Under the Bombs

The German Home Front, 1942–1945

Earl R. Beck

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2013
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813143705
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

"A tribute to human resilience under extreme stress, both in response to the terror from the sky and to the sacrifices the Nazis imposed on their people." — History
 
Under the Bombs tells the story of the civilian population of German cities devastated by Allied bombing in World War II. These people went to work, tried to keep a home (though in many cases it was just a pile of rubble where a house once stood), and attempted to live life as normally as possible amid the chaos of war. Earl Beck also looks at the food and fuel rationing the German people endured and the problems of trying to make a public complaint while living in a totalitarian state.
 
"An easily accessible 'impressionistic description' of life in Germany under Allied aerial bombardment . . . this evocative study captures the horror of war for a trapped population." — Library Journal
 
"The most vivid account available of what it was actually like to live under the bombings." — Historian
 
"Challenges the contention of Allied commanders that airpower was the ultimate key to victory and that it could have defeated the enemy by itself." — America
 
"A powerful study." — American Historical Review
 
"An enlightening, highly readable account of life in the war-ravaged Third Reich." — Pineville Sun
 
"A description of what it was like to live, work, suffer, and die in wartime Germany." — The Historian

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The End of Optimism: January-August 1942
• 2. The Last (Somewhat) Merry Christmas: August-December 1942
• 3. Stalingrad and All-Out Warfare: January-April 1943
• 4. Bombing Achieves Holocaust: May-August 1943
• 5. A Joyless Victory: September-December 1943
• 6. Life Goes on: January-April 1944
• 7. The Bombs Still Fall: May-September 1944
• 8. Germany's Darkest Winter: September-December 1944
• 9. The End Comes—With Death and Terror: January-May 1945
• Postscript: Forty Years Later—In Retrospect
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Illustrations