My Opposition

On 17 September 1939 Kellner reflected on the foolish choices the Germans had made following World War I, electing Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists to power, and allowing Germany to become a totalitarian state:

We now have gone through the beginnings of two wars. Who dares to forecast the end of this one? Because of our experience with the war of 1914-18, Pauline and I are extremely skeptical. A burnt child fears the fire. What all can yet occur? The undreamed of, the unexpected. The land maps have been thrown out of joint. Has nothing even once been said of [Oswald Spengler's] The Decline of the West? Who carries the blame? The people without a brain! To trample democracy with one’s feet and give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible one can really tremble over the things that will come. A people allow an idea to be poured and hammered into them, narrow-mindedly follow every suggestion, let themselves be stepped on, tormented, conned, exhausted--and must, in addition, under national control, call out "Heil Hitler." One can feel only deep mourning in his heart over such a dreadful age and over the sheep-like patience of an entire population.[15]

Laubach Courthouse in 1938, where the diary was written

Kellner's diary takes to task not only the German people who elected Hitler, but the citizens and leaders of other nations who remained indifferent to evidence that dictators in Germany, Italy and Japan were plotting to take possession of the entire world. In a number of entries, Kellner accused politicians in the democracies of failing to stand up against the dictators. He pointed out that the world's intelligentsia, university professors and professionals in medicine and law, were willing to accept the National Socialist propaganda. "Hitler duped the entire world. He had the great unbelievable luck to meet with weak and vacillating opponents, cowardly people who knew nothing of idealism or had a feeling for solidarity, who did not possess honor and love for freedom," he wrote on May 3, 1942.[16]

He especially could not understand how those who had defeated Germany in the First World War watched without protest as Germany rearmed itself. In an entry dated 12 November 1940, he wrote:

Chamberlain and the entire subsequent government carry the blame for not having taken equivalent steps when they discovered Germany's preparations for war. A world power must always be prepared to successfully and energetically repulse any attack.[17]

Also troubling to Kellner, aside from the Allies' failure to prepare for the war, was their hesitation to enter the war with their full forces once it had begun. When Poland was attacked in 1939, followed by attacks on Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium and France, Kellner looked to the United States to come to Europe's aid. He could not understand why the United States acted so late to enter the war. On 25 June 1941, a few days after Operation Barbarossa and six months before Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, he wrote:

A page from the diary

When will this insanity be brought to an end? When will the intoxication of victory turn into a terrible hangover? Now is a unique chance for England and America to take the initiative, but not only with empty promises and insufficient measures. America will not be able to bring about a utopia here, but if it sincerely has the will to throw its entire might into the fray, America could tip the balance and bring back peace. At the height of their insane power, the German people cannot be brought to reason with words. Only a tremendous force and the commitment of all war material can bring the wild steer to its senses. I would like to assume that at least some men in the world are energetically working to do for humanity what all the other statesmen--through unbelievable short-sightedness--neglected or failed to do. Mankind, awake! Concentrate all your might against the destroyers of peace! . . . No deliberations, no resolutions, no rhetoric, no "neutrality." Advance against the enemy of mankind![18]

In the same entry he angrily wrote:

Even today there are idiots in America who talk nonsense about some compromise with Germany under Adolf Hitler. They are the most atrocious dummies.[19]

In a number of entries, Kellner records atrocities being committed by the German soldiers. On 29 July 1941 he recorded what he learned of the deliberate execution of captured Russian soldiers in the prisoner-of-war camps:

Wounded soldiers in the field hospital in Giessen are saying Russian prisoners-of-war are to be killed. Barbarous gangsters! Are the German people a people of culture? No! A cultured people must be able to think as individuals and behave properly, but our people have repeatedly allowed themselves to be controlled and guided by their "infallible" Führer without participating in the slightest degree in their own fate. "The Führer is always right, the Führer never errs."[20]

And he denounced the German military for their policies against the resistance forces in the occupied lands. On 26 October 1941 he wrote:

In Nantes and Bordeaux in France, two German officers were shot by unknown culprits. Fifty citizens in each of these towns were apprehended and executed in retribution. To let people who are completely innocent suffer for the deed of another is reminiscent of the horrific deeds of wild beasts in times long gone. It remained to General von Stülpnagel to revive one of the most gruesome deeds. The world will rightfully be outraged over so much inhumanity, and it will ignite a hatred that can never be extinguished. . . . How long will this reign of terror continue?[21]

Perhaps the single most important entry in the diary is dated October 28, 1941. After the war many Germans would insist they knew nothing at all about the Holocaust.[22] More recently, Holocaust deniers have questioned the extent, and even the existence of the Holocaust.[23] Friedrich Kellner's diary counters such suggestions:

A soldier on leave here said he personally witnessed a terrible atrocity in the occupied part of Poland. He watched as naked Jewish men and women were placed in front of a long deep ditch and, upon the order of the SS, were shot by Ukrainians in the back of their heads, and they fell into the ditch. Then the ditch was filled in as screams kept coming from it!! These inhuman atrocities are so terrible that even the Ukrainians who were used for the manual labor suffered nervous breakdowns. All soldiers who had knowledge of these bestial actions of those Nazi sub-human beings were of the same opinion that the German people should already be trembling in their shoes because of the coming retribution. There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. Of course, in the case of retribution the innocent will have to suffer along with them. Ninety-nine percent of the German people, directly or indirectly, carry the guilt for the present situation. Therefore we can only say this: Those who travel together, hang together.[24]

Kellner also recorded the miscarriages of justice within Germany itself, where the Nazis' disregard for laws and human life took its toll upon the citizenry. On 5 July 1941 he wrote this:

In Giessen, Forester [Rudolf] Ritter should have been arrested because he said the war would last another three years. Two years ago R. was executed because he maintained that the war would last two years. The truth may not be said.[25]

Entry of April 14, 1943, about death sentence for listening to an overseas radio broadcast.

Kellner was particularly incensed by the internal censorship laws. Censorship in Nazi Germany was implemented by the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. All media—literature, music, newspapers, and radio broadcasts—were censored, in an effort to reinforce Nazi power and to suppress opposing viewpoints and information. On 14 April 1943, upon reading that the People's Court of Justice in Vienna had imposed the death sentence on a man accused of listening to a non-censored overseas radio broadcast, Kellner cut the article from the newspaper and wrote next to it:

Ten years in prison for a "radio crime"! But that was not punishment enough for the senior Reich prosecutor, who did not rest until he found a court that would give the death sentence. Just think: the death penalty for listening to a foreign broadcast! It is inconceivable any other country in the world would give out such a punishment for listening to a German broadcast. This terror regime has given itself a gruesome monument into the distant future. Will there not be retribution, Herr Reich Prosecutor?[26]

Two months before the war's end, on 7 March 1945, when the Allied armies crossed the Rhine and entered German territory, Friedrich Kellner tried to explain why the German people themselves had not rebelled against Nazi rule, and why it was necessary for outside forces to rid the Germans of the tyrannical government they themselves had voted into power.

The way that leads to the abyss for the German people has come even though the Party patriots continue ever to believe and hope. There are still those who do not want to see, who will hope right up to their funeral for a miracle from the Führer. In all other respects the number of peace lovers grows from hour to hour.

The coming generations and the foreign countries will never understand why the German people did not stop the Party leaders by force and turn against the Party tyranny so this horrible war could be terminated. To clarify that, I would remind them the number of Party members is extremely large, particularly the Party functionaries with power. Plus millions of people fully believed in the National Socialist philosophy and were influenced by the Führer's radio broadcasts and the detailed manipulations of Party propaganda.

There is no important place in the state or in the private sector that has not been occupied by proven Party members . . .  so wherever there might be a reaction, a Hitler guard stands. And those who are in these positions, who earn their living under Hitler, are certainly not opponents of the Hitler system. They want victory and not the defeat of Hitler because they will lose everything in a defeat, even though some of them, to disguise their black souls, have treated people somewhat more leniently.

Today our opponents are at the Rhine in the West, and at the Oder in the East, and still I do not believe a collapse can be brought about by a popular uprising. Without assistance from outside it is not to be considered. Only the armed forces would be able to make a conclusive end. There, however, a united will is missing. The prominent officers know just as well as the Party officials they are going to be swept away when the war is lost. National Socialism and German militarism will cease to exist. Therefore the war continues until it is impossible for any further war actions. The war will end when the German troops finally run out of ammunition to fire at the advancing enemy.

That is how I imagine the war will end. The opponents must continue to use their might in order to terminate the war.[27]