Eberhard Jackel. History Today. Volume 45, Issue 5, May 1995.
Ordinary Germans did not hail the Allied victory over the Nazi state as a liberation, but saw it as a great loss. The Nazi Party’s Sicherheitsdienst (SD) kept detailed records about public opinion about the war, and these records show that the public’s hope for victory lasted well into 1944.
Ten years ago, delivering his now famous speech on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Richard von Weizsacker, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, spoke emphatically. ‘May 8th was a day of liberation. It freed us all from the inhumane system of National Socialist rule’. Accurate as this remark was, in 1945 most Germans by no means greeted the end of the war as a liberation. Aside from persecuted groups and prisoners in concentration camps, almost no one felt liberated. They did not even feel relieved that hostilities and air raids had ceased. Germans unanimously called the event a downfall, meaning not only the fall of the state, but the collapse as well of their hopes and desires.
Otherwise every German experienced the war’s end in his or her own particular way. Most of the country was already occupied by foreign troops by the time capitulation was announced. For the majority, the decisive transition came in the moment when the town where they lived changed occupying forces, or when they had to flee.
1918 had been completely different. When the First World War ended, all Germans were living more or less under identical conditions: undernourished in the fifth winter of war, plagued by an influenza epidemic, but still seriously hoping for a favourable conclusion. And then news of armistice and defeat broke upon them. They all received it simultaneously, whether they lived in Lorrach or Interburg, in Flensburg or Munich, or stood at the Front. This was also how 1945 was experienced in most other countries.
In Germany, however, the end of the Second World War came in fits and starts, differing greatly from place to place. Soviet troops had already entered East Prussia in October 1944, triggering the flight of millions of refugees. But in May 1945, the Frische Nehrung peninsula on the Gulf of Danzig was still in German hands. Even as Dresden was being destroyed by an air attack in February 1945, residents of Aachen, insofar as they had remained there, had already lived under American occupation for four months. In March, when the Americans and British crossed the Rhine, people in rural areas of Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein still lived almost as though at peace.
The occupation arrived everywhere in a different fashion, in some places only after heavy fighting, in others suddenly and without resistance. Germans in each place experienced it differently. it is understandable that they did not feel liberated. Soldiers, when they survived, were taken prisoner. The civilian population saw itself subjected to the measures of the occupying powers. These were mostly brutal in the east, more lenient in the west. And yet what Germans felt as the war ended was everywhere much the same.
We are rather well informed about this. Of course, there were no opinion polls at the time, but the Nazi government had always been interested in finding out what people thought, what their mood was. Numerous agencies, most importantly the SD (Sicherheitsdienst)—the security arm of the party—kept written records of everything they heard. Such reports were gathered locally, then collected for larger areas, and finally summarised for the entire Reich. Thousands of reports have survived and have been published in many volumes. Reading them conveys precise impressions of what the average German thought and felt, hoped and dreaded, and how the changing situation was judged.
Unlike 1914, Germans had not been enthusiastic when the war began in 1939. But they had desired that their country did not again suffer defeat. The victories in the first three years of the war filled them with optimism. The elation first began ebbing in 1942. Uncertainty about when the war would end, mounting difficulties with food supply, and, most importantly, bombings of German cities brought on pessimism, which turned into resignation after the defeat at Stalingrad and finally evolved into a somehow still-hopeful fatalism. When would it all end, and how?
On May 4th, 1944, one SD report summarised dispatches about public opinion as follows: The population is currently most concerned about the air war. It affects all emotions and creates the greatest doubt in faith that the situation can be reversed’. Otherwise it was the so-called ‘invasion’; a landing of American and British forces in Western Europe, which was most anticipated:
The belief that a decisive turnaround in the progress of the war to our favour must come soon encourages most of our people to view an invasion with great hope. It is considered the last chance to turn the tide. Fear of invasion can hardly be detected. instead, a terrible defeat for the enemy is expected.
