The end of 1944. The tide of war has turned. Allied armies threaten the borders of the Reich, both east and west, while its once proud capital, Berlin, lies reduced to rubble under incessant enemy bombardment. Its inhabitants, emaciated by the shortage of food and the hardships of war, have little to celebrate during the coming festivities at the end of the year. The black humor typical of Berliners had turned to grim humor. The joke circulating in the city in that gloomy period was: "Be practical: give a coffin as a present.

The mood of the Germans had changed exactly two years before. Shortly before Christmas 1942, rumors began to spread that General Paulus' Sixth Army had been surrounded on the Volga by the Red Army. The Nazi regime found it difficult to admit that the largest formation of the entire Wehrmacht was doomed to be annihilated in the ruins of Stalingrad and the surrounding frozen steppe. In order to prepare the country for the bad news at that time, Joseph Goebbels, the Reichsminister of Propaganda and Information, had announced a "German Christmas", which in National Socialist terms meant a "German Christmas". which in National Socialist terms meant austerity and ideological determination to replace the candles, wreaths, and songs of Silent Night.

By 1944, however... the traditional roast goose had become a memory of another time.