The army soldiers who experienced the fighting at Normandy and the collapse of the front in France are the most disillusioned group in the protocols. Examples of individual successes, such as enemy soldiers killed or tanks destroyed, play hardly any role in their conversations. Instead their discussions are full of everyday experiences of powerlessness at facing a materially far better equipped foe. The overarching mood of futility is impossible to ignore.
Today, it may seem surprising that soldiers only dared to believe in the downfall of the Third Reich as of mid-1944. Why did it take them so long to arrive at this conclusion when, from a military perspective, the war had likely been decided by the end of 1941 at the latest? A particular form of perception is part of the explanation. Someone with a high-paying job rarely thinks about the structural problems of the global economy, and even when he does, he does so calmly. People who have a certain task in a war behave similarly. As long as the war continues, the task remains. For that reason, people only saw that Germany was headed for defeat when they experienced it personally. Ahead of the disastrous summer of 1944, many German soldiers still had reason to hope. At that juncture, Germany still occupied half of Europe, and Allied aerial bombardment was restricted to German cities. Thus, German troops in Italy could maintain, with a certain justification, that they would stand their ground against the Allies. The same was true, incidentally, for soldiers in Army Group Center on the Eastern Front.
Without doubt, it would have been possible for German soldiers to view their own experiences and the war in general more critically. They could have asked themselves: what did it say about the war effort when Germany had to postpone the ground invasion of England, when the Wehrmacht failed to end the Russian campaign as promised in fall 1941, when the United States with its huge economic potential entered the fray, or when German troops retreated ever closer to the homeland? Anyone who read newspapers, listened to the radio, watched the weekly newsreels, or simply discussed the situation with comrades, friends, and family, could have realized where things were headed without overtaxing his brain. Yet like most other people in most other situations, German soldiers were strictly bound to the necessities of their immediate social environment. As long as major historical events do not have direct personal consequences, they do not fundamentally change perceptions, interpretations, and decisions. Human beings think in concrete, not in abstract, terms. What in retrospect may seem to be an increasingly obvious reality remains irrelevant for an individual acting in real time, as long as he himself is not directly caught up in the looming disaster. There are notable exceptions,476 but most people only notice the coming of a flood when the first story of their house is already submerged. And even then, hopes persist that the water level will recede.
Germans lost hope in increments during World War II. If Germany was not able to achieve final victory, they told themselves, at least it could force an honorable peace settlement. Giving up every last bit of hope would have invalidated all the effort and emotions they had invested in the war with one fell swoop. People typically cling to hopes and instances of wishful thinking that, with the benefit of hindsight, appear completely irrational. Why do workers fight to save a company that has no realistic chance of surviving on the market? Because they have invested all their energy, dreams, hopes, time, and opportunities in it. And this characteristic is by no means restricted to “everyday people.” The higher their status, the less people are able to acknowledge failure. General Ludwig Crüwell put it this way. In November 1942, shortly after receiving word that the 6th Army was surrounded at Stalingrad, he retorted: “Are hundreds of thousands of men to be killed in this way again for nothing? That’s unthinkable.”477
Shortly before the end of World War II, Colonel Martin Vetter, the commander of Paratrooper Regiment 17, and fighter pilot Anton Wöffen from Luftwaffe Fighter Wing 27 had a discussion about National Socialism. Both men had been captured a few days earlier in two separate towns in Germany. For them, the war was over, and it was time for a general evaluation:
