As in other places in Germany, a “Hitler Oak” was planted in Bärweiler right after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power. It stood near today’s warriors’ memorial. The National Socialist régime’s Gleichschaltung set in right after the seizure of power and even in the smallest villages, it did not spare club life. The warriors’ club still staged memorial celebrations for those who had fallen in the First World War. The church and singing club participated in these as well. As elsewhere, the warriors’ club quickly submitted itself to Nazi ideology: “The warriors’ club, in the spring of 1933, always participated fully and wholly in the celebration of the National Rising of our people.” The youth – an important factor in Nazi power politics – were drawn in from the beginning, even in Bärweiler. Youthful membership in clubs and other organizations thereby virtually ceased to exist. Documents were compiled as to who had joined which mass Nazi organization, and when (that is, the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls, the Deutsches Jungvolk or whatever). Although on 1 September 1939 only three or four men from the village went to the war, later all men capable of fighting were called into the Wehrmacht, which amounted to 68 men, and that meant at least one man from almost every household. As early as the spring of 1940, bombs fell within Bärweiler’s municipal limits for the first time, among them one demolition bomb and several incendiaries. They did no damage to the village itself, although the craters were still visible long after the war. Bärweiler was mostly spared Allied bombings as the war wore on. The war’s consequences were harsh: Of 74 men who went away to fight, 17 did not return. To this day, eight local soldiers’ fates are unknown. One family lost three sons, while several others each lost two. The last to return was a man who had been held in the Soviet Union and who arrived back home on 7 December 1949. The population’s supply of everyday goods was at this time worse than it had been during the war. Rationing was still the rule. Until early 1948, food rationing cards were still in use.Third Reich
