jebmo’s posthaven

Peter Fritzsche has taken the title of his study of popular opinion under the heel of Hitler’s Reich from an inscription on the Stalingrad war memorial dedicated to Soviet soldiers, who indeed faced an iron wind as German forces swept across the steppe. It is an apt metaphor for the terrible storm of suffering that the European war unleashed. A few brave civilians leaned into the wind; most turned their backs or scuttled for shelter. Few understood well where the wind had come from, or when it would abate, or why it uprooted so much around them. They waited, Mr. Fritzsche claims, in the hope of better weather.

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