As World War II dragged on, past the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad in 1943, through strategic reversals on all fronts and increasingly devastating air raids, the German people, generally speaking, still gave the war effort their utmost support. Even in the fall of 1944 and into early 1945, many held out in desperate conditions under the belief that something, a miracle weapon or dissolution of the Soviet-Western alliance, would change Germany's fortunes. What compelled them to struggle and die for a regime whose crimes were so appalling? How much did Germans know about the Holocaust, and how could that knowledge coexist with a belief in the righteousness of the German cause?
In The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945, Oxford professor Nicholas Stargardt (Witnesses of War) explores these and other questions through letters, diaries and other first-hand accounts from German civilians and soldiers. The result is a portrait of a population that experienced complex combinations of patriotism, religious faith, fear, familial love and, ultimately, guilt.
Stargardt debunks the postwar pleas of ignorance given by Germans when confronted with the horrors of the death camps. News of genocide in the occupied east made its way back into the Reich through letters from soldiers to their families. As the bombing of German cities became catastrophic, civilians mused publicly that the air raids were revenge for how Germany had treated the Jews. The Holocaust was an open secret, and how regular Germans dealt with it is just part of what makes The German War so fascinating. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer