A close (diving) friend of mine lived in Berlin during the war as a young child. He recalled having to run downstairs -7 floors-to the basement when the allied bombers came. He recalls to this day all the explosions and shaking of buildings. He eventually came to the US as a scientific glass blower. He and I and our wives saw the movie when it came out. He walked out half way through the movie. Said he "couldn't take it any more".
As far as whether the German people knew what was happening to all the Jews, the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" addresses that. One of the most powerful movies on the subject of the actual trials of the judges and principals behind the Holocaust. Spencer Tracy plays of the American jurists and Burt Lancaster plays one of the defendants Dr. Ernst Janning. The closing argument by Maxmillian Schell who defended the Germans is quite something -at least from a lawyers point of view.
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