Child, promise me you'll choose the bullet. Germany 1945 and the downfall of ordinary people
A confronting book about a subject that has been kept silent about for decades.
On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head in Berlin. At the same time, as the Red Army advanced into the town of Demmin, hundreds of people headed for rivers and forests to commit suicide. Entire families were wiped out, parents killed their children. Demmin is just one example of many: thousands of people throughout the country were gripped by the suicide epidemic.
This book is based on diaries, letters, reports and memories, and is mainly about the downfall of ordinary people. The mass suicides of 1945 are to this day a repressed chapter in contemporary history. For many decades, no one had any interest in the psychological suffering of those left behind and their next of kin.
The reason for both the wave of suicides and the silence, repression and forgetting was the same: an escape from the unbearable. The deeper causes, however, were hidden away in the innermost parts of the Germans, who had lived in an emotional state of exception for twelve years.
Florian Huber sheds light on the story of the moods and thoughts of the people in the Third Reich through historical accounts and research into their mental states - a fascinating glimpse into the feelings of simple people who were facing their downfall.