a wood- and coal-burning cooking stove with two gas burners on the side and an oven in the stove. When my mother wanted to bake a cake, or make a roast, the stove needed to be fired up because this was the only oven we had. Taking a bath was done about once a week, if we were lucky, because the water tank needed to have a fire lit under it to heat the water. The toilet had an overhead water reservoir; a chain had to be pulled for flushing, when water was available. Preservation of food presented special problems. We had no refrigerator, so it was difficult to keep things fresh in the summer. Consequently, we often had sour milk, which we ate with a little sugar on it. In the winter, a small stove in the living room that burned wood and coal heated our apartment. When the weather was very cold, we fired up the stove until the stove pipe and stove would turn red. Eggs were not generally available in the winter, so when eggs were plentiful, my mother would make a mixture of water and lime in a crock and placed the eggs in it. Then in the winter, when she needed an egg, she would go to the crock in the basement and get it. I can’t remember what the eggs were like, but we didn’t use eggs for breakfast; they were usually mostly for baking.

In those days, we heard lots of reports of the war on the radio. The newspaper would also have articles of what was going on, with pictures of parachutists coming off the airplane and pictures of the soldiers landing on the ground. This fascinated me, and I thought I could jump out from our second-story windows with an open umbrella in hand and land down below on the ground. To this day, I don’t know what stopped me doing this, but I am certainly glad that I was stopped because I could have been very badly hurt or even could have lost my life. At that time, I was about seven or eight years old.

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Thinking back on my school days, I remember when I started school; I was six years old. On the first day of first grade, all children had a big tuete, which was like a large, upside-down dunce cap filled with all kinds of goodies, candies, and chocolate. We were outfitted with a slate, which had a raw wood frame. Every Saturday I had to scrub the slate and the wood frame until they were very clean. We had slate pencils that had pretty foil or colorful paper wrapped around them. This was our writing material for the first three grades; after that, we moved to paper and lead pencils.

Another highlight in my life was Christmas. The fresh Christmas tree was brought into our home on Christmas Eve. Lots of excitement went along with that. In late afternoon, the children were told to go to another room and wait there until they heard the ringing of a bell. Waiting was like an eternity, and we hoped that the Christ Child would bring some nice gifts. When that bell rang, we rushed in, and the view of the lit Christmas tree would take our breath away. We had no electric lights for the tree, but there were wax candles that were lit and carefully watched. I would get a sort of a doll house; it was a large doll kitchen, and I would get it every year. After a few weeks, it would disappear, only to reappear the next Christmas. There was always something new added, which delighted me to no end. One year I had the greatest surprise ever. I received a cook stove! It was about twelve inches long, six inches wide and eight inches high. It had petroleum burners, and I could cook.

One day, my aunt Kathi and her son, my cousin Karlheinz, came for a visit. My mother and aunt went out to do some shopping, and my cousin and I were left home alone. I was about eight years old. We decided to cook but overfilled the reservoir with petroleum, and when we lit the burner, the whole thing went up in flames. We were extremely busy smothering the flames, and it all ended very well. We didn’t tell our mothers about this.

Roller-skating was a major recreational activity for the children in our neighborhood. The kids had lots of fun trying to perform all kinds of tricks. I watched them enviously because I did not have roller-skates. One Saturday, Dad asked me to go with him shopping—an unusual request. I went with him, not knowing what was on his mind. We turned into a store that sold, among other things, roller skates. What a happy day that was! My dad bought a pair of roller skates for me. It did not take long before I had the ability to skate quite well. My mother took me to some skating performances, where skaters showed beautiful and clever moves and tricks. My aim was to achieve the same ability as those skaters had. After school and on weekends, I had my skates on, and with all that practicing, my ability improved. Finding a smooth surface to skate on was not easy because many of our streets were paved with cobblestones.

One day I was skating when a truck came by, and I thought it would be fun to hitch a ride on the back of the truck. I got a good hold on the back of the truck. How fun it was to race down the street effortlessly! Then the truck made a turn and drove on to a cobblestone street. After being shook up, I was finally able to let go, and I decided not to do that again.

One of my mother’s friends told my mother that she was going out to the country to pick cherries, and she wondered if I could accompany her and pick cherries for us. My mother agreed that I could go with her, so a few days later, we boarded a train in the morning and went to the little town where the farmers had many cherry trees. After getting off the train, we walked for quite some distance to where the cherry trees were. After it was negotiated that we could pick cherries and eat as many as we wanted, we started picking. We had a square, oblong basket that would hold maybe twenty-five pounds of fruit. On top and in the center, it had a broad wooden handle about two and a half inches wide, and it was long enough to be fastened together on the bottom of the basket.

We started picking cherries. Most of mine went into my mouth, but a few made it into the basket. After I was filled up, I started to put the cherries into the basket. By late afternoon, my mother’s friend had filled two of her baskets, and as I remember, mine was close to full. We started out to go to the train station for our trip back home, but we got lost. We went every which way but could not find the right road to get to the train station. My basket got heavier, and I needed to shift it from one hand to the other to carry it. I started to carry it on my hip because my hands were sore and started to get blisters from the basket handle. I kept switching from one side to the other, hoping we would find the train station soon. It was getting dark, and I asked if we needed to spend the night in the forest. Shortly after this, the train station came in view, and we were relieved to see it. We had to wait for a little while for the train to come, but when we boarded, we were so happy to sit down. My mother was at the train station waiting for us and was glad to have us back. She was proud of me that I had picked and carried all these cherries. She canned them; of course, we ate some as well.

BUDDING PATRIOTIC SPIRIT

M y brothers wrote encouraging letters and told us how exciting it was to do something good for the Fatherland. Everyone was very confident and believed that Germany would win this war. Germany had invaded Russia, there was a need for builders to go to Russia to build landing strips for airplanes, roads for trucks, and the necessary buildings. My dad was a mason, and so he was called up to serve his country in Russia, leaving my mother and me alone in Nuernberg. Nuernberg was a large city with a population of over four hundred thousand before the war. From this population, about one-third of those people were taken to serve in the war effort; only old people, women, and children were left in the city. The picture of the city changed, and it was sad to see. Everyone showed true grit and strength of character, believing that what their leaders had done was correct and justified.

All children were required to join the Hitler Youth. We wore uniforms and felt very important because we were told that Hitler looked upon us with pride. Nuernberg was one of Hitler’s favorite cities. I remember when Hitler’s motorcade was proceeding on a street in downtown Nuernberg. The people lined the street on both sides, and it was a jubilant affair, with everyone expressing national pride. A large coliseum was constructed on an area near the Dutzenteich (Lake of Dozen).

A huge parade ground was built, as was a district for parades, including large viewing stands; this was a federal parade ground called the Reichsparteitagsgelaende. It was inspirational when the parades were held. There were thousands of soldiers marching in goose step with flags and standards flying in the wind. Great bands were playing wonderful marching music. Hitler and his large staff reviewed the impressive spectacle. Quite often Hitler came to Nuernberg and basked in all this attention.

Often, we in the Hitler Youth had marching practices in a small park on Sunday morning. There was no excuse to miss this, and if one wanted to go to church