The Bitter Taste of Victory by Lara Feigel review – portrait of the Germans in defeat

A survey of postwar Germany as seen by writers and artists shows the complex nature of attitudes to the defeated nation

Sometimes, the aftermath of war can be more terrible than the conflict itself. With Hitler’s downfall, and the unconditional surrender of the Nazi state on 7 May 1945, Germany was plunged into an abyss of horror: cities reduced to rubble, without power or water; corpses unburied in bomb-cratered streets; and civilians at risk of disease, rape and starvation.

To visit this defeated Germany, writes Lara Feigel, was “to confront an apocalypse”. Almost the only signs of life were the Trümmerfrauen or “rubble women”, wraithlike figures employed by the allies to clear mountains of debris by hand.

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