A couple of years ago while visiting my small town public library I came across a copy of Harald Jähner’s 2022 Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955. Believe it or not I didn’t borrow it, not because the book didn’t interest me but because I wanted to first get through all the stuff I’d already checked out. (I know, hard to believe but on rare occasions it does happen!) But recently I borrowed a copy. After effortlessly cruising through this excellent piece of history writing I can easily see why it spent 48 weeks on Germany’s best-seller list.
By the spring of 1945 Germany resembled a hellscape from a post-apocalyptic action movie. Its cities reduced to ruble, as many as 8 million combined military personnel and civilians lay dead with millions more interned as POWs. Europe’s once mightiest nation, one that for a time stood on the cusp of global domination was in complete ruin. Millions of German refugees, expelled from either former German territory or neighboring countries flooded a demolished Germany. Joining them were countless urban dwellers made homeless by years of Allied bombing. As the smashed nation smarted under foreign occupation millions of Germans were hungry, unhoused and unemployed.
With things looking so grim one could argue Germany had no place to go but up. With the western half of the country divvied up and occupied by the armies of France, Great Britain and the United States the defeated Germans soon found ways to turn lemons into lemonade. Surprisingly, much of German industry still intact after the war. Once the country’s infrastructure was patched back together all that was needed to restart the economy was a generous supply of workers. Fortunately, Germany happened to be knee deep in millions of uprooted refugees and urban evacuees, most in need of employment. As more and more German POWs were released from custody the pool of available laborers eager to work only grew.
There was another unexpected benefit of being flooded by millions of the recently uprooted. Rural Germans were forced to rub elbows with, or even house former city dwellers while East Prussians decamped to Bavaria and Protestants mixed with Catholics. Linguistically, this massive population transfer had a homogenizing effect on regional accents and dialects and directly responsible for the nation building of West Germany, or officially the Federal Republic of Germany.
Of course one of the greatest challenges to creating a prosperous and strong Federal Republic of Germany was incorporation of many talented and experienced individuals into the newly-established democratic state while avoiding those with unsavory Nazi pasts. After World War II, the victorious Allies learned how hard it was to purge former Nazis who’d served in positions of leadership and expertise in the former Reich. Total deNazification became a pipe dream as institutions like the judiciary were left intact, despite the prominent role their members played in carrying out the orders of Hitler and his henchmen. While Nazi ideology might have been exercised from Germany some of its former practitioners could have a role in the new Federal Republic. Facilitated by the newly established consensus the German people were also victims themselves of Nazism this arrangement, as imperfect as it was seemed to work.
Even if Jähner might have spent a tad too much time discussing the role of the arts in early post-War Germany this is an excellent book. Readable, thoughtful and well-researched this outstanding piece of nonfiction is the best book I’ve encountered since Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II in providing a detailed and intelligent look at Europe in the years immediately following the Second World War. A definite shoe-in for my year end list of Favorite Nonfiction.
