The blurb on the back of this book describes it as being a history of the ordinary people of Germany using the letters and diaries during the war years.
I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a while but saving it as a bit of a treat. More about ordinary people and less of an historians perspective on what was happening.
It didn’t work out quite like that.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an interesting book and it does seek to understand the extent to which ordinary German citizens were bought into the Nazi ethos and what alternative beliefs were current. It just has more of an historian’s perspective and few quoted letters and diaries than I was expecting.
The book is in 5 parts; Defend the Attack, Masters of Europe, The Shadow of 1812, Stalemate, The War Comes Home and Total Defeat.
The first shock, to me, was that to the average German citizen the British were seen as the aggressors of war who wanted to encircle and weaken Germany. Oddly, I’ve never come across this before. I understand that nations always find another nation to blame when they choose to start a war but I was genuinely shocked that Britain was being held accountable. Probably gross naivety on my part!
The second shock was that Viktor Klemperer comes out of the book with his image slightly tarnished. I’ve never actually read his diaries although I know of them so hadn’t realised he actually led a very sheltered life during the war and never ended up in a KL. I recognise that it seems unfair to blame him for that stroke of luck, which allowed him to survive. And I feel uncomfortable with my reaction. But…
However, what mostly comes out of reading this book is that whilst things were going well most people were happy to go along with things. When things started going badly people couldn’t see an alternative to continuing going along with things. The Nazi propaganda machine didn’t convince all the people all of the time but it did a ruthlessly effective job at doing it for a lot of the people a lot of the time. A useful reminder of how important it is to gather your news from multiple sources.
It wasn’t quite the book I was expecting but it was a different perspective and I’m pleased that I have read it.
itsonlywordsweb 