What Was Life Like In Germany Immediately After The Fall Of The Nazis?

Berlin, early July 1945. Since the end of the housing war in Hitler's center of power, the Soviet authorities have determined the future of the city. Two months after the end of the war, the British and Americans are allowed to move into their agreed sectors. A camera crew of Hollywood director George Stevens ventures into the Soviet-occupied part of the city at the Brandenburg Gate. At Pariser Platz, the men first film the badly damaged Hotel Adlon. Before the war, one of the most fashionable abodes in Berlin, it was a military hospital during the battle for the capital. Shortly after the surrender, the building caught fire and has been uninhabitable ever since. Just around the corner, Unter den Linden, a ruin is collapsing. At the Brandenburg Gate, George Stevens poses in his Jeep, just as he's used to doing in the Dream Factory. He would have loved to have been there with his cameras at Hitler's downfall. But Allied reporters are not allowed to enter Berlin until July to document the lives of the defeated after 12 years of Nazi rule and six years of war. Berlin's former boulevard is now passable again. Bicycles are a luxury as a means of transport. Debris is being removed and tidied up everywhere. The last weeks of the war, the bombing raids, the excesses of the Soviet conquerors seem almost forgotten. It's not yet clear how things will continue. In a little over a week, the victorious powers will discuss this in Potsdam. Moscow, the 24th of June 1945. Six weeks after the German surrender, the Soviet Union celebrates its victory over the fascist beast. Here, before the walls of the Holy Kremlin, the country greets its sons who have returned from victory. Heroes of unprecedented battles on all fronts of the patriotic war. From Lenin's mausoleum, Joseph Stalin receives the homage of his subjects and oversees the Red Army's grand parade in Red Square. For four years, the Generalissimo demanded everything of his people to drive the German invaders out of the country. The Soviet Union suffered 27 million casualties in the great patriotic war. The Red Army celebrates itself and its victory over Hitler. The symbols of Nazi rule are thrown on the ground in front of the Red dictator in camera-ready fashion. Stalin is at the height of his power. With the help of the Red Army, he will consolidate the Soviet Union's status as a superpower. July 1945, a flight over a desert of rubble. 50,000 tons of explosives fell on Berlin during the war. Of the buildings in the German capital, 48,000 are destroyed, 23,000 severely damaged and 172,000 slightly damaged. After visiting the destroyed German capital, British Air Force Marshal Arthur Tedder described it this way. Berlin as a city is completely destroyed. The ruins of what was once Berlin should be preserved as a modern Babylon or Carthage, a monument to Prussian militarism and the horrors of the Nazi regime. The city is completely dead. You drive kilometre after kilometre through abandoned ruins and find nothing habitable. Berlin can never be rebuilt. The New York Times in the summer of 1945 hopes that the obliteration of Berlin could herald the beginning of a renewed civilisation of Germany. And a visitor believes that very few people would regret the disappearance of this unlovable parvenu among European capitals. The American journalist William Shearer describes Berlin in his diary. How shall one find words to portray truthfully and accurately the picture of a great capital destroyed beyond recognition? The image of a once powerful nation that has ceased to exist. The image of a conquering people who only five years ago, when I left here, behaved in such a brutally arrogant manner and were blindly convinced of their mission as a master race. In this pile of rubble, there are also Berliners with confidence. Journalist Ruth Andreas Friedrich writes in her diary on 7 July 1945. The whole city lives in a frenzy of expectation. One wants to tear oneself apart with eagerness to work, to have a thousand hands and a thousand brains. The Americans are here, the English, the Russians. The French too are said to be in the offing. Maybe they've already moved into their occupation area. We don't know all that for sure. Rumours abound, are defended and refuted. It doesn't matter at all. All that matters is that we are at the centre of the activity. 