Cherrypicker | Literature  1945 – a chronicle

The year 1945 was a historical turning point. A non-fiction book by film-maker and author Volker Heise opens our eyes to the multitude of perspectives on this extremely eventful and momentous year.

Books with a year in the title have long been in vogue. They often deal with years that are considered epoch-making. In Germany, Florian Illies was the first author to not only bring this genre to life with 1913. Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts (1913: The Summer of the Century), but also became very successful with it.

The year 1945 marked the end of the Nazi regime and the Second World War as well as the beginning of the post-war period and the transition to the post-war order. It was therefore one of the great turning points of the 20th century. Documentary filmmaker Volker Heise often focuses on historical topics. His documentary film Berlin 1945 – Tagebuch einer Großstadt (Berlin 1945 - Diary of a big city) was released in 2020 (available on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education). Heise has now published 1945, a book that also retells this year like a diary, again with a focus on Berlin. In it, he takes up and expands on much of the film.

Hard break with simultaneous continuity

Arranged chronologically from December 1944 to December 1945, Heise brings together diary entries, memories, letters and archive material, which he contextualizes. He skilfully uses this collage technique to create a multi-voiced portrait of the times. In doing so, he not only shows the simultaneity of non-simultaneous things, but also that there are not one, but many realities. People's lives went on alongside everyday life during the war. "A hard break with simultaneous continuity" is how Heise describes what he wants to tell with his non-fiction book in a Radio 3 interview.

Most of the articles are just one paragraph or less than a book page. The impressions and experiences of a schoolgirl, a young anti-aircraft auxiliary, a forced labourer or a Soviet soldier stand on an equal footing with those of the writer Erich Kästner, the actor Heinrich George, the rocket scientist and SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun or the Soviet Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.

Bombs and cinema

Until the surrender of the Wehrmacht on 8 May, which ends the war in Europe, the film shows how the Allies advance deeper and deeper into the German Reich from both east and west. They continue to encounter stubborn resistance and witness gruesome scenes during the liberation of the concentration camps. A BBC reporter recounts: The front is moving ever closer to the German capital until the battle for Berlin finally begins. Refugee treks pour into the country from the east, Berlin lies in ruins, the number of air raid alarms increases, so that even the escapes to the cinema that are still possible in everyday war life are interrupted: "Then in the cinema Truxa with La Jana. In the middle of the best part of the film, the pre-alarm went off and then the alarm immediately followed. Quickly into a bunker," writes one pupil, and: "Soon the all-clear was given and the film continued."

Adolf Hitler's teeth

The more hopeless the situation becomes, the more the Nazi propaganda tries to keep the population's will to resist alive. But the facade was crumbling. While watching a newsreel film about Hitler's visit to the Eastern Front in March, a young anti-aircraft helper noticed "that he looks sick and old, standing and walking seems to be difficult for him, his arm hangs down."

When Hitler finally commits suicide, the Soviets initially doubt it, they want proof. But this is not so easy to obtain in view of the badly charred corpse, so a Red Army translator takes Hitler's dentures and lower jaw to his dentist to identify the dictator. The dentist fled, but X-rays and a dental assistant confirmed: "These are Adolf Hitler's teeth."

This people is despicable

After the German capitulation, there is initially a vacuum; the old order no longer exists and the new one has yet to emerge. When a Jewish woman returns to her Berlin flat, she summarises the reactions in the building as follows: "All the tenants in the building were delighted, or at least they pretended to be." The writer Hertha von Gebhardt also had little faith in her fellow human beings and wrote on 12 May 1945: There is also mistrust among the Allies, especially between the Western powers and the Soviets. Each side has been trying to gain advantages for itself since the final phase of the war.

Demonstrations of power

The Americans bring the German space scientists and nuclear physicists to the USA, but first have to transport them to their zone of occupation, which was not easy in a heavily devastated country. At the beginning of June, an American soldier told a scientist from Nordhausen to leave Thuringia before midnight and, due to the lack of a vehicle, he was instructed: "Just take the mayor's car."

The Soviets not only dismantle entire industrial plants and transport them back home, but also work on building a new communist East Germany in their occupation zone, flying in Walter Ulbricht and other German KPD (Communist Party of Germany) functionaries from Moscow. Among other things, Ulbricht ordered that raped women were not allowed to have abortions.

It is about demonstrations of power. On 10 June 1945, the Western powers organise an air show in the presence of Soviet General Zhukov. Around 1700 American and British aeroplanes fly over Frankfurt am Main. “An impressive display of Western air power,” notes British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who elsewhere described the Red Army soldiers as “barbaric Asians.”

Living history

At the Potsdam Conference at the end of July, US President Harry S. Truman is pleased that "neither Hitler's nor Stalin's mob" were able to use the atomic bomb, as it is the "most terrible thing" ever explored, "but it can also be helpful." He gave the order to prepare for the US atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended the war in Asia on 6 August and 9 August 1945.

William L. Shirer, long-time American correspondent in Germany, reports on the beginnings of the Nuremberg Trials in November and December 1945. He writes about this country shortly before his departure from Germany: Only fragments of Heise's book could be picked out here. It is a veritable cornucopia of material on the basis of which everyone can and must form their own judgement. Heise doesn't pedagogise, he doesn't bully you with didactic guidelines, but brings history to life in an exemplary way. Definitely worth reading!
 

March 2025