Leseprobe

99 By the time of the Potsdam Conference, Germany no longer existed as a body politic. Instead it was a country divided into four occupied zones. Even the population was fragmented in many respects. This fragmentation began with the Second World War’s rolling end: for Germans in the region around Aachen, for instance, the war was already over in September 1944. In Berlin, on the other hand, hos­ tilities did not cease until 2 May 1945. When the Wehrmacht leader- ship finally capitulated on behalf of the Third Reich, most Germans therefore took the news simply as official confirmation of an older (or perhaps newer) fact of life. We must keep this fundamental state of affairs in mind when discussing the situation of the German people after the Second World War. Over the intervening decades, the narrative of a supposed “zero hour” has all too often warped our perception of what German society was like in the wake of the war. In reality, a diverse range of local start-up conditions existed. Academic historians, for the record, have thoroughly refuted the existence of an actual “zero hour”. But for many Germans at the time, the idea still rung true. 1 One thing most people had in common was a feeling of relief at having survived the fighting. However, many were also united by a sense of apathy as well as by fears—both concrete and diffuse— of what was to come. Up until the bitter end, Nazi propagandists and many of the top military commanders had spurred on the populace with talk of “final victory” and with trumped-up warnings of Allied recrimination. At the same time, the last months of the war were by far the bloodiest even for Germans, who had previously subjected their neighbours to hardship, murder, death and destruction. 2 The majority of the population perceived the end of the war as a defeat, one that would also end their way of life. (This of course does not apply to those who had been enslaved, tortured, displaced or otherwise disenfranchised by or on behalf of Germans.) They feared retaliation from the victors, particularly from those in Eastern Europe, and they feared an uncertain future. One immediate and positive change was the risk of violent death, which plummeted when hostilities ceased. Living conditions, however, did not change for the better. They continued to deteriorate rapidly, as they had during the last months of the conflict. The daily struggle to survive went on after the war ended: there was a shortage of everything necessary for living, from food to housing. Countless cities lay in ruins. The country’s infrastructure was destroyed and its energy supply cut. Eleven million Germans were being held as prisoners of war, and millions of others had fled their homes. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the biggest concern for most Germans each day was survival. For these people, politics were happening in the background, or somewhere far over their heads. Many were also hesitant to take political positions in this context, since doing so could raise ques- tions about one’s own recent history and the personal responsibility borne for the crimes against humanity committed in the concentration John Zimmermann ← Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag in ruins, after 1945