Berlins 1945

Eight million homes were destroyed or damaged across Germany, nearlyhalf the roads, railway,s and water, gas and electricity supplies had gone. The economy was similarly in total collapse. Such destruction and suffering had only been seen once before, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. That catastrophe was held to have affected German economic life for centuries. And yet within a generation of 1945 West Germany’s cities had been almost completely rebuilt and her economy was the fourth largest in the world. West Germany was hailed as a model of economic revival. And for the first time in decades, the world learned a positive German word: ‘Wirtschaftsiwunder,’ the economic miracle. How did this come about? The answer is: by human hand. It was people -- largely women -- who made the miracle. ~ Page 504

The challenge of recovering a sense of order and normality was all the greater in a society which had been largely denuded of young men and became overwhelmingly female. Colossal military losses had turned millions of German women into widows. In the summer of 1945 nearly 8.7 million German POWs were officially in the hands of the Allies; roughly 40 percent, or nearly 3.5 million, of them were married. Once released from POW camps, by no means did they all return home. Some were interned by the Allies for denazification, while others were among the thousands of civilians sent off to the USSR at the end of the war; and some decided not to return to their families but chose instead to start new lives elsewhere. Thus, when the war came to an end millions of couples were separated, millions of families were incomplete, and millions of German households were headed by women. ` Page 323