When they laid off the other team that was working in our office (on an entirely different product), they of course assured us that we were safe - they believed in our product, yadda yadda.
Then at some point, things started getting weird - a job position was cancelled right before we were going to offer the candidate the job. A trip to HQ was cancelled last minute. An external team was getting increasingly involved.
About a year after the other team had been fired, the second highest ranking executive was visiting our office, something he would do once in a while. When the visit was announced, we were joking that "if he brings Pattie from HR, they'll lay us off". I got the message from my coworker on my way to work: "Pattie is here."
The speech the executive gave us was the stupidest thing I've ever heard somebody say to me. He literally said: "In a couple of years, you will look at this as a big opportunity." We just rolled our eyes at each other. When he left the room, we picked up the remotes and started playing stickman against each other. It was the only thing that seemed appropriate.
We had a very nice office and so we were looking forward to be able to spend our notice period together, playing video games, making music and doing the bare minimum in terms of handover duties. Unfortunately, covid happened at right that time and our time together was dramatically cut short, which I still consider a tragedy.
One woman in our team was pregnant and fought the settlement they were offering us. As far as I know, they had to keep her on for longer and she eventually negotiated a better deal - pregnant people are especially protected under German labour law.
To this day, some in my former team doubt that what they did was really all that legal and think we should have fought back, because it later turned out that they lied to us about a bunch of things. But I doubt it would have been really worth it. They just wanted us out.