Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Focus On German-Speaking Countries/German Cultural Readers, Wolfgang Schlauch, Barbara Schlauch

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

In 1945, Hitler's Third Reich, which had brought misery and suffering to millions of Europeans, was in shambles. German cities had been reduced to rubble, and her people were frightened, starving and desperate. Americans, together with their allies, occupied the defeated country. Wishing to prevent a recurrence of German aggressiveness, the Allies planned to punish the guilty and prevent Germany from ever becoming a military power again.

Who would have thought at the time of the Nuremberg Trials that only thirty years later the western part of Germany would be one of the closest political and military allies and one …