With the arrival of the Western Allies and the withdrawal of the Russians from the western part of Berlin, normalisation finally began – at least for all those who, like us, were living in the US sector – now American, British or French. Basic supplies were slowly improving, but many luxury goods remained far out of reach – and the hunger for those was obviously great. Like many other Germans, we also took items for the Americans (as souvenirs) to their PX-shop in exchange for goods that were not normally available on the market. This was the way many of our precious belongings went – our father’s “plumber’s shop (his war medals)”, old jugs and other things.
I had a hard time with the lost war, the occupiers and how they treated us. Our returnees from Russian captivity – often young guys who were only a little older than me – came home as starved skeletons. They were lying around in the streets, barely able to eat the soup we were trying to feed them. They were unable to walk, and I had to drive them with our cart to the nearby hospital, where they usually died. There was a lack of prospects for our future, starting with the Morgenthau Plan, which envisaged relocating all Germans to deserts. Everything German was called into question – our entire history, culture, our soldiers, and us too. All Germans were portrayed as criminals, which was, of course, reinforced by the images of the atrocities committed by Germans. And the others wanted to be the good super-humans. Of course, it was clear to me by now what had happened in the concentration camps – it was incomprehensible to me. We knew that there were concentration camps because our father himself had spent 14 days in one of those in 1939. He had probably expressed himself too openly against the Nazis but was probably of the opinion that he was irreplaceable and that nothing would happen to him. He never spoke about those weeks in the concentration camp, not even after the war. He was probably close to the Social Democrats and was a party member when he died.
I don’t remember him speaking out loud against the Nazis during the war. This was somewhat understandable with the bad experiences he had in the concentration camp. He explained to me several times that he had been brought up according to Prussian virtues, that he had tried to live those, and that he did his best to pass them on to me: sincerity, honesty, helpfulness, a hunger for knowledge, conscientiousness, thoroughness, humanity and a sense of duty. On the occasion of the lost war with the cadaverous obedience of which we Germans were generally accused of and asked about it by me, he explained that both, as a civilian and a soldier, one undoubtedly had a duty of obedience, but also the duty to answer to oneself and to third parties.
He had no sympathy for the Hitler assassination attempts. However, only in terms of execution, since he would have expected any officer – one of those being Stauffenberg – to stay with the bomb and ensure that it really exploded next to Hitler. So, it left an aftertaste in his mouth that he had left the place to secure a post in the imaginary new government. He also had no sympathy for sabotage – for example, with unusable ammunition or tampered gasoline for the soldiers at the front. He took the view as a front-line fighter in the First World War, where the “little” soldier had to do his duty – no matter what – and he had a right to come home in one piece instead of being “killed” by his own people with such actions. He had probably seen a lot in the occupied eastern territories and stood by his opinion that something like this should never happen – despite all the severity of the war.
In response to my constantly probing questions, he always denied until his death that he had heard or known anything about death camps and the gassing of Jews. He had a high position that suggested he had access to more confidential information than others, but I had to believe him. However, I knew that our father’s company also employed concentration camp prisoners. I saw them with my own eyes when I accompanied our father to the work. And I can remember one incident. Father had obviously provided additional care, which the guards didn’t like. I don’t know what had preceded that moment, but in any case, my father suddenly yelled at the security guard to move his ass to the battlefront. He needed workers and not starving people. He demonstratively put the full plate of food back in front of a prisoner and waited until that person – and all the others – had eaten. That really impressed me.
We also discussed the question of resistance several times. Our father always insisted that he had done what he thought was justifiable during the war. That he had done something was only confirmed to me after his death. Several people explained to me that our father had helped them to flee abroad as late as 1944. According to their statements, he could have never done this alone. Someone must have helped him. Who that was, however, was never revealed. Someone else told me about some role in the resistance, from which he later distanced himself but continued to support as a cause.