2.8 million people live in Berlin. Rubble women dominate the cityscape. They take stone after stone out of the mountains of rubble for reconstruction. Clean up work that will take years. And most of the men have been killed or are imprisoned. In Berlin at this time, cameramen from Special Film Project 186 are also on the move. On 9 July 1945, Captain Carter shoots this footage of Berlin women and children, who are apparently being adequately cared for. Refugees from the East, on the other hand, have a particularly hard time. US reporter William Shearer. Starving human beings with no will, purpose in life or goal, reduced to animalistic functions like finding food and shelter to get through the next day alive. Rations are meagre. The best off are heavy workers and workers in unhealthy factories. This also includes cultural and artistic workers. Then come the categories for blue and white collar workers, rubble women and children. Those who do not work only receive ration card number five for non-working family members and the rest of the population. In the vernacular, it is called the hunger or cemetery card. Captain Carter's real job is to document the bomb damage in the capital. On this 9 July, he's particularly interested in historic buildings that played a special role in the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler. The Kaiserhof Hotel on Wilhelmsplatz was the first luxury hotel in imperial Berlin. In the 1920s, the operators sympathized with right-wing nationalist circles. From 1932, Hitler lived exclusively in this hotel when he visited Berlin. From his suite, he planned the takeover of Germany. On the 30th of January 1933, he traveled from here to President Hindenburg, who appointed him Reich Chancellor. The Kaiserhof is just as much a ruin as the Berlin Sports Palace on Potsdamer Straße. It was here that Hitler gave his first major speech as head of government in February 1933, announcing the crushing of the Communist Party and declaring his anti-Semitic inflammatory slogans to be state doctrine. Ten years later, on the 18th of February 1943, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels shouted, do you want total war? Into the arena, 15,000 fanatical party comrades cheered him and chanted previously rehearsed slogans. It took only two years for total war to finally reach Berlin. Hitler's Reich Chancellery was also badly damaged in a heavy bombing raid in February 1945. Soviet artillery did the rest. On the 1st of May, Reich Chancellor Joseph Goebbels committed suicide here, clearing the way for the unconditional surrender of the capital. Red Army soldiers immortalized themselves on the sign with vulgar slogans. The fate of Adolf Hitler remains unclear on this 9th of July 1945. German propaganda had declared that the Führer was killed in action fighting for Germany against Bolshevism to his last breath. But this is a bold-faced lie. In the bunker under the garden of the Reich Chancellery, the dictator shot himself in the head on the 30th of April. His last loyal followers carried the body to this bunker exit and doused it with petrol. Former security officers will soon testify that they watched the burning from a watchtower. They say that the charred remains of Hitler and his wife Eva were then buried in a bomb crater. But what happened to the bodies? As early as the 5th of May 1945, Soviet secret service agents found the grave. Within a short time, Hitler could be identified by his teeth. Joseph Stalin was informed. But the Kremlin ruler keeps the news to himself because he wants to keep his Western allies in the dark. With heavy losses, the Red Army has captured Hitler's power center. On this 9th of July 1945, another US Air Force cameraman meticulously documents the bullet holes in Albert Speer's monumental architecture, which for six years symbolized the German delusion of invincibility. The Red Army put a bloody end to this hubris. Throughout conquered Berlin, the Soviet victors put up posters with mottos by Joseph Stalin. The strength of the Red Army consists in the fact that it does not and cannot harbor racial hatred against other peoples, not even against the German people, as it is educated in the spirit of equality of all peoples and races, in the spirit of respect for the rights of other peoples. Such words are sheer mockery even for opponents of the Nazis. In view of looting and countless rapes in the first weeks after the surrender, journalist Ruth Andreas Friedrich writes in her diary, How little do trained politicians understand the simple trick that you only win peoples if you offer them better than before. The crowd hails the liberator, the savior from evil, because they added to their misery the inhabitants of the East Zone hate the Russians today. The Americans will do it differently, the English too. They will correct the psychological blunders of the first occupying power and restore justice and trust. A symbol of hope is the almost intact victory column, affectionately called the Goldelse by Berliners. It stands beyond the Brandenburg Gate in the British sector of Berlin, where the Union Jack has been flying since the 1st of July. Hollywood director George Stevens also took his camera crew to Wilhelmstraße to visit