Authors: Roger Moorhouse
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
xiv
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.
xvi
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