Volume III – The War that Reshaped Europe (1914–1918)
Chapter 19 – Letters from the Front
The Western Front, 1915.
Between the thunder of guns and the silence of anticipation, soldiers wrote. Letters were lifelines; ink on paper carrying voices across the mud, binding the trenches to kitchens, bedrooms, and farms hundreds of miles away. The war might swallow their bodies, but letters carried their hearts.
For the men of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, writing became ritual. Each evening, when the guns quieted and dusk settled like a grey shroud, the soldiers hunched under candlelight or the flicker of a stub of lantern, scratching their words into paper spotted with mud.
Adolf Hitler, the quiet Austrian, was among them.
Hitler's Voice on Paper
Hitler had no sweetheart to write, no wife, no child. His only regular correspondence was with acquaintances from Munich and occasionally distant relatives. Yet his letters carried the fervor of someone who had finally found purpose.
He wrote not of longing or homesickness, but of struggle and destiny. Where others described rats and lice, Hitler described sacrifice. Where others cursed the mud, he exalted endurance.
One surviving letter, written to a Munich acquaintance in 1915, captures his tone:
"I am not here as a man, but as a soldier of the Fatherland. Our suffering is great, but greater still is the honor. Each hour in the trenches steels us. If fate demands my blood, then I give it gladly, for Germany must live."
To the men beside him, Hitler was a comrade who rarely laughed and seldom complained. On paper, however, he became a prophet of sorts, convinced that the war was not merely political but spiritual; a trial by fire for the German nation.
The Letters of Others
Around him, the contrast was stark.
Private Josef Weber, a baker's son from Nuremberg, wrote to his mother:
"Dearest Mama, the mud is endless. My boots are never dry, and my feet bleed. Last night, Hans froze in his sleep, and we buried him in the trench wall. They say we'll be home by spring, but I don't believe them anymore. Pray for me, Mama. I only wish to see your face again."
Corporal Ludwig Braun, engaged to marry before the war, wrote to his fiancée:
"My beloved Liesel, every night I dream of your bread and your laugh. I swear to you, I will come back. This war cannot last forever. Do not cry when you see the papers. Your Ludwig still breathes."
These were not declarations of destiny. They were cries of survival, words meant to reassure loved ones and convince themselves they would live to see peace.
The Jewish Soldiers' Words
Among the regiment were Jewish soldiers too, patriots who wore the same grey uniform, endured the same mud, and faced the same bullets.
Levi Rosenfeld, a law student from Frankfurt, wrote to his brother in Berlin:
"We fight not for glory but because Germany is our home. I pray that when this ends, we will no longer be looked at as strangers. If my sacrifice proves my loyalty, let it be remembered."
Another, Samuel Stein, wrote to his wife:
"Dearest Miriam, the shells are constant. We do not speak of survival, only of duty. Tell our children their father is proud to serve. Tell them to study hard, to live, for life is what we are dying for."
The irony is cruel in hindsight. These men bled for Germany, believing their service would earn acceptance. Yet within decades, their loyalty would be erased, their names dragged into the mud of conspiracy.
The Ritual of Reading
When letters arrived, men gathered like children at a market fair. They shouted, laughed, wept openly. Some kissed the paper, pressing it to their faces as though it carried the warmth of home.
Those who received nothing tried to appear indifferent. They smoked or stared into the distance, but their eyes betrayed the ache of absence.
Hitler was often among the latter. His letters were few, and his replies fewer still. He watched others read with quiet detachment. Yet when comrades shared food or tobacco from home, he accepted gratefully, acknowledging their kindness.
It was in these moments, passing around sausages or sipping from a shared bottle that the regiment became more than soldiers. It became family.
Between Reality and Illusion
The letters painted two wars.
On the page, men softened their words. They wrote of minor discomforts, of courage and patience. They spared their families the true horror. No one wrote of bodies swelling in the sun, of the stench that clung to their clothes, of comrades drowning in mud.
In reality, the trenches were a graveyard waiting to swallow them whole.
Hitler alone seemed to revel in the suffering. Where others concealed, he exalted. Where others begged for the war's end, he insisted it must be fought to the last.
Later, in Mein Kampf, he reflected:
"The war gave me something that I had lacked: it made me part of a greater whole. What I had sought in Vienna, I found in the trenches. The brotherhood of suffering is the truest bond."
Censorship and Propaganda
Letters were censored. Officers read them before they were sent, scratching out complaints, erasing criticism of command. Men quickly learned to self-censor, shaping their words into the acceptable form: courage, endurance, faith in victory.
But even censored, the despair leaked through. Between the lines of every cheerful reassurance lay fatigue, fear, and longing. The letters became a code between the front and home: what was unsaid mattered as much as what was written.
The Unwritten Letters
There were also letters that never reached their destination. Torn by shells, stained in blood, buried with their writers in shallow graves. A soldier might clutch a half-finished letter in his breast pocket when the bullet struck, his final words sealed forever in silence.
Hitler, as a dispatch runner, often carried such letters. He delivered not only orders but last words. Sometimes he found himself holding envelopes smudged with blood, addressed to women who would soon receive not the letter, but the black edged telegram of death.
He never forgot these moments. To him, each death was not tragedy but testament. In every fallen comrade, he saw a martyr to the German cause.
A Divided Memory
By 1916, millions of letters had crossed Germany. They sustained morale, held families together, and gave soldiers a reason to endure.
But they also revealed division.
For many, the war was misery endured for survival. For Hitler, it was a sacred mission. For Jewish soldiers, it was loyalty proven in hope of equality.
Three visions of the same war, inked on the same kind of paper, carried by the same field post.
Years later, when Hitler rose to power, he would not remember the Jewish soldiers who had fought beside him, nor their letters of loyalty. He would not recall the quiet tears of comrades dreaming of home.
Instead, he would remember only his own words, his own conviction that war was destiny.
And in that selective memory, sharpened by bitterness and myth, lay the seed of his gospel of hate.