Hitler's Reich Chancellery. After the so-called Anschluss of Austria and the victory over France, the Germans cheered their Führer here. Now most of them don't want to hear about it anymore. These men are glad that they survived the war and were not taken to the Soviet Union. George Stevens has special permission from the Soviet occupation authorities to also visit and film inside the building. State guests were once received in the Cour d'honneur. Albert Speer went all out for crude effects. When the diplomats see this, they will learn to fear it, Hitler said to have once said to his architect. The Hollywood director is also interested in the dictator's whereabouts. That the body was burned here in the garden is only a rumor at this point. What is certain is that Josef Goebbels and his wife Magda took their own lives here. Their charred bodies were also recovered here by the Soviet secret service. But in this case Stalin's propaganda had already informed the world public about the find. George Stevens drives with his team to the sites from the Germans' imperial past. At the national monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I, the American reporters meet a group of Red Army soldiers. The Soviets have already made a German prisoner of war flown in from Moscow, the police chief of Berlin, in May. And thanks to the anti-fascist attitude of Paul Markgraf, control the newly established police units. One of the tasks is to combat black market trafficking. Directly at the Brandenburg Gate is the largest black market in occupied Berlin. The place is ideal for illegal business because the Tiergarten is nearby and the Soviet sector begins only a few meters away. Many Berliners sell their last belongings that survived the bombing war for food. Officially, the Allied authorities disapprove of the barter trade and occasionally try to crack down on it with raids. The Western Allies are suspicious of the Markgraf police from the start, rightly suspecting that the men are the extended arm of communist functionaries who have already arrived in Berlin from Soviet exile in early May. The Communist Party of Germany, banned by the Nazis, was already readmitted by the Soviets on the 11th of June 1945. Most Berliners still don't care. They're not interested in the slowly emerging conflict between the victorious powers but in the daily struggle for survival. On the 10th of July 1945, Captain Carter of Special Film Project 186 shoots this scene of rubble women clearing mountains of rubble for 72 pfennigs an hour and a better ration card. Every brick that is still halfway usable will be the basis of new housing for Berlin's population, which is overwhelmingly made up of women and children. On this 10th of July 1945, the journalist Ruth Andreas Friedrich reflects in her diary on the political future of Germany. Perhaps part of our misfortune is due to the fact that we have too few personalities. Each nation is naturally endowed with about the same percentage. 10% leaders against 90% led. That is to say, among 60 million Germans, about 6 million of all classes who think independently, act independently, judge independently. Against 54 million who are indifferent, immature and basically followers. After the last 25 years, what has remained of this precious 10%? Cameraman Carter's notes say that this boy's parents are dead and the nine-year-old is searching for his big brother. Endless refugee tracks pass through the ruined city. Hundreds of thousands of people who have come from the east with their few possessions. Because Berlin is already overcrowded, most of them have to move on. Those who live in Berlin have to improvise every day. Water is a precious commodity. The supply is still provided by public pumps. But some of the groundwater is contaminated and carries the risk of contracting dysentery or typhus. Even the obviously better off show up in the streets and stroll through Berlin in pretty summer dresses, looking for work, barter goods or a flat. Many of the undestroyed houses and villas in the suburbs of Dahlem, Zehlendorf or Charlottenburg have been requisitioned by the British and Americans to house the occupying troops. Our soldiers have also seized quarters in Russia and France. Only that one obviously feels something like this much more bitterly when it happens to oneself. Evacuation within a few hours. Barely the most necessary things allowed to be taken away. When the flat door clicks shut behind the evacuees, they can consider themselves totally bombed out. And as with the totally bombed out, the unfortunates fall without distinction of person. Whether Nazi opponent or Nazi friend, rich or poor, whoever has to get out has to get out. Let him then see where he can find a place to live. Those who were bombed out during the last years of the war know this