Dan Snow's History Hit - Suicide at the Fall of Nazi Germany

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

There is almost no end to the dark secrets that emerge from the smashed ruins of 1945 Europe. Dr Florian Huber has spent years researching the fascinating story of the epidemic of suicide that spread through Germany as they faced certain defeat in 1945. Some people committed suicide after suffering atrocities at the hands of the soviets, others because of the trauma of allied bombing and the destruction of the conflict around them. But many did so because they did not wish to live in a world without Nazism. Dr Huber has even interviewed people whose parents tried to kill them as young children. It is a dark secret in modern German society and his book provoked an outpouring of similar stories when it was published.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This week we've been talking about Dresden. It's the 75th anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden.

The obliteration of that beautiful city that led to the death of perhaps 25,000, perhaps more people. An obscene act of violence on behalf of the Allies that was instantly controversial, that Churchill instantly appears to have had regrets about. This podcast is about another piece of German history from 75 years ago. A very remarkable, a very disturbing story. The suicide epidemic that accompanied the fall of Nazi Germany 75 years ago this spring. Dr. Florian Huber has been working on this subject, interviewing people who remember their neighbors, their family members,

their friends committing suicide in the spring of 1945. Some, because of the atrocities they suffered at the hands of advancing Red Army soldiers, for example, the extraordinary trauma of sexual and physical violence. But many of the people he talked to said they remember people committing suicide for ideological reasons, because they couldn't bear to live in a world without Nazism. He has even interviewed young people whose parents tried to kill them and they were rescued by other family members or passers-by. This has been a dark secret really in contemporary

German society and he says that when he wrote the book, as you'll hear him say, there's been a giant of outpouring of similar stories of shared experiences. It's just another one of the myriad of gruesome, tragic, hidden consequences of violence on the scale that was seen during the Second World War. Wherever you look, it seems like we're still counting up new corpses. You can watch the material we've produced on Dresden. We've interviewed Sinclair Mackay. We've visited Dresden with the survivor, Victor Gregg, and he met other German survivors there. If you go to History Hit TV, if you use the code POD6, you get to watch all that free of charge for six weeks, P-O-D-6. Head over there, check it out. It's like a Netflix for

history. If you don't like it, don't subscribe, but use the code POD6. You just get a six-week trial period free of charge. Lastly, thank you again, everybody, for for rating the show i don't know why but it makes a difference we're high on the charts bizarre but there you go so thank you for doing it really i really do appreciate it because it's annoying the fiddly thing to do and and it makes a real difference to us so huge heartfelt thank you from me florian thank you very much for coming on the podcast. I'm very thankful for you to call me. Thank you. to terms with the fact they might lose the war and that losing might involve catastrophic foreign invasion and everything that goes along with that? Well, the first glimpse of losing the

war was absolutely the Battle of Stalingrad. Nobody had expected that any German army could seriously lose a battle. And this was the first time, and it could not be denied. So that was the first time that the idea of losing the war and being occupied by the enemy came into the mind of the people. And it's interesting, of course, because there was the terrible reverse around Moscow in the winter of 1941, 1942. But had that been covered up? Had that been glossed over by the government's propaganda machines?

It had been covered up by propaganda. And people still couldn't believe in losing any battle from the German side. Because before it had been Blitzkrieg. And Blitzkrieg was always very successful. So being forced to stop in front of Moscow in winter of 1941 nobody seriously expected that it would be the end of the the story for Germany. So the Battle of Stalingrad the German people got an inkling was it was it the speech by Joseph Goebbels was it just after Stalingrad fell when he said that more effort would be required to win this war? He admitted there'd been a terrible defeat.

appeal to the German people to now commit even more to go into the total war and like to give everything. So that was a big propaganda effort to collect the German people behind the big fight, the final fight against the enemies on all sides. And it made a big impression on the Germans because it was absolutely broadcast all over the country. But still, there was many doubts raised by the Battle of Stalingrad. And it never lost the mind of the people that the German army could be beaten. And this could all go very, very wrong for us. and this could all go very, very wrong for us. When people start to think about invasion, did they draw on folk memories of stories of the,

you know, Germany has been crisscrossed by foreign armies, the Thirty Years' War was terrible, the Russian invasions and the Seven Years' War, Napoleonic Wars, the French invasions, and then, of course, the First World War as well. Was it seen in those terms, or was it seen in the terms of the propaganda, the pseudoscience that was being spouted by the Nazi regime about the racially inferior people from the East, or the British Empire, or black Americans? Well, I don't think that people went back to the 30 Years' War.

