In Europe

through his head. That same day a comrade and I escaped in civilian clothes.’
    For Wolf Jobst Siedler, the war ended on 2 May alongside a road in Italy. ‘We Germans stood there with a white flag, but the British tanks just rolled on by, it was one huge thundering herd. No one wanted us!’
    Within only a few months, the four great leaders of the war – with the exception of Stalin – disappeared from the political arena. Roosevelt did not live to see the German capitulation: he died of a brain haemorrhage on 12 April, 1945. De Gaulle became the president of a provisional government. In that role, and with an eye to French unity in the future, he did his best to prevent retaliations against the Vichy supporters. That soon led to a conflict with the former Resistance fighters. When elections were held in October 1945, France once again proved to be deeply divided. To break the impasse, de Gaulle announced his resignation on 20 January, 1946. He was convinced that the French, shocked, would call him back and surround him with more power and glory than before. But he was mistaken: they let him retire in peace to his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. It was twelve years before France would call on the general once more.
    Just as unexpectedly, the voters banished Winston Churchill to Chartwell. (But not for good: in 1951 he once again became prime minister and stayed on until 1955, when he retired for reasons of health.) During the war years, Britain had been ruled by a cabinet drawn from all the major political parties, the ‘Grand Coalition’, and regular elections were held again for the first time on 5 July, 1945. A landslide of opinion seemed to have taken place among the British voters: Labour, led by Clement Attlee, won 393 seats in the House of Commons, while Churchill's Conservatives made an astounding fall from 585 to 213 seats. The blow took all parties by surprise. Attlee – whom Churchill had once called ‘a sheep in sheep's clothing’ – was a man seemingly devoid of charisma. As second in charge within Churchill's wartime cabinet, however, he had gained great popularity: he toured the entire country, unfolding extensive plans on housing, education, health care and industry, setting the tone, in short, for reconstruction even while the war was still in progress.
    Churchill, on the other hand, had seen only cheering masses during the election campaign, without realising that the British people were cheering him as a war hero, not as a politician. His own daughter, Sarah,clearly expressed the tenor of popular opinion:‘Because socialism as practised in the war did no one any harm, and quite a lot of people good. The children of this country have never been so well fed or healthy; what milk there was, was shared equally; the rich didn't die because their meat ration was no larger than the poor; and there is no doubt that this common sharing and feeling of sacrifice was one of the strongest bonds that unified us. So why, they say, cannot this common feeling of sacrifice be made to work as effectively in peace?’
    The official settling of accounts took place in the hall of the war tribunal at Nuremberg. Starting in November 1945, the first trials were those of the twenty-one principal suspects – including Göring, Papen, Frank, Ribbentrop, Seyss-Inquart and Speer – followed later by other, lesser gods. Since 1960 the famous tribunal hall has become part of the regular courtroom, a place where everyday theft and divorce is weighed in the balance. The hall was closed when I came through Nuremberg in the spring, but an old porter was kind enough to allow me a glimpse. The space seemed smaller, more human than I had imagined. Sunlight streamed through the high windows and fell on the judge's bench. The clouds were all that could be seen from the witness stand. ‘Nothing here is original,’ the porter said. ‘The Americans took everything as souvenirs, the furniture is now spread all over California, Arizona and the rest of the United States.’ Only the enormous table at which the magistrates conferred is still standing in a side room, because ‘it was too big to drag away’.
    It is often said of Nuremberg that here the ultimate truth finally came to light. That is true in so far as it applies to the belligerence and criminality of the Nazi regime, but many important questions remained unsolved years after the tribunal was closed. This has to do with the availability of information –