This presumption was in keeping with the propaganda and coincided with the leadership’s own assessments. Hitler also looked forward to the landing with optimism, believing it could be repelled. Most German troops could then be pulled out of the west and thrown to the Eastern Front. The population also assigned great significance to the leadership’s announced intention to answer a landing with new weapons, so-called ‘weapons o retribution’. The mood Was appropriately sanguine when the landing actually began on June 6th, 1944. ‘News that the invasion had started was received partly with great enthusiasm’. That ‘air attacks on the Reich have ceased since the invasion began’ contributed to such feelings. The majority curiously saw this as evidence of weakness; almost no one drew the conclusion that the Allies needed their air forces for the landing in Normandy.
The public mood was still rising on June 16th when the daily Wehrmacht report laconically announced: ‘Southern England and the city of London were bombed with new warheads last night and early this morning’. Someone was reported as. telling an acquaintance, ‘I have wonderful news for you, the retribution has begun’. The report of June 19th, summarised: ‘Jubilation which immediately followed even greater than at beginning of invasion. End to war seen coming soon’.
But already by the end of June, dejection had returned. The report of June 28th, listed four reasons for this. The new ‘V-1’ weapon (the pilotless flying bomb, nicknamed the Doodlebug, used by Hitler in the closing days of the war) was not producing the desired effect. The landing in France had not been turned back. instead, on the Eastern Front, a Soviet offensive began on June 22nd, and was moving very rapidly forward. And bombings had resumed. ‘The elation of the first days after the start of the invasion and the retribution is very quickly and generally deflating’, commented a report one day later. And, on July 14th: ‘Spirits are continuing to fall’. This was the setting for the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20th, 1944. Remarkably, no further worsening of the general mood resulted, according to the reports. On the contrary:
The population is greatly relieved that the Fuhrer did not fall victim to the attack. Connection to the Fuhrer has been thoroughly deepened, and faith reinforced in the leadership, who proved to be in command of the situation.
In fact, even a ‘general rise in fighting spirit and the will to hold fast at all costs are evident’.
But once again the upturn did not last long. The report of August 10th, recorded:
The unfavourable news from all fronts and also in the political arena is greatly damaging the public mood. The will to resistance is very well present in most districts, but there is no small doubt about whether this can really help very much anymore.
Indeed, the Anglo-Americans had successfully broken through in France, bombardments increased, the Soviet troops marched nearly to the East Prussian frontier. ‘The situation on the Eastern Front constitutes the main reason for the current powerful depression’.
One week later, on August 17th: ‘In the midst of this depression, desire is growing for an end to the war soon, and with it the illusion “that the end won’t be as terrible as everyone has always been told”‘. Within the rural population opinions were ‘now and then’ encountered ‘that there is no point anymore in sweating and straining, it is all for nothing anyway, and besides, not much can happen to farmers because everyone needs them’.
For the first time feelings that the war was lost became widespread, and thoughts turned to the time after the ‘downfall’. There are barely any SD public opinion reports from the months that followed. The popular depression was irritating the leadership, so much so that Martin Bormann, head of the party chancery, prohibited reports altogether. But we can imagine the rest of the story: a last flaring of hopes during the Ardennes offensive in December and then, as it too failed, adjustment to the inevitable. We have a last report from March, 1945. It is thoroughly characteristic, systematically summarising the following ‘fundamental facts’:
- No one wants to lose the war. Everyone had heartily desired that we would win it.
- No one believes any more that we will win. The spark of hope preserved until now is being extinguished.
- If we lose the war, the general feeling is that we are at fault, meaning not the common man, but the leadership.
- The people no longer trust the leadership. They harshly criticise the Party, particular leading figures, and the propaganda.
- For millions the Fuhrer remains the last hold and hope, but the Fuhrer is also day by day being mentioned more prominently in criticism and the issue of trust.
- Doubts about the sense in continued fighting are undermining engagement and the faith of our people in themselves and in each other.
This report probably describes the mood in Germany in spring 1945 fairly well. Certainly there were some people, opponents of the Nazis, especially in the concentration camps, who desired the fastest possible defeat because it would bring their own liberation. Others so longed for an end to war that they were completely indifferent to who would win. But the majority still hoped ‘that we will win it’. Perhaps that is all too understandable. After all, who desires the defeat of their own country?
