seemed to be in line with the culture at the time: the fact that the devastation in Germany was so great made it easy to consider Germany new. Not only was the country now separated into east and west, but it was also almost entirely being rebuilt. So for people at the time it seemed like a new Germany. Culture at the time of Stunde Null Germany at the time of Stunde Null was certainly very different from its former pre-war self. After the Allies had finished the war, and the concentration camps and the inhuman practices of the Nazis were revealed to the world, and Germany was put into a difficult public relations position (people like Thomas Mann saying things such as "Humanity shudders in horror at Germany!" (published in a Munich newspaper named Bayerische Landeszeitung)). The severity of Germany's crimes was almost universally recognized by the world, including Germany itself, so a culture of trying to escape that past was created. This spurred the idea that 1945 was not only an end, but a beginning too. This thought process began to appear more and more in German culture and speech, with people like Ernst Wiechert talking about making new beginnings in his 1945 address to Germany, talking of "a renewal of German spiritual life", or Werner Richter saying "The only possible source for a spiritual rebirth lies in an absolute and radical new beginning". But there were those that did not think that there would be a possibility for Germany to escape its Nazi past. As Karl Becker said "the German people will have lost all right to say that the German people is [are] not Hitler." This is what really created the culture that sought to wash away the wrongs of the predecessors, they wanted the respect and admiration on the world stage once again, and to do that they needed to distance themselves from this idea of Hitler and the Nazi party. The idea of Stunde Null was even in the politics at the end of the war. British diplomat Robert Gilbert Vansittart wanted to offer German "barren nothingness", an "empty space in which they [Germans] must fill in with their own ideas if they have any." Even some of the diplomats negotiating with Germany seemed to want to honor the idea of Stunde Null, further propagating the culture of new beginnings instead of endings. As