That was way beyond. But it is true that some people remembered the Russian invasion in the First World War in East Prussia, and that had left a big impression on the minds of the people. And whoever was able to memorize this was still terrified. And that's why the German people were wavering about the expectations of war, because they knew what could happen if the country was occupied. And then again, we have this very, very strong moment of German propaganda, which was for 10

years had been hammering into the heads of the people that the neighbors were inferior. And especially the Russians and the Slavic people were like Bolshevik monsters. And if those were kind of getting a chance to invade Germany, it would end in a terrible disaster, like women being raped and children being killed. terrible disaster, like women being raped and children being killed. And that was the popular image that was from day to day hammered into the Germans' minds. So, yeah, the fears that were raised by the propaganda towards the enemy and also the enemy from the east, from the western front with the black troops from Morocco or from the United States, there was like a big feeling of, if ever the enemy crosses the German border,

this was all going to turn up very, very badly for us. I should ask, what are your sources? Because it must be very difficult trying to work out what normal people were actually feeling and thinking during this time. Well, I would say there's two classes of sources. The first one are written memories or written diaries, which I found scattered all over Germany. And there is a very beautiful institution in the southern part of Germany, which exclusively has or offers insights into diaries, into personal diaries of normal people from like 200 years of German history. And I went there and stayed there for a couple of days

and dug myself into the memories of literally hundreds of Germans who were writing the diary about the 1930s and 40s. And this was a very exceptional opportunity. And the second class of memory, I would say, is the personal ones. Even though there were not very many people willing to talk about their experiences with the suicidal epidemics, because it's such a sensitive issue, I found a couple of them, and I talked to them. And it was like an oral history report that I picked up there of people who went through the experience of their parents or themselves trying to kill themselves. And that was obviously a very exceptional experience for me as well as a historian. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

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Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. So let me ask about that. I mean, so many people made the decision to kill themselves towards the end of the Second World War. Now, was that because they were terrified of the approaching enemy forces because they worried about rape and brutality? Or was it that they couldn't bear to live in a world where the Reich no longer reigns supreme?

Well, as to the suicide epidemics in Germany, I found out there were a couple of reasons why people could be driven to kill themselves. The first one is, of course, violence. The first one is, of course, violence. Many people went through terrible experiences like thousands of women being raped once, twice or even 10 times. We have civilians being beaten up. So there was a fear of violence and that's why people could decide to kill themselves. Then we have what we could call the propaganda moment that people were really used to think about foreign invasion as a total disaster, as foreign monsters coming to Germany and trying to kill everyone who is alive. Then we have this moment of what I would call a loss of sense of life or of meaning of life, where people who were used to live in this isolated cosmos of the Third Reich for 10 or 12 years, and they could not imagine of living in a world which was without a German

state, which obviously was going to happen. Another aspect I found out which was quite strong is a feeling of guilt, or let me better call it a feeling of complicity. Because people in Germany knew that, especially in the East, there was something terrible happened to the enemy, to the Jews, to the Slavic people. And they were not aware of it in detail. I don't think people really knew about the details of the concentration camps, but they had been aware that the Jews were driven out of their towns and out of their classrooms. And by the reports that German soldiers on leave brought back to Germany,

they knew about the crimes that were committed behind the front lines. So the awareness of retaliation was quite big in Germany because of this. And one last aspect is what we call in Germany the so-called Werte-Effekt. There was a book written by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a famous writer, which was called The Experiences of Young Werte. And this was a young man who fell in love with a girl and he couldn't get her and he committed suicide. And at that time, at Goethe's time, there was many, many people who followed the example, who literally killed themselves after reading his book. And that's the Werther effect. And in our times, we can it um if you have like um your neighbors or your friends or

your relatives who kill themselves in a row you may also get the idea yourselves even if you're not at all suicidal so we have this psychological moment of um of of epidemics of really a contagious disease and that's what we call the vata effect and in all this uh suicide epidemics, of really contagious disease. And that's what we call the Wetter effect. And in all this suicide epidemics and the end of the war, we have a very strong effect, which has this psychological background. It's extraordinary to think of it as an epidemic. I mean, are we able to estimate numbers of people that committed suicide in Germany? Are we able to estimate numbers of people that committed suicide in Germany?

