I reckon it’s probably a mix of surviving war time propaganda and panic/rumors that spread during the war. Many people would’ve just believed it, West Germany didn’t do much to combat beliefs like this so it just got passed down through the generations. If you grow up believing this kind of stuff and you’re not particularly politically/historically educated there’s a good chance you’ll just pass it on.
Probably how it happened in my family. Grandparents fled from East Prussia, they’s have heard rumors and propaganda, they told their children, they told me. People around me believed it too, so not much of a reason to doubt it for a long time.
I reckon it’s probably a mix of surviving war time propaganda and panic/rumors that spread during the war. Many people would’ve just believed it, West Germany didn’t do much to combat beliefs like this so it just got passed down through the generations. If you grow up believing this kind of stuff and you’re not particularly politically/historically educated there’s a good chance you’ll just pass it on.
Probably how it happened in my family. Grandparents fled from East Prussia, they’s have heard rumors and propaganda, they told their children, they told me. People around me believed it too, so not much of a reason to doubt it for a long time.
A plausible explanation given the mass suicides that also happened out of fear of the Red Army. Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945