The German War The German War The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945 is a history of the "thoughts and actions" of German citizens during the Second World War by historian Nicholas Stargardt. Stargardt presents evidence that Germans were aware of the genocide and atrocities being committed by German policy, through word of mouth. Stargardt argues that as the war went on, German media increasingly, "hinted at what people already knew, fostering a sense of collusive semi-secrecy." This 'spiral of silence' (according to Stargardt) produced a sense of quasi-complicity among Germans, even those who did not directly participate in atrocities. He argues
World War I grown up with the appellation of the Great War firmly applied to the 1914–18 First World War. But to anyone living before 1918, the title of the Great War was applied to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in which Britain fought France almost continuously for twenty-two years from 1793 to 1815." In Germany, "The Great War" was historically used for the 1618–1648 Thirty Years' War, also known as the "Great German War" or "Great Schism". One of the longest and most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in eight million fatalities from military action, violence, famine and plague, the