Well, for the last weeks of the war, we must at least count on a figure which goes in the tens of thousands all over Germany. It is not easy to establish a concrete number because it was total chaos and the administration had gone blown away and there were no doctors to kind of take a record of who was killed by whom or did he kill himself you see so it's not well documented but if we count at least for 7 000 suicides alone in in berlin in the last four weeks of the war we must surely count on like tens of thousands all over the third reich you said that there's these people aren't just killing themselves like the goebbels family the parents are sometimes killing the children as well but you managed to meet children who survived that experience i mean tell me about some of those stories.

First of all, it was not easy to have people talk about these terrible events, because it is obviously a very sensitive issue. If you imagine your own parents try to kill you and you kind of get away with it, how are you going to live on with that? And I found many people who went through this and who were kind of tied against the bellies of their grandmothers who kind of tried to drown themselves with their children. And they got away because Russian soldiers took them out of the pond. That was one example. Or I was able to talk to a gentleman who, when he was 10 years old, was nearly killed by his own mother with razor blades. And it just didn't happen because the grandfather went between and he stopped her. And he told me that even though they both survived he and his mother lived on together like for 50 60 years they never were able to even talk for one minute

about these events because it was so extraordinary and parents trying to kill their children and children witnessing their parents trying to kill them is an absolutely extreme experience. And it's very hard to talk about. And I think nobody can really get away with it without being heavily traumatized. Is there anything that unites the stories that were told to you by these survivors you know any impulses that were the sort of same in all the cases or was each circumstance different in its in its extra each circumstance extraordinary literally well obviously i could only talk to people who were children at that time because it's now 70 years after the events.

So these children always told me that there was a moment when they were not able to recognize their own parents. They were like different people from one moment to the other. It was like a moment when they lost their reason and lost their sense of life and tried to do what they could not ever imagine that their parents would do to them. And that was the moment that united all those stories, this moment of complete irrational step into a world that was beside them. And that counts for what I would call that in these weeks,

Germans were literally in an emotional state of emergency. And that could drive anyone to kill themselves or even to kill the children. It's just the most remarkable stories. I mean, when you come to write history in Germany, have these topics been explored before, or is it only now a young generation of historians like you that's able to write them and address them for the first time? Well, you must not forget that for the last 10 or 20 years we have had a debate in germany about if it is legitimate to also talk about german victims because like before we have

turned almost every stone in german history if it comes to the third Reich, like in terms of the villains and the victims. But we didn't really dig into the stories of the ordinary Germans who kind of were victims of the war as well. And it is just about the last five or ten years that we are beginning to dig into these stories as well. And I think it needed a younger generation of historians or even of children who asked their parents the question of where were you at that time?

What was happening to you? How did you go through the end of the war? And for example, my parents never asked the question to their parents about what they did in the war and now they do regret it because they're all dead but of course i was able to ask my dad what was he doing in 1945 and he told me his story like over So it was time for a generation who was still close enough to the generation upwards, but again had the necessary distance to ask the painful questions and to uncover the stories of their personal families. painful questions and to uncover the stories of their personal families.

So, for example, take your case. You have no idea what your grandfather and grandmother did during the war. Well, the father of my mother, he was a forest worker. And he was very important for the forests in Germany. And that's why he didn't go to war. He didn't have to. So I knew what he did. And he did nothing extraordinary apart from going into the forest. But the dad of my father, he was like four years on the Eastern Front close to Leningrad. And that is literally everything that we know about what he did during those four years so

what did he do there was he on a fighting front was he uh occupied with i don't know with the camps he never talked about it and nobody ever asked about him. So that's like a dark spot in the family history. And that is the regular story of what happened after the war in Germany, that nobody asked questions and nobody told his story. And that's why it was such a big scandal when Nobel Prize winner, when a Nobel Prize winner, the writer Günter Grass, in the last years of his life, uncovered that he was a member of the SS. It was a big scandal. Nobody knew about that. And it is absolutely typical that this story was coming up in the last 10 years.

So Germany had a long period of silence. And when the silence was broken, it was due to a new generation who kind of was able to ask those questions and go into the details. Thank you very much for asking those questions, Florian Huber. Your book is called? My book is called promise me to kill yourself right

and you'll have to promise me that you're going to come back on the podcast I know you're working at the moment on right wing terrorism in the very earliest days of the Weimar Republic

so please come back on the pod and talk about that sometime I would love to thank you for having me Dan thank you very much I feel we have the history on our shoulders

all the traditions of ours our school history our songs you for having me dan thank you very much one child one teacher one book and one pen can change the world he tells us what is possible not just in the pages of history books but in our own lives as well I have faith in you Hi everyone it's me Dan Snow

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It really helps and basically boosts up the chart, which is good. And then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks

or wherever audiobooks are sold. you