The collapse of the Third Reich and the death of Adolf Hitler should have brought Germans hope for peace. But after 12 years of monstrous Nazi barbarity, returning to their former life was not easy. Destroyed cities, loss of jobs, constant checks and fear of retribution. What are the millions of Germans who until recently applauded the Führer facing? Historian Nikolai Vlasov answers these questions in his book „The Germans after the War: How West Germany managed to overcome Nazism“.
The Germans breathe a sigh of relief - the victors did not begin to take revenge on a large-scale and bloody scale. The initial fear has passed, it has begun to optimism sets in: the war is over and things will now get better every day. “Perhaps this whole war and its consequences will not be as terrible for us as we thought before“, a young German woman wrote in her diary at the end of April. But the young are generally more optimistic – “it is easier to start over when your whole life is still ahead of you. “The older ones looked at things more gloomily“, recalls Count von Krokow, who turned seventeen in 1945.
May 1945 was becoming a very ambiguous stage for German society. Yes, the bombing and fighting had ended, the likelihood of death or injury had decreased significantly, the Nazi repressive apparatus had ceased to exist and the soldiers were starting to return home. The sense of relief was short-lived, however. – new, much more fundamental problems came to the fore. Many of the difficulties were just beginning and continued to worsen over the next two years.
For a certain part of the Germans, the military defeat became an important impetus, allowing them to rethink their attitude to National Socialism and radically revise their own views. Many, especially among the young, felt complete disillusionment with their former ideals and began to painfully search for new directions. This was especially true for those who met the end of the war in captivity: the monotonous existence created favorable conditions for deep reflection.
But this mood was not characteristic of everyone. Moreover, there were many people who believed that nothing serious would change. An American officer who talked to key figures in the German chemical industry in the spring of 1945 left with a disappointing impression:
"They believed that we would make mistakes and be forced to entrust them with the leadership again. In the meantime, they will wait and watch us fail... Many, if not most, are confident that American capital will immediately take up the reconstruction and declare their readiness to place their labor and skills at the service of this temporary master. They do not hide the fact that they hope to make Germany even greater and more powerful than it was in the past".
In the first days after the fall of the new regime, however, most Germans had no time for philosophical and political discussions. There were much more pressing issues on the agenda. With the collapse of the Third Reich, the official structures responsible for maintaining order and distributing provisions ceased to function. This immediately led to a legal vacuum and state institutions in many places were subjected to real looting. One of the residents of Dortmund wrote in his diary on April 13, the day American troops entered the city:
“Germans and foreigners competed in theft, took everything, tore it up, soiled it, snatched it from the hands with the greed of jackals, robbed liquor stores, and then wandered drunk through the city. They even broke into a medicine wagon - everything was broken, scattered, there was nothing left for the sick, let them die... A terrible picture of human depravity, malice and the fruits of National Socialist education.“
Two days later he noted: “The lumpen proletariat is still robbing, and the Americans are too humane to prevent it vigorously.“ Only on April 16 did order begin to be restored.
Although the victors tried to organize new administrative mechanisms and law enforcement services as quickly as possible, including attracting prominent opponents of the regime, the first post-war days and weeks were accompanied by a surge in crime.
The looting of shops and food warehouses was widespread, the property of the state and large companies became “no man's land” in the eyes of many Germans. When the accumulated stocks were exhausted or stolen, a time of general shortages set in. The rationing system, introduced in Germany as early as August 1939, continued to exist in its previous form.
However, food rations were reduced quite quickly and noticeably. Already in the early summer of 1945, the food situation became very tense and continued to deteriorate over the next year and a half.
