Berlin at War (16 page)

Foremost among the pessimists were those few who actively

opposed Hitler. Their attitude is a little easier to justify. Many of them

were hoping, that summer, for a military setback to dampen the

popular enthusiasm for Hitler and, in turn, to strengthen the calming

hand of the General Staff. One of those who typified this belief was

Colonel Hans Oster, a senior officer of German military intelligence,

the
Abwehr
, and a leading member of a group that had been actively

plotting Hitler’s downfall. Oster had even been passing military secrets

to the Dutch since the previous autumn, in the hope that it would

stiffen Allied resistance to the German advance.38 For all those like

Oster who opposed Hitler, the fall of France in 1940 was a hammer

blow. As Oster’s colleague Reinhard Spitzy recalled, the entry of

German troops into Paris that summer caused all the critics of the

Nazi regime to suddenly ‘fall silent’.39

Whatever their reasoning, it is clear that, for all the thousands

thronging the government district and cheering Hitler in July 1940,

there was also a minority in Berlin who felt little reason for jubilation.

Even if there were some small sectors of Berlin society that were

ambivalent about Germany’s success, the return of the victorious troops

to the capital seems to have been a cause for unalloyed and uninhib-

ited enthusiasm. Howard Smith noted that ‘it was the only occasion

in the better part of six years that I have spent in Germany that I saw

. . . Germans weeping and laughing from pure spontaneous joy’.40

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berlin at war

Even so, the event was meticulously stage-managed: grandstands

were erected on Pariser Platz, a public holiday was proclaimed and

church bells were to be tolled while the parade was in progress. As if

in recognition of the slightly ambivalent response to previous victory

announcements, Goebbels reminded the Berlin populace to provide a

‘tumultuous welcome for your sons, husbands, fathers and brothers

who won the great victories in Poland and France’.41

Berliners did not disappoint. They lined the streets cheering and

throwing flowers, their ‘good humour equalled only by that of the

soldiers themselves’. William Shirer noted that ‘nearly the whole town

turned out to welcome [the soldiers] back’ and that the crowds ‘yelled

and yelled until they were hoarse’.42 Indeed, at times it seems that

traditional military discipline threatened to break down entirely as the

parading troops broke ranks to be reunited with their loved ones,

while children escaped the police cordon to run to their fathers

clutching small bouquets of flowers.

According to Howard Smith the parade was ‘a real, tangible sign

of victory and the end of the war Germans detested and feared. Sons,

husbands and fathers, sun-tanned and healthy after long military

training, happy as kids after the great triumph, were returning home

to their families to stay.’ ‘It was’, he concluded, ‘truly a glorious day

and in every happy heart lived the belief that this was the end of it

all.’43 This last sentiment was perhaps one which every Berliner – even

those unmoved by previous celebrations – could share.

Some Germans, while not immune to Germany’s strategic and

military success, were also enthused by the prospect of the material

improvements they hoped would follow. Thus, while Göring toured

the museums and galleries of Paris in search of titbits to add to his

personal art collection, many Berliners were also anticipating their

own share of ‘war booty’, in the form of chocolate, silk stockings

and coffee.

Yet, though such material concerns may certainly have helped

generate enthusiasm, the sentiment registered by the vast majority of

Germans in the summer of 1940 was one of overwhelming relief. The

First World War had loomed large in German public life in the previous

two decades and, measured by the experiences of that conflict, 1940

was an enormous success. Germany was the master of continental

Europe. Her age-old enemies had been defeated: Poland had been

a guarded optimism

65

crushed and France had capitulated. And, best of all perhaps, the meat-

grinder of trench warfare had been avoided. German casualties in the

French, Scandinavian and Polish campaigns of the previous ten months

had amounted to 200,000, of whom some 60,000 had been killed. And,

while this total may seem shocking to twenty-first-century ears, it

represents about half of the German losses incurred in a single battle

of the First World War – the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

The fly in the ointment was Britain. Routed in France and forced into

ignominious evacuation off the beaches of Dunkirk, the British had been

roundly defeated and, though they were still at war with Germany, were

no longer considered to pose a serious threat. Indeed, the battles of 1940

were widely believed to have neutered the British for good. For one thing,

the military materiel left behind at Dunkirk filled ten acres of the French

countryside, and it was thought unlikely that it could be replaced in short

order. In addition, the Germans held little respect for British troops them-

selves, whom they considered, for the most part, to be ill-trained, ill-led,

ill-disciplined and far inferior to the already routed French.44 Newsreel

images of puny, gap-toothed ‘Tommies’ alongside strapping, bronzed

German infantrymen did much to convince the German public that their

troops really were biologically, as well as militarily, superior. Even the

British blockade of Germany, which had been so devastatingly effective

during the First World War, held no fear any more. As the German

people were keen to stress, with most of the western seaboard of Europe

– from the North Cape to the Pyrenees – in German hands, who was it

that was being blockaded anyway?45

In the summer of 1940, this flowering of popular optimism was

bolstered by a peculiar form of celebrity mania, as the heroes of the

recent military campaigns were lauded and fêted in the capital. One of

the first had been the U-boat captain Günther Prien. He was followed

by others who had won their spurs in the French campaign, such as the

pilots Werner Mölders and Adolf Galland. In most cases, the accession

to celebrity status in the Third Reich was swift. First, press conferences

would be called, where the would-be celebrity would recount his heroic

deeds for the waiting press and public. This would be followed by promo-

tion, the award of high military honours and an invitation to private

meetings with the Führer. In time, if the candidate proved sufficiently

malleable and photogenic, he would join the ‘A-list’ and be seen at all the

best events.

