“Actually, I Myself Was a Victim”—The Germans as Victims

The primary objective of the set of strategies described in Part II was to present the Germans as the main, and sometimes sole, victim of World War II, the Third Reich, and Nazism. The texts emphasize the unemployment and recession in Germany prior to the Third Reich, the oppressive Nazi regime, its reign of terror, as well as postwar destruction-moral and cultural decline, hunger, disease, grief, mourning, looting, rape, expulsion, and separation of families.