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Jan Delbrück Blog Entry |
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May 6, 2022, 1:28:27 AM May 6, 2022, 1:33:18 AM 5/6/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character portrait attempt for my weird anthro alternate-reality WWII storyline is Sturmbannführer (Major) Jan Delbrück, without cap (top drawing) and with cap (bottom drawing). He's the current adjutant (second in command) at the fictional labor camp in the story and is a pretty conflicted character with quite a few idiosyncrasies which I won't blather about here, there'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding his design, he's supposed to be a German shorthaired pointer, liver and white patched and ticked. His ears gave me quite a bit of trouble and I despised his first design, but after looking at photos of the dog breed again (I've been working on the drawing for several days) I modified them to look more like the actual ears and I think they turned out better, so maybe he'll grow on me. He's also one of my few Axis characters who don't have blond hair so far. Oh, right!--this drawing must be from earlier in the storyline, because he gets involved in a duel and ends up with a scar on his left cheek. Forgot about that. 😳 TUMBLR EDIT: So it's been like two weeks yet I'm still feeling dumb about breaking that Toyhou.se rule. Do I ever get over this?? 😓 Ugh. Anyway, lately I've been working on an adult scene featuring this character, whose personality has already morphed somewhat since he first crawled out of my brain not that long ago. He started out as a mere bit player and rather a goody-two-shoes who works in the file area of what was formerly Lt. Col. Ernst Dannecker's labor camp when the new commandant (I'm thinking I should start spelling it "kommandant" in keeping with the German stuff, maybe?), Lt. Col. Hasso Reinhardt, asks him to his office after reading his file, promotes him a couple of ranks to major, and BAM, he's the new adjutant, because the last adjutant, well, he kind of snapped and was forced to retire. Bit character acquired the name Jan (pronounced "Yahn") Delbrück. God I hate these freaking umlauts. I then learned bit character had been involved in Lebensborn. Things got weirder and weirder from there. So let's just unwind this character a bit. I don't know a whole lot about Delbrück's early life yet, but somehow, he ends up in the Schutzstaffel, specifically the Totenkopfverbände (URGH UMLAUTS), who are the branch who run the camps. Delbrück shuttles through several labor camps, ending up in the one run by Dannecker. I'll take a brief moment to say Delbrück really freaking hates his job. Why does he do it? I'm not sure. I can't even figure out why he joined the SS in the first place, because he doesn't even seem like a racist or anything. Even he doesn't seem to understand his own motivations when I let him speak. Maybe that'll come later. Anyway, he hates his job, yet he does it, because somebody has to, right? He soon learns that there's a good reason Dannecker is nicknamed Der Teufel, or the Devil. His camp has no gas chambers, so they have to use other means to kill prisoners who are no longer fit for work, and since Dannecker works people into the ground, that ends up being a lot of people, and the crematorium is usually running. The chosen method of death is just gunning everybody down in a group. The thing is, this isn't 100% effective, and there are often a handful of prisoners still alive, just badly wounded, at the end. Somebody needs to finish them off with a coup de grace. (Oh nuts, that's got a funny character in it too but I don't know what it's called and am too lazy to copy it in.) Dannecker finally addresses this issue by asking for a volunteer to do this nasty job. Anyone? Anyone? Nobody steps forward because even though they're SS, they really hate this job too. Dannecker shows signs that he's about to do something drastic and probably very nasty when an Obersturmführer (lieutenant) finally steps forward. This is Delbrück, deciding it's better to do the dirty work before Dannecker makes life even more unpleasant for everybody. When the next batch of prisoners selected for death is gunned down, Delbrück steps in afterward and shoots each survivor in the head, one by one. Dannecker does that thing he does, says, "Very good!" like this is just fantastic. (Something I'm learning, if Dannecker says, "Very good!" it's usually in response to something very bad.) Delbrück then throws up. So, he has the job. Naturally, this is the sort of thing that wears on one after a while. Delbrück develops insomnia and starts