Soldaten

POHL: I was so annoyed when we were shot down; just before the second engine got hot, I suddenly had a Polish town beneath me. I dropped the bombs on to it. I wanted to drop all the 32 bombs on the town. It was no longer possible; but 4 bombs dropped in the town. Down there everything was shot to pieces. On that occasion I was in such a rage… one must imagine what it means to drop 32 bombs into an open town. On that occasion I would not have cared a damn. With 32 bombs I would certainly have had 100 human lives on my conscience.

MEYER: Was there plenty of traffic down there?

POHL: Chockablock. I wanted to drop a batch, because the whole place was full of people. I wouldn’t have cared. I wanted to drop them at intervals of 20 metres. I wanted to cover 600 metres. It would have been great fun if it had come off.

Pohl seems most concerned about inflicting maximum damage before his plane crashed and indeed, as he himself stresses, taking as many lives as possible. He takes aim where the town is “chockablock,” and he’s unmistakably irritated at not having achieved the desired results.

Meyer’s next question is one of professional curiosity:

MEYER: How do people react when they are fired at from a plane?

POHL: They go mad. Most of them lay down with their hands up, making the German sign. (Imitating rattle of M.G.): That laid them out. It was really bestial.

On to their faces—they all got the bullets in the back and ran zigzag in all directions like mad. Three rounds of incendiary bullets, when they had that in their backs, hands up—bang—then they lay on their faces. Then I went on firing.

MEYER: What happens if one lies down at once?

POHL: You get hit all the same. We attacked from 10 metres, and when the idiots ran I had a good target. I had only just to hold my machine-gun. I am sure some of them got a full 22 bullets in them. And then suddenly I scared 50 soldiers and said: “Fire, boys, fire!” and then we just sprinkled them with the M.G.’s. In spite of that I felt the urge, before we were shot down, to shoot a man with my own hand.

^{“This is what a Polish city looks like from the nose gunner’s position of a warplane.” Propaganda photograph from an He 111, September 1939. (Photographer: Roman Stempka; BA 183-S52911)}

In this conversation, one of the parties clearly feels the need to communicate something about himself, while the other tries to analyze whom he’s talking to and what the conversation is really about. We don’t know how often Meyer spoke with Pohl or whether he knew him well. But he seems somewhat revolted at his cell mate’s statement that he’d have liked to have directly shot and killed another human being. He comments: