The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

September there had been a particularly fine spell of little rain and sunshine,
Else and her fellow Berliners referred to it as ‘Führer weather’, as though
Hitler’s magic could even influence the skies above them.
Of Else’s circle of friends and family there was only one person who
was vehemently anti-Nazi, and that was her Aunt Fee, who lived in the
country to the east of Berlin. Else had visited her at Christmas and while
she was there Fee openly admitted to her that she listened to foreign radio
broadcasts, something that was strictly verboten in Germany. Else was
appalled, and horrified when her aunt accused the Nazis of repeatedly lying
to the German people. ‘This wicked man,’ Fee said of Hitler, ‘will lead
Germany to her doom.’
Else was genuinely shocked; she felt sure her aunt was wrong.
‘You are supposed to be an educated woman,’ her aunt fumed, ‘and you
have two sons. Why don’t you find these things out? You’re hopeless. You
are just as childish as the rest of Germany. You have a leader and that is all
you ask. Can’t you ever take any individual responsibility at all?’
‘We were so young,’ says Hilda Müller of those early months of the war,
‘we didn’t really understand the political background.’ In May 1940, Hilda
was not quite seventeen, but had already left school, done her compulsory
year’s service in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), and had
just begun her first proper job, working for Siemens, the world-renowned
electrical engineering company. Her father was deeply wary of Hitler and
the Nazis, but since he was something of a drunkard, Hilda had learned not
to take his views too seriously.
In fact, Hilda had a lot to be grateful for to the Nazis. She was from a
working-class family from the Hohenschönhausen suburb of east Berlin,
and lived in a very small house her father had built on their allotment back
in the early thirties to save money. Hilda was an intelligent girl but before
the Nazis took power she would not have been able to stay at school, and
would have left at thirteen. However, in Nazi Germany, she had been able
to take an exam to remain a further two and a half years and because her
family could not afford it, the State paid. Now, because of her education,
she was being trained by Siemens and paid 75 marks a month, a good wage
at the time for someone of her age.
Siemens had supported the Nazis, and their two factories in Berlin –
Siemens Schuckert and Siemens-Halske – were both producing war