When Germany surrendered in May 1945 it was a nation reduced to rubble. Immediately, America, Britain, Soviet Russia, and France set about rebuilding in their zones of occupation. Most urgent were physical needs--food, water, and sanitation--but from the start the Allies were also anxious to indoctrinate the German people in the ideas of peace and civilization.
When Germany surrendered in May 1945 it was a nation reduced to rubble. Trummerfrauen, or rubblewomen, were engaged to clear away the rubble of bombed out buildings,by hand.
America, Britain, Soviet Russia, and France set about rebuilding in their zones of occupation. Most urgent were physical needs--food, water, and sanitation--but from the start the Allies were also anxious to indoctrinate the German people in the ideas of peace and civilization as first offensive in the Cold War.
Denazification and reeducation would be key to future peace, and the arts were crucial guides to alternative, less militaristic ways of life. In an extraordinary extension of diplomacy, over the next four years, many writers, artists, actors, and filmmakers were dispatched by Britain and America to help rebuild the country their governments had spent years bombing. Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell, Lee Miller, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder, and others undertook the challenge of reconfiguring German society. In the end, many of them became disillusioned by the contrast between the destruction they were witnessing and the cool politics of reconstruction.
Wilder, whose entire family with the exception of his brother, Wilhelm, perished in the camps, had a very difficult time feeling sympathy for the starving Germans around him, as he prepped and filmed exteriors for A FOREIGN AFFAIR, featuring Marlene Dietrich, as a former Nazi showgirl who indulges in an affair with an American officer, generously based on Gen. James Gavin.
And Marlene was indefatigable in entertaining tropps and visiting hospitals-she was adored by the GIs. After learning that her sister Lisel and her husband Georg Willi had run the cinema at Belsen for SS officers she would forevermore deny that she had a sister.
Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub
While they may have had less effect on Germany than Germany had on them, the experiences of these celebrated figures, never before told, offer an entirely fresh view of post-war Europe. The Bitter Taste of Victory is an important addition to the literature of World War II.
