Berlin at War (4 page)

toll: with an estimated 200,000 casualties it suffered the largest non-

military loss of life of any city of Western and Central Europe.

Yet though Nazi Germany and the Second World War are subjects

that continue to occupy and fascinate historians, the story beneath

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berlin at war

those superlatives – the story of civilian life in Berlin during the war

– is one that has remained curiously unwritten.

There are a number of reasons why this apparently obvious subject

should have become one of the few remaining lacunae in the historical

record of Nazi Germany. Historians have traditionally tended to pay

comparatively little attention to the social history of Nazism, preferring

the ‘top-down’ approach of analysing the role of Hitler, the Nazi elite or

the military. The result is that few of the volumes in the ever-burgeoning

canon of literature on the Third Reich shed any light on civilian life at all.

Other factors serve to reinforce this bias. Most important, perhaps, is

the fact that those historians that do venture into the social sphere of

the Third Reich often tend to concentrate their attentions on the per -

secution and destruction of the Jews. This is, of course, right and proper,

but it has also led to a profound imbalance in our understanding of

German society as a whole. We know little about the challenges posed

to the German people by living in a dictatorship, the compromises

demanded and the principles that, in some cases, had to be abandoned.

We know little about the ways in which consent was engendered, how

it was maintained and what happened when it broke down. In short,

there are a plethora of books explaining how a minority died under

Nazism, but there are very few that explain how the majority lived.

Happily, there are a number of factors that strongly encourage an

examination of the social history of wartime Berlin. Historiography has

been shifting in this direction in recent years, as historians look beyond

the bare facts to discern popular reactions to events. Where once grand

strategy and high politics were the dominant themes of history, now -

adays much more humble everyday subjects and sources begin to prolif-

erate. One might call this process the democratisation of history, marking

as it does the shift away from ‘the great and the good’ in favour of the

‘view from below’. This trend is also illustrated by the many published

memoirs and diaries that now seem to be ubiquitous in the bookshops.

The most urgent argument in favour of this approach, however, is

that this is the final opportunity we have to allow those that experi-

enced the war directly to tell their stories. Many of the ‘voices’ that

I have used in this book are from published sources, but I also wanted

to make use of the personal accounts of ordinary Berliners, which

have never been recorded for posterity. To this end, I undertook a

programme of interviews in the German capital, in which I criss-

introduction

xv

crossed the city to meet people for whom ‘Berlin at War’ forms part

of their personal story.

Yet as time marches on – this spring saw the sixty-fifth anniversary

of the end of the Second World War – those that experienced the war

even as adolescents are now well into their seventies. Sadly, some of

those elderly Berliners whom I interviewed have passed away in the

interim. Many of them are still in rude health, a few quite astonish-

ingly sprightly, but there are some, I fear, that will not see the publi-

cation of a German edition. The generation that experienced the war

at first hand is gradually slipping away. And as the African saying runs:

‘When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.’

Over coffee and cake in
gemütlich
surroundings, I would often hear

the most hair-raising tales of personal pain, loss and survival; occa-

sionally there were tears as long-suppressed memories were brought

to light once again. Though it was never demanded or requested, I

felt obliged to render such contributions anonymous, out of respect

for the privacy of those who I interviewed and whose unpublished

memoirs and diaries I have quoted.*

Needless to say, I gleaned far more material in this process than I

could ever sensibly use in the writing of this book. Much of it was

also very subjective, unverifiable, occasionally misremembered or

accompanied by the whiff of self-exculpation. But in spite of those

caveats, the experience demonstrated to me that eye-witness testi-

mony has a vital role to play in history; personal accounts and

anecdotes can bring a fresh perspective, colour or context to even the

most hackneyed and well-trodden narrative. Some purists wax rather

sanctimonious about this ‘personalisation of history’, which they

perceive as the elevation of the personal above the political and empir-

ical. But I would suggest that if it is done correctly and responsibly,

then this personal approach not only has a role to play, it is an essen-

tial ingredient of the historian’s art of bringing the past to life.

Of course, other primary sources are readily available. There is a

wealth of published memoirs, ranging from the well-known works of

Missie Vassiltchikov or William Shirer to the vast number of obscure

volumes never translated into English. Countless unpublished diaries kept

by ordinary Berliners during the war were subsequently bequeathed to

* For stylistic reasons pseudonyms are employed in the text, while the authors are cited in the endnotes with only their first name and an initial of their surname.

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berlin at war

relatives or donated to the archives. It is this mass of primary material

that has been my constant companion in writing this book. Here too I

have been able to incorporate only a fraction of those ‘voices’ into my

narrative, but their words have shaped my understanding of the subject.

Yet even with the best possible research and the richest ‘raw ma t -

erial’, it is still a hugely complex task to tell the story of a city of five

million souls over six years of warfare. In the circumstances, my

approach has been necessarily
pointillist
, seeking to give a flavour of

events, rather than make any grand claims to comprehensiveness. The

book’s structure also required a degree of ingenuity. Given the

complexity of the story that I wanted to tell, I dispensed early on with

the idea of a unified linear chronology and realised that some nod

towards a thematic approach would be necessary. The result is an

attempt to combine both the thematic and the chronological in a

single narrative arc. I would willingly concede that this has sometimes

been a difficult balance to strike and I beg the reader’s indulgence if

occasionally he or she has to rewind a little between chapters.