trying to find ways to distract himself from being stuck in such a horrible job, but he's not much of a people person, so his options are limited. He tries getting drunk a few times, doesn't really like it. Asks one of the camp doctors for something to help him sleep, is given a shot that knocks him out all night and makes him feel weird the next day, declines when the doc offers him Pervitin as a pick-me-up. He gets lonely, but isn't good at human connection and he really, REALLY hates making smalltalk; he comes across as rather asocial, which is a bad thing to the Nazis, I mean they'd even stick people in camps because of it. Oh, plus, being a young eligible bachelor in the SS, of course they want him to remedy that by getting married and having kids as soon as possible. Delbrück doesn't care for that since it turns out he's a bit of an antinatalist, too. (Jeez, Jan, seriously, why did you join the SS??) But he hears about the Lebensborn program, which seems like it might be a decent compromise, and decides to check it out. In my storyline, this has two main parts (which I've picked up on in my reading/YouTubing). The main part is a program that provides for both spouses of SS members as well as single mothers ready to give birth, so that they can do so privately and in anonymity without any stigma or shame, and give their babies up for adoption by SS families if they're suitably...well, Aryan. The SS isn't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. (This side of Lebensborn comes into play in Sturmbannführer Ludolf Jäger's storyline--this has developed significantly since I wrote about him in here, but basically, he meets his wife, an unwed mother, while touring a Lebensborn facility and decides to marry her and adopt the baby as his own. They proceed to have a veritable swarm of kids together. Good little Nazis.) The other part of Lebensborn is a weird sort of...I'm not quite sure how to describe it. "Stud farm" doesn't do it justice. Pretty much, unwed women and SS members apply, and nice Aryan specimens are selected to participate. They all meet at a sort of social get-together in a nice big castle in the country or some such. Schmoozing, parties, games, all that. Everybody gets to know everybody else (though it's all kept anonymous) and the women choose which SS guy they like the most. And, well... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You can imagine the rest. This is so weirdly and specifically set up that it's timed around the women's menstrual cycles, how's that for dedication. With hope, the women end up pregnant and are pampered throughout the pregnancy, after which the baby is given up for adoption, and the parents never see it again (apparently the father never sees it ever). So, yeah...it's just an excuse to create more Aryan babies. Something Delbrück isn't into. BUT, he's bored, and lonely, and the SS is pressuring him into helping out the cause, and aside from the annoyance of schmoozing with the women for a bit, there's none of that messy relationship stuff. So all right, he gives it a shot, and is involved in the program long enough to see several different women (and presumably get them pregnant, though he never gets to see any children he might father--which is fine by him, at least, he thinks). After a time, though, he quits the program, explaining later on to Reinhardt that it "got weird." I think it's just that it was ALWAYS weird, and Delbrück finally decided he'd had enough, and looked for other ways to distract himself from his horrible job. One of these distractions is setting himself somewhat apart from the other guards, whose company he doesn't really care for. He prefers keeping to himself, and develops the habit of standing at the edge of the yard and sharing cigarettes with the kapo, Isaak Schindel. Schindel has no idea why the hell an SS guard decides one day to hang out with him and smoke, but hey, free cigarettes. The two don't talk to each other, either, just stand there and watch the yard and smoke. Perfect friendship. Delbrück also gets to know another prisoner, Lukas Mettbach, a little after he arrives, and when he learns Lukas plays the violin, offers him one that was previously confiscated from a now deceased inmate, and listens to him play. (This is a nice little reprieve for both of them but is cut short when Dannecker appears; he doesn't even have to do anything to directly threaten them, his mere presence and his reputation are enough. Pretty much all he does is smile and ask WTF they're doing and Lukas hands back the violin and scurries back to work.) Delbrück realizes he has an issue with authority and starts feeling