The overwhelming difference in the way Germans think today is thus all the more remarkable. Nowadays the vast majority feel that May 8th, as the president said ten years ago, was a ‘day of liberation’. For those who know history, such a change in opinion is not particularly unusual. The assessment of a situation by contemporaries (‘the perception’, as historians call it) often does not reflect reality. People experience the present, and it is quite real to them, but they fail to see through it because they lack information. Only much later do they recognise that their original judgements, and thus also their feelings at the time, were false. The German transformation is primarily due to greater knowledge. It must unfortunately be admitted that National Socialism, and above all Hitler, had enjoyed broad popularity. Certainly almost no one had wanted a war. in 1939, the last war was less than twenty years past. All adults still had their own memories of it, and anyone with a modicum of political understanding knew that Germany could not win a war against the Western Allies, who had all the resources of the world at their disposal.
Nonetheless, almost no one knew at the time that Hitler had started the war consciously and recklessly. To Germans in 1939, it seemed as though a conflict with Poland had arisen, in which the Western powers intervened with their entry into the war. Nazi propaganda was constantly trying to persuade Germans that war had been forced upon them. In every war, solidarity with one’s own government and army arises. Even in 1941, when Hitler fell upon the Soviet Union with truly no justification this time, many believed his fabricated claim that he was only pre-empting a threat. They did. not know that Hitler himself did not believe what he was saying’ that he in no way felt threatened and instead wanted to conquer the so-called ‘Lebensraum’; and, at least to begin with, they did not know what terrible crimes he would commit in the process.
With time they began to suspect. When German troops discovered mass graves of Polish officers in Katyn near Smolensk in 1943 and German propaganda loudly denounced this crime of Stalin, SD public opinion dispatches reported ‘a large part of the population’ found this ‘curious’ or ‘hypocritical’ and explained, ‘we have no right to get excited about such Soviet measures because Poles and Jews were eliminated in much greater numbers on the German side’.
Also characteristic is a joke that was making the rounds in 1945: If only we hadn’t started this war that was forced upon us! More than a few thus seem to have had an inkling that not everything had been right and proper. But only a very few were prepared to draw the conclusion that the country had to be liberated from its criminal government. Most importantly, the people were not ready to see Hitler as the main perpetrator. While the Party’s image got increasingly worse, Hitler remained exempted from all criticism. Many even deluded themselves that he was not informed of the true situation. ‘If only the Fuhrer knew this’ was another widespread saying.
Only after the war did it become obvious that the Fuhrer had indeed known everything, that he had consciously and intentionally led the country into a hopeless war and in the process ordered crimes on a scale that had never been seen before. Even then it still took a long time before this certainty settled into the minds of the majority. Older people especially did not want to part with their earlier beliefs and feelings, and many people lacking insight actively encouraged them. Perhaps even that is all too understandable. After undergoing great suffering, and certainly many Germans also suffered during the war, it is not easy to recognise and admit it was all for nothing, that all sacrifice had been for an evil cause.
It is, after all, difficult to deliver a negative verdict on an entire epoch of one’s own history. In 1945, everyone was certainly forced to recognise it had ended badly. But had everything therefore been bad from the very beginning? Even long after the war, opinion polls revealed that many still believed National Socialism had been a good idea, and only badly executed. And among those prepared to admit German crimes, excuses were still sought in whatever crimes were said to have been committed on the other side.
A lively confrontation with the past began, and it became ever stronger, so that some finally claimed it was enough, a line had to be drawn somewhere. But this proved impossible. Ever more facts came to light, and the most indisputable evidence was in the writings of the perpetrators themselves. Nonetheless some people are still incapable of learning, and deny crimes against humanity and especially the worst crime of all, the murder of the European Jews in the Second World War, or try to find other justifications for the Nazi regime. But while many thought this way in 1945, there are only a few left today. This is a remarkable transformation, and it resulted in the conviction that the downfall was in truth a liberation.