Stunde Null
The term zero hour (even zero hour ) was applied on 8 May 1945 and the earliest portion of the immediate postwar period in Germany and Austria. It refers to the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht and the complete collapse of the Nazi state, which would have provided the opportunity for a fresh start unconditional.
Term
The term zero hour actually comes from the language of planning organizations, classic of the military. It generally refers to the crucial time at which a new chain of events begins to run. A maneuver command could accordingly be: " departure 04:15. . Reaching the point P in zero plus 3 hours of " The term was used for the German post-war period for the first time with reference to the history of literature; when he showed up exactly, is no longer to determine. The title of Roberto Rossellini's film of 1948 Germany Year Zero probably has promoted the spread of the expression.
Controversy use
With the slogan Zero Hour is meant that the destruction of the Nazi state would have brought a radical and complete break with the German company itself, so there was no continuity between the Federal Republic of Germany and its predecessor systems. Due to the loss of self-determination of the German people under military occupation from 1945, the (old ) German company had ceased to exist, their old values were then all been perceived as disproved. Thus, a tabula rasa situation had prevailed, from when "everything" had to be developed from scratch. Several authors have criticized that this opportunity to start anew from zero in the years of the occupation and the Adenauer era had not been used: Instead, there was a restoration in which the capitalist relations, which led to fascism, or a first for half of the century characteristic " frömmelndes Christianity " had been restored.
This thesis has been widely rejected. So Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker said on 8 May 1985 from the fact that it had no where "zero hour", but merely a " fresh start". The mentality of the German society has changed only slowly and only partially innovative. As the cultural historian Bernd Hüppauf stresses also occurred in the history of literature no zero hour. Although many German writers stressed the supposedly radical newness of her writing in the so-called debris literature after 1945, but even here outweigh the similarities with the previous years stronger than the differences. Instead of the absolute concept of zero hour they should be better differentiated from continuity and change sign.
Rather could be identified for the post-war Germany many different and by no means comprehensive " zero hour ". How could families ( for example, after a re- together of parents and children under entirely new life requirements), companies ( for example, after the re-recording of " peace-time production " ), art forms emerging artists ( after rehabilitation as " degenerate" by the Nazis defamed Art direction - see the first Documenta 1955), institutions ( eg the " search service " of the German Red Cross) and parties (in this example, the CDU and the CSU as a catholic- Protestant coalition parties ) their own distinct " zero hour " have experienced. In particular, the currency reform on 20 June 1948 by many Germans as a large incision (see Anastrophe ), as seen from a social historical perspective as a outcropping a " leveled middle -class society ."
Hans Braun, Uta Gerhardt and Everhard Holtmann describe where they issue anthology four years of occupation in West Germany as a " long zero hour " in the under steering especially the American military government, the transformation of German society from a Nazi- dominated towards a democratic society had succeeded.