All Quiet on the Home Front
Unlike in August 1914, Berliners did not greet the opening of hostilities in September 1939 with celebrations in the streets. People reacted with resignation to the news that the Wehrmacht was “counterattacking” into Poland in response to alleged Polish aggression. “A grey morning with overhanging clouds,” wrote CBS correspondent William Shirer in his diary on September 1, 1939. “The people in the street were apathetic when I drove to the Rundfunk for my first broadcast at eight fifteen a.m. Across from the Adlon the morning shift of workers was busy on the new I.G. Farben building just as if nothing had happened. None of them bought the extras which the newsboys were shouting.”
That evening, at seven o’clock, air-raid sirens wailed across the city, and this time it was not a drill. But no bombs fell that night, and after a brief rush to the shelters Berliners flocked to the cafés, restaurants, and beer halls. The streets were totally dark in accordance with blackout regulations. Though this made for perilous driving and walking, it also yielded a happy surprise: a clear view of the constellations over Berlin. After walking home from a shelter with a friend, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, a correspondent for Ullstein, wrote in her diary: “On our way we see stars over Berlin for the first time—not paling sadly behind gaudy electric signs, but sparkling with clear solemnity. The moon casts a milky gleam over the roofs of the town. Not a spark of electric light falls upon the streets. ‘The metropolis is going back to nature,’ [my friend] Andrik smiles. ‘It’s almost enough to turn one into a romantic.’”
On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, following the Reich’s rejection of their ultimatum to withdraw from Poland. Hitler was surprised by the British action, having been assured by his foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, that London would never go to war against Germany. Shirer was in the Wilhelmplatz at noon when Britain’s war declaration was announced. “Some 250 people were standing there in the sun. They listened attentively to the announcement. When it was finished, there was not a murmur. They just stood there as they were before. Stunned.” France’s declaration came through a couple of hours later. This too elicited “no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria.”
The first weeks of World War II brought no direct threat to the German capital, or indeed to any part of the Reich. Employing its new blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht smashed through weak Polish defenses, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw by the second week of fighting. On September 17 Russian forces fell upon Poland from the east, expediting that country’s collapse, which was complete by early October. In this brief but brutal campaign the Germans and Russians killed over 100,000 Polish soldiers and captured a million; German casualties numbered only about 45,000. Poland’s Western European allies did nothing to distract the Wehrmacht from its grim business on the eastern front. Britain and France made no advances against the Reich, electing instead to pursue a purely defensive strategy while they built up their armaments. The result was the so-called “phony war”—Sitzkrieg instead of blitzkrieg. For Berliners and other Germans, the lack of action came as a pleasant surprise. They were beginning to wonder, as Shirer reported, “if it’s a world war after all.”
Berliners certainly acted as if there were no war going on. They paid little attention to the victory parade of the troops returning from the Polish campaign. Theaters, operas, and cinemas all stayed open, and all were jammed. In mid-September Tannhäuser and Madama Butterfly played at the State Opera, while at the Metropole a sister-duo, Margot and Hedi Hoffner, pranced around the stage dressed only in cellophane. Such racy acts were permissible because, as Goebbels explained, in trying times “one must be liberal regarding the exposure of the female body [while forbidding] a degeneration into obscenity.” The nightly blackouts, while certainly a bother to most citizens, were a boon to thieves and prostitutes, who did a land-office business in the crepuscular gloom.
Determined to pull the home front into the war effort, the Nazi regime extended its rationing regulations to a broad variety of consumer goods. At the same time, however, it tried not to make the restrictions too harsh, for it hoped to avoid the crippling discontent that had erupted in World War I. To save gasoline, citizens who owned private vehicles were allowed to drive only for work purposes. Some of Berlin’s busses were taken out of service or put on shorter schedules. To raise revenue for the war, a 20 percent surcharge was imposed on beer, schnapps, and cigarettes. The government also ordered an end to premiums paid for overtime work, but it quickly rescinded this when the workers protested. In the first year of the war, each citizen was allowed one hundred ration points for the purchase of clothing. The women’s ration card was particularly complicated owing to the variety of apparel items and fabrics it covered. For example, a sweater cost nine points, a brassiere ten, a pair of panties or a girdle eight. Because soap was regulated (one bar a month), the air in the Berlin subways soon became quite rank. In early October the government decreed the first Sunday of each month to be “casserole day,” meaning no meat. It was announced that the Führer himself shared in this sacrifice—but of course for him it was no sacrifice, since he was a vegetarian.
As in World War I, conscription for the military yielded a “feminization” of Berlin’s workforce. By late September some 300 women were employed as streetcar conductors. To fill the places of drafted agricultural workers, teenage Berliners were sent into the fields to help bring in the harvest; they did this without pay, inasmuch as it was considered “patriotic service.”
In the winter of 1939/40 Berlin presented a mixed picture. The nightly blackouts and shorter days gave one the impression of living in near-constant darkness. Nor did it help that the temperature dropped to minus fifteen degrees Celsius, and that coal deliveries were curtailed. The American diplomat George Kennan, who had been transferred from Prague to Berlin at the beginning of the war, recalled that winter as “a difficult one. Canals were frozen. Fuel was short. Whole blocks of huge apartment houses could not be heated at all and had to be evacuated in zero weather.” Berliners had to put up with incessant requests for “voluntary” donations to the Winter Relief, supposedly a charity for the poor but actually a collection for the war effort. The regime also began collecting paper and metals from the population. Hitler was said to be replacing the bronze doors of the Neue Reichskanzlei with wooden ones as an example of patriotic sacrifice. At the same time, however, the regime eased the rationing regulations at Christmas to promote a happy Yule-tide spirit. A pamphlet entitled “Christmas in the Third Reich” featured twelve poems about Hitler, one with the inspiring lines: “Silent night, Holy night / All is calm, all is bright / Only the Chancellor stays on guard / Germany’s future to watch and to ward / Guiding our nation aright.” Berliners were officially encouraged to patronize the city’s cultural and amusement centers. The entertainment on hand that winter was heavily American: the Marmorhaus cinema showed Südsee-Nächte (South Sea Nights) with Eleonor Powell and Robert Young, while the Kurbel featured Micky-Maus and Dick-und-Doof (Laurel and Hardy).
In spring and early summer 1940 the fare in Berlin’s cinemas turned more martial, with the Wochenschau (weekly news) programs recording the amazing progress of Germany’s offensive in the west against Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France. Nevertheless, according to Shirer, the German capital remained blase. There was “no evidence,” wrote the reporter, “that the Berliners, at least, are greatly exercised at the battle for their thousand-year existence.” Conquest of the Low Countries and key victories over French and British armies in France elicited similar indifference, though all the Berlin papers carried the stories under banner headlines. According to Kennan, even the announcement of the fall of Paris “was received with the same inscrutable silence and reserve.” Instead of victory, the “talk was all of food cards and the price of stockings.”