Things fall apart

Women are missing and factory workers are adrift in this dystopian tale set in the aftermath of the Third Reich

Xan Brooks

It is late afternoon, March 1945, when a German schoolboy cycling home through the dusk sees a number of women under armed guard at the verge. The boy has grown used to the regular transport of workers to the munitions plant beyond town and instinctively senses that this group is different; out of place and suspicious. But by now the war is in its death throes and abnormality has become a given. Allied forces are pouring in, foreign labour is bleeding out. Everyone on Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, seems depleted and confused, no longer sure who belongs and who doesn’t. Hitler’s war machine was propped up by millions of workers, predominantly brought in from Poland and Ukraine and forcibly deployed to canneries, factories and farms. Once the Deed Is…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 21 March 2025

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