Dear reader,
For twenty years, Patrick Desbois traveled through Eastern European countries to educate about the "Holocaust by bullets".
He looked for traces of the reign of terror in places where the Germans and their helpers murdered more than 2.2 million people in 1941 and 1944, primarily in the Ukraine.
There the Catholic priest from France continues to drive through the country.
But now with a new mission: Since the attack by Putin's forces, he has been collecting evidence of Russian war crimes.
His team has already conducted around 150 interviews with eyewitnesses, documented torture and murder, viewed photos and videos of mass graves.
Whether past massacres or current deeds in an ongoing war - the goal is the same, the methods are similar: Father Desbois, 67, wants to reconstruct in detail what really happened.
The German Holocaust researcher Arno Funeral called him an “archaeologist of evil”.
"These people want justice," says Desbois about his interlocutors in Ukraine.
"It's the least they can expect."
History editor Katja Iken became aware of his new job through a notice in the French media.
She wondered what goes on in a man who is now investigating war crimes again on the same terrain - and how disillusioned he must be with the human species.
It took months to talk because Desbois is always on the go.
Katja then experienced him as »actually a very happy, humorous Frenchman who is driven by a warm heart and cold rage«.
Not an ardent activist, but rather a reticent listener in search of the "truth" that is always the first casualty of war.
It is a turbulent and, in the middle of a war, risky work.
The look into human abysses is too much for Desbois.
“He told me very frankly that he always pushes his limits.
Without daily prayer, without therapeutic support, without the exchange in the team, he wouldn't be able to cope," says Katja about the conversation.
You can read her portrait here: The Father Who Descends into Hell.
How German »Frolleins« looked for happiness
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Post-war couple: Trudy and Jim
Photo: private
After Germany unleashed World War II and lay in ruins in 1945, the population starved and froze.
The USA has become a place of longing, especially for young people.
And numerous women wanted to escape the misery of the post-war period by marrying an occupying soldier.
Up until 1949, a good 20,000 German »war brides« tried their luck in America.
Among them was Trudy Gronning, now 93. "We made up our lips red with shoe polish," she told our colleague Inga Kemper.
At the age of 17, Trudy, then still Gertrud, had a crush on the US soldier Jim.
In 1948 in Munich, they became a married couple and moved to the USA, where not everything was as Trudy had dreamed.
After Jim's death, she remarried to a US soldier and still lives with him in Pennsylvania.
Read Inga's article about the hopes, experiences and disappointments of the women who were often reviled as "American sweethearts" here.
Did you have Flachwitz?
And now for something completely different, to quote the British comedian sextet Monty Python: When you think of German humor in the 1970s, who and what do you think of?
Maybe it's the late years of Heinz Erhardt, maybe it's Loriot as the grand master of elevated merriment or the political cabaret of the laughing and shooting society, which broke up 50 years ago because their jokes no longer wanted to ignite.
You probably remember big TV episodes like »Klimbim« or »Ein Herz und Eine Seele«, »Sketchup« or »Nonstop Nonsens«, the shows by Otto Waalkes.
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Always just above the turf: the bunny jokes
Illustration: adrenalina / IMAGO
Apropos: The East Frisian jokes of the 70s, invented in a Berlin youth hostel, were rightly feared.
But it went even flatter - bunny jokes.
They almost always began with "Hatu carrots?" and ended with a lowered punchline.
That gave them a big hello in schoolyards, at regulars' tables or on the joke pages of TV magazines.
Even Dieter Hallervorden, and that's saying something, described it as a "dark chapter of German humor".
The origin of these flat jokes was hardly known - it was in the GDR.
The prototype was distributed in 1976 at the "Festival of Political Songs" in East Berlin, satirist Henning Venske reported in SPIEGEL, primarily as a subversive criticism of the socialist economy of scarcity, where the bunny in the shops never got what it was should be there.
In our »Odd History« series, history editor Danny Kringiel traces how the »Hattu« jokes then made their way to the West and lost all ambiguity.
The next newsletter, which can be ordered here, will reach you in two weeks.
If you have one, the current issue of HISTORY »Slavery: How people became goods – and Germany benefited« is always suitable for reading in a warm place.
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Your SPIEGEL HISTORY team