even more cynical; his feelings are confirmed when Dannecker decides he isn't suited for guarding the prisoners, yet he can't get rid of him since he's the only one willing to do that nasty shooting business, so he sends him off to the file section of the camp to sort through stacks of dusty papers. So yeah, this is his punishment. Delbrück prefers it, though, and remains in this position until inmate Josef Diamant shoots Dannecker in the head (fitting) and flees with several other inmates including Lukas; the adjutant, Lars Franke, seizes control of the camp but suffers a mental breakdown, beats one of his own guards unconscious, and locks himself in Dannecker's office; and then Reinhardt arrives to sort everything out. Reinhardt is a different, "progressive" sort of commandant, and decides he wants to move on from Dannecker's way of doing things and promote a new model of labor camp. Accordingly, he starts making some changes. He pores over employee files (which, ironically, Delbrück digs up for him), picks Delbrück, and promotes him to adjutant. Contacts the SS-Helferinnenkorps and requests a secretary to help them get things in order, and they send along SS-Helfer Britta Azinger. (She and Reinhardt begin a relationship but that's neither here nor there.) Reforms the way labor is done in the camp so prisoners are no longer worked into the ground and into the crematorium, including assigning lighter work to inmates who are incapable of heavy work, to help limit the number who are selected for execution. Cleans up and improves living and working conditions. Improves and expands the medical facilities to better tend to ill/injured inmates as well as guards. Improves the guards' working conditions as well, to help boost their morale; this includes eliminating the previous, chaotic "firing squad" (if you could call it that), instead killing incapacitated inmates with a simple shot to the head. (To the Totenkopfverbände, this is considered "humane." It really isn't, but we're talking about Nazis in a labor camp here. Progress only goes so far.) He treats the kapo much better as well (although Dannecker assigned him his job, he was absolutely loathsome to poor Schindel), ensuring his loyalty. The camp death toll drops drastically (though they do still occasionally transfer inmates to other, not as kind camps) and Reinhardt even makes a sort of self-competition out of seeing how many days they can go without needing to run the crematorium. Since he's now second in command, Delbrück is no longer responsible for killing prisoners, which to him is a huge relief. Yeah, he still works in a labor camp and they're still technically enslaving and killing Jews and Roma and others and it still sucks, just not quite as much as before. And yeah, officials visiting the camp think Reinhardt is a little weird for his "progressive" way of doing things, but the new camp really does get a lot more work done with less waste, and the big bonus is he's no Dannecker. (Literally everybody, except maybe his widow, hated Dannecker. So, him being gone is a plus in a lot of books.) Despite all this, Delbrück is still gloomy and dissatisfied with his life, as well as lonely and disconnected. One day he asks the civilian chauffeur for the camp SS, Andreas Cranz, for a recommendation for a distraction. Though Delbrück's kind of hedgy, Cranz knows exactly what he means and asks, "Women...? Men...?" when he's hesitant to respond. Women, of course. Older or younger or very young? Around his age. Any other preferences? Delbrück requests a place with some variety, where the women are treated well. Cranz knows just the place and takes him there. The brothel is run by an old woman named Frau Bitterlich, she has about ten "girls," and though most of them could decently pass as Aryan, she has one exception available: a Jewish woman named Mirjam Zweifel. Delbrück arrives in full Schutzstaffel uniform, which makes the women nervous, but Frau Bitterlich politely asks him what he's looking for. Turns out Delbrück isn't there for sex--he just wants somebody to beat the s**t out of him. 