Berlin at War (71 page)

began spreading about Germany’s ‘wonder weapons’, which were popu-

larly known in Berlin by the acronym ‘Wu-Wa’, after the German

‘
Wunderwaffen
’. Though some dismissed such rumours out of hand, there

were many others who believed them, praying that the ‘Wu-Wa’ would

turn the tide of the war and wreak devastation among Hitler’s enemies.

Hans-Georg von Studnitz recalled hearing the stories:

For some time now rumours have been circulating about secret weapons

which are about to be used and which will change the whole aspect of

the war in our favour. Nearly everybody knows somebody who was

present when these weapons were being tested. Some talk about a bomb

which will be fired by rocket from an aircraft and contains an explosive

force sufficient to wreck a whole city. Others declare that the new projec-

tiles will be fired from specially constructed bases on the French coast.

The people eagerly swallow these fairy-tales. Faith in the wonder-weapon

is at present the one thing which stimulates their morale.21

For all Studnitz’s scorn, the Berlin rumour mill was largely correct.

Early trials of the weapon that would become known as the V-1 ‘flying

bomb’ had indeed involved launches from parent aircraft, while later

firings were planned from fixed sites on the French coast. Within

barely a month of his diary entry in August 1943, Studnitz would have

been surprised to hear Albert Speer publicly confirm that retribution

would be wrought against the western Allies using a ‘secret weapon’.22

The first operational launches of the V-1 would follow in June 1944.

While some undoubtedly found solace in such rumours, others were

more realistic. Increasingly, opinions began to be aired which doubted

Germany’s ability to fight on, much less to win. Doubts also began to

to unreason and beyond

345

be expressed about the accuracy of German news reports.23 Ruth Andreas-

Friedrich spoke for many when she made the following acerbic comment

in her diary about the ‘tactical withdrawals’ that were increasingly being

reported from the Eastern Front: ‘In the east they are resorting to more

and more radical “shortening of lines”. If you look in the atlas, these

unadmitted retreats seem rather to lengthen the front. I expect we shall

still be shortening our lines when they’re ten kilometres from Berlin,

successfully disengaging and victoriously resisting.’24

As 1943 drew on, therefore, morale in Berlin gradually deteriorated.

The population, tired from its relentless exertions, shattered by the

ongoing and intensifying air war, and crushed by the constant restric-

tions and shortages of rationing, sank increasingly into indifference.

Hans-Georg von Studnitz recalled the mood in the prestigious Adlon

Hotel in Berlin in the autumn of 1943, when one of Hitler’s speeches

was being broadcast:

Public apathy was symbolised by the fact that the speech was not relayed

to the dining room, as previously, and that in the small lounge where

a loudspeaker was installed, not even a quarter of the hotel’s guests

bothered to listen. Most of the audience consisted of cooks, waiters

and maids.25

Increasingly, Wehrmacht reports and the shrill pronouncements of

the regime sounded hollow, and both were most frequently met with

a derisory snort. As Lutz Ritter recalled, ‘Nobody in my circle of

friends took the “final victory” fantasies seriously any more.’26 Public

optimism about the war was becoming a rare commodity, supplanted

by self-reliance and a grim determination to survive.

Whatever aspirations Berliners might once have harboured, after

Stalingrad and the reverses of 1943 they were reduced to the simple

desire somehow to escape the war with their lives. For some, such

fundamental human instincts became paramount. As one diarist noted

in the winter of 1943–4:

Neither rubble shovelling nor pillow rescuing has anything to do with

Nazi enthusiasm or resolution to endure. Nobody thinks of Hitler as he

boards up the kitchen window. What everyone thinks of is that you can’t

live in the cold, that before evening falls and the sirens wail you must

346

berlin at war

have a corner where you can lay your head and stretch your legs – the

way you choose to do it, and not the way someone else wants you to

choose.27

As the public mood deteriorated through 1943, life in the German

capital became exceedingly trying. The aspect that affected Berliners

most immediately was the parlous state of public health. Already in

1941, the American Howard Smith had complained about the stench

of halitosis – the result of a catastrophic decline in dental hygiene –

which seemed to permeate the city, and noted the pale faces of Berliners

‘unhealthily white as flour, except for red rings around their tired, life-

less eyes’.28 In the years that followed, public health deteriorated further,

assailed by the stresses and strains of life in wartime, the sleepless

nights and the enforced shortages of rationing. Influenza and the

common cold quickly became endemic, while dysentery and scarlet

fever were also on the increase.29 Yet, as the example of Helga

Schneider’s family demonstrates, even those who did not suffer from

any identifiable complaint were often in very poor health. ‘We are all

in a sorry state’, she wrote:

Opa has a painful swollen knee, but we have no painkillers, and Hilde

has not been able to find any either . . . My stepmother is suffering

from bilious colic and wraps her belly with woollen shawls, seeking

comfort in massages she is given by Frau Köhler, the concierge of our

building. I have scabs on my head, and Peter vomits yellow foam.

Whenever I get up from a chair or out of bed, I immediately feel faint.30

By 1944, it seems, an extraordinarily bleak atmosphere had

descended on the German capital. The Danish journalist Paul von

Stemann recalled in his journal that it was a time of

dullness, anticipation, fear and continuous bombing. It was a soul-

less existence. The war seemed perpetual. The sameness of each

successive day was blunting but the obliteration of all beauty was

even more so . . . The flowers had gone, the books had been burnt,

the pictures had been removed, the trees had been broken, there

were no birds singing, no dogs barking, no children shrieking . . .

there was no laughter and no giggling. No face ever lit up in a

to unreason and beyond

347

warming smile, no friendly kiss or hug. There was still the sky above

. . . but then it was often effaced by the stinking and greasy carpets

of voluminous black smoke.31

Norwegian reporter Theo Findahl bemoaned the fact that the restric-

tions imposed by the regime now affected every aspect of life and that,

since Goebbels’ new regulations had come into force, even the trad-

itional refuge of the theatre or a cabaret show was now denied to the

capital’s civilians. ‘With a stroke of his pen’, Findahl wrote, ‘Goebbels

has abolished almost everything enjoyable in Berlin in the name of

“Total War”. No theatres, no variety, no dance clubs, no wine bars.

