ABBREVIATIONS
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BAB |
Bundesarchiv Berlin/Lichterfelde |
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BA/MA |
Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, Freiburg |
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BDC |
Berlin Document Center |
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BfZ |
Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Württembergische |
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BHStA |
Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich |
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DNB |
Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro (German News Agency) |
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DRZW |
Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg |
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DZW |
Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg |
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HSSPF |
Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and Police Leader(s)) |
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IfZ |
Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich |
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IMT |
International Military Tribunal |
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ITS |
International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen |
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IWM |
Imperial War Museum, Duxford |
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KTB/OKW |
Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommando der Wehrmacht |
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KTB/SKL |
Kriegstagebuch der Seekriegsleitung |
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LHC |
Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London |
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MadR |
Meldungen aus dem Reich |
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NAL |
National Archives London (formerly Public Record Office) |
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Nbg.-Dok. |
Nürnberg-Dokument (unpublished trial document(s)) |
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NCO |
non-commissioned officer |
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NL |
Nachlaß (personal papers) |
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NSDAP |
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party) |
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NSFO |
Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffizier (National Socialist Leadership Officer) |
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NSV |
Nationalsozialistiche Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization) |
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OKH |
Oberkommando des Heeres (High Command of the Army) |
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OKW |
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces) |
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OT |
Organisation Todt |
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PWE |
Political Warfare Executive |
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RPÄ |
Reichspropagandaämter |
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RPvNB/OP |
Regierungspräsident von Niederbayern und der Oberpfalz (Government President (Head of the Regional Administration) of Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate) |
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RPvOB |
Regierungspräsident von Oberbayern (Government President of Upper Bavaria) |
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RPvOF/MF |
Regierungspräsident von Oberfranken und Mittelfranken (Government President of Upper Franconia and Central Franconia) |
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RVK |
Reichsverteidigungskommissar(e) (Reich Defence Commissar(s)) |
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SD |
Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) |
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SHAEF |
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force |
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StAA |
Staatsarchiv Augsburg |
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StAM |
Staatsarchiv München |
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TBJG |
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels |
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VB |
Völkischer Beobachter |
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Vf Z |
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte |
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YVS |
Yad Vashem Studies |
For the full book titles, see List of Works Cited, pp. 511–32; for details of archives, see List of Archival Sources Cited, pp. 509–10. Contributions in DRZW are cited by author only in the Notes; titles are given in List of Works Cited.
PREFACE
1. See, for example, Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007.
2. A good, critical study of Dönitz, long overdue, appeared only after this work had been completed: Dieter Hartwig, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz: Legende und Wirklichkeit, Paderborn, 2010.
3. Exemplary, in different ways, are Herfried Münkler, Machtzerfall: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches dargestellt am Beispiel der hessischen Kreisstadt Friedberg, Berlin, 1985, and Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich, Lexington, Ky., 2004.
4. None better than Antony Beevor’s brilliant narrative depiction of the Red Army’s assault on the Reich capital, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007.
5. Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg, vol. 6: Die Zerschlagung des Hitlerfaschismus und die Befreiung des deutschen Volkes (Juni 1944 bis zum 8. Mai 1945), written by an Authors’ Collective under direction of Wolfgang Schumann and Olaf Groehler, with assistance from Wolfgang Bleyer, Berlin, 1985.
6. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, edited by various authors for the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, vols. 7–10, Munich, 2004–8.
7. Two recent works among many might be singled out: Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007; and John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009.
8. This applies to the excellent works by Dieter Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, and Eleanor Hancock, National Socialist Leadership and Total War 1941–45, New York, 1991. Martin Broszat’s classic Der Staat Hitlers, Munich, 1969, dealt in the main with the beginning, rather than the end, of the Third Reich.
9. The extensive study by Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 2: 1933–1945, Newton Abbot, 1973, for example, devotes little more than 20 of its 538 pages to the period after the Stauffenberg assassination attempt and no more than 8 pages or so to the months January–May 1945, while Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, written by two GDR historians, devotes less than a dozen out of 429 pages to the period under consideration in this book.
10. Marlis Steinert’s splendid Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, has not yet been bettered as a social history of Germany during the war. It is, however, largely restricted to usage of – highly informative – internal reports on morale, and deals in the main with civilian society, but not with the military. A new and highly promising study of German society during the war is being prepared by Nicholas Stargardt, Magdalen College, Oxford.
11. The outstanding study of American strategy and the military advance into Germany is that of Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995. A graphic description of Allied, as well as German, military experiences at the fronts as Germany was crushed is provided by Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004.
12. On this issue, see the excellent study of how German experiences in the final war months helped the beginnings of recovery after capitulation by Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009.
INTRODUCTION: GOING DOWN IN FLAMES
1. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen: Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen 1945–1966, vol. 1, ed. Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1968, Nos. 010, 029, pp. 115–29, 645–59; Elke Fröhlich, ‘Ein junger Märtyrer’, in Martin Broszat and Elke Fröhlich (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. 6, Munich and Vienna, 1983, pp. 228–57; Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich, Lexington, Ky., 2004, pp. 153–8; Hans Woller, Gesellschaft und Politik in der amerikanischen Besatzungszone: Die Region Ansbach und Fürth, Munich, 1986, pp. 48–55. Dr Meyer, the town’s former military commandant, was sentenced in December 1946 by the Ansbach district court to ten years in a penitentiary.
2. See the valuable collection of essays on the terror of the last phase in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jörg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Göttingen, 2006.
3. Members of the Munich police constabulary, for instance, were paid continually through to May 1945. Backpay for a cleaner in the department who had not been paid in April was claimed at the end of June. – BHStA, Munich, Minn 72417, Nr. 2415f27, Gehaltszahlung, 28.6.45, 2415f28, Zahlung von Arbeitslöhnen, 28.6.45. At the other end of the spectrum, Himmler’s former chief of his personal staff and in the last phase of the war Wehrmacht plenipotentiary in Italy, General der Waffen-SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, still drew a salary of 2,226.80 Reich Marks (1,551.90 Reich Marks net) in April 1945, at a time when he was in fact secretly plotting the unilateral surrender of German troops in his region. – BAB, BDC, SSO-Karl Wolff, Gehaltsabrechnung, April 1945, 31.3.45. I am grateful to Horst Möller and Michael Buddrus for this information, and to Jonathan Steinberg for the suggestion to look for it.
4. Information kindly provided by Wolfgang Holl, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Bad-Godesberg, and by Holger Impekoven, currently working on a history of the Stiftung between 1925 and 1945, to whom I am indebted for an exposé of his project.
5. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 467; BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 7 (1945–6).
6. Andreas Förschler, Stuttgart 1945: Kriegsende und Neubeginn, Gudensberg-Gleichen, 2004, p. 10.
7. Christian Hartmann and Johannes Hürter, Die letzten 100 Tage des Zweiten Weltkriegs, Munich, 2005, Day 78, 21 Feb. 1945 (and for the following). The football hardly measured up to modern Premiership standards. The teams had to be improvised from what players – often soldiers on leave – were available. The last final for the German championship took place on 16 June 1944 in front of 70,000 spectators in Berlin, when Dresden beat Hamburg 4–0. After that, because of limited transport capacity and the ever worsening war fortunes, matches were restricted to regional ‘Sportgaue’.
8. For an interesting comparison of the potential for a coup d’état in Italy and in Germany, see Jerzy W. Borejsza, ‘Der 25. Juli 1943 in Italien und der 20. Juli 1944 in Deutschland: Zur Technik des Staatsstreichs im totalitären System’, in Jürgen Schmädeke and Peter Steinbach (eds.), Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Munich and Zurich, 1986, pp. 1079–85.
9. Michael Geyer, ‘Endkampf 1918 and 1945: German Nationalism, Annihilation, and Self-Destruction’, in Alf Lüdtke and Bernd Weisbrod (eds.), No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, Göttingen, 2006, p. 40. An almost identical question was posed by Doris L. Bergen, ‘Death Throes and Killing Frenzies: A Response to Hans Mommsen’s “The Dissolution of the Third Reich: Crisis Management and Collapse, 1943–1945” ’, German Historical Institute, Washington DC, Bulletin, 27 (2000), pp. 26–7: ‘We need to ask what made people not only tolerate [Hitler’s regime] but fight and kill for it until the bitter end.’
10. Alfred Vagts, ‘Unconditional Surrender – vor und nach 1943’, Vf Z, 7 (1959), p. 300. The demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ had arisen from the perception, especially strong in the USA, that it had been a costly mistake to concede an armistice instead of insisting on German surrender in 1918, thereby opening the way for the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend propagated on the German Right that Germany had not been militarily defeated at all in the First World War. This time, the Americans and the British were agreed, there would be no repeat of the mistake and no scope for misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Germany’s unconditional surrender was regarded as the very basis for lasting future peace. – See Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 438–9.
11. A number of leading German generals were adamant after the war that the Allied demand had been a mistake and had lengthened the conflict. – Anne Armstrong, Unconditional Surrender: The Impact of the Casablanca Policy upon World War Two, New Brunswick, NJ, 1961, pp. 137–47. General Westphal remarked in his memoirs that the demand for unconditional surrender ‘had welded us to a certain extent on to the Nazi regime’, and that it was impossible to have laid down weapons and opened up the western front to the Allies without being given some sort of security for Germany. He claimed that news of the Morgenthau Plan to break up Germany and turn it into a pre-industrial country, then the result of the Yalta Conference, ‘left every initiative by us completely without prospect’ and that there was, therefore, no other way than to fight on. – Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, pp. 326, 341. Grand-Admiral Dönitz’s adjutant, Walter Lüdde-Neurath, also claimed that it had been decisive for the readiness to fight on at any price. – Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Regierung Dönitz: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches, 5th edn., Leoni am Starnberger See, 1981, p. 22.
12. Reiner Pommerin, ‘The Wehrmacht: Eastern Front’, in David Wingeate Pike (ed.), The Closing of the Second World War: Twilight of a Totalitarianism, New York, 2001, p. 46. See also the comment of Klaus-Jürgen Müller, ‘The Wehrmacht: Western Front’, in the same volume, p. 56, that ‘unconditional surrender’ added to the fear of senior military leaders of being accused of perpetrating another ‘stab in the back’.
13. Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, p. 286, remarks that for General Jodl (and unquestionably for other military leaders) the demand for unconditional surrender provided a ‘flimsy excuse’ (‘fadenscheiniger Vorwand’).
14. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), p. 316.
15. The classics were Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, 1951, and Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge, Mass., 1956.
16. See Eckhard Jesse (ed.), Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert, Bonn, 1999, for a collection of later evaluations and applications of the concept.
17. See, as representative of the new research trend, Frank Bajohr and Michael Wildt (eds.), Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt am Main, 2009.
18. Heinrich Jaenecke, ‘Mythos Hitler: Ein Nachruf’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 223.
19. This notion underpinned the path-breaking ‘Bavaria Project’ in the 1970s. The volumes of essays arising from the project and published in the series Bayern in der NS-Zeit, ed. Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich et al., Munich, 1977–83, carried the subtitle ‘Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflikt’ (‘system of rule and society in conflict’).
20. Robert Edwin Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, London, 1979.
21. See especially, Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung, Hamburg, 2007 (though the work deals only with the pre-war period) and Peter Fritsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2008.
22. DRZW, 9/2 (Herf), p. 202.
23. Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus, Frankfurt am Main, 2005.
24. See Fritsche, pp. 266–96.
25. Quotations from Fritsche, pp. 269–71.
26. Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2001, pp. 1, 3, 226.
27. For a thoughtful analysis of the importance of the legacy of 1918, not just for Hitler but for the entire Nazi regime, see Timothy W. Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich: Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft, Opladen, 1977, ch. 1.
