War!

WAR! •


Berliners in front of a radio store listen to news of the invasion of Poland by German forces on September 1, 1939. The capital lived its first experience in aerial warfare when an air siren sounded that evening, the first of many to come. It was a false alarm, probably caused by a single plane straying too close to the city.

A new war had begun, but as Hew Strachan says in “The First World War”: (…) “in 1918 the Germans had also learned what modern warfare entailed. They did not take to the streets to show their enthusiasm when the conflict broke out in 1939” (…) as they had done in 1914 to fire and cheer their soldiers on their way to the front. Hitler had unleashed a war like never seen before and would cost the destruction of Germany and much of Europe and the death of more than 60 million people.

[Photo by Carl Weinrother: © Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.]

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Sources and Bibliography:

  • Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, London. 2011.
  • Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane. 2013.
  • Strachan, Hew. The First World War. Penguin Group. 2005.
  • Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag. 2013.
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