😳 Yep--he's a bit of a masochist, and after being stuck for so long in such an awful job in an awful war, he's decided, screw it, may as well get the s**t beaten out of him. When Frau Bitterlich asks what type of girl he'd like, he blurts out that he wants one with dark hair and dark eyes. Frau Bitterlich sets him up in one of their private rooms and goes to fetch her one girl who fits the bill--Mirjam. Now, uh...Mirjam's had her own especially nasty run-in with members of the SS (specifically, the Allgemeine-SS). I won't go into detail, except to say that the result of this is her toddler daughter, Gabriele (Gabby). Gabby is light skinned and blond haired and blue eyed and looks nothing like her mother. Mirjam adores her anyway, even if working in Frau Bitterlich's establishment is pretty much the only life left open to her. She's not sure why Frau Bitterlich warns her not to be too alarmed by the appearance of her new client, but then she gets a look at him and he gets a look at her and both of them are like O_O Mirjam freaks out a little at first, but when Delbrück tells her he can be discreet if she can, she realizes he's endangering his own career and life just being there--the SS is unlikely to let him off the hook if he's found with a Jewish prostitute. Despite her reluctance, Mirjam takes him on as a client (she's kind of unnerved by how easy it is for her to get into beating him), and Delbrück appreciates her work enough to set up a standing arrangement to see her every three weeks. The catch is that Mirjam finds herself intensely curious about WHY he's doing this, while Delbrück vehemently insists on no talking, no romance, no getting to know each other. So this is the way things go for a while, even after the Allgemeine-SS pays the brothel a visit after getting word of a Totenkopfverbände officer visiting there. (Mirjam and Gabby hide under the stairs. And the next time Delbrück shows up, Frau Bitterlich reams him out for showing up in uniform and endangering her girls. Chastened, he starts wearing a plain overcoat and removes his distinctive cap on subsequent visits.) Remember the duel I mentioned? This is directly related to Delbrück's extracurricular activities. As my write-ups for Godfrey Klemper and General Schavich made clear, the SS has ways of finding things out, and they're just fine with acting on mere rumor, because more often than not, it turns out to be true. The rumor about a high-ranking member of the Totenkopfverbände visiting a brothel, which is rumored to have a Jewish woman in its employ, spreads among the Allgemeine-SS and eventually reaches Obersturmführer (1st Lt.) Gunter Hesse. I'm not positive what Hesse's exact position in the Allgemeine-SS is, but he's involved in lots of covert information gathering, and Delbrück isn't immune to this. While various members of the SS are relaxing at the Mesmer Club, Hesse and Delbrück end up getting into an argument after Hesse makes an offhand comment, to test the waters, about Delbrück being involved with a Jewish woman. Delbrück denies this, but gets in a nice jab about Hesse's own involvement with the club's singer, Sophie Sommer, who's known to have had numerous relations with club patrons herself. (While this is occurring, various other parties--including Reinhardt, Azinger, Hesse's right-hand man Theodor Schulte, and Reinhardt's guest Dr. Mengele--are all sitting there watching the increasingly hostile back-and-forth.) Azinger roots for Delbrück, while Schulte backs up Hesse; things escalate when Sophie approaches and asks them all to take it outside, at which point Delbrück refers to her by a choice epithet which doesn't sit well with Hesse at all; he loses his temper and the two are just about to come to blows when Reinhardt finally gets in between them and orders them to sort things out. Delbrück challenges Hesse to an actual duel, because yes, they do these things. Hesse accepts. (All the offended parties but Reinhardt storm out and Dr. Mengele is all, "Well, that was entertaining. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ") The SS being as dramatic as it is, they turn this into a whole big event with torches and banners and spectators and all, with the Allgemeine-SS and the SS-Totenkopfverbände cheering on their respective fighters. (Josef Diamant, Lukas Mettbach, and Margarethe Dannecker observe in disguise; Gret cheers on Delbrück, while Lukas laments that there's nobody decent to root for.) During the duel, Hesse cuts Delbrück's face and Delbrück makes Hesse lose his glasses; it briefly looks like the younger, fitter Delbrück is going to win, when the older but more experienced Hesse disarms and knocks him down. Hesse is declared the winner; Delbrück sulks but gives him back his glasses, and the experience wearies Hesse enough that he decides he has better things to do than dig into Delbrück's sex life. (Sophie herself humiliates Hesse when he tries to explain that he accepted the challenge to protect her honor, at which she scoffs, "'Honor' is something men made up to impress women! You really think we care about such things?" Given that the Schutzstaffel's very slogan is "My honor is loyalty," this is quite a slap in the face.) MEN! I tell you. Well...Delbrück