European Witness- Devastation and Demoralization from WW2

Thesis: Stephen Spender paints a sad picture of the demoralized German people under Allied occupation shortly after the end of the war.

• There was not a single house left in Cologne; standing walls but gutted interiors


• Only three hundred habitable buildings left.


• Thousands of people trudge all day long, who once lived prosperously only a few years ago, but no more.


• Cologne used to be the heart of the Rhineland with shopping centers, restaurants, theaters, etc.


• The Destruction of Germany is different than the worst that has happened in England


• People are scarred there, but not destroyed, it will heal


• The external destruction is so great that it cannot be healed and the surrounding life of the rest of the country cannot flow and revive the city.


• The people are parasites sucking a dead carcass, just trying to survive


• They are like a tribe of wanderers that has discovered a ruined city


• The city smells and looks like a corpse


• One feels haunted by the ghost of tremendous noise from explosions


• The undamaged cathedral amidst the rubble retains Cologne's character.


• The destruction is a discouragement to everyone living and working in Germany


• The city is dead and the people only inhabit the cellars like rats


• So much progress of civilization is destroyed.


• The destruction of the city itself is a reproach to the people who go on living there.