28. The most forthright statement of this is in Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Der Nationalsozialismus: Bewegung, Führerherrschaft, Verbrechen, Munich, 2009, esp. chs. 2, 7, 11, 14, extracts assembled from his monumental Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4: 1914–1949, 3rd edn., Munich, 2008. The concept of ‘charismatic rule’ is, of course, drawn from Max Weber. See his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th rev. edn., Tübingen, 1980, pp. 140–47, 654–87. Although Ludolf Herbst, Hitlers Charisma: Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias, Frankfurt am Main, 2010, criticizes notions that Hitler began his ‘career’ with innate personal charismatic qualities – something few serious historians have claimed – and emphasizes the propagandistic manufacture of his charisma in the 1920s (in an argument that comes close to portraying the Germans as victims of techniques of sophisticated mass seduction), he appears nevertheless to accept that the Nazi regime was based upon ‘charismatic rule’.
CHAPTER 1. SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
1. Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels – the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, p. 147 (23.7.44). Semmler (real name Semler) was a press officer in the Reich Propaganda Ministry. The original German text of his diary entries appears to have been lost.
2. Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. xi, 15, 17.
3. MadR, 17, pp. 6645–58, reports for 14 and 22.7.44.
4. This sketch is based upon: Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär: Martin Bormann. Der Mann, der Hitler beherrschte, Frankfurt am Main, 1980; Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, Harmondsworth, 1972, pp. 191–206; and The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, pp. vi–xxiii.
5. For a full study of this obnoxious individual, see Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007. See also Ralf Meindl, ‘Erich Koch – Gauleiter von Ostpreußen’, in Christian Pletzing (ed.), Vorposten des Reichs? Ostpreußen 1933–1945, Munich, 2006, pp. 29–39.
6. BAB, R43II/684, fo. 61, Kritzinger to Lammers, 13.7.44. And see Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, pp. 82–3.
7. BAB, R43II/393a, fo. 47, Vermerk for Lammers, 11.6.44.
8. ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 432–3.
9. Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘Der starke Mann im Heimatkriegsgebiet’: Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm. Eine Biographie, Paderborn, 2005, pp. 670–73; Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, p. 720 (and now in general the most authoritative account of Himmler’s personality and career).
10. Eleanor Hancock, National Socialist Leadership and Total War 1941–45, New York, 1991, p. 127.
11. TBJG, II/12, p. 522 (22.6.44).
12. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 754.
13. e.g. MadR, 17, pp. 6657–8 (22.7.44).
14. BAB, R3/1522, fos. 4–16, Memorandum on ‘Total War’, 12.7.44. And see Wolfgang Bleyer, ‘Pläne der faschistischen Führung zum totalen Krieg im Sommer 1944’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 17 (1969), pp. 1312–29; also Gregor Janssen, Das Ministerium Speer: Deutschlands Rüstung im Krieg, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, 1968, pp. 271–2.
15. Peter Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter: Führung der Partei und Kontrolle des Staatsapparates durch den Stab Heß und die Partei-Kanzlei Bormann, Munich, 1992, p. 195. In his Nuremberg testimony, Speer suggested, presumably with his success in instigating the planned meeting in mind, that his letter had prompted Hitler to appoint Goebbels as Plenipotentiary for Total War (IWM, FO645/161, p. 10, 9.10.45).
16. Dieter Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, p. 514.
17. Peter Longerich, ‘Joseph Goebbels und der totale Krieg: Eine unbekannte Denkschrift des Propagandaministers vom 18. Juli 1944’, Vf Z, 35 (1987), pp. 289–314 (text pp. 305–14). And see Hancock, pp. 133–6.
18. BAB, R3/1522, fos.23–45, Memorandum on ‘Total War’, 20.7.44. And see Hancock, pp. 129–33; and Janssen, pp. 272–3.
19. Kroener, p. 705.
20. Speer did not pass the memorandum to Hitler, via the latter’s Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, until 29 July, the day after he sent a copy to Himmler. – BAB, R3/1522, fo. 48, Speer to Himmler, 28.7.44.
21. BA/MA, N24/39, NL Hoßbach, typescript, ‘Erinnerungen’, May 1945.
22. Lagebesprechungen im Führerhauptquartier: Protokollfragmente aus Hitlers militärischen Konferenzen 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber, Berlin, Darmstadt and Vienna, 1963, p. 219 (20.12.43) (Eng. edn., Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, London, 2002, p. 314).
23. Quoted in Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 61.
24. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 336.
25. Friedrich-Christian Stahl, ‘Generaloberst Kurt Zeitzler’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite, vol. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, p. 278.
26. General Heusinger had evidently changed tack since spring 1944, when he had followed Hitler’s line of not yielding a metre in the east and intending a later offensive to win back the Ukraine, providing the expected Allied landing in the west could be repulsed. – Jürgen Förster, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Eine strukturgeschichtliche Analyse, Munich, 2007, p. 189. After the war Heusinger was a strong critic of Hitler’s military leadership.
27. IWM, EDS, F.5, AL1671, 1.8.44; printed in ‘Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung’: Die Opposition gegen Hitler und der Staatsstreich vom 20. Juli 1944 in der SD-Berichterstattung, ed. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 654–8 (and see also vol. 1, pp. 125–6, 515).
28. A point made by Förster, pp. 131ff., and in his contribution to DRZW, 9/1, p. 621 as well as by Heinemann in the same volume, p. 883. See also Kunz, pp. 105ff.
29. Ardsley Microfilms, Irving Collection, D1/Göring/1.
30. BA/MA, N24/39, NL Hoßbach, typescript, 19.5.45.
31. Hans Mommsen, ‘Social Views and Constitutional Plans of the Resistance’, in Hermann Graml et al., The German Resistance to Hitler, London, 1970, p. 59.
32. Joachim Kramarz, Stauffenberg: The Life and Death of an Officer, November 15th 1907–July 20th 1944, London, 1967, p. 185.
33. Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, pp. 476ff.
34. Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Berichte an Bormann und Hitler über das Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944. Geheime Dokumente aus dem ehemaligen Reichssicherheitshauptamt, ed. Archiv Peter, Stuttgart, 1961, pp. 1–11 (reports from 21, 22 and 24.7.44).
35. BAB, R55/601, fos. 54–63, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly report of the head of the Propaganda Staff, 24.7.44.
36. BAB, R55/601, fos. 69–70, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly report of the head of the Propaganda Staff, 7.8.44. Guderian, speaking to General Balck, blamed Field-Marshal Kluge’s involvement with the conspiracy for the collapse in the west. – BA/MA, N647/12, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 11, fo. 89, entry for 10.9.44.
37. The plot immediately gave Hitler his explanation of the disaster on the eastern front. See the comments he made to Jodl at the end of July. – Lagebesprechungen im Führerhauptquartier, pp. 246–8 (31.7.44); Hitler and his Generals, pp. 446–7. Those close to Hitler passed on the interpretation. Writing to Gauleiter Eggeling in Halle, Bormann claimed that the collapse of Army Group Centre had been connected with the conspiracy, and pointed to the role of Major-General Henning von Tresckow. – BAB, NS6/153, fos. 3–5, Bormann to Eggeling, 8.9.44. Bormann eventually felt compelled to rein in the generalized attacks on the officer corps, particularly some higher officers, in connection with the bomb plot and the collapse of Army Group Centre that had been made in Party meetings. – BAB, NS6/167, fos. 69–71, Party Chancellery, Bekanntgabe 254/44, Stellungnahme zu den Vorgängen im Mittelabschnitt der Ostfront und zu den Ereignissen des 20.7.1944, 20.9.44; also in BAB, NS19/2606, fos. 25–7.
38. BAB, R55/603, fo. 508, Party Chancellery, Abt. II B4, Vertrauliche Informationen, 13.9.44.
39. BAB, R55/603, fo. 380, Hauptreferat Pro.Pol, Dr Schäffer to Abteilung Rfk. Dr Scharping, 18.8.44.
40. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Gefr. Günter H., 2.8.44.
41. Heinrich Breloer (ed.), Mein Tagebuch: Geschichten vom Überleben 1939–1947, Cologne, 1984, p. 334.
42. Steinert, p. 479.
43. Ortwin Buchbender and Reinhold Sterz (eds.), Das andere Gesicht des Krieges: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe 1939–1945, Munich, 1982, pp. 21–2.
44. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 72, appendix B, letter (in English translation) to Hfw. Ludwig E., 21.7.44.
45. BA/MA, MSg2/5284, fo. 603, diary of Major Max Rohwerder, entries for 20–21.7.44.
46. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, vol. 2, fo. 20, entries for 20–21.7.44. Biographical details about Dr Julius Dufner, born on 25 January 1902, whose diary entries will find reference in the following chapters, are sparse. The first entry in ‘Mein Kriegstagebuch’, MSg2/2696, fo. 1, for 12.11.40, says he was called up to 3.Inf.Ers.Batl.14 in Konstanz. Later in the war, on 11.3.44, he is mentioned (fo. 190) as a participant in a meeting on that date as Lieutenant ‘O.Zahlm.d.R. [Oberzahlungsmeister (head of payments section) in the Reserve] Dr. Dufner, 1.Fest.Pi.Stab. 15, Stabsgruppe [pioneer corps]’. I am grateful to Jürgen Förster for his help in tracing Dufner in the Kartei of the BA/MA in Freiburg. His diary entries (MSg2/2697, fo. 182) were typed up in 1971, ‘according to his continuously kept diary’.
47. Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Die Wehrmacht: Vom Realitätsverlust zum Selbstbetrug’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches – Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Ein perspektivische Rüchschau, Munich and Zurich, 1995, pp. 240–41.
48. Förster, p. 136.
49. DRZW, vol. 8 (Frieser), pp. 539 ff. for the disaster of the 3rd Panzer Army at Vitebsk in late June.
50. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, Persönliches Kriegstagebuch, fo. 75, 20–21.7.44.
51. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, Auszugsweise Abschriften von Briefen an seine Frau, letter to his wife, fo. 39, 17.8.44.
52. BA/MA, N647/12, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 11, fos. 77–8, 83–4, entries for 21.7.44, 5.8.44. Balck later described Hitler as ‘the cement that bound people and Wehrmacht insolubly together’. – Quoted in John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, p. 2.
53. BA/MA, N24/39, NL Hoßbach, typescript, 19.5.45 (four-page interpolation following p. 5).
54. ‘Führer-Erlasse’, p. 433.
55. Kroener, pp. 710–11, 730.
56. Förster, p. 134, and pp. 138–45 for the significance of Himmler’s new powers within the army; also Longerich, Himmler, pp. 717, 719–21. There was, understandably, little initial enthusiasm among the higher ranks of the Wehrmacht for Himmler’s takeover (though they were said to have been won over by a speech he made to generals and other officers at a training course in Sonthofen). – BAB, NS19/3271, fo. 31, Auszug aus der Meldung des SD-Leitabschnittes Danzig, SD report from Danzig, 14.9.44.
57. Kroener, p. 714; Longerich, Himmler, p. 722. There was, in fact, a dispute within the high ranks of the SS over responsibilities in recruitment for the Replacement Army. The head of the SS Central Office (responsible for recruitment to the Waffen-SS), Gottlob Berger, successfully extended his own powers in this area not only towards the army, but also towards Jüttner, who in practice was more conciliatory towards the interests of the Replacement Army than his rival within the SS leadership. – Kroener, pp. 714–15. Berger’s ambitions to take over all matters concerning recruitment and training for the Replacement Army are evident in his letter to Himmler of 1.8.44 in BAB, NS19/2409, fo. 6.
58. BAB, NS19/4015, fos. 13–32, Himmler speech to officers of Chief of Army Armaments, 21.7.44.
59. BAB, NS19/4015, fos. 42–7, Himmler speech at Grafenwöhr, 25.7.44; IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2708, Himmler speech at Bitsch, 26.7.44 (printed in Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Aussprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson, Frankfurt am Main, 1974, pp. 215–37). Himmler did not conceal his contempt when, this time addressing Party leaders in early August, he castigated the air of defeatism which the officers of the General Staff had spread in the army since the beginning of the war in the east. – Theodor Eschenburg, ‘Die Rede Himmlers vor den Gauleitern am 3. August 1944’, Vf Z, 1 (1953), pp. 362–78.
60. BAB, NS19/3910, fo. 89, Himmler to Fegelein, 26.7.44.
61. ‘Führer-Erlasse’, p. 438.
62. BAB, R3/1522, fos. 48–9, Speer to Himmler, 28.7.44.
63. Hancock, p. 139.
64. Rebentisch, p. 515.
65. BAB, R43II/664a, ‘Totaler Kriegseinsatz’, fos. 81–91, fos. 117, 154 for the exemption for the Reich Chancellery, agreed by Hitler. Goebbels’ summary of the meeting is in TBJG, II/13, pp. 134–7 (23.7.44). And see Rebentisch, pp. 515–16; Hancock, pp. 137–8; and Elke Fröhlich, ‘Hitler und Goebbels im Krisenjahr 1944: Aus den Tagebüchern des Reichspropagandaministers’, Vf Z, 39 (1990), pp. 205–7.
66. TBJG, II/13, pp. 136–7 (23.7.44).
67. TBJG, II/13, pp. 153–5 (24.7.44).
68. BAB, R43II/664a, fos. 119–21 (and fos. 92–118 for drafts and preparatory material).
69. Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 94 (25.7.44).
70. TBJG, II/13, pp. 135, 137 (23.7.44).
71. BAB, R43II/664a, fos. 153–4; Rebentisch, pp. 516ff.; Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, pp. 195ff.
72. Von Oven, Mit Goebbels, pp. 120–21 (16.8.44).
73. Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, p. 197.
74. Hancock, pp. 157, 287 n. 27.
75. Hans Mommsen, ‘The Indian Summer and the Collapse of the Third Reich: The Last Act’, in Hans Mommsen (ed.), The Third Reich between Vision and Reality, Oxford and New York, 2001, p. 114.
76. BAB, NS6/167, fo. 95–95v, Bormann to the Gauleiter on the ‘new combing out action’, 19.7.44; TBJG, II/13, pp. 134 (23.7.44); Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, p. 196.
77. ‘Führer-Erlasse’, pp. 428–9. The role of the RVKs would be widened with the second decree (pp. 455–6) on ‘Collaboration of Party and Wehrmacht in an Operational Area within the Reich’ of 19 September. Bormann passed on to the Gauleiter Keitel’s guidelines for cooperation of 27 July (BAB, NS6/792, fo. 1–1v, Rundschreiben 163/44 gRs., Zusammenarbeit zwischen militärischen und zivilen Dienststellen, 1.8.44, also in NS19/3911, fos. 30–32). See also Förster, p. 133 and n. 9; Kroener, p. 668.
78. Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, p. 196. One, among many, examples of the extended power of the Party was in the takeover of control by the Party Chancellery (delegated by Bormann to the Reich Defence Commissars) of air-raid protection and the necessary instruction of the population. See BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 54 Lammers to the Highest Authorities of the Reich, 27.7.44, passing on the Führer decree of two days earlier.
79. See Karl Teppe, ‘Der Reichsverteidigungskommissar: Organisation und Praxis in Westfalen’, in Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (eds.), Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers, Göttingen, 1986, p. 299 for the extended power the RVKs gained after Goebbels’ appointment as Total War Plenipotentiary.
80. The somewhat clumsy term was the invention of Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 2: 1933–1945, Newton Abbot, 1973, p. 474.
81. For Bormann’s centralization of Party control, see Orlow, pp. 465–8.
82. IfZ, ZS 988, Interrogation of Wilhelm Kritzinger, State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery, 5.3.47.
83. See Hans Mommsen, ‘The Dissolution of the Third Reich’, in Frank Biess, Mark Roseman and Hanna Schissler (eds.), Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity: Essays on Modern German History, Oxford and New York, 2007, pp. 110–13 (a reprint of ‘The Dissolution of the Third Reich: Crisis Management and Collapse, 1943–1945’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Washington DC, 27 (2000), pp. 9–23).
84. Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, pp. 401–2; Joachim Fest, Speer: Eine Biographie, Berlin, 1999, pp. 306–7.
85. Speer, Erinnerungen, pp. 405–7; and for the contradictions in the ‘total war’ effort, see Janssen, pp. 274–82.
86. TBJG, II/13, p. 526 (20.9.44).
87. Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, p. 637.
88. BAB, R3/1538, fo. 7, Speer handwritten letter to Hitler, 29.3.45.
89. See DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 755.
90. TBJG, II/13, p. 147 (23.7.44).
91. Guderian, p. 351.
92. BA/MA, RW4/57, fos. 27–31, Ansprache des Chefs WFSt Gen. Oberst Jodl, 24.7.44. For Jodl’s stance after the assassination attempt, see also Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 282–6.
93. BBC Archives, The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997), written and produced for BBC2 by Laurence Rees, Beta Tape 59, pp. 102–3: Karl Boehm-Tettelbach, Luftwaffe Operations Chief on OKW-Führungsstab, interview with Laurence Rees, c. 1995–6.
94. Orlow, p. 465; Kunz, p. 115; DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 623. Keitel and Bormann agreed that uniformed members of the Party and the Wehrmacht had the duty to greet each other with the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute to demonstrate the unity of political will and the common unbreakable loyalty to the Führer. Lammers extended this to civil servants. – BAB, R43II/1194b, fos. 90–94, text of Anordnung from Keitel and Bormann, fo. 93, 26.8.44.
95. TBJG, II/13, p. 146 (23.7.44).
96. Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination, Hamburg, 1969, pp. 433–7 (text of the order on p. 435); DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 625, (Heinemann), p. 884. Guderian’s own account of his appointment as Chief of the General Staff is in his Panzer Leader, pp. 339–44, though he does not mention this order. A brief, critical sketch of Guderian is provided by Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Heinz Guderian – “Panzerpapst” und Generalstabschef’, in Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.), Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches, Berlin, 1995, pp. 187–208. In the same volume, Peter Steinbach, ‘Hans Günther von Kluge – ein Zauderer im Zwielicht’, p. 308, describes Guderian as ‘the willingly deferential instrument of the undignified “self-cleansing” of the Wehrmacht from “traitors” until a few weeks from the end of the war’.
97. Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, p. 441. On the history (and pre-history) of the NSFOs generally, see Waldemar Besson, ‘Zur Geschichte des nationalsozialistischen Führungsoffiziers (NSFO)’, Vf Z, 9 (1961), pp. 76–116; Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘Adolf Hitler und der NS-Führungsoffizier (NSFO)’, Vf Z, 12 (1964), pp. 443–56; Volker R. Berghahn, ‘NSDAP und “geistige Führung” der Wehrmacht 1939–1943’, Vf Z, 17 (1969), pp. 17–71; Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, pp. 441–80; and the comprehensive treatment in DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 590–620.
98. See DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 620ff.
99. Kunz, p. 114.
100. Besson, p. 113; DRZW, 9/1 (Heinemann), p. 884.
101. Wolfram Wette, Die Wehrmacht: Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, p. 190. On p. 189, Wette gives the number of full-time (hauptamtliche) NSFOs as 623 at the end of 1944. It is unclear why there is a discrepancy with the figure of 1,074 given in DRZW, 9/1 (Förster). The training of the NSFOs was carried out by a staff based in the Party Chancellery. By the end of 1944 it had held thirteen training courses, attended by 2,435 participants. Some 1,300 lectures a week were given to members of the Wehrmacht on ideological matters. – Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, p. 371.
102. BA/MA, RH19/IV/250, fos. 41–2, Richtlinien für die NS-Führung, Nr. 6/44, Kommandeur der 242. Infanterie-Division, 22.7.44.
103. On a rough estimate – precision is impossible – some 700 officers were arrested and 110 executed for their participation in the attempted coup. – DRZW, 9/1 (Heinemann), pp. 882–3.
104. Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, p. 188. More critical towards Model than Görlitz’s biography are the biographical sketches in Smelser and Syring, pp. 368–87 (Joachim Ludewig), in Ueberschär, pp. 153–60 (Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. and Gene Mueller), and in Correlli Barnett (ed.), Hitler’s Generals, London, 1990, pp. 319–33 (Carlo d’Este).
105. Model’s ‘Tagesbefehl’ of 31.7.44, quoted in Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Die Wehrmacht in der Endphase: Realität und Perzeption’, Aus Parlament und Zeitgeschichte, 32–3 (1989), pp. 38–9 (4.8.89).
106. See Smelser and Syring, pp. 497–509 (Klaus Schönherr) and Ueberschär, pp. 236–44 (Peter Steinkamp). A largely sympathetic portrait of Schörner is provided in Roland Kaltenegger, Schörner: Feldmarschall der letzten Stunde, Munich and Berlin, 1994.
107. DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 596–600; Smelser and Syring (Schönherr), p. 504.
108. BA/MA, RH19/III/727, fos. 2–3, Tagesbefehle der Heeresgruppe Nord, 25, 28.7.44.
109. BA/MA, RH19/III/667, fo. 7, post-war recollections of Hans Lederer (1955): ‘Kurland: Gedanken und Betrachtungen zum Schicksal einer Armee’.
110. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), p. 464.
111. Warlimont, p. 462.
112. Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, p. 291, for Ley’s speech. The impact on the military was said to have been ‘simply catastrophic’. – Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Tübingen, 1974, p. 505 (29.10.44).
113. Orlow, pp. 462–5.
114. See Förster, pp. 132–3.
115. TBJG, II/13, p. 134 (23.7.44).
116. Förster, pp. 131, 134, 139.
117. NAL, WO208/5622, fo. 120A, not contained in the printed edition of these bugged conversations by Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005 (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007).
CHAPTER 2. COLLAPSE IN THE WEST
1. The High Command of the Wehrmacht had expected to cut off the Americans by a counter-attack and was taken by surprise at the breakthrough to Avranches. – NAL, WO219/1651, fo. 144, SHAEF: interrogation of General Jodl, 23.5.45.
2. This was the tenor of his discussions with Jodl late on the evening of 31 July 1944. – BA/MA, 4/881, fos. 1–46; printed in Lagebesprechungen im Führerhauptquartier: Protokollfragmente aus Hitlers militärischen Konferenzen 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber, Berlin, Darmstadt and Vienna, 1963, pp. 242–71 (Eng. edn., Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, London, 2002, pp. 444–63). See Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 386, for Hitler’s thinking about a new offensive in the west; and DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 576–7, for the implications for a negotiated end.
3. DZW, 6, p. 105.
4. DZW, 6, p. 112.
5. Joseph Balkoski, ‘Patton’s Third Army: The Lorraine Campaign, 19 September–1 December 1944’, in Albert A. Nofi (ed.), The War against Hitler: Military Strategy in the West, Conshohocken, Pa., 1995, pp. 178–91. BA/MA, N647/12, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 11, fo. 90, diary entry for 21.9.44, shows Balck’s impressions on receiving the command of a ‘fresh and confident’ Hitler, and of the troops he was taking over as ‘mere shadows’. TBJG, II/13, p. 528 (20.9.44) gives Goebbels’ assessment of Balck as a ‘first-class general from the eastern front’.
6. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, p. 98. Lieutenant-General Siegfried Westphal, appointed at the beginning of September 1944 as Chief of Staff to Rundstedt in Oberkommando West, and struck on taking up the post by the poor morale of the retreating troops and the bloated numbers of the rear-lines staff, reckoned that a more determined advance by Eisenhower’s forces would have made it impossible to have built up a new front on the western borders of the Reich, and would have allowed an assault on the Reich itself that would have ended the war in the west. – Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, pp. 273, 279, 289.
7. The course of military events is based upon: DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 550–80, 606–14; DZW, 6, pp. 105–19; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 688–702; Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 295–306; R. A. C. Parker, Struggle for Survival: The History of the Second World War, Oxford, 1990, pp. 200–208; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. 1–83; John Man, The Penguin Atlas of D-Day and the Normandy Campaign, London, 1994, chs. 6–7; The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, Oxford, 1995, pp. 809–12; Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009, chs. 19, 21–2, 24, 27.
8. The Luftwaffe, and its Commander-in-Chief, Hermann Göring, were widely blamed by the Nazi leadership, as well as much of the population, for Germany’s plight. A letter to Himmler from Gauleiter Joachim Albrecht Eggeling of Halle-Merseburg on 1 September pointed out the image of total impotence in air defences left by the repeated attacks on the hydrogenation plants in his Gau, and the popular view that the collapse of the front in France was solely attributable to the failure of the Luftwaffe. – BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 71–2, 1.9.44. Hitler himself attributed the crisis of the Luftwaffe to Göring’s ‘own absolute failure’. – TBJG, II/12, p. 520 (22.6.44). Speer and Himmler corresponded in September 1944 about the ‘lack of leadership in the Luftwaffe and air industry’. Himmler criticized poor planning, production mistakes, long delays in availability of new aircraft and weapons, and the attempt to deploy the prototype jet-fighter, the Me262, as a bomber (an absurd decision, however one that Hitler himself had insisted upon, against Speer’s advice). – BAB, NS19/3652, fos. 1–8, 26–8, Himmler to Speer, 5.9.44, and Speer’s reply, 8.10.44.
9. Even without access to secret reports, the regular monitoring of the German press and that of correspondents from neutral countries, such as Sweden, based in Germany, gave the British a clear enough indication of the demoralized condition of the retreating Wehrmacht and the chaotic disorganization of the evacuation of western regions. – NAL, FO898/187, fos. 489–90, 522–3, 540–42, 559–61, 577 (reports from 11.9–22.10.44).
10. BAB, R55/601, fos. 73–4, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly report of propaganda offices, 14.8.44.
11. MadR, 17, pp. 6705–8, ‘Reports on Developments in Public Opinion’, 17.8.44. This was the last report of its kind. Martin Bormann stopped the regular digest of SD reports on account of their defeatist tone.
12. BAB, R55/601, fos. 102–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report 4.9.44. Goebbels noted the ‘rather dark picture’ of morale that emanated from the propaganda reports in his diary entry for 15.9.44 (TBJG, II/13, pp. 484–5).
13. BAB, R55/603, fos. 411, 413, Stimmung durch Ereignisse im Westen, 5.9.44.
14. BAB, R19/751, fo. 4, Gebhardt to Himmler, 5.9.44; copy in IfZ, Fa-93.
15. This follows the excellent, detailed account in Christoph Rass, René Rohrkamp and Peter M. Quadflieg, General Graf von Schwerin und das Kriegsende in Aachen: Ereignis, Mythos, Analyse, Aachen, 2007, pp. 29–64. This solid research supplants the earlier versions of the dramatic events that emphasize Schwerin’s role in defying the evacuation orders in Bernhard Poll (ed.), Das Schicksal Aachens im Herbst 1944: Authentische Berichte, Aachen, 1955, pp. 213–56; Bernhard Poll (ed.), Das Schicksal Aachens im Herbst 1944: Authentische Berichte II, Aachen, 1962, pp. 65–77, 80–97; Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 211–12; DZW, 6, p. 113.
16. TBJG, II/13, pp. 462–3 (12.9.44).
17. TBJG, II/13, pp. 491–2 (16.9.44).
18. TBJG, II/13, p. 498 (17.9.44). See also Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 137 (18.9.44); and Olaf Groehler, ‘Die Schlacht um Aachen (September/Oktober 1944)’, Militärgeschichte (1979), p. 326.
19. TBJG, II/13, pp. 500–501 (17.9.44).
20. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 12–14, summary report, dated 14.9.44, of Speer’s visit to the west, 10–14.9.44.
21. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 17–31, report of 16.9.44 for Hitler on his visit to the western area, 10–14.9.44.
22. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 7–9, draft report by Dorsch on his ministerial trip to the western front, 13.9.44.
23. IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2837A, unfoliated, Kaltenbrunner to Himmler, 16.9.44, sending reports from 12–16.9.44. Few Party functionaries evidently had any intention of following Bormann’s instructions that, in areas falling to the enemy, they were to report voluntarily to the Wehrmacht and serve with the fighting troops. – BAB, NS6/167, fo. 100–100v, Bormann to the Gauleiter, 16.9.44. A letter home from an officer stationed in the west spoke of the ‘purest panic’ after Gauleiter Josef Bürckel had ordered Germans to leave Lorraine on 1 September. No trains were available, and officials were at the forefront of the flight. – BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Lt. Otto F., Berghaupten, 13.9.44.
24. BAB, NS19/3809, fo. 16, wire to Standartenführer D’Alquen for immediate presentation to Himmler, signed Damrau, SS-Standarte ‘Kurt Eggers’, September, ?13.9.44. Gauleiter Simon, the head of the civilian administration in Luxemburg, moved his office to Koblenz, where he complained at the end of October that he had not received copies of edicts and ordinances, asking for these to be sent to him, including those for the period since the end of August. – BAB, R43II/583a, fo. 151, Der Chef der Zivilverwaltung in Luxemburg an den Reichminister der Finanzen, 31.10.44.
25. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, fos. 39–46, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, entries for 1–18.9.44.
26. For the revival of criticism of the Etappe – which had not featured in the early, successful, years of the war – in the wake of the collapse in France, see Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘ “Frontochsen” und “Etappenbullen”: Zur Ideologisierung militärischer Organisationsstrukturen im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, pp. 380–84.
27. TBJG, II/13, pp. 394–5 (3.9.44).
28. DZW, 6, p. 106.
29. BAB, NS19/3911, fo. 5, Himmler to HSSPF in west, 23.8.44.
30. BAB, NS19/1864, fos. 7–13, Bormann to Himmler, 29.8.44, Holz to Bormann, 28.8.44, Himmler to Bormann, 1.9.44.
31. BAB, R55/620, fos. 101–3, report by Generalleutnant Dittmar, 26.9.44.
32. BA/MA, RH19/IV/14, Tätigkeitsbericht der Geh. Feldpolizei für September 1944 (27.10.44).
33. BAB, NS19/1858, fos. 1–7, Chef des NS-Führungsstabes des Heeres, Kurze Aktennotiz über Frontbesuch im Westen in der Zeit vom 22.9–3.10.1944, 5.10.44.
34. On 1 September, the OKW passed on an order from Hitler that troops retreating from the west and not needed for relocation to other theatres were to give up weaponry and equipment as they crossed the frontier into Germany, which could then be redeployed for the western front. – BAB, NS6/792, fo. 15–15v, Oberbefehlsleiter Hellmuth Friedrichs, head of Abteilung II (Parteiangelegenheiten) in the Party Chancellery, to western Gauleiter, 1.9.44.
35. DZW, 6, p. 108; BA/MA, RW4/494, fo. 94, Chef des OKW, Maßnahmen gegen Auflösungserscheinungen in der Truppe, 23.9.44.
36. BA/MA, RW4/494, fo. 108, Jodl to Ob.West, etc., 16.9.44; DZW, 6, pp. 106–9, partial facsimile of Hitler’s order of 16.9.44, p. 109; Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Verbrannte Erde”? Hitlers “Nero-Befehl” vom 19. März 1945’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 158.
37. DZW, 6, pp. 119–20; Groehler, pp. 331–2.
38. NAL, WO208/4364, pp. 2–6 (quotation, in English, p. 6) (26–8.10.44).
39. DZW, 6, p. 111. For examples of the fanaticism and belief in Hitler among wounded SS men in France, see Beevor, p. 324.
40. Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, pp. 369–70.
41. Bernd Wegner, Hitlers politische Soldaten, Paderborn, 1982, p. 306.
42. Examples from August and September 1944 in Ortwin Buchbender and Reinhold Sterz (eds.), Das andere Gesicht des Krieges: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe 1939–1945, Munich, 1982, pp. 154–61. A number of large samples of soldiers’ correspondence in August and September 1944 tested by the censors showed mixed results. Some indicated a slight rise in positive attitudes towards the regime and the war effort. Others pointed in the opposite direction, with a small increase in negative attitudes and trend towards war-weariness. Unsurprisingly, however, political views were expressed (or hinted at) in only a fraction of the correspondence. Most of the letters confined themselves to personal matters. – DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 631–3. The limited indoctrination with the ideals of National Socialism is a general hallmark of letters to and from the front, dominated above all by private concerns. See DRZW, 9/2 (Kilian), pp. 287–8. For an assessment of the value of the letters as a reflection of ordinary soldiers’ mentalities, see Klaus Latzel, ‘Wehrmachtsoldaten zwischen “Normalität” und NS-Ideologie, oder: Was sucht die Forschung in der Feldpost?’, in Müller and Volkmann, pp. 573–88.
43. DRZW, 9/1 (Rass), pp. 686–90; Christoph Rass, ‘Menschenmaterial’: Deutsche Soldaten an der Ostfront. Innenansichten einer Infanteriedivision 1939–1945, Paderborn, 2003, pp. 121–34, esp. pp. 122–3; also Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 114. Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare, New York, 1986, p. 49, estimates that around 30 per cent of officers had been members of the Nazi Party.
44. NAL, WO219/4713, fos. 907–8, SHAEF report, 4.9.44.
45. NAL, WO219/4713, fos. 906–7, SHAEF report, 11.9.44.
46. BAB, R55/601, fo. 104, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 4.9.44.
47. ‘Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?’ Die geheimen Goebbels-Konferenzen 1939–1943, ed. Willi A. Boelcke, Munich, 1969, p. 452; Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, p. 43.
48. BAB, R55/601, fo. 113, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 11.9.44.
49. TBJG, II/13, p. 388 (2.9.44).
50. MadR, vol. 17, p. 6708 (17.8.44); BHStA, MA 106695, report of RPvOB, 6.9.44. The first V2 rocket attack on London on 8 September, causing only a few casualties, was not publicized in the German press. When eventually, two months later, news of the V2 attacks was broadcast, there was a mixed reaction. Satisfaction, revived hopes and an upturn in mood were reported, though Berliners were said to have been ‘not specially impressed’. – Steinert, pp. 511–12; Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, p. 147 (7–12.11.44).
51. BAB, R55/601, fos. 78–9, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.8.44.
52. Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2001, pp. 226–30.
53. BAB, R55/623, fos. 56–9, Wochenübersicht über Zuschriften zum totalen Kriegseinsatz, 28.8.44.
54. MadR, 17, pp. 6697–8 (10.8.44).
55. Michael Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919–1945, Oxford, 1983, p. 263 (figure 1).
56. Figures from Pätzold and Weißbecker, pp. 354, 375, 419 n. 17.
57. TBJG, II/13, p. 389 (2.9.44); Eleanor Hancock, National Socialist Leadership and Total War 1941–45, New York, 1991, p. 164.