Another serious problem in the first post-war weeks was the huge number of so-called displaced persons - foreigners, forcibly or voluntarily brought to the territory of the Third Reich. This was a very diverse community: it included concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, foreign workers and collaborators who had retreated with the Wehrmacht. In the western occupation zones alone, there were about 6.5 million displaced persons. The victors viewed them as victims of Nazism and planned to create privileged conditions for them. However, no one was prepared for such a large number of displaced persons, and as a result, it was not possible to quickly organize food and medical care, as well as transport to their homeland. Only half of the displaced persons could be accommodated in makeshift camps. As a result, the end of the war did not bring immediate relief to many of them, the mortality rate among the released concentration camp prisoners remained high.
The occupying forces sought to give an organized character to the return of the displaced persons. Many displaced persons, however, quite naturally felt that they had already stayed too long in Germany. Gathering in small groups, they walked home - of course, providing themselves with everything they needed along the way. For obvious reasons, they did not feel much sympathy for the Germans and were often eager to avenge all the suffering they had endured.
The Germans, in turn, treated the displaced persons with hatred and fear. This also did not add stability to the post-war situation in the Western occupation zones. Even when the most acute phase passed - most of the displaced persons returned home, and the rest were accommodated more or less in temporary camps - the situation remained tense. Gradually, the Western occupation forces began to feel burdened by those they had previously sympathized with. In March 1946, with the tacit consent of the American authorities, the German police raided a Jewish displaced persons camp in Stuttgart. This led to serious clashes and casualties. At the same time, the police, to put it mildly, did not at all restrain themselves in their choice of methods. Only the scandal that erupted made it possible to prevent similar incidents in the future. By the beginning of 1947, more than a million displaced persons still remained on German territory.
However, it was not only foreigners who were displaced. By the end of the war, about half the population of the territory that later became West Germany was outside their places of permanent residence - in prisoner-of-war camps, evacuated from bombed cities, on the move in search of relatives or a piece of bread. They were soon joined by masses of refugees who arrived from the eastern territories ceded to the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Their total number in the western occupation zones eventually amounted to about 12 million people. In Berlin alone, almost 1.5 million refugees accumulated in the autumn of 1945. This created enormous problems for the occupation authorities, who tried to somehow direct these flows and organize supplies. Sometimes some cities had to be "closed" to new arrivals. It is difficult to imagine the chaos that reigned.
Those who were lucky enough to see the end of the war in their own homes, with a roof over their heads, were not always hospitable to their less fortunate compatriots.
The vaunted Nazi "national unity" turned out to be one of the propaganda myths. Refugees were often treated with hostility, "foreigners" were perceived as unwanted newcomers who were to blame for their own misfortunes.
They were asked why on earth they had come to a place where there was nothing to eat even without them, and they were accused of bringing with them contagious diseases and lice (alas, both very common).In October 1945, an initiative group of Schleswig residents appealed to Field Marshal Montgomery, commander-in-chief of the British occupation zone, with a request to clear the region of refugees, the “flow of foreigners from the eastern territories“, as soon as possible. In Bavaria, those arriving from the east were accused of being Prussians, therefore militarists and Nazis, and of not being fully German, but half-foreign.
The occupation authorities had to force Germans to show solidarity with their compatriots (with the exception of the French, who initially refused to let the refugees into their zone). In Schleswig-Holstein, refugees eventually made up half of the state's population, in Bavaria - a quarter. The friction between them and the local population continued for many years, even when the "economic miracle" gained momentum and every working hand was busy.
Millions of people were separated from their loved ones and did not know whether they were alive. In an era when the Internet did not yet exist, finding another person in a relatively large country was not an easy task, even with mutual desire. In the cities, the walls of destroyed houses were covered with notices informing about the fate of former residents or asking relatives to come forward. Against this background, private "search services" began to flourish rapidly, where unfortunate people brought their last money in the hope of finding out something about their missing relatives. Naturally, there were scammers, so quite quickly, by decision of the occupation authorities, exclusive powers in this area were transferred to the German Red Cross.
