A People Without A State: Germany after VE Day
From Hitler's suicide to the Berlin blockade - Friedemann Bedurftig looks at the consequences of defeat, the process of denazification and reconstruction and the growing Cold War tensions between the former Allies in charge of the ruins of the Third Reich.
'Never was there such a beginning': this dictum was often used later to transfigure the positive side of the German collapse, seen as the opportunity for a new beginning. But what was true for the people and the country at the time was: 'Never was there such an end'.
'Germany is not to be occupied for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation'. This sentence which occurs in Directive JCS 1067 of May 11th, 1945, giving instructions for the American military administration, yet again focused hatred on Hitler's regime, a hatred which had held the surprising coalition of victors together and transformed Germany into a ruined wasteland.
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