58. On 31 August Bormann ordered schools and universities to continue until their pupils, students or teachers were conscripted for work in armaments, in accordance with the restrictions laid down by Goebbels. – BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 644/2, unfoliated, Party Chancellery circular 209/44, 31.8.44.
59. DZW, 6, pp. 230–31; Hancock, p. 148.
60. Dieter Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, pp. 520–21.
61. Goebbels decided, however, having gained Hitler’s agreement, not to proceed with this further increase of the age limit for women’s labour duty. – TBJG, II/14, p. 218 (16.11.44).
62. TBJG, II/13, pp. 307–9 (24.8.44).
63. BAB, R43II/680a, fos. 135–7, Spende des Führers (Eierkognak) an die NSV, costs of supplying the liqueur, 12–18.8.44.
64. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/6, unfoliated, Stuckart to RVKs, 3.9.44; BAB, R43II/1648, Lammers to RVK, 4.9.44.
65. Rebentisch, p. 522.
66. Hancock, pp. 155, 158.
67. Hancock, pp. 151, 156. Goebbels was well aware that 70 per cent of the exempted occupations were in the armaments industry. – TBJG, II/13, p. 239 (10.8.44).
68. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), pp. 750, 752, 762, 767; DZW, 6, p. 229.
69. TBJG, II/13, p. 397 (3.9.44).
70. TBJG, II/13, pp. 196–7 (2.8.44).
71. DZW, 6, p. 231; TBJG, II/13, p. 239 (10.8.44); BAB, R3/1740, fos. 38–9, Speer-Chronik.
72. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 761.
73. Von Oven, p. 124 (1.9.44).
74. Hancock, pp. 162–4; Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 2: 1933–1945, Newton Abbot, 1973, pp. 470–72; BAB, R3/1740, fos. 43, 81, Speer-Chronik.
75. BAB, R3/1740, fos. 103–4, Speer-Chronik; TBJG, II/13, pp. 370 (31.8.44), 378 (1.9.44), 388–9 (2.9.44), 452 (10.9.44), 490 (16.9.44), 525–7 (20.9.44), 568 (26.9.44); von Oven, pp. 127–9 (3.9.44), 134 (10.9.44).
76. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), pp. 764–6. For Bormann’s antagonism, see Louis Eugene Schmier, ‘Martin Bormann and the Nazi Party 1941–1945’, Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1969 (University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbor), pp. 304–8, 312–13.
77. TBJG, II/13, p. 388 (2.9.44).
78. BAB, R3/1526, fos. 3–19, Speer to Hitler, 20.9.44. See also Hancock, p. 167.
79. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 407.
80. See DZW, 6, p. 228, Speer’s Posen speech, 3.8.44; BAB, R3/1527, fo. 13, Speer to Hitler, 3.10.44.
81. BAB, R3/1527, fos. 8–9, Stellungnahme zur Führerinformation v. Dr. Goebbels, 26.9.44; fo. 10–10v, Speer to Bormann, 2.10.44; fos. 12–15, Speer to Hitler, 3.10.44 (quotation, fo. 12).
82. TBJG, II/14, pp. 329–30 (2.12.44).
83. See TBJG, II/14, p. 383 (9.12.44).
84. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 754.
85. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), pp. 755–61; DZW, 6, pp. 364–5.
86. BAB, R3/1740, fo. 111, Speer-Chronik, mentions some of these aims.
87. Speer’s suggestion in his Erinnerungen, p. 411, that this emphasis was a tactical device, in case Hitler should hear that installations close to the front had not been destroyed sounds like a later rationalization of something that at the time he genuinely advocated.
88. Speer, p. 410. See also Gregor Janssen, Das Ministerium Speer: Deutschlands Rüstung im Krieg, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, 1968, pp. 304–7; Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos, Berne and Munich, 1982, pp. 146–7; and Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1973, pp. 412–13. Hitler had agreed in August, during the retreat from France, that industrial plant in danger of falling into enemy hands should be temporarily immobilized, not destroyed. – BAB, R3/1512, fo. 57, notes from armaments conferences 18–20.8.44; printed in Deutschlands Rüstung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Hitlers Konferenzen mit Albert Speer 1942–1945, ed. Willi A. Boelcke, Frankfurt am Main, 1969, p. 402. Speer (pp. 411–12) had, however, then been alarmed at signs in early September that Hitler intended a ‘scorched earth’ policy in Germany. This was from a leading article in the Völkischer Beobachter on 7 September, written by Helmut Sündermann, deputy Reich Press Chief, on Hitler’s direct instructions, Speer said (p. 577 n. 13). Goebbels was displeased with the article, written without his agreement, which had been badly received by the public. – TBJG, II/13, p. 493 (16.9.44). See also von Oven, p. 137 (18.9.44), who described the article as ‘idiotic’.
89. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 7–14, 17–31, reports on visit to the west, 14.9.44, 16.9.44 (quotation, fo. 28); R3/1740, fos. 106–7, Speer-Chronik; BAB, R3/1623, fos. 22, 24–7, 50–52, 66–8, 77–77v, directives on disabling industry in the west.
90. BAB, R3/1540, fos. 6–23, report on the visit to the western areas, 26.9.–1.10.44 (5.10.44); description of the visit in R3/1740, fos. 112–25, Speer-Chronik. See also Speer, p. 408.
91. BAB, R3/1583, fos. 110–11, Speer to Himmler, Bewachungs-Mannschaften für KZ-Häftlinge, 29.10.44.
92. Speer, p. 409; Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, London, 1995, p. 460. And see the critical assessment of Speer’s claim to have accepted at an early stage that the war was lost, by Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ‘When Did Albert Speer Give up?’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 391–7.
93. A point he makes in Erinnerungen, p. 411. For the industrialists’ preparations for peace, see Ludolf Herbst, Der Totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft, Stuttgart, 1982, pp. 345–7 and part V generally.
94. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 302.
95. IWM, Box 367/27, Speer Interrogations, Karl Saur, 11–13.6.45; Box 368/77, Kurt Weissenborn, December 1945–March 1946. And see, for Saur’s brutal mode of operation, Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, pp. 628–9.
96. DZW, 6, p. 266.
97. Around 2.5 million additional foreign workers and prisoners of war were put to work in Germany between the beginning of 1943 and autumn 1944, two-thirds of these from the east. Nearly a third of the labour force in the mining, metal, chemical and building industries in August 1944 consisted of foreign workers. – Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, Bonn, 1985, pp. 258, 270.
98. DZW, 6, pp. 261–3. See Herbert, pp. 327–31, for increasingly arbitrary and violent persecution of foreign workers as fears of a breakdown of order grew in the last months of the war.
99. DZW, 6, pp. 257–9; Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 4th edn., Munich, 1985, p. 635.
100. BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 66–7, Der Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Spree an den Gauen Berlin, Mark Brandenburg und im Wehrkreis III to Reichsführer-SS Persönlicher Stab and others, conveying Himmler’s decree of 20.8.44. Himmler later reinforced the full backing he had given to his HSSPFs as solely responsible for combating internal unrest, when commanders of Defence Districts sought to exert their own authority in this realm. – BAB, NS19/3912, fos. 17–26, correspondence relating to the competence dispute, 14.9.44 to 5.10.44.
101. DZW, 6, p. 233.
102. TBJG, II/13, pp. 389–90, 398, 408 (2, 3, 4.9.44).
103. BAB, NS19/751, fo. 3, Party Chancellery Rundschreiben 224/44, Erfassung von zurückführenden und versprengten einzelnen Wehrmachtsangehörigen, 4.9.44; NS6/792, fo. 16–16v, Himmler to the western Gauleiter, 4.9.44. A repeated order to pick up individuals or units returning over the Reich border following the events in the west was issued on 22 September (NS19/751, fos. 10–12, Party Chancellery circular 258/44). Increased fears of enemy agents, saboteurs and spies led to the police being given the sole right to check papers of members of the Wehrmacht as well as the Waffen-SS and, where necessary, to make arrests. – BAB, R43II/692, fos. 1–2, directive by Keitel and Himmler, 20.9.44.
104. Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, p. 732.
105. DZW, 6, p. 108.
106. BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 96, Einsatz von Alarmeinheiten im Kampf um Ortschaften, Guderian’s directive, 27.8.44.
107. TBJG, II/13, p. 438 (8.9.44); David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, pp. 39–40.
108. TBJG, II/13, p. 464 (12.9.44).
109. Yelton, pp. 7–18; Klaus Mammach, Der Volkssturm: Bestandteil des totalen Kriegseinsatzes der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45, Berlin, 1981, pp. 31–3; Hans Kissel, Der Deutsche Volkssturm 1944/45, Frankfurt am Main, 1962, pp. 15–23; Franz W. Seidler, ‘Deutscher Volkssturm’: Das letzte Aufgebot 1944/45, Munich and Berlin, 1989; BAB, R43II/692a, fos. 2–7, 14–20.9.44; DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), pp. 183–5; DZW, 6, pp. 237–8. Goebbels still spoke of the new organization by this name in his diary entry for 21 September 1944. – TBJG, II/13, pp. 534–5.
110. Mammach, p. 33. Two days earlier, Himmler had received a list of suggestions sent to him by SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Richard Hildebrandt, Chief of the Race and Settlement Head Office, to mobilize and organize the civilian population for ‘the people’s war’, a ‘German partisan war’, to be carried out as a ‘freedom struggle’ in the homeland. – BAB, NS19/2864, unfoliated, Hildebrandt to Himmler, 19.9.44.
111. BAB, R43II/692a, fos. 8–21; Mammach, pp. 32–3, 55–6 and 168–73 for facsimiles of Hitler’s decree and Bormann’s order for implementation.
112. Yelton, chs. 2–3. Longerich’s claim (Himmler, p. 733) that Himmler and Berger were successful against Bormann seems doubtful. Bormann’s personal success in his demarcation disputes with Himmler is underlined by Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär: Martin Bormann. Der Mann, der Hitler beherrschte, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, pp. 298–9. For the recruitment and organization of the Volkssturm, undertaken by the Party local leaders (Ortsgruppenleiter), see Carl-Wilhelm Reibel, Das Fundament der Diktatur: Die NSDAP-Ortsgruppen 1932–1945, Paderborn, 2002, pp. 377–81.
113. Kissel, p. 89; Mammach, p. 58; Yelton, pp. xv, 19–35.
114. TBJG, II/13, p. 535 (21.9.44).
115. Mammach, pp. 57–8. No figure for its actual size (which anyway fluctuated) at any one point appears to exist. Because of manpower shortage, exemptions, deferrals and bureaucratic inefficiency the target was never remotely reached in practice. Even so, the numbers drafted were large. The first levy of the Volkssturm amounted to 1.2 million men, formed into 1,850 battalions. – Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 149.
116. TBJG, II/13, p. 103 (13.7.44); Noble, pp. 100–101.
117. DZW, 6, pp. 235, 237; BAB, NS6/792, fos. 6–8 (29.8.44), 9–12 (30.8.44); DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), pp. 180–82.
118. IfZ, ZS 597, fo. 27, Gauleiter Josef Grohé (1950).
119. TBJG, II/13, p. 465 (12.9.44).
120. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8, unfoliated, copy of Hitler’s Verfügung 12/44 (1.9.44); BAB, R43II/1548, fo. 36, Lammers an die Obersten Reichsbehörden, transmitting Hitler’s order (6.9.44); ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 446–50; DZW, 6, p. 237.