Millions of German men are in captivity. In the spring of 1945, the command of the Western armies was not prepared for the boundless flow of prisoners. They had to be placed in huge makeshift camps on the west bank of the Rhine. In essence, these were just meadows surrounded by sentries and barbed wire. They soon earned the nickname "killing fields". Hundreds of thousands of soldiers camped in the open, digging shelters in the ground with their hands to protect themselves from the cold wind, and during heavy rains these shallow holes quickly filled with water. Food was delivered irregularly, and at first the Germans often went hungry for several days. "One ration a day, little bread, no hot food," one of the prisoners recalled. "You had to stand in line for several hours to get a little drinking water. Even worse for such a large number of people were the sanitary conditions, for example with the toilets. Many soldiers fell ill in these conditions." Immediately after the end of the war in Europe, the victors tried to send enemy soldiers home as quickly as possible. However, this process took a long time. And those who returned home faced enormous problems, often finding that their entire old life had been destroyed and that no one needed them in the new one. One of the direct participants in the events later called his return home in August 1945 the worst moment of his life. Postwar German cinema captures the collective image of a soldier returning home from the front line: confused, disoriented and superfluous to everyone around him. This image reflects the real experience of thousands of Germans. The words "returner's disease" and "straitjacket syndrome" appear in the lexicon, denoting the psychological difficulties of returning to civilian life.
A fifth of the country's housing stock was destroyed - the centers of major cities lie in ruins after carpet bombing. "On May 9, 1945, Germany was a country of broken stones," wrote the American publicist Milton Meyer. A total of 131 German cities were bombed during the war, and the proportion of completely destroyed buildings in the most affected reached two-thirds. Some cities, such as Paderborn and Düren, were wiped off the face of the earth by more than 90 percent, that is, almost completely. In Cologne, 70 percent of the housing stock was destroyed, in Hamburg - more than 50 percent. One of the contemporaries, seeing what was left of Kassel, noted: it would be easier to capture and build a new Kassel somewhere nearby. In addition, the occupying forces occupied many of the surviving buildings, which only worsened the housing situation.
The urban landscape of post-war Germany is characterized by the skeletons of houses and mountains of rubble blocking the streets. Between these piles, paths wind along which rare passers-by hurry. Although the removal of the ruins began immediately after the end of the war, the volume of work was so great that it stretched over many years. In Cologne alone, a total of 13.5 million cubic meters of rubble and garbage had to be removed from the city center. One of the symbols of the post-war devastation and at the same time of the reconstruction became the so-called women of the ruins - German women engaged in clearing the rubble. Their image later acquired romantic features, they were perceived as a vital force and a desire to rise from the ashes. In reality, this was hard work, which was also very poorly paid - many, however, had to get hired to somehow feed their families.
There is a curfew in the settlements, there are checkpoints and regular checks of documents of passers-by. In some cities it is forbidden to go outside after six o'clock in the evening. In the American occupation zone, Germans are forbidden to move more than six kilometers from their permanent place of residence without special permission. The rule "no gatherings for more than five hours" is in effect. All radios, cameras and binoculars had to be immediately handed over to the occupation authorities; it is forbidden to own carrier pigeons.
The victors are still afraid of a possible partisan movement and take appropriate measures in advance. There is no communication between the different cities and regions. Neither post offices nor telephones function. The infrastructure was restored relatively quickly, but administrative restrictions come into effect: for example, the British only allow Germans to send postcards to each other in July. Correspondence between the various occupation zones was only permitted in the autumn of 1945.
In these difficult conditions, there was almost no solidarity in society, and the rule of "every man for himself" was in force all the time. In the early 1960s, the philosopher Karl Jaspers recalled the immediate post-war period: "Confusion and silence reigned, hidden anger and, for a short time, just boredom. Many tried to get some advantage for themselves from the victors. Grief coexisted with impudence." Optimism began to fade quickly, pessimism grew stronger. Germans looked at the victors with anxiety and hope, wondering what to expect from the new authorities.
Source: lenta.ru