is also left bitter and embarrassed by the fight, though he will have a nice new dueling scar, as Azinger points out. He resumes his appointments with Mirjam, who's learned that that injury and the big SS-related event (she rarely leaves the brothel, so didn't attend) were basically because of her. Awkward, especially considering that Delbrück refuses to talk about that, or...anything, really, given the "no talking" nature of their arrangement. Mirjam seems a bit more impressed than Sophie was by the lengths he went to to protect her, however, and despite his best efforts to keep detached, Delbrück slowly finds his icy shell melting. This becomes most apparent when one of their sessions doesn't go successfully...his heart isn't in it anymore. Mirjam is alarmed, expecting him to be angry and/or cancel their arrangement; he doesn't, though. He does finally say something other than "No talking!" and suggests Mirjam head home for the night; she replies that she actually lives there, above the brothel, with her daughter. Delbrück says, "You have a child--?" Then the buzzer sounds and indicates that their time is up, and they part ways. When he visits three weeks later, he accidentally spots Gabriele, and Mirjam introduces her. Delbrück is surprised to learn Mirjam has a child; he's dismayed to learn who the father is. (The most specific Mirjam can get is to say he was one of a group--"I lost count at eight.") Mirjam is suitably alarmed when she asks Delbrück if he has any children and he replies, "I'm not sure." He clarifies by explaining the Lebensborn program, to which Mirjam says, "That sounds...cold." Delbrück realizes that his rejection of any sort of regular social connection has caught up with him and left him even more isolated and depressed than ever. He feels somewhat comfortable with Mirjam, though, same as he felt a connection to Isaak Schindel. Both of them deemed "inferior," not even people, by his own kind. And he gets the niggling feeling of, what is the point of all this. He dares to ask Reinhardt about it later. Turns out Reinhardt has been thinking the same thing, that all their efforts, the master race, the camps, the SS itself, seem not only utterly cruel but utterly pointless. Given the nature of the situation, there isn't really much either of them can DO about it, so they keep going through the motions of their jobs, though Reinhardt does still continue to make his camp as "humane" as possible, and Delbrück grows close to both Mirjam and Gabriele, trying to keep them safe from the rest of the SS. Finally comes the day when the Third Reich falls. Among all the chaos of enemy armies approaching from both sides, the SS terrorizes the city as well. Suddenly, it's everyone for themselves, and everyone acts accordingly. Reinhardt is wounded but returns to his camp, disables the electric fences, and opens the gates, deciding to remain there to be taken captive. Delbrück, realizing he can be tried for war crimes for his role in Dannecker's executions of prisoners, bids him goodbye, and flees. He runs across Cranz, who has retrieved his ailing mother in the SS limousine and is also fleeing the city; Cranz offers him a ride out, but first Delbrück wants to fetch Mirjam and Gabby. (I never mentioned, Cranz was previously recruited by Josef Diamant's Diamond Network, and while working for the SS, has been providing the resistance with info on his employers.) They stop by the brothel and Delbrück bustles the two out over her and Frau Bitterlich's protests, though Frau Bitterlich does realize Mirjam stands a far better chance leaving with him, and doesn't protest too much. After a brief, weird introduction, the five make off through the city, veering around numerous obstacles without much incident (thanks to the SS flag on the car) until encountering an SS blockade on the only way out; here, they'll need to show their ID. Cranz offers to keep on going if they'll hold on. They do so, and Cranz plows through the blockade, mostly avoiding the following barrage of gunfire, and escapes to the countryside. The Allies enter the city and find the labor camp mostly deserted, all of the staff and most of the prisoners but the very sick ones having fled; they do locate Commandant Reinhardt, however, in the control room where he'd disabled the electric fences, seated on the floor, badly wounded; Isaak Schindel remained behind to watch over him. Reinhardt is taken into custody, while Schindel tags along. Meanwhile, Mirjam informs Cranz of the location of a relative of hers, and he takes her there; the relative is bewildered to see Mirjam and Gabby dropped off by a big black SS limo, but it's a