Hitler is dead.
Up till now, although I had been frightened about the war, I never really thought the Germans would win, I think a lot of people were like this. We have become used to hearing the most dreadful stories, it seems as if nothing can shock us anymore, but as the allies drove the Germans back, they came across more camps full of dead and starving people. Most of them were Jews but anyone who didn’t fit the Fascist view of things were in there as well. It has now come home to me how close we were to being like those poor people. Our family have always been socialists and we bought the Daily Herald, a socialist newspaper, that is all that is needed for us all to have been put into one of these camps.
The news that Hitler had committed suicide came at just the right time to stop me worrying about all these things, this must mean the war is coming to an end. The Russians have really pushed forward into the outskirts of Berlin hoping to capture Hitler and to stop the Germans from making a bomb so powerful that just one could destroy a whole city like London—a new weapon up their sleeve, just as Mrs salmon had said—he cheated them by killing himself just as they were near to his bunker, they never found the new bomb though. The newspapers said it would be impossible for any bomber to carry such a huge bomb, and it was just an empty threat to frighten us.
The news of his death overshadowed the war in the Pacific. My uncle Ron was fighting the Japanese, he was mum’s youngest brother and we never heard where he was or even if he was still alive. The Japanese soldiers were trained never to give up, so most of them were killed in battle. This meant they were very hard to beat, and thousands of allied soldiers lost their lives—mostly were American—before they captured the islands around Japan.
Although the Germans had not surrendered everyone was keen to light the bonfires in Cowley Avenue, and some of the older boys kept guard all night to make sure that they didn’t. We were waiting for Mr Churchill to tell us it was all over before that would happen.
Madeinchertsey 