Mass suicides committed by Germans during the final days of World War II
The Deputy Mayor of Leipzig and his wife and daughter, who committed suicide in the Neues Rathaus as U.S. troops were entering the city on 20 April 1945
During the final weeks of Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe, many civilians, government officials, and military personnel throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe committed suicide. In addition to high-ranking Nazi officials like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Philipp Bouhler, many others chose suicide rather than accept the defeat of Germany.[1] Motivating factors included fear of reprisals and atrocities by the Allies and especially the Red Army, Nazi propaganda glorifying suicide as preferable to defeat, and despondency after the suicide of Adolf Hitler. For example, in May 1945, up to 1,000 people killed themselves before and after the entry of the Red Army into the German town of Demmin.[2] In Berlin alone more than 7,000 suicides were reported in 1945.
Periods of suicides have been identified between January and May 1945 when thousands of German people took their own lives. Life magazine reported that: "In the last days of the war the overwhelming realization of utter defeat was too much for many Germans. Stripped of the bayonets and bombast which had given them power, they could not face a reckoning with either their conquerors or their consciences."[1] German psychiatrist Erich Menninger-Lerchenthal [de] noted the existence of "organised mass suicide on a large scale which had previously not occurred in the history of Europe [...] there are suicides which do not have anything to do with mental illness or some moral and intellectual deviance, but predominantly with the continuity of a heavy political defeat and the fear of being held responsible".[3]
^ ab"Suicides: Nazis go down to defeat in a wave of selbstmord". Life Magazine. 14 May 1945. Retrieved 10 April 2011.
^Buske, Norbert (Hg.): Das Kriegsende in Demmin 1945. Berichte Erinnerungen Dokumente (Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Landeskundliche Hefte), Schwerin 1995, in German (The End of the War in Demmin 1945 - Reports, Reminiscences, Documents). ISBN 3-931185-04-4.
^Goeschel page 165
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