If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult at best and all but unlivable at worst or possibly even unlivable do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility then it's a lie.
The Germans certainly - the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong probably in my judgment and that is most disturbing.