The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 by Kershaw Ian

Author:Kershaw, Ian [Kershaw, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101565506
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

8

Implosion

We’re issuing orders in Berlin that practically don’t even arrive, let alone can be carried out. I see in this the danger of an extraordinary diminution of authority.

Joseph Goebbels, diary entry, 28 March 1945

I

Berlin in April 1945 was a city bracing itself for the storm about to blow. All possible preparations were being hastily made to try to counter the coming onslaught from the east. Everyone knew that it could not be long before the city was engulfed in the fighting. The mood had reached rock bottom. Only the occasional expression of gallows humour punctuated the fatalistic acceptance that there was no way out.1 But as the seemingly interminable dark days of those truly terrible winter months of 1944–5 gradually gave way to a sunny and warm spring, some Berliners tried their best to shut out the war for a few fleeting moments.

For anyone passing through the Tiergarten, the beautiful park in the centre of the city (if now horribly damaged, occupied by heavy artillery and serving as a source of much needed firewood), beneath trees coming into bloom and accompanied by the chirping of the birds, or looking out from the balconies of spacious villas in the Grunewald, on the western outskirts of Berlin, the war could seem far away (though the ruins of some villas could provide a swift reminder). But fleetingly pleasant activities, unremarkable strands of peacetime everyday life, were in early April 1945 no more than an attempt to ‘seize the day’, to grasp what might be one of the last chances of enjoyment before grim reality overtook them.

Others sought to ‘seize the night’ as women and soldiers in districts of central Berlin frantically engaged in ‘a hectic search for pleasure’ in shelters, basements of buildings reduced to rubble and dark pathways through the ruins. Looting and thieving were commonplace. Despite the harsh penalties, a black market flourished in food and almost any material goods to be found. Resort to any form of alcohol – including stolen medical supplies – served for many to blot out fears of what was in store.2

Whatever illusions people still briefly entertained swiftly passed. And in any case only a few were in a position to share them. Most were too worn down by cares and worries, trying to cope with the severe privations of daily existence. For the city, like every other big city in the country, was in physical appearance and the psychological disposition of its inhabitants deeply scarred by the war. The main feature of Berlin’s outward appearance was, in fact, not just the devastated city centre, the desolate façades, the bomb craters, the ruined buildings that were no more than empty shells, but its emptiness – the lack of traffic and people on the streets, the shops bereft of goods, the houses without furniture.3 At night, ‘a ghost town of cave-dwellers was all that was left of this world metropolis’, noted one observer.4 Practically every evening, as people ate their meals by flickering candlelight – since electricity

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