Bessel provides us with a glimpse into a world difficult to imagine; a world where a 20th century nation is suddenly thrown back into an earlier age, where centralized power has disappeared and roaming bands of mercenary soldiers are replaced by vengeful slave laborers whose main concern is to try to return to their homes and families.
With the end of the war, Germany is divided amongst the victors, each with various visions of the future, each with various goals. For the Russians, it is revenge and a desire to strip the wealth of Germany in order to rebuild their nation. Who pays? Hundreds of thousands of women who suffer rape and death and millions of German men who will become slaves of the Soviet Union. For the French, they too seek revenge and to strip their sector to take back treasures to France; their rule while not as terrible as that of the Russians will include rape by their Moroccan troops and labor under gruesome conditions for former members of the German military. The British and Americans each want to purge the nation of the last vestiges of National Socialism, but the British are more pragmatic and realize that the sooner German is repaired, the sooner it’s consumers will purchase British goods.
And the Germans? In bombed out cities, with millions of displaced Poles, French, Ukrainians, Russians, etc. roaming their streets and few creature comforts, a legend of German suffering is born. The Germans only see their own terrible condition, their own hunger, their own humiliation at the hands of the victors. Yesterdays Master Race has become today’s vanquished; looked down upon, unable to control their own lives, unable even to know when or if husbands, fathers or brothers will return home, a nation of women and old men try to survive from day to day.
This myth of German suffering is convenient for the Germans as it ignored the fact that other cities, other peoples were also suffering but not from their being the cause, but because they were the victims. Who destroyed Warsaw? Who destroyed tens of thousands of Russian villages? Who stripped the food from peasants and farmers across Europe so Germans would not have to repeat the turnip winters of World War I? Who brought the slave workers to German and treated them as if they were beasts of burden? It was convenient for millions of Germans to view themselves as victims because they did not want to admit that they were the cause of their own suffering.
Of course, in the end, the Marshall Plan provided the capital needed for Germany and the rest of Europe to rebuild, to move forward. But before that time, Germany suffered as a result of its own racial ideology. Where their German victims? Of course; not everyone supported National Socialism and as always, the children suffered. They all had to pay the price for and “ism” that promised utopia and which completely ignored human reality. Bessel’s book is an excellent overview of suffering, confusion and lost identity, but it also shows us the ability of a strong people to renew themselves. We should all keep that lesson in mind.
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