Staying true to the book’s premise, the chapter Unwelcomed Strangers was all about giving a voice to those who have not been given one before. Moorhouse stated that ‘foreign workers’ were seldom mentioned in first-documents in wartime Berlin. They were a substantial group within Berlin (they worked at Speer’s megalomaniacal constructions) yet natives managed to deliberately avoid them in the streets and ostracize them from their diary entries. These foreign workers were easily mistaken for POWs and concentration camp inmates as these three groups often worked side by side. This close association poorly affected the treatment foreign workers received from most Berliners. This was a disconcerting idea because it highlighted the mentality of the time – meaning, it was acceptable to discriminate POWs and concentration camp inmates and even expected.
Chapter A Taste of Things To Come was a beautiful example on how “ideas are more powerful than guns.” Falling German flak guns were actually deadlier than British bombs; however, the environment of constant fear and sleep deprivation created by these night raids effectively atrophied German morale. The constant leafleting raids indicated these bombers were about mining the enemies’ confidence and nationalism. All this anti-German propaganda did come to some use because by the autumn of 1940, there was a “dawning sense that the Nazi authorities were not telling the truth about the scale or seriousness of the attacks” (Moorhouse, 157). Meaning, Berliners were starting to question the efficacy and veracity of their government.
Also, German for dummies meine Lieben:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/education-languages/languages-cultures/german.html
The language video is hysterical, but I found German much more pleasant to the ear than I had expected. Maybe it’s just Berlin.