He Would Not Salute

This shipyard worker paid a price for his forbidden love.

An August Decision  

"I have never done wrong."

            The Nazis claimed their straight-arm salute had origins in ancient Rome, but that was a lie. Historians believe Italian fascists first used it in the early 1920s to honor Mussolini. German fascists admired the salute's militant posture and adopted it.

            "It must be regarded as a survival of an ancient custom, which originally signified, "See, I have no weapon in my hand," said Hitler.

            On June 13, 1936, Hitler visited the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg to witness the christening of the warship Horst Wessel. By a strange twist of history, a photograph taken that day went unnoticed until in 2011. That’s when it showed up in a Japanese blog dedicated to boosting relief efforts for that country's recent earthquake and tsunami.

            The black-and-white picture shows more than 100 men packed together, their arms outstretched in the Nazi salute, all presumably chanting "Heil Hitler" (Hail, Hitler!) or "Sieg Heil" (Hail, victory!)

An Odd Expression

            While there are a few men in the photo whose arms are not raised, one man stands out. His arms are crossed with seeming defiance. He has an odd expression, almost a grimace. None of the other men seem to want to be near him.

            The man was August Landmesser. He was a shipyard worker. He had joined the Nazi Party five years earlier hoping it would help him find a good job which it apparently did.

            In 1935, however, when he became engaged to Irma Eckler, the party expelled him because she was Jewish. They were to be married in September, but before they could exchange vows, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws which forbid Jews and non-Jews to marry and made legal other severe forms of discrimination against Jews. Their first daughter Ingrid was born the next month.

            In 1937 the lovers tried to flee to Denmark but were arrested at the border. When Eckler became pregnant again, the Nazis arrested Landmesser, accusing him of violating the Nuremberg Laws. He was tried and found guilty.

            In a gesture of leniency, the court accepted his assertion that he thought Irma was only part Jewish, and he was not jailed. She had been baptized as a Protestant when her mother remarried. As a parting gesture, the court warned him if he continued on the same path, he would be imprisoned.

Racial Infamy

            Two months later authorities seized him again. He begged the court for leniency: "My fiancee is expecting our second child any time now. Now I would like to marry her before this occurs and not leave her alone with the two children. I also ask that it be taken into consideration that I have never done wrong and that in this case the crime was committed thoughtlessly and, as it were, in a state of mental confusion, first due to the constant questions of acquaintances about how I'm going to manage and pay for everything once the second child arrives."

            The court found him guilty and sent him to Borgermoor concentration camp where he served two-and-a-half years of a three-and-a-half year sentence for dishonoring the Aryan race—Rassenschande (racial infamy).

            A newspaper account of the trial read: "In passing sentence, the Court maintained that if the purity of the Gennan race is to be successfully maintained, then such violations of the Race Protection Law (Rassenschutzgesetze) must be severely punished; that applies to Aryans as much as Jews. However, in this case the Court did not totally ignore the human aspect of the case. The Court was concerned not so much with the relationship of the accused with the woman involved, who is hardly a very worthy character, but rather his relationship with his children, for which the Court has every sympathy. However, the situation was aggravated by the defendant resuming the forbidden relationship and thus acknowledging neither restraint nor repentance. This was also the reason for the Court's decision to impose a sentence of penal servitude."

            Landmesser never saw his wife again.

            The Gestapo arrested his wife and sent her to prison where she gave birth to her second daughter Irene. From there, she was sent to one concentration camp after another and ended up up at Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp. She was then taken to the Bernburg Euthanasia Center where it is believed she was murdered in February 1942. The Nazis used this facility to kill mentally ill, sick, elderly, and disabled people as a part of its racial cleansing program. A total of 9,384 innocents died there in a gas chamber that used carbon monoxide.

            Freed from prison in early 1941, Landmusser worked as a laborer until being drafted in 1944 into a battalion composed of former prisoners. Strapped for manpower, the Nazis used these teams for dangerous missions, such as minefield clearing, where large numbers of casualties were expected. He died in combat in Croatia in October of that year.

            August and Irma’s children Ingrid and Irene were sent to an orphanage prior to their parents' deaths. The Nazis later allowed Ingrid to live with her Aryan grandmother, and she did so until her grandmother’s death in 1953.

            A family friend took Irene to relative safety across the border into occupied Austria. When she returned to Germany during the war, she was admitted to a hospital, which was told her identity papers had been lost.

Later both children were placed with foster parents. In 1958, Irene published her family's memoirs. These mostly consisted of reprints of Nazi documents which set out the course of events that happened to her family.

MORAL: Doing what is right does not mean you will succeed. At least in your lifetime.