The result is something rather novel: a ‘Berlin-eye view’ of the

Second World War, telling the story of that conflict as ordinary Berliners

would have experienced it. It gives a flavour of everyday life in the

German capital, charting the violent humbling of a once-proud metro -

polis – the fear, the cruelty, the petty heroism and the individual tragedy.

What emerges most vividly, I believe, is the rich political diversity of

Berlin society. The German capital was never a natural constituency

for the Nazis: its left-wing traditions, vibrant Jewish community and

cosmopolitan elite saw to that. Consequently, it witnessed more

opposition to the Nazis – on every level – than any other German city;

more Jews survived in the underground there – aided and abetted by

ordinary Berliners – than anywhere else in Germany.

I hope the book will demonstrate that we are fundamentally missing

the point if we imagine wartime Berliners to be an indoctrinated mass

of Nazified automata, sleepwalking into catastrophe. As numerous

interviewees made clear to me, Berlin was a city where minorities of

active Nazis and active anti-Nazis flanked an ambivalent majority, who

were often simply motivated by self-preservation, ambition and fear.

In this respect, at least, it strikes me that wartime Berliners had much

more in common with ourselves than we would care to concede.

‘They’ are really not so very different from ‘us’.

Prologue: ‘Führerweather’

Unbroken sunshine was forecast for Thursday 20 April 1939,
Führerwetter

as it was known in Nazi Germany. Across the city, Berliners woke that

morning in eager expectation of what promised to be one of the high-

lights of the year. It was the fiftieth birthday of the German Chancellor

and Führer of the Greater German Reich, Adolf Hitler, and a series

of events, parades and receptions would mark the occasion. A public

holiday had been decreed, a grand spectacle was in the offing and the

forecast of good weather would only have heightened the party mood.

Across the capital, therefore, thousands of ordinary Germans prepared

for a day out. Veterans of the First World War would polish their medals

and pin them proudly on their chests. The women would take care to

select stout shoes and carry coats and some refreshments: bread rolls,

perhaps, and cold meats. The better prepared among them would take

folding chairs or stools. Some even packed a mirror periscope to ensure

a good view of proceedings. The younger generation, meanwhile, mostly

members of the various Hitler Youth organisations, would don their

neatly pressed uniforms, shine their belt buckles and check their comple-

ment of badges. Boys would comb their hair; girls would wear plaits or

neat ‘German’ braids. For all of them, the excitement of that morning

would have been palpable.

Before setting off for the city centre, those attending the cele-

brations would have been wise to read the official directions that

were published in every newspaper. They were advised not to stray

too close to tracked vehicles during the parade and warned to stay

well clear of horses. The instructions of police and Party officials,

they were reminded, were to be heeded without delay and without

contradiction. During the parade itself, photography was strictly

forbidden.1

2

berlin at war

The official preparations for the day were no less thorough. The admin-

istrative centre of the city was closed to traffic from 7.00 in the morning.

The Tiergarten railway station – close to the site of the parade – was

also shut. Those travelling into the centre of Berlin to enjoy the festiv-

ities were advised to alight as close as possible to the restricted area and

continue their journey on foot. Finally, due to a planned fly-past that

afternoon, the airspace over central Berlin was to be closed to air traffic

for the entire day.2

Large numbers of participants and visitors would require overnight

accommodation in the capital. The majority of the 50,000 or so mili-

tary personnel who were directly involved in the parade could be

housed in the barracks at Lichterfelde and Potsdam, or at the various

other military installations that surrounded the capital. VIPs and special

guests, meanwhile, were given rooms in two of Berlin’s best hotels;

the Adlon and the Kaiserhof, where they were even afforded an SS

guard.3 The many thousands of ordinary visitors, who had come from

all over the Reich and abroad, found accommodation – if they were

lucky – in Berlin’s many less renowned hotels and guest houses. For

the lowliest among them, the city’s numerous parks offered ample

opportunities for pitching a tent.

Hitler, meanwhile, had wanted for nothing that morning. He had

risen unusually early. As his valet, Heinz Linge, later recalled, ‘The

Führer donned his brown Party uniform . . . [and] put on the golden

dress belt of a German general as Supreme Commander of the

Wehrmacht. He stood before the mirror in his bedroom for ages,

feasting his eyes on his own image like a peacock and repeatedly

adjusting his jacket.’4 His staff, standing to attention in the marbled

halls of the Reich Chancellery, had been similarly preened. ‘Servants

stood at the doors’, Linge went on:

wearing magnificent uniforms with silver lanyards and medals on their

chests . . . the adjutants and liaison officers were lined up, together with

Hitler’s bodyguard and the pilots from his own flight. Then there were

the soldiers from the
Leibstandarte
in their black SS uniforms, their new belts made in imitation of Kaiser Wilhelm’s guards. Officers from the

Leibstandarte
– like those from the Wehrmacht – wore silver lanyards

and dress-uniform belts.5

prologue: ‘führerweather’

3

At 8.00 that morning, the band of the SS-
Leibstandarte
performed

a short recital in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, playing

‘
Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles
’ and the ‘Horst Wessel Song’. Hitler, standing beneath the elegant classical portico, listened intently before

thanking the performers and returning inside. There, he perused the