The German War

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945 is a history of the "thoughts and actions" of German citizens during the Second World War by historian Nicholas Stargardt.

Stargardt presents evidence that Germans were aware of the genocide and atrocities being committed by German policy, through word of mouth. Stargardt argues that as the war went on, German media increasingly, "hinted at what people already knew, fostering a sense of collusive semi-secrecy." This 'spiral of silence' (according to Stargardt) produced a sense of quasi-complicity among Germans, even those who did not directly participate in atrocities. He argues that Germans began the War in the conviction that they were fighting, "a war of national defense forced upon them by Allied machinations and Polish aggression," and that Allied bombing of Germany convinced them of their own victimhood, mixed with guilt over their treatment of Jews, Ukrainians, Poles and others. He explains that the determination with which Germans fought (long after it became clear that the Reich was losing) was based in conviction that the war "must never come home to Germany."

Stargardt goes on to explore the remarkable resilience of defeated Germans who, despite living under military occupation, organized themselves to receive and assist the millions of ethnic Germans expelled from countries to Germany's east and south at the end of the War.