IN THE summer of 1942, after the fall of Kerch, Sevastopol and Rostov-on-Don, the Berlin press changed its tone; grim restraint gave way to joyful fanfares. The successes of the ambitious Don offensive put an end to articles about the severity of the Russian winter, about the size of the Red Army and the power of its artillery, about the fanaticism of the partisans and the stubborn resistance of Soviet forces in Sevastopol, Moscow and Leningrad. These successes displaced the memory of terrible losses, of crosses on soldiers’ graves, of the alarming urgency of the last Winter Relief campaign, and of how train after train, day and night, had brought back wounded and frostbitten soldiers from the Eastern front. These successes silenced those who saw the whole eastern campaign as an act of madness, those who worried about the strength of the Red Army and were still troubled by the Führer’s failure to keep his promise to capture Moscow and Leningrad by mid-November 1941 and so bring the war to a swift, victorious conclusion.
Life in Berlin was now all bustle and noise.
The telegraph, the radio and the newspapers constantly reported new victories on the Eastern front and in Africa. London was now half-destroyed; U-boats had paralyzed America’s war effort; Japan was winning victory after victory. There was excitement in the air—an expectation of new, still greater victories, heralding a final peace. Every day trains and aeroplanes arrived with yet more of Europe’s high and mighty: industrialists, kings, crown princes, generals and prime ministers from all the continent’s capitals: Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Copenhagen, Prague, Vienna, Bucharest, Lisbon, Athens, Belgrade and Budapest. The Berliners watched all this with amusement, studying the faces of the Führer’s voluntary and involuntary guests. As their cars drew up outside the grey facade of the New Reich Chancellery, these important figures became like trembling schoolboys, frowning, fidgeting, glancing from side to side. There were endless newspaper reports of diplomatic receptions; of lunches and dinners; of military and trade treaties and accords; of meetings held in the Reich Chancellery, Salzburg, Berchtesgaden or Hitler’s field HQ. Now that German troops were approaching the lower reaches of the Volga and the Caspian Sea, Berliners had begun to talk about Baku oil; about a future link-up between the Wehrmacht and the Japanese army; about Subhas Chandra Bose, India’s future gauleiter.30
Trains from Slav and Latin countries arrived hour after hour, bringing more workers to Germany, along with cereal grains, wood, granite, marble, sardines, wine, iron ore, oil and butter, and a variety of metals.
There was a sense of victory, a hum of triumph in the Berlin air. Even the green of the ivy and vine leaves, of the lindens and chestnuts in the parks and on the streets looked more splendid than usual.
This was a time of illusion, a time when many were taken in by the fantasy that ordinary people and a supposedly all-conquering totalitarian state shared a single destiny. Many believed what Hitler proclaimed as truth: that the blood flowing in Aryan veins united all Germans under the banner of riches and glory, of power over the entire world. This was a time of contempt for the blood of others, a time of the official justification of unimaginable atrocities. It was a time when losses of every kind—the deaths of countless soldiers, the many children made orphans—were justified by the prospect of the imminent and total victory of the German nation. At the close of each day, another life would begin; hidden monsters would make their presence felt. Night was a time of fear and weakness, of lonely thoughts, of exhaustion and longing, of whispered conversations with your closest friends and immediate family, a time of tears for those killed on the Eastern front, of complaints about hunger and need, about backbreaking labour and the arbitrary power of officials. It was a time of doubts, of subversive thoughts, of horror at the implacable power of the Reich, a time of troubled premonitions and the howl of English bombs.
These two streams flowed through the life of the German nation as a whole, and through the lives of all the individual Germans—whether they were minor officials, workers, professors, young women or kindergarten children. The split was complete and extraordinary; it was difficult to imagine what it might lead to. Would new, unprecedented forms of life come into being? Would this split be annulled after the victory, or would it endure?