Berlin has become the most boring capital city in the world.’32

It could also be one of the most surreal. Life in wartime could

produce some peculiar human responses, as people became inured to

the constant drama surrounding them and adopted their own idio-

syncratic survival strategies. Hans-Georg von Studnitz noted the rather

bizarre experience of his friend, Hans Flotow, who decided to walk

home through the centre of Berlin in the aftermath of an air raid:

Firemen were still at work extinguishing the flames, intermingled with

courting couples, an old gentleman with a little dog, girls in slacks wearing

steel helmets, people with portable radios and men selling newspapers. A

female voice was screaming for water. When Flotow turned round, a young

girl asked him if he would like to take her home: she would show him a

good time. When he reached home at last, he found that the neighbouring

Magdeburgerstrasse was in flames. Hurrying across, he discovered Frau

von Gersdorff in her burning kitchen, calmly making sandwiches for the

firemen. In another room of the Gersdorff house lay the corpse of a man

who had died several days before, covered with a tartan rug, a crucifix on

the chest: the body could not be removed to the mortuary because of the

incessant alarms. Hans went to bed at 7.00 a.m.33

The experience recorded by Ursula von Kardorff was perhaps less

searing, but no less peculiar. Over Easter 1944, she described in her diary

an excursion to the Spree bend in the heart of Berlin, in the area that

was supposed to form the centrepiece of Albert Speer’s ambitious

remodelling of the capital. In the bright spring sunshine of that day,

however, the site made a bizarre impression:

348

berlin at war

There in the middle of this Hieronymus Bosch landscape, there is now

a lake, some metres deep, surrounded by the ruins of the former

General Staff building . . . and the wrecked ambassadorial villas.

Although it is forbidden, children play around the lake, building rafts

out of charred planks . . . All around the wild flowers bloom, yellow

and poisonous, but the air is clean and the weeds are green, and fish

have already made themselves at home. A macabre sort of idyll.34

The year 1944 brought a further deterioration of Germany’s military

predicament. That spring, the US Air Force began their daylight raids

on the capital, spurred by their own growing capacity and by the

comparative weakness of Luftwaffe defences. Though Berliners had

become rather used to the night-time visits of the RAF, daylight raiding

was a new and disconcerting experience, not least because most people

were on the move or at work and thus some distance from their

usual shelters and their loved ones. As an SD mood report noted, the

American attacks brought about a marked change in civilian behav-

iour. Whereas the routine of night-time raiding had bred an attitude

of stoicism in the cellars, the daylight raids generated a ‘pronounced

fear’ and had led to instances of civilians literally ‘running for their

lives’ in search of shelter.35 There were other novelties, as one diarist

explained:

In contrast to the British night raids, which usually last for about forty-

five minutes, the American daylight raids go on for two or three hours.

Whereas the British prefer to attack on dark nights and in bad weather,

the Americans like daylight and clear skies . . . The British drop their

bombs quickly and at random – ‘carpet-bombing’ is their speciality –

while the Americans prefer to take their time and make two or three

trial runs over the target before releasing their bombs.36

The advent of daylight raiding afforded many Berliners the first

opportunity actually to see their attackers. It was a curious experi-

ence. Some eyewitnesses almost waxed lyrical about the ‘silver birds’

of the USAAF, whose vapour trails scarred the blue skies above their

city. Yet, for all their brutal majesty, they were bringing death to the

capital and their straight and level bombing runs suggested a worrying

immunity to German air defences. Albert Speer was one of the many

to unreason and beyond

349

who drew gloomy conclusions from the American attacks of that

spring, believing that they sounded the death knell for German arma-

ments production.37

In addition, rumours abounded in the first half of 1944 of the expected

Allied invasion of occupied Europe. By that stage, not only were the

Soviets beginning to threaten the borders of German- occupied Poland,

but the long-awaited ‘second front’ in the west was also considered

imminent. It was fast approaching the point where Reich territory itself

would come under ground attack. After months of speculation and false

alarms, when news of D-Day broke in Berlin on 6 June 1944 it was

almost a relief. Certainly that was the tone adopted by the Nazi press.

One journalist noted that the instruction from her editor was one of

near-jubilation: ‘Hurrah!’, she wrote in her diary in imitation of the offi-

cial tone, ‘it has finally come, now we will show how we will chase [the

Allies] away. Victory is finally approaching!’38 Dieter Borkowski was one

of those caught up in this perverse sense of optimism. Musing in his

diary on his recent conscription to the flak service, he wondered if his

call-up had actually come too late.39

Most Berliners were much more sceptical. One diarist noted the

military situation ‘visibly deteriorating’, and remarked that ‘one hardly

dares to read the military’s communiqués’.40 The bad news came thick

and fast that summer: the Allied invasion of Normandy in June was

followed by the 20 July Plot and the attempt on Hitler’s life. August

then saw the liberation of Paris and the rising of the Polish Under -

ground on the streets of Warsaw. It all amounted, as Hans-Georg von

Studnitz recalled, to ‘an avalanche of events, hurtling downwards with