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berlin at war

An essential part of the celebrity culture in the Third Reich was

the production of photographs and postcards. In an age before tele-

vision, this was seen as a vital way to extend the celebrity appeal

beyond the traditional circles of those who read the newspapers or

listened to the radio, and especially to target the young. Postcards

had long been a part of the Nazi propaganda effort, from those

commemorating the Nuremberg rallies or the movement’s martyrs

to the ubiquitous, stern-faced image of Hitler. But with the advent

of war, and especially the victories of 1940, the medium really came

into its own.

The rise to fame followed a familiar pattern. The dashing war hero

would be required to sit for a photographic portrait, perhaps even by

Heinrich Hoffmann himself. The resulting images would be printed

as postcards and then either be sold or sent out, upon request, to the

adoring public. Field Marshal Rommel’s adjutant, Hans-Joachim

Schraepler, recalled the process in a letter sent to his wife from the

North African desert in the summer of 1941. ‘Yesterday’, he complained,

‘I wrote and dictated a vast amount of letters on the general’s behalf,

and sent the new photos which were well done. I am afraid that not

hundreds but thousands will ask for a photo. This is the price of glory.

It is of no use to become a famous man.’46

Perhaps the best examples of this celebrity culture were the cards

produced by the prolific artist Wolfgang Willrich. Willrich was already

well established prior to 1939, with numerous exhibitions and publi-

cations to his name. Among other commissions, he had been engaged

to produce collections of sketches of the Nazi leadership, ethnic

Germans abroad (
Volksdeutsche
) and German peasants. His portraits

typically consisted of a head and shoulders, often viewed in profile,

showing the contours of the face and the bone structure of the subject

to best advantage. Executed in pencil and charcoal, but sometimes

wholly or partly overpainted in watercolour, they portrayed the same

bluff heroicism – all cheekbones and rippling muscles – common to

much Nazi art. Those earlier pictures were generally published with

commentary in bound volumes, appealing to collectors and those with

a passion for German ethnography.47

Willrich seems to have come into his own with the outbreak of war.

After petitioning Rommel, asking to be permitted to accompany the

troops as a war artist, he took part in both the Polish and the French

a guarded optimism

67

campaigns, sketching senior personnel and ordinary soldiers as he went.

In time, he also produced sketches of the military heroes of the day,

including Prien and Mölders. One of Willrich’s portraits of Rommel

would even find its way into the possession of British general Bernard

Law Montgomery, who gave it pride of place in his battlefield caravan.48

Such pictures, reproduced as postcards for the Propaganda Ministry,

proved enormously popular. Sold for around 20 pfennigs apiece, sales

particularly spiked when entire platoons of Hitler Youth were encour-

aged to write off requesting signed examples. One collector was the

young Christa Riemann. Her bedroom wall was festooned with pictures

of Mölders and Galland: ‘We were crazy about the pilots’, she recalled,

‘they had these chic uniforms and received medals and high awards . . .

all very impressive.’49 These cards would be eagerly collected, or might

be swapped in schools and playgrounds, but their propaganda value

was incalculable.

So, Berlin’s optimism was palpable that summer, but it would prove

to be short-lived. In August 1940, the RAF began night bombing over

Berlin and, although the early raids tended to be rather inconsequential,

they nonetheless reminded citizens that they were still at war and gave

them a grim warning of things to come.

That autumn there were further unsettling shifts. The state visit of

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin in November

had been strained and, despite public expressions of friendship, the

perceptive observer would have discerned a new chill in German–

Soviet relations. Political developments thereafter only strengthened

the suspicion that Stalin was being cut adrift. The Tripartite Pact,

signed earlier that autumn between Italy, Germany and Japan, gained

a number of new signatories – Hungary, Romania and Slovakia – in

November 1940. Though the text of the Pact explicitly stated its peaceful

intentions towards Moscow, it was obvious that the countries of central

Europe were taking sides.

The following spring, the balance of power appeared to shift still

further. In March 1941, Bulgaria too joined the Tripartite Pact and was

immediately occupied by German troops. In April, German forces

launched the simultaneous invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, thereby

at a stroke cutting the Gordian knot of Yugoslav politics and clearing

up the Italian-inspired military quagmire in Greece. When the German–

Turkish friendship treaty was signed early that summer, Germany had

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berlin at war

gained effective control of all of continental Europe and, most im-

portantly, her south-eastern flank was secure. The scene was set, it

seemed, for the next phase of the war.

Yet, this is – in part at least – to read history backwards. Seen from

the perspective of ordinary Berliners in the early summer of 1941, these

were heady days indeed. Germany, it appeared, had already taken on

her primary, historic enemies and had emerged victorious: France had

been defeated and the British had been driven from the continent. The

German Reich was bound by treaty with the other major powers in

Europe – the Soviet Union and Italy – and had entered alliances with

almost all of the other lesser players. Greater Germany was a reality:

it bestrode the continent, its economy was the strongest and its polit-

ical model was the most dynamic. Militarily, too, the perception of

German invincibility was creeping into even the most sceptical hearts.

And yet, for all the optimism, a profound sense of unease seemed

to persist. This was not helped by the regime’s rather clumsy attempt

to distract attention from the build-up of German forces on the eastern