The Physical and Cultural Destruction of Germany: Introduction
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The following pages do not pretend to present the rights or wrongs of events of World War Two.
They are neither a vindication nor a condemnation of any side of the conflict, nor are they intended
as a political statement. They serve only to illustrate the ravages of war as they applied to Germany
and to speak to the suffering of the German people, subjects which both tend to evoke hostility,
especially when they are presented without the customary prefaces which serve to justify, rationalize,
excuse and condone any atrocities and crimes carried out against Germany and the German people.
To understand World War Two, it is imperative to understand World War One, for the second
conflict was a tragic and inevitable continuation of the first. In fact, it would be a good idea to read
"Anti-German Hysteria of World War One", available from a link on the main page of this site before
going any further. One must look beyond the propaganda, the Hollywood images and comic book
presentations of either war to begin to comprehend how and why the utter ruination of this ancient
land with its historically profound influence on European culture occurred, and how a rich, powerful
nation which enjoyed a positive, even glowing image at the dawn of the twentieth century would be
cut off at the knees and relegated to a stature of relative unimportance today.
Long before Germany became a nation, from before the dark ages, she had a more peaceful, less
aggressive history than her European neighbors and was the principal participant in less than a quarter
of the wars of England, Spain, Russia, or France. This fact is not only ignored, it is overshadowed by
statements made even today by mainstream historians who make the ludicrous and erroneous claim
that Germany "started five wars since the time of Bismarck" (and therefore deserved all she got). In
reality, by 1914, the young German nation had enjoyed 43 years of peace and prosperity while other
nations were embroiled in and started various global conflicts which in some cases are still ongoing!
In fact, in 287 wars between the years 1800 and 1950, Prussia/Germany participated in only 8 %,
as did Holland. In contrast, Britain participated in 28 %, France in 26 %, Russia in 22 %, Turkey in
15 %, Poland in 11 %, Sweden in 9 %. Not to mention that it was not Germany who engaged in
slave trading or held a quarter of the globe under her bloody thumb or imposed brutal colonial rule on
anywhere near the scale of Britain, for example.
The German Empire was well-respected around the world, having achieved astonishing technical
advances: one third of all Nobel Prizes were going to German researchers and inventors. She had a
superb educational system and rapidly growing industries. She was the most powerful industrial
nation in the world after America. She had surpassed Britain's economic growth rate and she also had
the most efficient army in the world, the second largest navy and a fledgling Army Air Service.
This all changed almost overnight. The violent anti-German assault was initiated by propagandists
representing special interests in Great Britain a decade before World War One even broke out, and
then regurgitated to embroil the USA into that conflict. It changed the image of Germany forever. A
pariah was formed in the shape of the loathsome Hun and the zealous efforts to reinforce that image
in words, music and art continued long after the war was over, branding Germany and her people
absolutely repugnant in almost every corner of the world. Probably no other ethnic group has ever
been so quickly, so professionally and so intensely assaulted or so thoroughly dehumanized.
"However the world pretends to divide itself, there are only two divisions in the world today..
human beings and Germans" Rudyard Kipling June 22, 1915
World War One, the cultural equivalent of the Black Death to Germany, killed the seed of a whole
generation. The vindictive Treaty of Versailles burdened Germany with reparations she could never
repay without exposing her own people to even more suffering and death. The spitefulness, greedy
motives and shortsightedness of the "peace" terms would have terrible effects in the near future. In
their quest to weaken German and Austrian power for their own monetary gain, the victors directly
and indirectly abetted the virulent rise of communism which would sweep in and try to take the place
of the four world Empires which had been destroyed in the aftermath of this needless conflict.
Germany lost 74.5% loss of her natural resources, about 13% of her land and had to forsake seven
million of her people, including three million Germans in the Sudetenland. The Austrian portion of
the Dual Monarchy was deprived of 3/4 of her former area and 3/4 of her people, dooming her to
become an insignificant, land-locked state. In their place, the victors at Versailles created a flock of
tiny, budding, nationalistic states in a chaotic manner which guarantee future strife in Europe.
2,000,000 German soldiers were killed in the First World War. 100,000 others were missing and
presumed dead and 4,814,557 had been wounded, amounting to 9 to 14 percent of Germany's
pre-war population. 85% of eligible German males had been mobilized at one point or another. In the
conflict, millions of others died due to starvation from the venomous hunger blockade and further
food shortages, or from influenza and other epidemics. The war changed German society forever.
One-armed, one-legged or one-eyed men, blind men, men with noses torn off or mouths ripped up or
only half a face stood begging for food and carrying signs proclaiming "The War Cripples are
Starving!". They came home with indelible mental scars as well, some suffering from shell shock or
the insidious battle fatigue called "the shivers". Many lost homes as a result of the German land theft
at Versailles, others lost their families. While Germany was in a state of ruin, communist, anarchist
and socialist agitators took advantage of the chaos. The veterans received little respect and gratitude
for their sacrifices, and their suffering went uncomforted.
