|
Ernst Dannecker Blog Entry |
|
April 1, 2022, 1:53:00 AM April 1, 2022, 1:54:29 AM 4/1/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Suit Of Armor/Free Draw Friday." So I forgot my first day back to drawing regular themes was Free Draw Friday, but then I remembered, so, this is that theme and not the theme theme... 😳 Today's character portrait attempt from my weird anthro alternate-reality WWII storyline is Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Col.) Ernst "The Devil" Dannecker, without his cap (top), and with it (bottom). I really hadn't intended to draw him (he's not a primary character, in fact he's deceased by the time the main story takes place) so soon after drawing his stepdaughter Gret Dannecker, but here he is. He's a labor camp commandant and...really, really skeezy. That's pretty much all I can say in a family-friendly environment. Regarding his design, I've been trying to keep most of my Nazi characters as purebred German and related dog breeds, since that makes the most sense. My relatively clear mental image of Dannecker, however, screamed Siberian husky, so that's what he is. (I know real huskies are big dramatic crybabies but oh well.) There'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se (Gret's entry has quite a bit of info). TUMBLR EDIT: Ah welcome April, AKA COVID surge month here in Michigan...hoping it doesn't get as bad as the past two years. 😖 Anyway...here he is, the horrible Devil Dannecker I went over in Gret Dannecker's entry. His basic profile is already live on Toyhou.se so you can see a basic outline of the skeeziness there. Or ah, I guess I'll try to be plain but non detailed here. Just a warning that this is one of the more disturbing characters I've created so far, so you've been warned. ONE MORE WARNING. I'd put a bunch of line breaks there but Tumblr formatting is just awful and I can never get it right. But yeah, there's your warning. Okay. One fine day Lt. Col. Ernst Dannecker accidentally collides with a woman who's out running errands with her little gaggle of kids (two girls, two boys); he starts to yell at her to watch where she's going, when his eyes fall on the oldest of the four kids, Margarethe "Gret" Dannecker (that's not her surname at the time, of course), who is around fourteen or fifteen years old. And right that minute, he decides he has to have her. Her mother, Else, is profusely apologetic about the accident (it's WWII and you just mowed down a high-ranking SS officer, how would you feel?) and gathers her kids and hurries off, but already Dannecker is mulling over how to get hold of Gret (who casts him a furtive glance as they depart, since she knows already that something is not quite right here). Dannecker basically starts stalking the little family. Sits at a nearby cafe every day, although visiting bars at night is more his thing, to see what Else's daily schedule is, when she'll pass by and how often she has the kids with her. Uses his SS position to dig into her background and finds out she's a widow whose husband, a low-ranking soldier, was killed in battle the previous year, leaving them near destitute. And in that, he finds his "in." Starts staging "coincidental" run-ins with Else, acting friendly and charming and interested as she gradually grows infatuated with him. He finally proposes, offering to move Else and her family into a nice big house and provide for them well with his SS funds and make them his own family. (Dannecker is a highly eligible bachelor and the SS just loooooves blond kids like Else's. Plus there are already four of them! Nice ready-made Aryan family. Sweet.) (Oh yeah, uh, SS guys were highly encouraged to father at least four kids. Or so I read.) Well, of course she can't turn that down. They all move into that nice big house and become a nice big family, though Gret refuses for quite a while to refer to him as "Papa." (She does so only after her mother rebukes her one day for referring to him at the breakfast table as "Herr Dannecker." Dannecker graciously insists it's okay. But she falls in line after that.) Dannecker is pretty patient (well, to a point--fairly certain he cheats on Else with random women during this time) and he lets about a year pass for them all to get comfortable being the family of a labor camp commandant (he doesn't follow the regulation that he's supposed to live on camp grounds, instead returning to the family home at night). He spoils the children, but especially Gret, paying for an expensive education, fencing lessons (some of which he gives himself, nice quality father/daughter time), toys, and clothes--Gret ends up with a large collection of dresses in all colors, though Dannecker favors the black one, because it matches his SS uniform. Of