Mass evacuation may have been an organisational triumph. It was not, however, a victory of the ‘national community’. On the contrary, the experience of evacuation in particular would engender whole new areas of conflict within German society. Time and again, the refusal to share kitchens and laundries with evacuees became flashpoints of conflict, and local Party officials had to mediate. The Nazi Women’s Organisation and the People’s Welfare set about establishing sewing centres, communal kitchens and laundries to defuse these
