Demmin

An exceptionally large wave of suicides occurred in Demmin between April 30 and May 4, 1945, in the context of the city's capture by the Red Army and the complete collapse of the Third Reich. It is considered one of the largest mass suicides in Germany at the end of the war. Demmin was located in Pomerania (now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) and was a politically distinctly national-conservative and Nazi-minded city, with strong support for the DNVP, Der Stahlhelm, and later the NSDAP, even during the Weimar period. Jews had already been largely eliminated from economic life before 1938, and Nazism was deeply ingrained in the local milieu. In April 1945, in addition to the city's 15,000 to 16,000 residents, thousands of German refugees from areas further east also settled there, roughly doubling the population just as the Eastern Front collapsed.

On April 30, 1945, advance guards of the Soviet 65th Army and the 1st Guards Tank Corps reached Demmin as German troops retreated. The Wehrmacht blew up all the bridges over the Peene and Tollense rivers, effectively turning the town into an "island" and making escape virtually impossible. In the days surrounding the capture, skirmishes broke out (including the shooting of Soviet negotiators and fire from Hitler Youth fanatics), after which Soviet soldiers were allowed to plunder for three days. Numerous eyewitnesses report mass rapes "regardless of age," arbitrary executions, and systematic arson, which destroyed approximately 80% of the city center.

In this atmosphere of panic, propaganda-fueled fear of the Soviets, and real-life violence, hundreds, possibly well over a thousand, residents and refugees committed suicide, often within their families. Methods included drowning in the Peene and Tollense rivers, hanging, poisoning, gunshot wounds, or slitting wrists. Estimates vary: historians such as Norbert Buske and Christian Goeschel speak of approximately 700 to 1,200 suicides immediately after the arrival of the Red Army; local reports mention more than 800 deaths in a few days, and a total of approximately 2,300 "war and starvation deaths" in 1945–1946.

Pascal Brackman