Berlin полностью

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.”