Harald Jähner

Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955

Aftermath

Harald Jähner's "Aftermath" fills a crucial gap in World War II literature by examining Germany's rebirth in the decade after 1945. While most books focus on the Third Reich's fall, Jähner explores how Germans rebuilt their cultural, economic, and social fabric from the ruins. He particularly highlights America's profound influence in reshaping German society toward democracy through everything from economic aid to cultural exports. However, the book's heavy focus on the American zone comes at the expense of examining parallel developments in the Soviet-controlled East and British-occupied territories, making it more a study of American influence than a complete picture of post-war Germany.

Liana

Laura Mauler

Absolutely incredible. I loved that it covered so many aspects of life, from theft to theater to love. I suspect that many readers will be extremely curious about denazification, as was I, and the chapter does not disappoint; frankly, it stunned me. 

One thing that I particularly loved was that Brigitte Eicke's diary was one of the sources of information for this book. See, she grew up on the street that I now live on, in fact I can see her door from my living room. So her input for this book had particular meaning to me, and gave me a little thrill every time I saw her name. For the curious, Eicke's diary is called Backfisch im Bombenkrieg (Teenager in the War), available only in German as of this writing.

Andrew John Kinney

Having lived in Germany in the 1980's, my wife and I often commented on how strange it was that Germans we knew, of a certain age, would have been adults during the war and that these apparently nice people were probably supporters of Hitler during his twelve years in power. Since it appears that as much as 90% of the German people approved of Hitler in 1939, this was a plausible assumption on our part. 

After the war, there was a huge challenge for the occupying Allies and for the Germans in terms of devising a way forward, and not just in terms of how to feed, house, and clothe the millions living in the ruins. How to identify former Nazis, and how to "denazify" Germany was the question, and the challenge the Allies set themselves, but they quickly found the archives (wonderful record-keepers, the Germans) of 10.5 million Nazi Party members. This was of course a huge percentage of those eligible for work in government. The compromise, after several false starts, was to execute the worst, to exclude only the most egregious offenders from public office, and to move on to the enormous task of rebuilding.

The section of the book on black markets and the establishment of the Deutsche Mark were quite revealing to me. Until 1948, the old Reichsmark currency was still in use, though with steadily decreasing confidence in it, because everyone expected it to be replaced or devalued. So barter systems and the black market played a huge role in the economy, but this meant that shops were constantly changing prices, hoarding goods, and haggling as the Reichsmark declined in value. This situation could not continue if a true market economy was to emerge, so In 1948, in a stroke of economic genius, the US printed billions of the new D-mark and established an exchange rate for the Reichsmark that meant everyone got something, but above a certain amount, the Reichsmark was worthless. Overnight, confidence in the new currency, which was effectively backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, rebounded, and shops opened for business in a normal way, with goods priced in D-marks. And so the West German recovery began in earnest. Nothing similar happened in the East, and the DDR's economy struggled for decades as a result.

The story of the recovery of German industry is told in some detail, particularly the story of Volkswagon. It is interesting to me that Germany received a relatively small payment from the Marshall Plan; in 1948 dollars, the UK received $3.2B, France received $2.7B, Italy $1.5B, and Germany received less than $1.4B, but the Germans made every dollar count. A key driver for the delivery of Marshall Plan funds was the realization that the Cold War was beginning, and it was necessary to prop up the countries of Western Europe lest they become satellites of the USSR. It was quite effective in that respect, while also relieving immense human suffering and making possible the rapid economic recovery of Europe.

The story of the arts in Germany after the war is largely one of reaction to the bland conformity of the Nazi years. Modern art was no longer suppressed, jazz became one of the favorites of young people, and magazines covering myriad interests sprang up. To me, the chapters about the visual arts were the weakest, because, to paraphrase Elvis Costello, writing about paintings is like dancing about architecture.

When I was a small child in France, my mother had a German maid, Maria Schnarschmidt, and Mom used to remark on how badly the French treated Maria, but then she would say, "Well, I suppose you can't blame them". The house we lived in had been requisitioned by the Wehrmacht during the war. My father's French boss had had two brothers executed by the Gestapo. Many Frenchmen had been shipped to Germany as forced labor. So yes, a little coldness toward Germans might be expected of the French, and it was worse in the eastern countries. The author comments about the prevalent obliviousness of the Germans in wondering, a bit querulously, why they were so disliked in the world for a couple of decades after the war. They wanted to believe they were mostly victims of Hitler's misdeeds, and there is some truth to that, for some Germans, but it was a bad look for the former members of the Master Race to play the victim.

The truth is that the Germans suffered far more from bombing by the Allies than the British or other Western countries suffered from similar German attacks on them. The same cannot be said of the toll inflicted on Russia or the Jews by the German state. In 1945, their country in ruins, most Germans just wanted to move on, and so did most of the countries they had conquered. Ultimately, the compromise that allowed the Germans to move on, rebuild, establish the Federal Republic, and regain their status in Europe satisfied no one, which meant it was probably a reasonable compromise. The period of peace in Western Europe has now lasted almost 80 years, and the amazing longevity of that peace can be attributed to the way in which Germany moved forward, and the way in which the Allies fostered prosperity and stability, and so the post-war years from 1945 to about 1950 continue to be intriguing.

Aftermath Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955

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