weird time. They stand and watch as the car drives away. When Cranz asks Delbrück where he'd like to go, Delbrück doesn't know--he has no friends, no family, no connections--he literally has no one and no place to go to. He instructs the chauffeur to just drop him off along the road. Cranz obliges, bidding him goodbye and good luck before driving off with his mother. And just like that, Delbrück is alone again, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the clothes on his back--and those clothes are a big honking target, now. He comes across a barn and takes shelter there, but wakes up not long after with the owner of the property aiming a rifle at him and commenting how she imagines his sort isn't very welcome in the city right now, and it's rather amusing that the terror of the Third Reich is relegated to scurrying off and hiding like rats. She asks him why he isn't begging for his life, to which Delbrück replies, "There isn't much worth begging for." She then asks if he knows how to milk cows ("Nein"), and if he's willing to learn ("Ja"). Keeping him at gunpoint, she leads him to the farmhouse and has him change his clothes (to Delbrück, this part is weirdly similar to his visits with Mirjam, where the only thing she was ever allowed to say to him was to tell him to take off his clothes and lie on the bed) (it's also implied this woman's husband/domestic partner is dead, probably killed by the Nazis), and for a little while this is what he does, works on this lady's farm; the additional irony of a labor camp guard now being relegated to doing hard farm work isn't lost on him, either. After a while he's allowed to move on, and for a time he passes from homestead to homestead doing similar work, until while walking along the street in a neighboring city one day, he sees a truck skid to a halt after passing him. Out steps Mirjam, calling, "Herr Jan?" Delbrück replies that his name is Herr Bruno (the alias he's taken). The two stare at each other a moment before she says he reminds her of someone she knew, gets back in the truck, and starts to pull away. It soon stops again, though, and she again exits and approaches. She's gotten back in touch with extended family, including her uncle (driving the truck), and their farm is in need of an employee, is he a hard worker? Delbrück says he is, and joins her and her uncle. His new life after the Third Reich begins. There's an additional part in here I nearly forgot, since it's still in its infant stages. Delbrück has a brief run-in with another face from his past when he spots a man standing on a bridge, contemplating jumping off. It's Isaak Schindel, the former kapo from the labor camp. Similar to Delbrück, after Nazi Germany fell, he found himself with nowhere left to go--not for lack of family, since he has a wife and young daughter (she was pregnant when he was imprisoned), but because they've turned their backs on him, knowing what sort of job he had while in captivity. (Being considered collaborators, kapos often were not received well after liberation, and the very word became a terrible insult among Jews, from what I've read.) Schindel fought so hard all those years just to stay alive and return to his family, only for them to reject him. Racked with guilt and despair, he sees no other path left open to him. Delbrück recognizes him and tries to talk him down; Schindel is surprised to see his old smoking companion from the camp, and finally steps away from the edge, though he breaks down sobbing over his lost family, wishing that he'd died in the camp. Delbrück listens, not really having much advice. All he can suggest is Schindel keep himself open--perhaps his family will come around someday--and see if he can find anyone else he once knew, to reach out to. He can't stick around himself, still technically being on the run, though he hopes to come across him again someday. After he leaves, Schindel looks across the river and sees a castle that's been converted into a prison. And then realizes there is an unlikely person left he can reach out to. He makes plans to visit the prison and try to be allowed to speak with Hasso Reinhardt, who's now incarcerated there. It sounds strange, but the former commandant was kind to him, and like Delbrück he's willing to grasp at any little human connection he can. ...That bit there is indeed more about Schindel than Delbrück, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to drawing him, and I've typed it up already so here's one more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [Jan Delbrück 2022 [Friday, May 6, 2022, 1:28:27 AM]] [Jan Delbrück 2022 2 [Friday, May 6, 2022, 1:33:18 AM]] |