situation. On the ruins, you can still see the inscriptions with new addresses for relatives or friends. Many flats have bomb damage, but are still usable. If the facade is missing, family life takes place in front of the public. At night, people have to be careful not to fall in the dark. Entire streets, on the other hand, are uninhabitable. On this 10th of July 1945, Captain Carter shoots a tracking shot for the US Air Force. The green of the street trees will not remain for long. Most of them are already cut down in autumn as fuel for the winter. Although most of the streets have been cleared, there is almost no traffic in the former metropolis. Only a few private vehicles are registered. Most of the wide cars were confiscated by the Wehrmacht, or later by the victors. And so people wait patiently for the few means of public transport. Like here at Alexanderplatz in the Soviet sector, where there are regular tram connections to the outer districts again. Even an S-Bahn line has been back in service since the beginning of July. George Stevens has gone to the Reichssportfeld, where Nazi Germany was allowed to host the 1936 Summer Olympics. At first, the USA wanted to boycott the event. But when the regime agreed to allow Jewish athletes to compete, American officials relented. Jesse Owens, a black athlete with four gold medals, became the superstar of the Games. Much to the chagrin of the Führer. Not only in the USA, but also in Germany, many people had hoped that the Olympic Games would strengthen the dictator's will for peace. But this soon proved to be a naive illusion. The site has been in the British sector since the arrival of the Western Allies. The new masters immediately put the Olympic swimming stadium back into operation for their soldiers. For Germans, of course, swimming is off-limits. George Stevens and his team also take a trip to the Wannsee, where only a few bathers are enjoying themselves in July 1945. They are occupation soldiers and their female companions who demonstratively ignore the ban on fraternization. The relationship between the soldiers of the victorious powers still seems to be unclouded here. The interest in the German fräuleins unites them. Germans are not allowed to enter the beach. But they're only too happy to make an exception for attractive young ladies. There is even a golf course at the beach club of the 2nd US Armoured Division, the Hell on Wheels. Under the command of General George S. Patton, the unit has fought its way from Normandy through the Ardennes to Germany and is now stationed in the American sector of Berlin. German policemen have cleared the square at the Brandenburg Gate for a large parade by the British. The men are wearing uniforms that were in service before 1933. Especially in the Soviet sector, the police are not too particular about their past. Men trained under the Nazis are also loyally at the service of the new masters. On this 12th of July 1945, soldiers of the British Desert Rats march across Hitler's east-west axis to the Brandenburg Gate. The cameramen of Special Film Project 186 are on site to film the special spectacle. The 7th British Armoured Division distinguished itself above all in the battles of the African Campaign, liberating Tripoli and Tunis in 1943. It crossed the Rhine in March 1945 and took part in the occupation of Hamburg. The border between the British and Soviet sectors runs right here. So this square is the ideal place to celebrate the joint victory over Nazi Germany. But Berliners sense very clearly that cracks are appearing in the Allied brotherhood in arms. Journalist Ruth Andreas Friedrich writes in her diary, They don't seem to love each other, our Allied occupying forces. One must not let this become loud. If we cautiously hint to the Americans and English that there might have been difficulties with the Russian occupation, their countenances turn cold as ice. Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, the commander-in-chief of the British occupation forces, has arrived from his headquarters in East-Westphalia to present the victor of Berlin with a High British Order of Merit. Marshal Georgi Zhukov. Joint appearances like this are intended to deceive the public about the true state of relations between the Allies. Hollywood director George Stevens has also come to Berlin with his team to document the forthcoming Conference of the Victors. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had last met in Yalta. After the death of the US president, Harry S. Truman has become his successor. The big three are meeting in Potsdam to discuss the future of Germany. Although Truman sees with concern that the Red Army controls almost all of Eastern Europe, he still believes in a future for the anti-Hitler coalition with the Soviet Union. In the British sector, George Stevens films a Red Army unit marching through the Tiergarten. His president expresses the belief these days that the Russians would continue to be friends of the US. Although incidents between GIs and Red Army soldiers continue to occur in Berlin, Truman sees no reason at this point not to welcome their friendship and give them ours. July 14, 1945. Captain Carter of Special Film Project 186 shoots this footage at Pariser Platz, which is part of the Soviet sector. What will be the future of a destroyed, defeated and occupied Germany? Will the Soviet Union sooner or later extend its influence further west? Is Joseph Stalin counting on the withdrawal of American troops from Europe, as Roosevelt had announced at Yalta? Or will the British, Americans and French stick to their plan to rebuild the country and educate the Germans to become Democrats? After all, the president never really took seriously US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau's idea of making Germany an agricultural country without heavy industry. Morgenthau's adversary, US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, won Truman over with the view that the only hope for a stable future in Europe was an economically strong and productive Germany. In his diary, he writes about a conversation with Truman in mid-May 1945. Punish the war criminals severely. Take away the weapons for all time. Supervise government action until the Nazi-educated generation has left the stage. But don't deprive them of the possibility of building a contented Germany at the end, interested only in the non-military methods of civilization. This is exactly what Ruth Andreas Friedrich hopes for. That four world powers will meet in our ruins and that we will prove to the representatives of these world powers how serious we are about our zeal, how boundlessly serious about the effort to make amends and rise. Berlin is running at full speed. If we are understood and forgiven now, everything will be achieved from us. Everything. That we renounce Nazism, that we find the new better, that we work and are fundamentally of goodwill. Never before have we been so ripe for redemption, so tired of terror, fear and injustice. If only our victors will keep their promises to us. Tempelhof Airport was one of the first major projects of the Third Reich. When it was inaugurated in 1941, the monumental facility was considered the largest surface building in the world. However, when the US Air Force took over the site on the 2nd of July 1945, the cleanup work was not complete. So on the afternoon of the 15th of July 1945, three C-54 transport planes land at the British military airfield in Gatow. On board they have the American delegation that the US President is taking to the Potsdam Conference. It is four times the size of the delegation that had travelled to Yalta in February. The notorious prosecutor of the Stalinist show trials, Andrei Vyshinsky and Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, greet US Secretary of State James Burns. Various generals and liaison officers accompany the President, plus Secret Service security guards, naval cooks and military doctors, to ensure Truman's well-being. US General George Marshall is one of the advocates of rapid reconstruction with American help. He will initiate the Marshall Plan for Europe, named after him, in 1948. Then Truman also leaves his plane. In a letter to his mother and sister before leaving Washington, he had written, I have a briefcase full of information about previous conferences and suggestions as to what I should do and say. I wish I didn't have to go there. Potsdam has been sealed off by Soviet checkpoints for days. In front of the villa of a German publisher in Babelsberg called Little White House, President Truman receives the British Prime Minister on the morning of 16 July 1945. These scenes are filmed by Kirk B. Lawton, who is part of the American delegation. Winston Churchill is a head of government on call because he lost the House of Commons elections on 5 July. He believes Truman cannot hold a candle to his late predecessor, but he's impressed from the outset by the President's tremendous resolve. Truman is apparently less enthusiastic, as his diary reveals. He told me a lot of nonsense about how great my country was, how much he loved Roosevelt and how he would love me. I think we can get along if he doesn't butter me up too much. George Stevens drives with this team along the autobahn to Potsdam. On the way, he films Berliners who have apparently procured food in the surrounding countryside. In her diary, Ruth Andreas Friedrich hopes for positive news. It was announced on the radio this evening that Stalin, Truman and Churchill had arrived for a joint conference. What has happened up to now, we have to accept as the aftermath of