121. Quoted (in English) in NAL, FO898/187, fo. 598, PWE report for 4–10.9.44.
122. DZW, 6, p. 236. By the end of 1944 the number of conscripts for fortification work on all fronts was over 1.5 million. – DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), p. 182.
123. BAB, NS19/3912, fos. 11–12, Bormann to Gauleiter, Rundschreiben 302/44g.Rs., Stellungsbau, 6.10.44.
124. BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 35–8, Party Chancellery Rundschreiben 263/44 g.Rs., Zweiter Erlaß des Führers über die Befehlsgewalt in einem Operationsgebiet innerhalb des Reiches vom 19.9.1944, etc., 23.9.44, transmitting Hitler’s decree of 19.9.44, and providing guidelines for implementation; BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 27, Rundschreiben 312/44g.Rs., Zweiter Erlaß des Führers über die Befehlsgewalt, etc., 11.10.44, amending one clause of the decree to underline Himmler’s overall authority; ‘Führer-Erlasse’, pp. 455–7; Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939–1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Walther Hubatsch, pb. edn., Munich, 1965, pp. 337–41.
125. The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, p. 88 (27.8.44).
126. The Bormann Letters, p. 139 (25.10.44).
127. Pätzold and Weißbecker, p. 375.
CHAPTER 3. FORETASTE OF HORROR
1. DZW, 6, pp. 78–9; Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, pp. 152–3. Those killed on the eastern front numbered 589,425 in the months June to August 1944. In the last six months of 1944, the figure was 740,821 dead. The number of deaths on the eastern front in 1944 as a whole, 1,233,000, amounted to 45 per cent of the mortalities in that theatre since the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. – Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Munich, 1999, pp. 277–9.
2. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), p. 594, who gives the losses for Army Group Centre at around 390,000 men, compared with some 330,000 at Verdun and 60,000 dead and 110,000 captured at Stalingrad. On the four fronts of ‘Bagration’, the Soviets deployed around 2.5 million men, 45,000 artillery pieces, 6,000 tanks and more than 8,000 planes over a front of around 1,100 kilometres with a depth of advance of 550–600 kilometres over a period of 69 days (22 June to 29 August). – DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 526–35, 593, for the size of the Soviet offensive and relative weakness of German forces.
3. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), p. 556. Soviet losses were more than 440,000. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, provides a good summary of the developments on the eastern front in this period.
4. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), p. 612; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, p. 218.
5. DZW, 6, pp. 52–60; DRZW, 8 (Schönherr), pp. 678–718.
6. Hitler himself had given the order, passed on by Himmler, for the total destruction of Warsaw. – BA/MA, RH19/II/213, v.d. Bach-Zelewski to 9th Army command, 11.10.44.
7. DZW, 6, p. 410. For a vivid narrative of the horrific events, see Norman Davies, Rising ’44: ‘The Battle for Warsaw’, London, 2004.
8. This figure in DZW, 6, p. 70, deviates from that provided by Weinberg, p. 714 (380,000 men lost) and DRZW, 8 (Schönherr), p. 819 (286,000 men killed or captured in the Romanian theatre). The basis for the discrepancy in figures is not clear.
9. DZW, 6, pp. 62–70; DRZW, 8 (Schönherr), pp. 746–819.
10. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 626–7, 668–72; DZW, 6, p. 72; Weinberg, pp. 707–720–21; and the fine, thorough study by Howard D. Grier, Hitler, Dönitz, and the Baltic Sea: The Third Reich’s Last Hope, 1944–1945, Annapolis, Md., 2007.
11. BA/MA, RH19/III/727: for Schörner’s tough orders on taking over command of Army Group North and his demand for fanaticism, mentioning also the fear of being cut off (25.7.44, 28.7.44); his threats regarding discipline and appeal to ruthless fanaticism in the total war ‘for our threatened national existence’ (12.8.44); his demands for ruthless punishment by military courts in accordance with Hitler’s orders (1.10.44); his appeal to fanatical determination after the ‘heroic’ fightback in Riga (5.10.44); further demands for ruthless action and improvised methods, with threats for those found lacking (7.10.44); his exhortation to his generals to educate their men to fight harder than ever, and order for defensive measures to be adopted in line with Hitler’s command to hold the area (18.10.44, 21.10.44); his claim that they were not conducting the war ‘uncompromisingly, radically and asiatically enough’ (2.11.44); his extreme intolerance of perceived absence of fighting spirit (10.11.44). When Schörner was on trial in West Germany after his return in 1955 from Soviet captivity, he received supportive letters from former comrades who praised his leadership of Army Group North and attributed its survival to his leadership. See BA/MA, N60/73, NL Schörner. However, the court found that the level of his brutality could not be justified, even in the conditions of war on the eastern front in 1944.
12. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, pp. 376–7.
13. DZW, 6, pp. 70–76; DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 623–57 (troop numbers, pp. 657–8); Grier, ch. 3.
14. TBJG, II/13, pp. 524–5 (20.9.44), 536–42 (21.9.44).
15. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 602–3 and map, p. 573.
16. Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, pp. 20–22.
17. Noble, chs. 1–3, p. 46 for the evacuee figure.
18. See Noble, pp. 85 and 276 n. 81. British intelligence authorities gleaned much about the panic in eastern Germany from reading between the lines of German newspapers and other publications. See NAL, FO898/186, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fos. 18, 35–8 (reports for 24–31.7.44 and 31.7–6.8.44).
19. MadR, 17, pp. 6698–9 (10.8.44).
20. MadR, 17, pp. 6702 (10.8.44), 6708 (17.8.44).
21. BAB, R55/601, fos. 73–4, 102–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda reports, 14.8.44, 4.9.44.
22. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Ein unüberwindlicher Wall gegen den Bolschewismus: Die Vorbereitung der “Reichsverteidigung” im Osten im zweiten Halbjahr 1944’, in Schlüsseljahr 1944, ed. Bayerische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildungsarbeit, Munich, 2007, p. 236.
23. Kunz, p. 249.
24. Quoted Kunz, pp. 250–51.
25. Noble, p. 152.
26. Noble, pp. 95, 100, 107–8, 280 n. 28.
27. Noble, pp. 95–9.
28. BAB, NS6/792, fos. 17–22, Guderian to Wehrkreis commands, etc., 28.7.44; Stuckart to eastern Gauleiter, 28.7.44.
29. BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 36, Lammers to Oberste Reichsbehörden, 6.9.44, transmitting Führer order of 1.9.44; also in BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8.
30. DZW, 6, pp. 234–5; Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007, pp. 417–22.
31. NAL, FO898/187, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fo. 685 (report for 7–13.8.44, in English); Noble, p. 106.
32. Guderian, p. 360; Noble, pp. 102–3, 127.
33. MadR, 17, pp. 6720–6, report to the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, 28.10.44.
34. Noble, pp. 108–13; DZW, 6, p. 236; also Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, pp. 504–5.
35. Noble, p. 114.
36. TBJG, II/13, p. 224 (4.8.44); Noble, p. 107.
37. Noble, p. 108.
38. Noble, pp. 126–7.
39. Noble, pp. 107, 127.
40. BAB, NS19/4016, fos. 99–126, draft of speech, 18.10.44 (quotations, fo. 123); VB, 19.10.44.
41. BAB, R55/601, fo. 180, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 23.10.44.
42. BAB, R55/601, fol. 208, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; Christian Tilitzki, Alltag in Ostpreußen 1940–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte der Königsberger Justiz 1940–1945, Leer, 1991, pp. 283–4, 286, reports for 17.10.44, 19.10.44; Edgar Günther Lass, Die Flucht: Ostpreußen 1944/45, Bad Nauheim, 1964, pp. 23–31. And see David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, pp. 89–96; Noble, p. 151; Steinert, pp. 506–8.
43. Yelton, p. 90.
44. Yelton, p. 91; Noble, p. 151.
45. Yelton, pp. 97–102.
46. Klaus Mammach, Der Volkssturm: Bestandteil des totalen Kriegseinsatzes der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45, Berlin, 1981; Yelton, p. 75.
47. Yelton, p. 120.
48. BA/MA, RH21/3/730, post–war account written in 1955 by the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Panzer Army, Major-General Mueller-Hillebrand, p. 1.
49. Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiße, ed. Theodor Schieder et al., pb. edn., vol. 1, Munich, 1984, pp. 1–4; and see Noble, pp. 130–32.
50. Guderian, p. 376.
51. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 612–19; Noble, pp. 132–5.
52. See Noble, pp. 136–8.
53. Noble, p. 130.
54. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, diary entries for 11, 17, 22.10.44 and 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14.11.44 refer to his continuing hefty disputes with Koch – though not directly on the evacuation issue – as does his letter to his wife of 23.10.44, in N245/2, fo. 40. See also N245/15 for his protest to Himmler at Koch’s misrepresentation of conditions within his Army Group (letters of 26.10.44 and 27.11.44). Part of the conflict related to Koch’s allocation of armaments meant for the army to the Volkssturm (BA/MA, RH19/II/213, fo. 303, Reinhardt to Guderian, 31.10.44).
55. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 4–7.
56. Bernhard Fisch, Nemmersdorf, Oktober 1944: Was in Ostpreußen tatsächlich geschah, Berlin, 1997, ch. 5. See also Guido Knopp, Die große Flucht: Das Schicksal der Vertriebenen, Munich, 2001, pp. 37–49.
57. Quoted DRZW, 10/1 (Zeidler), p. 700, and pp. 682ff. for an excellent account of Soviet propaganda aimed at troops about to fight in Germany, including the role of the arch-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg. See also Guido Pöllmann, ‘Rote Armee in Nemmersdorf am 22.10.1944’, in Franz W. Seidler and Alfred M. de Zayas (eds.), Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Hamburg, 2002, p. 215.
58. Quoted Manfred Nebelin, ‘Nazi Germany: Eastern Front’, in David Wingeate Pike (ed.), The Closing of the Second World War: Twilight of a Totalitarianism, New York, 2001, p. 98.
59. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 7–8. Further gruesome reports are presented in Lass, pp. 44–50. The International Commission was a creation of the Propaganda Ministry. It met on 31 October 1944 in Berlin with representatives from Spain, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Italy and Serbia, before an audience of 600 or so, largely drawn from Berlin Party members, and attended by 100 members of German and foreign press and radio. Predictably it concluded that the Soviet Union had been guilty of serious breaches of international law. – BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 7–8, report of Major Hinrichs, Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost, 1.11.44.
60. Bernhard Fisch, ‘Nemmersdorf 1944 – ein bisher unbekanntes zeitnahes Zeugnis’, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 56 (2007), pp. 105–14. See also Fisch, Nemmersdorf, chs. 6–7.
61. ‘Persönliches Kriegstagebuch des Generals der Flieger [Werner] Kreipe als Chef des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe für die Zeit vom 22.7.–2.11.1944’, entry for 23.10.44, in Hermann Jung, Die Ardennenoffensive 1944/45, Göttingen, 1971, p. 227.
