First published as "Tysk Höst" in 1947. It's a collection of articles/essays written while the author, on a journalistic mission, visited post-war Germany. The difference between the poorest and the poor was more that between the poor and the rich in other countries. Bombed ruins were scavenged - coal and potatoes were valuable. Morality was renegotiated - survival of one's children was paramount. Things were better in Hitler's day. What did the English hope to gain by bombing? Why should Germans collectively take the blame? Was it so evil to have been law-abiding? All the politicians were old. Bavarians thought they were less guilty than other Germans. There's conflict between city-dwellers and farmers.
Anti-nazi tribunals provided entertainment for those who can't afford the cinemas. Unpopular people had to defend themselves. Silence/inaction became retrospectively a crime. It was important to get jews to speak in your favour, paying them if necessary, and to say that you listened to foreign radio.
Other reviews
- goodreads
- Irene Lami (in his accounts of social inequity and bitter divisions, the young author communicates all the disappointment of the anti-Nazi revolutionaries who hoped that 1945 would bring justice to Germany. ... Dagerman has us witness the trials of the pointless, rigged ‘de-Nazification tribunals’, huge “paper mills” where trivial cases were manipulated, while the real Nazis managed to escape and settle down in the comfort of the “Allied” countries. )
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