This is John Batchelor, a conversation with the author Ian Baruma, his new book, Staying Alive.

The reports of Germany, Berlin particularly, 1939 to 45.

The diaries and letters of those who survived and those who didn't. Sent it around the author's father, Leo,

who was dragooned by the Hitlerites out of Holland

to work in a factory in Berlin

because all the young men and women had been sent to the front.

Ian here speaks of the resistance,

the very small number of people who were bold enough to resist.

Almost all of them did not survive. And then the bombing and how it changed the language of the

front page of the propaganda sheets issued in Berlin by the Hitlerites. Much more of this later

tonight. Ian Baruma. Well, first of all, the people who

are actively resisting, well, that was always a very small number of people. It was too dangerous for

most people to risk, even if they'd wanted to. Most people tried to survive as best they could. So

there are real resistance figures in my account,

and Ruth Andreas Friedrich, whose diaries I used extensively was one of them,

but it was rare.

Now, whether it became more difficult after the bombing or not, I think it was always

difficult. I don't think that was the, I don't, I'm not sure the bombing made the biggest

difference on the resistance, but it certainly changed life. Not only the bombings, but the defeat in

Stalingrad, which was a catastrophe for the German army, hundreds of thousands of men died.

And they realized really that the chances of winning the war were getting slimmer by the day.

And then the bombings start getting worse and worse.

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