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.
“That attitude did not change for many of them.”
Even today...that attitude still persists by many.
Also, your statement about the Jews just vanishing...right on point.
They weren’t, but it was one of the reasons to push the Japanese into an economic corner and get them to attack. Germany had a pact with Japan that stated they would declare war on whomever the other was at war with (in a nutshell) and Roosevelt and advisors and knew that with American sentiment running well over 50% favorable toward Germany and not getting into a European war we were never going to jump in with England without a serious prompting.
They knew Hitler would honor that pact, and he’d declare on us if Japan became embroiled with us in the Pacific. The Germans big mistake there was assuming we’d concentrate on kicking Japanese ass first.
My perspective is from one of an American who lived in almost of 12 years in Germany in the era of post World War II. My ideas were formed by my Father who was a professional an Army Officer and my Father in Law who was a Command Pilot of the 8th Air Force leading attacks of multiple attacks on the Third Reich. I also knew and understood many of my German neighbors who saw their destroy of both and family and culture in the aftermath of World War II.
One of my fellow Vestry members at my church in Wiesbaden was one U-Boot Capitan Martin Niemoeller who received an ron Cross during World War I. For his public dissent of Hitler, he has sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.
We had one great friend in Gelnhausen whose husband was a member of the French Foreign Legion because who had been a member of the Waffen SS during World War II. He was a professional soldier on the Eastern Front, but any who fight against the Communist paid the price.
In 1943, the German population were very like like the American population in the midst of the Obama Administration. They believed the propaganda that was feeding every day by both the media and the government. They believed these lies and they sacrificed their families and neighbors in the amidst of the 8th Air Force and the RAF. The Germans were clueless and paid their price. Americans fall into their stupidity clueless path.
The general attitude of the average Germans during that time was that the Americans and British were a barbaric people for bombing cities and civilians. However, they realized that Germany was going to lose the war well before D-Day. What they held out hope for was that Hitler would be able to negotiate a peace that would allow them to keep Germany proper relatively intact.
When I was a kid I lived next to a German family that left Germany because they thought their nephew would be killed. Two aunts and the nephew. The nephew was hard of hearing, and they were convinced he would soon be liquidated to keep his DNA out of the Master race. They were very open about. There was an urgency to get him out before he was killed. He was a little kid when they left.
Great question. Thanks for posting this....will be reading with interest to see where to get more information.
That’s right.
Hitler saved Roosevelt a lot of trouble. And Hitler’s bet that the Japanese would tie down a lot of Soviet divisions didn’t pan out.
It was a “Germany” first approach.
I understand. Thanks.
The White Rose society was tragic. She was a true heroine.
Yes, Americans are clueless.
We celebrated Obama for saying :”Boston Strong” instead of saying “how dare you let that happen to spare muzzie feelings?”
Obama is a curse that has yet to be fully appreciated. He will get many people killed. He is importing the enemy and draining the treasury.
Powerful. Yes, that old man knew.
Well, you may not appreciate my advice and it is sad that so many otherwise intelligent folks have missed the point also. But, WW2 German history is the most tortured and propagandized of anything one could read. And, if you seek the second and third hand sources that have been recommended to you above, you will learn only what the commentators you choose think Germany was like in 1943 among the townsfolk. Or, more to the point, what the writers wanted their audience to think it was like. You will reading the equivalent of Sydney Blumenthal on the subject. Or the Bill Ayers equivalent.
Find out the truth for yourself. Its the only way in this case.
There is a book called the Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943, Joseph Goebbels pretty much spells it out. I had a conversation with a former German officer who’s brother was in the SS, and his brother told him at the time; “The Americans have landed, the war is over for us.” Even General Von Rundstead when asked by Hitler what he should do, his answer was “Make Peace you fool.” Most Germans in 43 didn’t believe they were going to win the war, but they had a steady stream of propaganda that promised great new weapons that would change the course of the war. As I said, read the Goebbels Diaries.(I don’t think he was lying to himself)
Didn’t the German exchange students acknowledge the German atrocities, the Blitz on London and the other English cities, etc.?
Obama is a curse that has yet to be fully appreciated.
You are absolutely right.
It’s beyond frustrating that so many are still supportive of the evil bastard or are simply indifferent.
Regarding post 48. The name of the book is “Modern Times”; I don’t know how the auto correct on my phone made it MoTune. Sorry.
no correlation.
I will say there is not one authoritative source as there was no unity of opinion.
There were public manifestations of support for the government and private grumbling over the spoils of the system.
Public displays of dissent often met with death (see the White Rose Conspiracy) and assassinations of NAZI leaders drew gruesome death and mass killings (see Heydrich’s assassination and the murder of the male inhabitants of Lidice in Czechoslovakia, the home town of one of his assassins).
Private dissent often took the form of humor, but that too was prosecuted. And that is not a joke.
We would like to think that “good Germans” did not know about the camps. From one lady on a train to Auschwitz, she told me that a farmer nearby drew his hand across his neck as their train passed by. He was signaling what would happen once they arrived. (Yes, Auschwitz is in Poland, but what was going on was no secret and there were camps throughout the Reich.)
(I am the grandson of a Dachau and Stadelheim prisoner who was to be put on trial for his life (1942 to late’44); but then came Patton and they needed prison guards for the Ardennes offensive.)
I have thought of the parallels too; Mark Twain said that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. I see the parallels in the Middle East and the situation there.
I hope you gain many thoughtful responses from your post. I often learn new things about that time from the relatives of those who served in US forces during that time. It is interesting, to say the least.
Yes it is.
I appreciate you candor. And I agree. The history of that time is written by the “winners” and as I have been looking into this for a while, most if what you find is mostly war history. There really isn’t any coherent sources about what the people of Germany were thinking, even to themselves since it was dangerous to your health to make any analysis that was counter to the propaganda that was circulated.
There had to be a percentage of the people who were simply trapped in the society who could see what was all around them, the wounded soldiers, the airplanes flying overhead.
But even today, there several 800 lb gorillas in the room, and the democRAT media refuses to even acknowledge they even exist. Yet the public sees them, and they can smell them. No need to recount them for you, you know what they are.
I have read some of the accounts of the German resistance people and the accomplices of Klaus von Staufenberg et al.
I understand too that these are people who have no guns to speak of, the local police are a unit of the larger military so any real resistance is futile. I am looking for how those who could see the writing on the wall managed to stay calm in that interminable period before the sky fell in on them.
I know it is sort of a morbid inquiry, but I am working on a theory and how to predict when to hit the eject button.
Today, it’s not the same cataclysm of war headed our way, but a similar catastrophe is brewing, and our feckless leader is doing his best impersonation of one who thinks the laws of physics don’t apply to him as well.
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