Posted on 04/03/2015 4:52:05 PM PDT by Ouderkirk
I have been looking for commentary from your average German about the feeling in Germany in 1943.
They had to know the Americans were massing troops and material for an invasion from England, the Russians were gearing up for the same, and American bombers are starting to trash your cities, they are rounding up people and killing them on a scale that is unmistakable, and that you understand that it could be you at any minute. So, do you keep your head down, enjoy what you can while things are quiet and await your fate?
Was there sort of a nihilist "party while you can" atmosphere? It's clear that a certain amount of the leadership knew they were doomed and it was not a matter of IF, but WHEN and HOW BAD was it going to be in the next year or so.
There had to be a certain consciousness of the situation no matter the propaganda. The daily reality had to creep in for most folks at some point even though you couldn't discuss it publicly.
I've been trying to correlate what I am experiencing to what happened during that time to gauge the likelihood of several potential outcomes.
This may seem like an odd question to ask, but it is something that I have been thinking about in a larger context of the history of WW2 and the present.
I read where Hitler loved his movies and just wanted him captured and used for propaganda purposes.
I would imagine most of the Germans were still pretty upbeat based on the propoganda they were fed. (Just like today in America! Unemployment at record lows, historic treaty with Iran, model of success in Yemen....)
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You’re right. Goebbles would applaud the Obama and MSM propaganda.
Oh - later on the German war summary states that “Some allied warplanes were reported to have dropped some bombs scattered about with no targets hit.”
The New York Times banner says “Nazi Ball Bearing Plant Smashed, estimated 600 casualties and $20,000,000 in equipment destroyed. LOL!
I read where Hitler loved his movies and just wanted him captured and used for propaganda purposes.
I should have been more clear when using “bounty”. You’re right.
Amazing the sacrifices that were made back then. (My uncle was a bombardier over Germany - made it back home. Never talked about it.)
I personally know a few.
When the USA started the bombing runs, the average attitude was outrage and contempt. They thought we were scum and their crap did not stink. They were outraged. They were superior. How dare we shoot at them. Even fifty years later, they felt the same. That attitude did not change for many of them.
The other common thing, they say they had no idea jews were being exterminated. They just left, like snow in spring. Jew? What Jew?
They would’ve had a chance of fighting to a stalemate if Hitler hadn’t declared war on the USA.
“MoTunes Times” by Paul Johnson is in itself a brilliant history of the twentieth century. A thick volume, he provides a thinking conservative’s viewpoint on the events from the last 100 years.
His assessment of the European powers is excellent. I can tell you what I remember from the book: Hitler was received with great acclaim, yet within a few short years, the average German was aware a great mistake had been made. Yet they were powerless to change the course, as all the levers of political power had been seized by fascists.
Their mood had altered well before 1943....if I recall correctly, even before the move on Poland in 1939.
Get the book....it will take some time, and he gets a bit too deep into internal politics and some statistics, but his overall premise is superior.
Hope this helps.
Happy Resurrection Sunday.
A really great documentary on the rise and the fall of the 3rd reich taken largely from German journal entries and other writings. It depicts a whole range of thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KG74s4DnRw
He was talking about the declaration of war- it was Germany that declared war, not the USA.
I was not looking for an education on the subject, but for sources of research.
It’s difficult to know where to start because so much of the history of the war years is dedicated to... the war. The battle of this, Operation that, and the holocaust. The general feeling of the average German citizen who could not help but notice that the propaganda and reality didn’t line up is not as easily identified or payed short shrift, because after all they were the losers.
And, as always our fellow Freepers gave me some great places to begin looking and reading. One book leads to another as a source, and the bibliography is the best way to find more.
I’ll find what I need now that I have a better starting point.
And I’m certain that both reports were pure fiction LOL! Especially if it was the NYT...
Years later, when I was in my thirties, my mother told me a sobering story she had gotten from this lady, who's name I know but I won't say here. I'll call her Karen.
The story was this. Karen's father was an automotive mechanic in Germany, in a big city (I think it was Munich). The garage in which he worked was located near some government offices; many of the customers were officials of the Nazi party.
One day, one of these Nazi bigwigs dropped off his car to be fixed, and - in front of some bystanders, men hanging around the shop for whatever reason - this guy was overheard telling Karen's father that he didn't have to hurry with the repair work, because he had a second car that he could use while the car he was dropping off was worked on.
After he left, one of the bystanders remarked out loud "what's wrong, one car isn't enough for him?" This was during the heat of the war, and cars, tires, gasoline were very hard to come by.
Karen said that the man who uttered those words disappeared that night, taken from his home after dark. He was never seen again, and no amount of searching by his family ever turned up the slightest hint of what happened to him. He simply disappeared from the face of the Earth.
That's all it took in Nazi Germany for you to disappear. Just an ironic quip in public, overheard by the wrong set of ears.
It was comfortable to have one’s head in the sand then........as it is now.
Generally smarter, better educated, and smelled better than one of today's liberals, but didn't goosestep as well.
Start watching at :30 in for info about hedonism and nihilism. Also read Goldhagen’s amazing book HITLERS WILLING EEXCUTIONERS.
Tomorrow Belongs to Me - Cabaret
The patriotic song from Cabaret, in the beergarten in pre-war Nazi Germany, sung by the arian Hitler youth. You see many young and old people getting taken up by the song, but you can also see the old man who remembers WWI and knows what will happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUctFu46_c
Yes they were.
I think they were truly convinced that they were the master race. When the shit hit the fan, it “did not compute” and still doesn’t.
That attitude has been passed to two generations since then.
They don’t boast. It’s subtle, but it’s still there.
They have a lot of pride in the fact that they were so advanced with rockets, jet planes.
They would admit they were beat, but not much more.
When we came in on the ground, he tells me that we made it clear, sundown you stay inside. If caught outside, you get shot. We went house to house, demanded to see every radio, and we cut the power cord off and took the cord with us. This stopped all communications for them, left them feeling defeated.
They were very proud of the stone houses that wouldn’t go down. I guess they needed to be prod of something after all the bombing they took.
Some of them said that.
When I was a child, we often had contrite missionaries from Germany speaking at churches here who admitted to have been fully aware of what was being done to the Jews, Gypsies, mentally ill, etc...
Actually, I’d take the point that the idea began to creep in as being shortly after the 6th fell at Stalingrad. As I’ve read it/heard it, most of the engineering personnel working on the jet programs (and to a lessor extent other “wonder weapon” articles) got transferred to field units on the eastern front and the programs idled at the outset of Barbarossa, and during/subsequent to Stalingrad there was a mad scramble to recall them and place the programs back in high gear.
That was a critical error in judgment, particularly from a side that was going to pursue aggressive war in such a way that all the opposing forces involved were going to want to beat them back to the stone age if the tide turned.
In the general population, they probably kept up an overall positive attitude up until the west was breached in 44. Germany still possessed something like 10X it’s original landmass in territory separated from enemy by mostly water, with the exception of the east front and Italy. Coupled with being in a tightly controlled media state, about the only clue they could really have that things weren’t going well was the amount of friends and neighbors not returning from fronts.
As far as the air campaign goes, they could have kept up the idea that they were giving as good as they were getting until allied units began to operate tactically close and into German territory.
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