The End and the Beginning

In 1945, the war ended. And a new era in history began.

The year is 1945. The victorious “Big Three”—Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—are in Potsdam, deciding the future course of history. Berlin housewife Else Tietze fears for her son's life. American soldier and eldest son of the famous writer Thomas Mann, Klaus, is hunting for Nazi criminals. Director Billy Wilder is in Berlin planning a comedy about life among the ruins. The city's cafés and restaurants are reopening. German children beg a Red Army soldier, Vasily Petrovich, for bread. Japan awaits the final blow of the war.

The Third Reich had fallen. Over the course of four months, the old world order collapsed and a new one began to emerge. It was a period of coming to terms with the war, but also of new conflicts. What was the summer of 1945 like for the victors and the vanquished, for the victims and the perpetrators, for celebrities and ordinary people? In a kaleidoscope of stories, Oliver Hilmes captures the unique atmosphere of a time full of extremes: the joy and hope of the liberated, the fears of the defeated, misery and sorrow, as well as newfound freedoms.

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One can only marvel at how much Hilmes’s entertaining and enlightening, critical and understanding book manages to show and tell.
— Die Literarische Welt