Farewell, Mein Führer: The German mass suicide wave of 1945.
Why did thousands of ordinary Germans kill themselves at the end of World War II? The answer may be more complicated than you think.
Content warning: this article discusses suicide and includes (non-gory) historical images of dead human beings. Skip this one if these are triggering for you.
This week marks the 79th anniversary of a string of events that occurred at the end of World War II in Europe, most of them associated with the Battle of Berlin and the end of the Nazi regime. Most people know that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945 as Soviet troops were closing in on the last pitiful remnants of the dying Nazi state, huddled in the bunker under Berlin. Many people have also heard of the other suicides of top Nazis that occurred in the Führerbunker at about the same time, including Eva Braun Hitler, Adolf’s long-time mistress whom he finally married just that day, plus the odious Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda, who horribly murdered their six children to boot. But these high-profile suicides were only the tip of the iceberg. In reality they were only a small part of several successive waves of politically-motivated suicides that rippled through Germany in the closing days of World War II, a suicide plague that claimed at least 7,000 lives and possibly many more. It’s a grim subject, but one worth thinking about.
Suicide is definitely a touchy topic. Most of us reflexively think of suicide as a deeply individual act, usually motivated by personal factors that often even a victim’s closest loved ones and friends can’t understand or may not even be aware of. This is certainly true of my own experience. My best friend, age 26, shot himself in 2000. The act came as a complete surprise to friends and family and left many unanswered questions. The suicides of celebrities, like Robin Williams in 2014 or Kurt Cobain in 1994, also fit this traditional pattern. It’s very odd to us, then, to think of suicide as not necessarily personal, but collective, behaving very much as a communicable disease. It’s also difficult to imagine suicide being motivated by political factors rather than personal ones like depression, mental health issues, terminal illness, substance abuse or financial problems. The suicide wave in Germany in 1945 upends our usual assumptions about why people kill themselves.