war, including the rapes, the looting and confiscations. The meeting of the big three will establish order. It will prepare the ground for good to flourish. George Stevens' camera crew is filming in the old garrison city of the Prussian kings, now in the Soviet occupation zone. Stalin has refused to enter Berlin. Graves of Soviet soldiers testify to the fact that Potsdam was not vacated by the Wehrmacht without a fight. Because of the stage guests, the Red Army marches through the city more frequently. This brings back bad memories, especially for many women. A Potsdam woman later writes about the 8th of May 1945. How we had longed for this end. But had we now reached a state we could call peace? We had not imagined the Soviet occupation to be as bad as it now appeared. Now what we had sometimes said in jest during the last months of the war had become reality. Enjoy the war, peace will be terrible. Although Potsdam was badly hit in an American bombing raid in the spring of 1945, in Stalin's eyes it was suitable for the big conference. It is in Soviet occupied territory and can be better protected than Berlin. The magnificent buildings from the Prussian era, such as the Nikolaikirche by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, are also damaged. The decision of the upcoming conference will shape the lives of Germans for decades. Media representatives from all over Europe have arrived to cover the major event. Stephen's team proudly presents the Russian pass for the car. The Hollywood director has an accreditation for the big event. Whether he was finally allowed to shoot there in black and white is unclear. So these scenes remain George Stephen's last colour shots before his return to America. The 17th of July 1945. Before the start of the conference, Stalin pays his respects to the American president. Kirk B. Lawton shoots with his amateur camera. Truman will later describe the most powerful man in the world as friendly, good-natured and businesslike. As honest and insanely smart. At the meeting, US Secretary of State Burns casually asks the Soviet dictator if he knows anything about Hitler's whereabouts. Stalin claims Hitler is still alive and hiding in Spain or Argentina. The venue for the Potsdam conference is Cecilienhof Palace, where the German crown prince and his family resided before 1918. Lawton is allowed to film from the gallery. A Russian camera crew, on the other hand, shoots in 35mm colour. Officially, the Soviet Union is still neutral towards Japan. And so the first topic at the negotiating table is the Pacific War. Stalin has already signalled to Truman during the morning conversation that he will soon declare war on Japan. Then Stalin, Truman and Churchill discuss the drawing of borders in post-war Europe, reparation payments and the administration of occupied Germany. Press meeting of the big three on the terrace. Truman is in high spirits because he has got his hands on a military instrument with threatening potential just in time for the start of the conference. On a military base in New Mexico, the first nuclear weapons test in history has succeeded. A new era has begun that will soon be called the Cold War. Special film project 186 finishes its month-long work in Germany with aerial footage of destroyed Berlin. About 80 hours of footage have been shot. The unique material will disappear for decades in a US Air Force depot. There is no money to edit a documentary film from it. In Potsdam, the victors agree that Germany will not be partitioned. The West accepts Stalin's demand for the separation of East Prussia and the areas east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. The country is to be completely disarmed and demilitarised. The Germans must pay reparations. War criminals are to be trialled by an international military tribunal. Ruth Andreas Friedrich is optimistic. Big headlines in the newspapers. The Potsdam Agreement. Common policy in all occupation zones. Agreement on the peace order in Europe. It took a load off our minds, so no new war. Common construction and common order. The final communique emphasises, the statesmen leave the conference with the renewed confidence that the governments and peoples of their countries, in conjunction with the other United Nations, will ensure the establishment of a just and lasting peace. It sounds almost too good to be true. The American president is not quite so confident. At the site of the destruction in Berlin, Truman was utterly shocked. On the 16th of July 1945, he wrote in his diary, I thought of Carthage, Baalbek, Jerusalem, Rome, Atlantis. Thought of Scipio, Ramses II and Genghis Khan. I hope for some kind of peace, but fear that machines are several centuries ahead of morality. Only when morality has caught up will there be no more need for such destruction.