Soldiers On Leave in Berlin, 1941

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), p. 133: Perhaps Moltke was not just thinking of German victims, but it was difficult to disguise the toll the war was taking on German soldiers. Death notices of men who had “fallen for the Volk and Führer” increased in the newspapers. And bitter strains began to be felt between the men who had to do the fighting and the people at home. The Wunschkonzert for the Wehrmacht had been stopped already in May, for reasons that are not quite clear. By midsummer, German soldiers on the eastern front might no longer have had time for such distractions. In December, a curious letter of complaint was sent by a soldier to officers in the high command, who forwarded it to the Nazi Party authorities. On leave in the capital of the Reich, this soldier had been shocked by the behavior of Berliners. While men on the front were dying for their country, or losing their limbs, or freezing to death, he remarked, Berliners, many of them men…