course he'd want Gret and himself to match, because he basically considers her his bride. The situation changes shortly after when Dannecker starts visiting Gret late at night. He tells her that this is something special, just between the two of them; yet he also says that if she tells anyone, she and everyone else in her family will be taken to his camp and shot. She agrees to keep quiet and go along. Dannecker is roughly in his forties; Gret is sixteen. This continues for at least two years, and Dannecker (who outright informs Gret of his wish to divorce her mother, marry her, and adopt her siblings as their children) develops the habit of bringing Gret along to the camp; he likes showing it off to her, as well as showing her off to the camp, yet it's also intended as a subtle threat, to help keep her in line. He shows her an abandoned passageway, which only he knows about, leading out of the camp, explaining that down there nobody can hear you scream. (It's true.) Almost everyone else around them is oblivious, sometimes deliberately so, to what's going on. Two exceptions are Dannecker's chauffeur, Andreas Cranz, who sees how weirdly inappropriate he is toward Gret on their way to and from the camp; and the kapo, Isaak Schindel, who pretty much notices everything. Neither one of them is in much position to do anything about it, though. The adjutant, Sturmbannführer (Major) Lars Franke, seems aware something isn't right, but doesn't really care, and everyone else, especially Gret's mother, ignores all the strange little clues. Although unaware of what's going on between them, another party pays close attention to Gret every time she visits the camp: inmate Josef Diamant, who determines that Gret is his ticket out of there. Gret determines that Diamant is her ticket out of her own situation. Independently, they reach the same conclusion: Dannecker must die. (Have I mentioned the lovely reputation Dannecker has among his own inmates? Physical and especially psychological torture are some of his favorite pastimes. Diamant became his primary target, or "pet project" as Dannecker calls him, when he tried to stop him from beating another inmate. Dannecker stopped, all right--only to return a few moments later, shoot the prisoner dead, then corner Diamant and frighten him with a round of Russian roulette. Later on he sneaks into the barracks and wakes Diamant up with his gun to his head again. Surprise! You'll never know when he'll show up! This goes on for quite a while, and includes a lovely interlude where he plays a variant of the Russian knife game and jams a needle file into Diamant's hand, injuring him badly enough that he has to switch to using his other hand or risk getting killed off for being unable to work. He also pits Schindel against Diamant and the other inmates because of course he would. (Schindel ends up giving Diamant a good beatdown every few days to desperately prove to Dannecker that he's still fit for his job as kapo.) These are just some of the pastimes that earn him his nickname of the "Devil." Even his own adjutant is scared of him.) Too bad Dannecker's too distracted by his creepy little fantasy of setting up house with Gret to even notice when she and Diamant start plotting against him. You can find a decent summary of these events in Gret's entry. There's a nice juicy irony in Dannecker himself, who adored using Russian roulette to terrorize Diamant, having to face Diamant terrorizing him with Russian roulette. AAANNNNND...that's the end of Dannecker. That's not quite the end of the drama, though, since Dannecker's murder, as soon as it's discovered (Dannecker's own creepy habits ensure this takes about an hour to happen), sends the camp into chaos. Maj. Franke, the adjutant, seizes control of the camp, since nobody's quite sure what to do under such unprecedented circumstances. After a few days of no luck tracking down either the escaped inmates or Gret herself (at first she's assumed to be a kidnap victim, but it soon becomes clear she actually took part in her stepfather's murder), Franke seems to suffer some kind of mental breakdown, terrorizing the guards and even ordering Schindel to beat one of them when he refuses an order. Schindel can't disobey an order either, BUT he also can't beat an SS guard, so he has no idea what to do and just freezes--Franke grabs his stick and starts beating the guard himself. Another guard leaves the camp to report this to authorities while everyone else, SS officers and kapo and inmates alike, just stand around watching and wondering WTF is going on. When the insubordinate guard falls unconscious, Franke orders that none of the other guards can help him or else they'll be punished, then retreats to Dannecker's office and locks