f Hitler to rise to power. Because of the poor economic state Germany was put in through the Great Depression, people were willing and eager to listen and elect a man that promised them the things they needed to survive. But the man that the people chose was the source of the greatest disappointments in all of German history. The war completely destroyed Germany in more ways than one. World War II caused 5.5 million deaths of Germans. The entire country was in ruins: millions of refugees were everywhere, entire cities were leveled, people were hungry and sick, and crime was widespread. Germany was no longer one nation, but divided between an Allied controlled West Germany and a communist controlled East Germany. But the greatest disappointment that World War II brought to the world was the Holocaust. Hitler’s “Final Solution” killed more than 6 million Jewish people. It is an event that the entire world finds complete shame and disappointment in. The German people have been subjected to many disappointments and setbacks throughout its entire history. It is because of these occurrences that the universal experience of disappointment is such a common theme in so much of German literature. The story of “Pale Anna” is only one example Boll gives us to illustrate how disappointing, frustrating and disheartening life can be. What better way to describe disappointment than through the eyes of a German?...