The First World War left a legacy not only of bitterness, but of unresolved issues and unfinished
business. For Germany, there was simmering resentment at the humiliation imposed upon her and for
that which had been unfairly taken from her. Beyond all this, there was overwhelming injustice in the
fact that she had been held solely responsible for the entire conflict and was therefore made to suffer
twice: from the toll of war itself and, while she was writhing in agony, from the vengefulness and
avarice of the victors who had been just as responsible, if not more so, for the war as Germany was.
By the end of World War Two, the destruction of Germany was nearly complete. Germany not only
lost the War, it lost a massive portion of its physical history, its cultural centers and its intellectual
elite. Millions of her people were lost, both during and after the war: five times as many Germans,
both civilians and soldiers, died in the first year after war than died during the course of the entire
war, and they lost their lives directly at the hands of others as a result of revenge policies: rape,
expulsion, murder, forced "atonement" marches, freezing, slave labor and starvation; Millions more
were left with lasting physical damage from the shocking post war brutality visited upon them.
It was amid millions of dazed, homeless people and upon the ruins of hundreds of medieval cities,
murdered German prisoners of war, raped German women, starving German children and wandering
orphans that the victors performed the coup de grâce: Following unconditional capitulation, Germany
was immediately partitioned into four isolated occupation zones, further intensifying its incapacitation
and readying it for a controversial, methodically developed, sharply focused and skillfully applied
program of psychological assault labelled "re-education".
This mass brain washing program was geared to ensure the rejection of everything that had thus far
constituted the national German identity as well as any pride in German cultural, intellectual or
spiritual heritage. This intense campaign structured a "new Germany" to have purely "American
values" and it allowed to Germany only a history which began in 1945 with her defeat, relegating all
which had come before as unworthy of remembrance. This program was so psychologically ruthless
that it did not allow people to grieve their own losses, and was so successful that well over a half
century later, words such as "Vaterland" or "Volk" remain "dirty words" to the modern German who
has been convinced that Germany was actually "liberated" in 1945 by those very forces who wanted
and worked for nothing less than her total destruction.
"Re-education" was applied with severity to Austria as well, in hopes that the two neighbors linked by
their long mutual history would never again join forces. Before 1945, almost all Austrians regarded
themselves as "German" by virtue of a common bond of blood, culture and history. According to
polls today, less than 10% of Austrians consider themselves German.
The fact that Germany was bombed into rubble, that millions of surrendered German prisoners of
war were murdered through intentional neglect, that millions of refugees were created and then
abused as they attempted to flee violent, rampaging, communist hordes who stole their homes, that
one third of her ancestral territory and her Eastern provinces were taken from her, and that her
private and public property, art treasures, historical monuments, cultural institutions and patents were
brazenly plundered do not disturb the modern German. They have been so deeply shamed that they
have allowed collective guilt to be bestowed upon them...and their children and their grandchildren,
accepting their nation's future as one spent in a hair shirt of perpetual atonement.
The attack on German culture itself, which began in World War One with the manufacturing of the
loathsome Hun by Allied propagandists was carried over by the re-education teams from the apelike
Hun in 1917 with "Kultur" emblazoned on his club to war weary German civilians in 1945 being
subjected to posters the American military put up all over Germany at war's end attacking "Kulture"
as the root of all evil. The push was to create the self-hating German.
Is it any wonder we have to watch the disgusting spectacle of German self-hatred evince itself in
song parodies and silly art work which degrades its historical figures, in politicians falling over
themselves to see who can utter the most apologies, in the utter absence of national pride and in its
fervent persecution of any who dare challenge this abysmal, degenerate, masochistic trend?
Germany's birthrate is at its lowest level in history and the lowest in Europe. On a global scale, it is
just as dire. Of 27 countries with populations in excess of 40 million, Germany ranks second from
bottom in terms of children under 15 as a percentage of the overall population. In 2009, 651,000
babies were born in Germany, 30,000 less than the previous year. With only 8.2 children being born
for every 1,000 citizens, and with 10 in 1,000 citizens dying every year, Germany is nowhere near
approaching a replacement rate that would keep the population stable. The birthrate is exceptionally
low in former East Germany, where the city of Chemnitz is thought to have the lowest birth rate in
the world today. Austria is not faring much better.
The Allied foreign policy crusade was for victory at any cost, even at the cost of the destruction of
traditional values and culture and, if need be, the destruction of the planet itself. Yet, it is becoming
increasingly more difficult to question the necessity and wisdom of that conflict. Indeed, the event we
call World War Two is fast becoming off limits to further debate, closer scrutiny, re-evaluation and
revision. Those stimulating intellectual activities which, although occasionally uncomfortable and
inconvenient, have traditionally taken place after every other conflict in human history in an effort to
search for truth and accurately define human events for posterity, have been narrowed in scope in a
good part of the world by legislation which restricts free speech by limiting which aspects of that
event we can freely speak of and which aspects are criminal to discuss, question or investigate
further, surely not a trend indicative of the cherished "democratic values" the victors intended.