‘From one day to the next. First they are all Nazis and suddenly Communists. Out of the brown skin into the red one,’ the 17-year-old noted in her diary, resolving that ‘I will keep clear of the whole infatuation with the Party. At the most a Social Democrat like my parents.’ As news of the suicide of Hitler and Goebbels spread, people’s sense of rage at having been abandoned by their leaders rapidly grew; so too did the feeling that having lived under a dictatorship absolved one of personal responsibility for all that had happened.3