himself in. Everyone is left in the camp yard all O.o The guards eventually disperse since they were given the order not to assist; the inmates, on the other hand, start edging closer to the unconscious guard. Schindel notices this, picks up his club, and, standing over the guard, brandishes the stick and glares at the other prisoners until they retreat (one of them spitting at Schindel and the guard for good measure); he then sits on the ground by the guard to protect him. None of the other SS officers can convince Franke to leave the office or even respond to them, and by now nobody is doing any work, everybody is just milling around not knowing what to do. The next day, Lt. Col. Hasso Reinhardt arrives; the guard who had left the camp managed to get in touch with camp authorities and inform them about the situation. Reinhardt volunteers to go see what's going on. He enters the camp and finds an SS guard knocked out on the ground, the kapo sitting nearby keeping an eye on him, none of the prisoners doing any work, and none of the SS guards doing any work, either, plus the adjutant-turned-commandant is locked in his office and won't respond to anyone. So...okay. 🤨 He knocks on Dannecker's door but Franke screams at him to get lost; it's only when he announces his name and rank that the adjutant hastily opens the door and apologizes. He's not so apologetic when Reinhardt announces he's taking command of the camp, and orders Franke to resign his position for "medical reasons." Franke tries to object--there's nothing medically wrong with him, he swears--but Reinhardt makes it clear there's no room for negotiation, unless he wants to end up in a camp himself. (Nazis don't like people with mental issues.) So Franke departs, albeit simmering with rage...he has yet to reenter the plot currently unwinding in my head, though he's presumably still out there somewhere. Maybe some other commandant took him, I dunno. Stay tuned! After getting the camp operational again, Reinhardt names a new adjutant, Sturmbannführer (Major) Jan Delbrück (promoted by Reinhardt a couple of ranks from Obersturmführer, or first lieutenant), and starts to rehabilitate the camp somewhat, taking up residence on the grounds like the commandant is supposed to do, beefing up security, bringing in a secretary (SS-Helfer Britta Azinger) to help get records in order, and attempting to make things a bit more civilized by not QUITE working the inmates into the ground, and making sure those who are too sick or weak to work anymore are dispatched "humanely" with a shot to the head. (Yeah...an enlightened guy. 😐 Well, compared to Dannecker, at least. He doesn't terrorize and torture the inmates, so, there's that.) Yes, it's still a labor camp, yes, there are still "selections" where people unfit for work are killed and sent to the crematorium, yes, the same fate awaits those no longer able to work, but hey, no Dannecker! Everyone considers the situation under Reinhardt to be much more tolerable and the camp's reputation improves...kind of ironic, since Dannecker had been so proud of how he ran things, previously. This camp BTW is never given an official name in the story, largely since the location of the action is never clarified. It's just known as Dannecker's camp, even after Reinhardt takes over. Though his shadow looms large over the camp ever after (Reinhardt speaks in terms of never letting what happened under Dannecker's command happen again), almost nobody misses Dannecker after he's gone. There IS one party out there who grieves the loss of Dannecker...his widow, Else. She's heartbroken to lose the man who swept her off her feet and rescued her family from poverty (even if he only did so to get at her daughter, and cheated on her and called her an "old fat cow" behind her back on numerous occasions--oh, and there was that whole "I'm going to divorce you and marry Gret and adopt your other kids" thing, too). Even after one of Gret's younger brothers reveals that he witnessed the abuse taking place on one occasion, she refuses to believe Dannecker is to blame--surely Gret seduced him or something like that. She saw the way Gret wore the pretty dresses he bought her, the way she would hold his arm as he paraded her around--surely she was asking for it. Gret's involvement in his murder just proves this in her eyes. On a future occasion when she and Gret accidentally run into each other, she disowns her daughter, calling her a whore and blaming her for the loss of her beloved husband. Gret sees the hatred in her eyes and doesn't bother trying to argue. The two never reconcile. Great work there, Dannecker. 👍 [Ernst Dannecker 2022 [Friday, April 1, 2022, 1:53:00 AM]] [Ernst Dannecker 2022 2 [Friday, April 1, 2022, 1:54:29 AM]] |