Author: rreams@rollins.edu

Although there was violence leading up to the Nazi surrender and the Soviet occupation of Berlin, a sense of almost calm and a restoration of relative peace, according to Moorhouse, seemed to install itself over the city. This is an intereting point I wish he made in more than just the epiloge because of the…

Although I contest the mentioning in Berlin at War that the mood in Berlin began to deteriorate in 1943–I fully believe that many experienced a decrease in their mood far before this because of the rationing restrictions and the infrequent air raids that had already occurred–the decreease in mood in 1943 because of sickness is…

Berliners were told so many times that I’m sure they were convinced Berlin was the best defended city in WWII. Whether this is true or not is up for debate. What we do know is that Berlin did indeed have some considerable defenses against air raids throughout the war. The most prominent of these were…

As WWII progressed, so too did the death toll. Whereas in normal times all families would be able to place death notices in the local paper, with the increase in demand for notices, it became more difficult to obtain a mention. At the beginning of the war, the wording of the notices was chosen by…

Ich zeige dich an, junger Mann! (“I’ll have you arrested, you impudent young man!”) Even if the Nazis couldn’t control, know, and watch over everything, they still wanted to. So, they asked the general population in Berlin and large metropolitan areas to help them out. Any suspicious activity was to be reported if seen. For…

We’re all used to almost international programs on our TVs. But what type of broadcasts were available to those with the resources to purchase a personal radio or go to a bar or restaurant with a radio when the technology was just emerging in Germany? Certainly not programs with as international a scope. In Germany,…

Reading about the measures the Nazi regime took against Jews and others they considered ‘undesirable’ is always hard. There’s multiple things people are taught, people know, about these measures. Some of the largest include: deportation to ghettos, relocation to concentration camps, the Final Solution, exclusion from society, etc. I was a little shocked while reading Berlin at…

Nazi officials were propaganda masters. The Third Reich managed throughout WWII to convince German citizens they were ‘the superior race,’ senior to even Western Europeans living and working in Germany; they convinced many German citizens (initially) that war damage caused by Allied forces was not as severe as the plane and bombing noises made it sound,…

Albert Speer became Hitler’s preferred architect for Berlin through the Second World War because of his grand scheme for the city. If all of his highly expensive plans had been carried out the city, he hypothesized, would be more splendid than Paris. More splendid than Vienna. This was an idea highly attractive to Hitler, who…

I found the discussion about the unusually cold winter in 1939-40 interesting. Moorhouse in Berlin at War gave me the impression he was trying to create an image that Berliners were unaccustomed to the level of chill the city experienced. I guess in some cases this could indeed be true. However, I think a large…