Leseprobe

100 and extermination camps, or visited on the millions of forced labourers who were now returning home following their liberation. Avoiding these topics was another part of the daily struggle to survive. Incidentally, this fact also refutes the “zero hour” theory: the majority of Germans were looking out for themselves in highly individualised ways, and not just since the war ended either. 3 The Germans at the end of the war In autumn 1944, the war made its way back to where it was first unleashed. And it came not just by air, but by ground too. As the Wehrmacht was forced to retreat on all fronts, including in Western Europe, bombs began raining on German soil. This gave many Germans their first true taste of war. On top of it all, the Nazi regime intensified its reign of terror against anyone having second thoughts or thinking of quitting. “My god, it is a terrible war! Now everyone feels it”, wrote Theo Paschmann on 19 February 1945. His hometown of Erkelenz had recently been converted into a “fortress” and was now in the crosshairs of the Allied forces. 4 The erosion of the much-touted Volksgemeinschaft (“national community”) began in the watershed year of 1943, and it continued apace throughout the series of defeats suffered over the next two years by the Wehrmacht and its Axis confederates. When the ground Colonel General Alfred Jodl signing the Instrument of Unconditional Surrender of the German Wehrmacht at Reims, 7 May 1945 Cologne 1945  →