Stunde Null

Stunde Null or "Hour Zero" is a term used by Germany referring to May 8, 1945 at midnight.
This was a term that was used to mark both an ending of World War Two and the start of a
‘new’, non-Nazi Germany. It was in part trying to separate the current Germany from the guilt of
the former Nazi racial state. The term itself is meant to imply “an absolute break with the past
and a radical new beginning”, or a “sweeping away of old traditions and customs”. People at the
time were living in an almost completely devastated Germany.
Stunde Null also was used to distance Germany from the Nazi regime in other ways as well.
Over time the culture surrounding Stunde null tried to create a ‘race-less’ Germany.

History of the Term

The term was first used in World War One, and it was used to say “a time at which some great
military action has to take place”. The term ‘zero hour’ appears in various sources throughout
post-world war one history. It is mostly used in terms of a militaristic concept.

Allied Occupation of Germany

During the post-war period Germany was split up into four zones controlled by: The Soviet
Union, the United States of America, France, and the United Kingdom. A main cultural impact
of this occupation was the so-called ‘denazification’ process i.e., remove Nazis from the
Germany.

Berlin
When the Soviets (who were the first occupying power) arrived in Berlin, they saw a city
devastated by the air raids and street fighting. It was described as a Geisterstadt ("ghost town").
Extent of the devastation
48,000 of the 245,000 buildings in Berlin were destroyed.

 1/3 of all private apartments were totally destroyed.

 23% of industrial capacity was obliterated and the rest was dismantled for transportation by
the Russians in the demontage (disassembly).
 There were 75 million tons of rubble, which equated to 1/7 of all the rubble in Germany.
 All electricity, gas and water supplies were destroyed:
 It was forbidden to wash one's whole body.
 The transport network was badly destroyed:
 The underground stations had been flooded and over 90 of them had been bombed.
 The first buses resumed service on May 19.
 78,000 deaths:
 50,000 victims of the air raids.
 977 suicides.
 A further 4,000 died daily in August 1945, because of the cholera and diphtheria epidemics.
 The population shrank and the demographics were significantly altered:
 4.3 million lived in Berlin before the war, but only 2.8 million afterwards.
  1/4 of the population were over 60.
 1 in 10 was under 30.
 16 women to every 10 men.
Das Aufräumen ("The clean-up")
The job of cleaning up the city fell to the Soviets, as they were first (the Western Allies arrived
on July 4, 1945) to enter the city. According to them, the clean-up operation would last 12 years.
On May 29, all women aged between 15 and 65 were conscripted as Trümmerfrauen (rubble
women). In all, 60,000 women worked to rebuild Berlin.
Rations and starvation
The biggest problem that the Berliners had to face was the threat of starvation. German war-
time ration cards were no longer valid. Any remaining rations were either used to feed Russian
troops or stolen by hungry Germans.
On May 15, the Russians introduced a new five-tier ration-card system: The highest tier was
reserved for intellectuals and artists; rubble women and Schwerarbeiter (manual workers)
received the second-tier card, which was more valuable to them than the 12 Reichsmark they
received for cleaning up a thousand bricks; the lowest card, nicknamed
the Friedhofskarte (cemetery ticket) was issued to housewives and the elderly.
During this period, the average Berliner was around 6 to 9 kg (13 to 20 lb) underweight.
Alternative sources of food
Due to the meagre rations, the black market thrived, and thousands traded on it daily. Payment
was either in cigarettes or by bartering. There were even rumors of cannibalism and the trading
of human flesh.
Two new words entered the German vocabulary during 1945:*
hamstern
Literally, "to hamster". This meant to travel into the countryside, in order to exchange
possessions for food. Anything from watches and jewelry to blankets and rugs were
exchanged for very small amounts of food.

fringsen
This meant to steal to survive. This word is etymologically based on the surname of
Cardinal Josef Frings, a senior figure in the Catholic Church of Cologne, who (in
accordance with long-standing Catholic tradition[5]) famously gave his blessing to those
who had to steal in order to feed their family.
Der Elendswinter ("The miserable winter", 1945–46)
The winter of 1945–46 was one of the coldest in living memory. Temperatures
plummeted to −30 °C (−22 °F) and there was no protection from the biting cold in the
bombed-out houses. About 40,000 people suffered from hypothermia and 1,000 died as a
result. The Berlin Magistrat (municipal authority) created official Wärmeräume (warm
rooms) for people to warm themselves in.
Crime
In 1946, Berlin was a haven of crime. There were an average of 240 robberies and five
murders a day, and most criminals were the destitute and homeless. In the areas east of
the future Oder-Neisse line, Red Army soldiers committed cruelties against the German
population, including countless rapes. Allied soldiers sometimes harassed German
civilians too. Problems with law and order occurred in the areas that had still been
controlled by the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945 (e.g. western Austria, Bavaria, South
Tyrol (Italy), East Frisia and Schleswig-Holstein), the date of the final German
surrender.

Reconstruction and Stunde Null

Also at the time of stunde null, Germany lay in ruins after the destruction wrought by
World War Two. Following the war was a period of massive scale reconstruction. With
roughly eighty percent of the country’s infrastructure now in need of repair the German
people saw an opportunity to reconstruct an old infrastructure into something more
modern. They traded the condensed busy interiors of cities for newer, more expansive
boulevards, opting to expand outward, creating more space to live in, rather than
continuing the trend of condensing as they had done before. However, this project of
reconstruction is and was so great that we are still in the process of implementing all of
the changes today.

Culture at the time of Stunde Null

Germany at the time of Stunde Null was certainly very different from its former pre-war
self. After the allies had finished the war, and the concentration camps and the inhuman
practices of the Nazis were revealed to the world, and Germany was put into a difficult
public relations position (people like Thomas Mann saying things such as “Humanity
shudders in horror at Germany!” (published in a Munich newspaper named Bayerische
Landeszeitung). The severity of Germany’s crimes was almost universally recognized by
the world, including Germany itself, so a culture of trying to escape that past was
created. This spurred the idea that 1945 was not only an end, but a beginning too.
Politics during Stunde Null
The idea of Stunde Null was even in the politics at the end of the war. British diplomat
Robert Gilbert Vansittart wanted to offer German “barren nothingness”, an “empty space
in which they [Germans] must fill in with their own ideas if they have any.” Even some
of the diplomats negotiating with Germany seemed to want to honor the idea of stunde
null, further propagating the culture of new beginnings instead of endings.
As a result of this new way of thinking, Germany entered into a new period of political
rhetoric. A “race-less” Germany was created, Germany began to disconnect themselves
from their hyper-racialized past in favor of one that seemed to ignore the question in
general. To a large extent, even scholars started to ignore questions about race, treating
the end of World War Two as if it solved all of these issues. But race was still very much
an issue in the post-war period in Germany. Germany offered their quick acceptance of
democratic ideals and customs as proof of their supposed ‘race less’ culture, but these
same ideals were reintroducing racialization to Germany.
For all the talk of new beginnings there was a movement to remember the past, and cope.
This was called Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coping with the past), though not much of
the politics of the time was shaped by this there were many people did not want
Germany to simply forget the crimes it had committed during world war two.

Controversy
In 1985, Richard von Weizsäcker, the President of West Germany at that time, stated
"There was no "Stunde Null" but we had the chance for a new beginning" ("Es gab
keine Stunde Null, aber wir hatten die Chance zu einem Neubeginn.), implying that a true
and total restart never occurred in postwar Germany.