The change of government in January 1933 heralded a rapid and ultimately disastrous transition to a one-party dictatorship in Germany. It was far from easy to continue as before with the private running of a Christian children's home, with a shared Christian focus and frequent regular Christian worship. There was one senior Nazi who had once been a young helper at the home who was able to provide a level of protection. Nevertheless, the older children were obliged to join the Hitler Youth and then, following the outbreak in 1939 of another war, to become soldiers. Many came back from the front to spend any periods of army leave at Deep, but by the time the war ended, formally in May 1945, many had been killed in the fighting. At the start of 1945, with ethnic cleansing underway in the east, the children were able to escape to Mecklenburg. They were then sent back, however, and survived for a few more months in Deep, which was now being inundated with refugees being forced out of Eastern Germany in order to make space for Polish refugees being forced out of what had previously been eastern Poland. In Deep, as the Soviet armies over-ran the region, the dangers facing the von Gaudeckers, now in their mid-sixties, were doubled on account of their aristocratic provenance (and name) and because Captain von Gaudecker was a retired army officer. They fled or were expelled from Deep and until October 1945 survived hunger and sickness in the Berlin suburb of Treptow.