“Living in Germany at war” to be seen again on France 5 Sunday September 29, 2024

Based on some correspondence and diaries which allow us to hear the voices of these German civilians, mostly women, through the surprising images recorded by amateur films shot over the days and seasons, this film shows how the Second World War was experienced, away from the front. It plunges us into the interior of the country from 1938 to 1945, in the ordinary chronicle of catastrophe, from twilight to disaster of Germany.

Since January 30, 1933 and the coming to power ofAdolf HitlerGermany was brought into line. The opponents were destroyed. The press under the complete control of the regime, the news projected in cinemas and the radio broadcast to the heart of every home are the mouthpieces of the official, omnipresent propaganda. An immense majority of Germans support this new order which promises them a bright future.

This is evidenced by the letters sent to each other by engaged couples and spouses, soon separated by the war, giving each other news as if their lives continued to be normal. But after the euphoria of the first conquests, the front moved closer and closer to the very interior of Germany which, under the deluge of Allied bombs, would become a besieged fortress.

Irene Reitz works for a florist in Lauterbach, a town in the middle of the Black Forest. Ernst Guickingher fiancé, is a career non-commissioned officer in the Wehrmacht and fights in France then in Russia. Liselotte Purperwho was 22 years old in 1940, was a photographer for the official organizations of the Reich. She is engaged to Kurt organlieutenant in an artillery regiment which will be sent to Stalingrad. Like the great majority of Germans, they are convinced by the Third Reich.

While the persecution of the Jews became a priority objective, those who managed to remain lucid and who dared to write in their diaries what was really happening were extremely rare.

A devout Lutheran, Jochen Klepper relates his conscience and his desperate efforts to save his wife and daughter-in-law, of Jewish origin. A believer too, Lisa de Boor lives and works in Marburg where she writes children’s stories and poems, noting significant events. Mathilde Wolff intends her written testimony in the form of letters to her children exiled outside Germany, although she cannot send them to them, “so that they will know later what we really experienced”she said.

Ruth Andreas-Friedrichwho belongs to a small underground Jewish relief group, works as a journalist in Berlin. At the same time, throughout the war she kept her logbook where she recounted everything she could, at the risk of her life. Journalist for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Ursula von Kardorff comes from an old Prussian nobility family. As Ruth Andreas-Friedrichshe never ceases to secretly confide how her country descends into horror when the war becomes global.