62. Günter K. Koschorrek, Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front, London, 2002, p. 293 (22.10.44).
63. BA/MA, RH20/4/593, unfoliated, report of Hauptmann Fricke, to Armeeoberkommando 4, 26.10.44, enumerated 45 corpses, 26 found in Nemmersdorf and 19 in nearby Tutteln (together with several more uncounted charcoaled corpses in a burnt-out byre there). Most of the dead in Nemmersdorf were not inhabitants of the village but had been on treks overtaken by the Red Army. Two further reports (BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 2, 5) indicated one woman probably raped then murdered by being beaten with an axe or spade in Schweizerau on 22 October and 11 civilians, including 4 women who had been raped, found in the dairy at Bahnfelde, near Schulzenwalde. A list of victims later compiled recorded 90 in a number of places in East Prussia (the largest number, 26, in Nemmersdorf), with numerous cases of rape and including the murder of 5 childen whose tongues, it was claimed, had been nailed to tables. – BA/MA, RH2/2685, fo. 168. Karl-Heinz Frieser in DRZW, 8, p. 620 n. 77, gives a probable figure of 46 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself, not counting adjacent localities, though he provides no basis for the figure, which is probably a marginal miscounting of those in Nemmersdorf and Tutteln together. As he points out (n. 76), Fisch’s findings were reliant almost entirely upon answers to the questions he had posed to survivors still alive in the 1990s. In his attempt to reveal the propaganda as largely mendacious, he appeared to verge on occasion towards an over-sympathetic image of the Red Army soldiers. Pöllmann, p. 214, indicates 26 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself and a further 28 in the immediate vicinity.
64. BA/MA, N245/2, fo. 40. NL Reinhardt, letter to his wife, 26.10.44.
65. TBJG, II/14, p. 110 (26.10.44). And see Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 170 (27.10.44). Hitler himself had responded to the news of the atrocities by demanding their propaganda exploitation within the Wehrmacht, and expressed impatience at the slowness to act in distributing photographs and eyewitness accounts. – IfZ, Nbg.-Dok. PS-1787. See also David Irving, Hitler’s War, London, 1977, p. 893, n. to p. 726.
66. Quoted Steinert, pp. 521–2.
67. Fisch, Nemmersdorf, pp. 144, 153 n. 8.
68. Schwendemann, p. 240 n. 41.
69. Some, along similar lines, were monitored by British intelligence services: NAL, FO898/187, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fos. 439, 457–8 (reports for 23–9.10.44 and 30.10–5.11.44).
70. Fisch, Nemmersdorf, pp. 146–7.
71. VB, 1.11.44.
72. BAB, R55/601, fo. 181, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 23.10.44. See also Meindl, p. 434.
73. Steinert, p. 522.
74. TBJG, II/14, p. 69 (10.10.44).
75. See IfZ, Fa-93, Vorlage for Bormann, 12.10.44, in which Werner Naumann, State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, informed him that Germans in western occupied areas were not behaving in compliance with ‘national honour’; and Himmler to HSSPF West, 18.10.44 (also in BAB, NS19/751, fo. 21), indicating that enemy press reports revealed ‘dishonourable’ conduct by German citizens under enemy occupation in the west. See also Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, p. 172.
76. TBJG, II/14, pp. 176 (8.11.44), 189 (10.11.44).
77. BAB, R55/601, fo. 204, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44).
78. BHStA, MA 106696, report of RPvOF/MF, 8.11.44.
79. BAB, R55/601, fo. 210, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44.
80. BAB, R55/608, fo. 29, Mundpropagandaparole Nr. 4, 7.11.44.
81. TBJG, II/14, pp. 192–3 (10.11.44).
82. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel (eds.), Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, Düsseldorf, 2004, p. 546, no. 749, report from SD-Leitabschnitt Stuttgart, 6.11.44; also in IWM, ‘Aus deutschen Urkunden, 1935–1945’, unpublished documentation, n.d. (c. 1945–6), pp. 275–6; and quoted by Steinert, pp. 522–3.
83. BAB, R55/601, fo. 215, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.11.44.
84. BAB, R55/608, fo. 30, Mundpropagandaparole Nr. 5, 8.11.44.
85. TBJG, II/14, p. 169 (7.11.44).
86. BAB, R55/601, fo. 223, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.11.44. Goebbels had concluded earlier in November that ‘the publication of the atrocities of Nemmersdorf has already been sufficient to make clear to every soldier what is at stake’. At Führer Headquarters it was thought that there was no need at present to fire up the morale of the troops by publishing details of Bolshevik atrocities against German soldiers. – TBJG, II/14, p. 159 (5.11.44).
87. Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary, London, 2002, p. 145.
88. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 340.
89. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2045.
90. Himmler had the names of those not present noted on a list – an indication that the purpose was to ensure knowledge of and complicity in what had taken place. – Irving, pp. 575–6.
91. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, fo. 40 (diary entry, 26.10.44).
92. Udo von Alvensleben, Lauter Abschiede: Tagebuch im Kriege, Frankfurt am Main, 1971, pp. 439–40 (12.2.45). Also quoted in Kunz, p. 253.
93. See the negative imagery in letters from the front in DRZW, 9/2 (Müller), pp. 80–89.
94. See DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 638–9.
95. Almost 10,000 death sentences in the Wehrmacht (most of them in the army) had been carried out by the end of 1944. – DRZW, 9/1 (Echternkamp), pp. 48–50.
96. Part of the title of Omer Bartov’s book, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare, New York, 1986.
97. Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009, p. 522.
98. TBJG, II/14, p. 199 (11.11.44)
99. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 179, pt. II, p. 8, letter from Johanna Ambross, Munich, 20.9.44. Text in English.
100. BA/MA, N6/4, NL Model, report (for US authorities) on Army Group B from mid-October 1944 to mid-April 1945 by Oberst im Generalstab a.D. Günther Reichhelm, compiled in 1946–7, fo. 1.
101. Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Hitlers Ansprache vor Generalen und Offizieren am 26. Mai 1944’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 2 (1976), pp. 123–70.
102. Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, London, 2007, pp. 615–19; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New Viewpoints edn., New York, 1973, p. 547.
103. Hilberg, p. 629.
104. Friedländer, p. 628.
105. Hilberg, pp. 630–31.
106. See Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, Cambridge, Mass., 2006, pp. 246–54.
107. Kulka and Jäckel, p. 544, no. 744.
108. Peter Longerich, ‘Davon haben wir nichts gewußt!’ Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945, Munich, 2006, pp. 304–11, where recorded criticism of such crude assessments of the bombing is also apparent.
109. Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol. 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 594–6 (27.9.44).
110. He remarked on how depressed an acquaintance was about the defeat of the British at Arnhem. Otherwise ‘they would now have the Ruhr District and the war would be over’. – Klemperer, p. 609 (30.10.44).
111. Klemperer, p. 605 (17.10.44).
112. Klemperer, pp. 609–10 (2.11.44, 12.11.44).
113. Klemperer, p. 616 (26.11.44).
114. Klemperer, p. 609 (30.10.44).
115. Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich, Cambridge, 1997, p. 298.
116. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. v0n Stemann (a Danish journalist based in Berlin from 1942 to the end of the war, compiled c. 1980), fo. 183.
117. See BAB, R55/601, fo. 124, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 18.9.44.
118. BAB, R55/601, fo. 119, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 11.9.44.
119. IWM, ‘Aus deutschen Urkunden, 1935–1945’, unpublished documentation, n.d. (c. 1945–6), p. 276.
120. BAB, R55/601, fo. 124, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 18.9.44. fos. 123–4.
121. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, pp. 2160–67.
122. Jung, p. 103 and p. 218 (Kreipe diary, entry for 16.9.44); Guderian, pp. 370–71.
123. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 423.
CHAPTER 4. HOPES RAISED – AND DASHED
1. Quoted DZW, 6, p. 125; KTB/OKW, vol. 4/I, p. 436, Jodl to Chief of the General Staff at OB West, 1.11.44. See also Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 303–6, for Jodl’s doubts about – though justification of – the Ardennes offensive. When he learnt from Speer that Hitler was about to play his last card, the leading industrialist Albert Vögler presumed, naturally enough, that it would be on the eastern front. ‘No one could be so mad as to expose the east in order to hold up the enemy in the west,’ he reasoned. – Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 423.
2. Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, London, 2002, pp. 539–40 (12.12.44).
3. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), pp. 475–8; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 619–20.
4. Hermann Jung, Die Ardennenoffensive 1944/45, Göttingen, 1971, p. 218 (Kreipe diary, 16.9.44); DZW, 6, pp. 124–5.
5. John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, pp. 394–7; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 248–59.
6. Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. 202–25.
7. DRZW, 7 (Vogel), p. 615.
8. DZW, 6, pp. 212–13; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 615–16; Hastings, pp. 218–20; Joseph Balkoski, ‘Patton’s Third Army: The Lorraine Campaign, 19 September–1 December 1944’, in Albert A. Nofi (ed.), The War against Hitler: Military Strategy in the West, Conshohocken, Pa., 1995, pp. 178–91.
9. Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Tübingen, 1974, pp. 517–18 (3.12.44); TBJG, II/14, pp. 339–41 (3.12.44); BAB, R55/608, fo. 34, Verbal Propaganda Slogan, No. 11 (18.12.44). The suddenness of the fall of Strasbourg and the chaotic attempts to evacuate the population were emphasized in an eyewitness account, later sent on to Himmler. – BAB, NS19/606, fos. 2–4v, report on the events in Strasbourg on 22–3 November 1944 (19.12.44). A propaganda report from Baden underlined the ‘enormous shock effect’ throughout the region that resulted from the fall of the city. Streams of refugees engulfed the right bank of the Rhine. The depressed mood of the people reached a low point. Trust was ‘extremely shaken’. – BAB, R55/21504, unfoliated, Gaupropagandaleiter, Reichspropagandaamt Baden, Bericht über die Propagandaführung im Gau Baden, 15.1.45.
10. Hastings, p. 225.
11. Hitler and his Generals, p. 541 (12.12.44) and p. 1038 n. 1556.
12. See Franz Kurowski, ‘Dietrich and Manteuffel’, in Correlli Barnett (ed.), Hitler’s Generals, London, 1990, pp. 411–37 for pen-pictures.
13. DZW, 6, pp. 126–8; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 621–2; Warlimont, p. 485; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 380.
14. Warlimont, pp. 481–5; Guderian, p. 380; Scheurig, p. 305; BA/MA, RH21/5/66: Manteuffel: ‘Die 5. Panzerarmee in der Ardennenoffensive’ (deposition for US Historical Division, 1946), fo. 50; BA/MA, N6/4, Oberst G. Reichhelm (Model’s Chief of Staff), ‘Zusammendfassender Bericht über die Kampfhandlungen der deutschen Herresgruppe B von Mitte Oktober 1944 bis Mitte April 1945’ (deposition for US Historical Division, 1946–7), fos. 14–15; Guenther Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt: The Soldier and the Man, London, 1952, pp. 264–9; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), p. 620; DZW, 6, p. 125; Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, pp. 294–300: Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 222–5; David Downing, The Devil’s Virtuosos: German Generals at War 1940–5, London, 1977, pp. 231–3.
15. Quoted Warlimont, pp. 489–90. Jung, pp. 201–2, argues that the only alternative course of action open to them – to resign – would have given the command to less able generals and increased German losses.
16. See Warlimont, pp. 481–2.
17. NAL, WO219/1651, fos. 144–5, SHAEF: interrogation of Jodl, 23.5.45.
18. Quoted DZW, 6, pp. 129–30.
19. For an assessment of the catastrophic collapse, largely in the second half of 1944, see John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, pp. 40–65.
20. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 368/54, deposition of Speer (13.7.45). On the economic impact of bombing in 1944, see Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, London, 1995, pp. 130–31; and Dietrich Eichholtz, ‘Deutschland am Ende des Krieges: Eine kriegswirtschaftliche Bilanz’, Bulletin der Berliner Gesellschaft für Faschismus- und Weltkriegsforschung, 6 (1996), pp. 22–3, 27–30.
21. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/26, deposition of Speer (13.8.45); Box 368/67, deposition by Saur (2–8.10.45). For the armaments situation leading up to the Ardennes offensive, see Jung, ch. 2.
22. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, depositions of Saur and Kehrl (13.8.45).
23. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/28, deposition of Bosch (11.6.45).
24. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, deposition of Kehrl (26.7.45).
25. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, deposition of Röchling (10.8.45).
26. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/35, suppl. I, deposition of Rohland (22.10.45).
27. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, and Box 368/93, depositions of Schulze-Fielitz (10.8.45 and undated, summer 1945).
28. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 368/84, part II, deposition of Fiebig (25.5.46).
29. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/26, deposition of Speer (13.8.45).
30. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 368/67, depositions of Saur (2–8.10.45, 7.6.45). Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1973, p. 407, also pointed to the fact that despite all the mounting difficulties, armaments production was higher in 1944 than in each of the years 1940 to 1943, when Germany was in full command of its economic basis. Even in January 1945, the index of armaments production was higher than that of any war year apart from 1944. – Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, pp. 687–8, table A6.
31. IWM, Box 367/27, deposition by Saur (11–13.6.45).
32. See, for these decisions in November and December, Deutschlands Rüstung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Hitlers Konferenzen mit Albert Speer 1942–1945, ed. Willi A. Boelcke, Frankfurt am Main, 1969, pp. 444–58; and for Speer’s strenuous efforts to sustain production at this time, Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ‘When Did Albert Speer Give up?’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), p. 394.
33. Heavy raids had repeatedly hit the big industrial cities and attacked the transport network. Over 50 per cent of American bombs at this time were aimed at destroying transport installations. The British, who dropped more bombs in the last three months of 1944 than in the entire year 1943, concentrated more on the cities, with big attacks on Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen, but also inflicted severe damage on transport, dropping 102,796 tons, mainly on railway marshalling yards, between November and January 1945. See DZW, 6, pp. 163, 166–7; Tooze, p. 650; Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945, pb. edn., Berlin, 2004, p. 150. Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944–1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway, Chapel Hill, NC, 1988, chs. 6–7, provides a detailed account of the crippling impact of the bombing on transport in autumn 1944. Speer informed the naval leadership in mid-November of the seriousness of the air attacks. The Reichsbahn had been badly hit. Five major railway stations were out of action. There had been huge drops in coal and steel production (with four-fifths of steel mills damaged or destroyed), and gas supplies had been reduced by 40 per cent. – KTB/SKL, vol. 63/II, p. 188 (17.11.44).
34. BAB, R3/1528, fos. 1–48, Speer’s report on the Ruhrgebiet, 11.11.44.
35. BAB, R3/1542, fos. 1–21, Speer’s report on his trip to Rhine and Ruhr, 23.11.44.
36. Deutschlands Rüstung, p. 444 (28.11.44).
37. TBJG, II/14, pp. 368–9 (7.12.44).
38. BAB, R3/1543, fos. 3–15.
39. Speer, p. 425.
40. BAB, R3/1544, fos. 56–73 (quoted words, fo. 71).
41. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 771, sees this as, in effect, Speer’s ‘survival programme’ for the last phase of the war.
42. Speer, p. 423. After his trip to the Ruhr in November, Speer engineered Vögler’s appointment by Hitler as Plenipotentiary for Armaments and War Production in the Ruhr in order to take decisions on the spot in his name in order to sustain Ruhr production. – Deutschlands Rüstung, p. 445 (28.11.44).
43. BAB, R3/1623, fos. 3, 4, 8–10, 22 (26.7.44, 2.8.44), on retreat from the east; fos. 24–7, 46, 50–52, 66–8, 77 (10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 22.9.44), on immobilization of industry in western areas.
44. BAB, R3/1623, fo. 123, Keitel to Speer (6.12.44).
45. BAB, R3/1623, fos. 125–6, Speer to head of Armaments Commission XIIb Kelchner, 6.12.44; Keitel Fernschreiben, 10.12.44. Even now, Speer felt it necessary (fo. 127, 12.12.44) to intervene again, this time with Grand-Admiral Dönitz, to prevent the destruction of wharves and their installations which had been scheduled for destruction by an order of Coastal Command East (Marinekommando Ost) on 17 November.
46. A point made by Müller in DRZW, 5/2, p. 771.
47. BAB, NS19/1862, fos. 1–5, Bormann to Himmler, 23.10.44.
48. BAB, NS19/4017, fos. 43–56, meeting at Klein-Berkel, 3.11.44.
49. TBJG, II/14, pp. 157–8 (5.11.44).
50. See Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (eds.), Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers, Göttingen, 1986, pp. 7–32; Peter Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter: Führung der Partei und Kontrolle des Staatsapparates durch den Stab Heß und die Partei-Kanzlei Bormann, Munich, 1992, pp. 256–64; and Armin Nolzen, ‘Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933–1945’, German History, 23 (2005), pp. 494–518.
51. Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, p. 375; Dieter Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, pp. 528–9.
52. All contained, many from November–December 1944, in BAB, R43II/692b: Deutscher Volkssturm, Bd. 2, fos. 1–28. An impression of the mass of heterogeneous business dealt with by the Party Chancellery in this period can be gleaned from the collection Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, vol. 1, ed. Helmut Heiber, Munich, 1983, Regesten Bd. 1–2, and vol. 2, ed. Peter Longerich, Munich, 1989, Regesten Bd. 4.
53. TBJG, II/14, p. 432 (17.12.44).
54. The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, p. 148 (11.12.44).
55. See TBJG, II/14, p. 400 (12.12.44) for the paper shortage.
56. BAB, R43II/583a, fo. 64–64v, Reichspostminister to Highest Reich Authorities, etc. (7.11.44).
57. TBJG, II/14, pp. 146–7 (3.11.44), 191 (10.11.44), 224 (17.11.44), 232 (18.11.44), 268 (24.11.44), 308–9 (1.12.44), 444 (19.12.44); BAB, R3/1529, fos. 3–12, Speer’s memorandum to Hitler (6.12.44).
58. TBJG, II/14, pp. 394 (11.12.44), 398 (12.12.44); von Oven, pp. 519 (5.12.44), 520–23 (11.12.44). Text of the decree in ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1944, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 469–70.
59. TBJG, II/14, p. 305 (1.12.44).
60. Von Oven, p. 517 (29.11.44); TBJG, II/14, p. 276 (25.11.44).
61. TBJG, II/14, pp. 317–34 (2.12.44).
62. TBJG, II/14, pp. 159–60 (5.11.44).
63. TBJG, II/14, pp. 208–9 (13.11.44); von Oven, pp. 511–12 (12.11.44).
64. On the film, see David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945, Oxford, 1983, pp. 225–35.
65. TBJG, II/14, pp. 310–11 (1.12.44), 345 (3.12.44); Welch, p. 234.
66. TBJG, II/14, pp. 469–70 (23.12.44). More changes were necessary, but, as he had hoped, the premiere took place on 30 January 1945, the twelfth anniversary of Hitler’s takeover of power.
67. BAB, R55/601, fo. 204, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44) .
68. TBJG, II/14, p. 147 (3.11.44); also p. 310 (1.12.44). He acknowledged that the failure of the regime to protect its population in the air war was its greatest weakness in the eyes of the public (p. 165 (6.11.44)). Düren, east of Aachen, one of the most heavily bombed towns of the war, provides an example. Only 13 out of 9,322 buildings were left undamaged by the autumn air attacks and over 3,000 people lost their lives (Friedrich, p. 144). In late December Himmler reported that the population there was ‘completely hostile and unfriendly’ and that the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting was almost unknown, even among local Party functionaries (BAB, NS19/751, fo. 32, Himmler to Bormann, 26.12.44, also in IfZ, Fa-93).
69. TBJG, II/14, pp. 133 (1.11.44), 238 (19.11.44); Robert Grosche, Kölner Tagebuch 1944–46, Cologne, 1969, pp. 52–6 (30.10.–6.11.44); LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 178, pt. II, pp. 7–8 (27.11.44), ‘Total War Comes to Cologne’ (account of a prisoner of war who witnessed the raid).
70. Widerstand und Verfolgung in Köln, ed. Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, Cologne, 1974, pp. 395–6; Detlef Peukert, Die Edelweißpiraten: Protestbewegungen jugendlicher Arbeiter im Dritten Reich, Cologne, 1980, pp. 103–15; TBJG, II/14, p. 426 (16.12.44).
71. TBJG, II/14, p. 269 (24.11.44).
72. TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44).
73. Margarete Dörr, ‘Wer die Zeit nicht miterlebt hat…’: Frauenerfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg und in den Jahren danach, vol. 3, Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1998, p. 437.
74. TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44).
75. TBJG, II/14, p. 269 (24.11.44).
76. IWM, Box 367/35, suppl. I, deposition of Rohland, pp. 3–4 (22.10.45).
77. Von Oven, p. 518 (3.12.44). The ‘Morgenthau Plan’, put forward by the Americans at the Quebec Conference in September 1944, had been agreed, apparently with little detailed consideration, by the British (who, surprisingly, seem to have shown scant interest in its proposals). Though President Roosevelt favoured a harsh peace, he was eventually persuaded to back away from the ‘Morgenthau Plan’ by the combined and determined opposition of his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and his Secretary for War, Henry Stimson. – Toby Thacker, The End of the Third Reich: Defeat, Denazification and Nuremberg, January 1944–November 1946, pb. edn., Stroud, 2008, pp. 58–60.
78. Von Oven, pp. 524–5 (14.12.44); TBJG, II/14, pp. 407–13 (13.12.44). Vivid descriptions of the dreadful conditions following the raids in Bochum (‘a dead city’) and other major conurbations in the Rhine and Ruhr were given in a secret German censorship report on letters to and from the front, which fell into Allied hands. – NAL, FO898/187, summary of German media reports, fos. 292–5 (27–31.12.44).
79. TBJG, II/14, pp. 408–9, 412 (13.12.44).
80. TBJG, II/14, p. 377 (8.12.44).
81. Robert Ley, the Party’s Organization Leader, sent Hitler a somewhat mixed report on the qualities of the western Gauleiter, after a 14-day visit to the west in November, but there was no hint of disloyalty. – BAB, NS6/135, fos. 12–17, Ley’s report to Hitler, 30.11.44; accurately summarized in TBJG, II/14, pp. 355–7 (5.12.44).
82. BAB, R55/603, fo. 513, Hauptreferat Pro.Pol. an das RPA Neustadt a.d. Weinstr. (28.11.44).
83. TBJG, II/14, pp. 309–10, 316, 344, 382 (1–3.12.44, 9.12.44); BAB, R55/601, fos. 221–2, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.11.44; von Oven, p. 509 (10.11.44); Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, pp. 153, 160, 167 (21.11.44, 29.11.44, 9.12.44).
84. TBJG, II/14, p. 420 (15.12.44).
85. BAB, NS19/751, fos. 23–5, Chief of SS-Hauptamt Gottlieb Berger to Himmler, 17.11.44 (also in IfZ, Fa-93).
86. Cited in Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 269.
87. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, fos. 64–7, diary entries of Lieutenant Julius Dufner (27.11–5.12.44). For the bombing of Freiburg, see Peter Zolling, ‘Was machen wir am Tag nach unserem Sieg?’ in Wolfgang Malanowski (ed.), 1945: Deutschland in der Stunde Null, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1985, p. 121; and, especially, Friedrich, pp. 306–11.
88. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, U’Fw. Hermann S., 6.12.44.
89. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, SS-Rttf. Paul S., 5.12.44.
90. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, SS-Rttf. Paul S., 11.11.44. Propaganda offices reported an improvement in the mood of the civilian population in mid-November, which it partly attributed to the announcement of the V2 attacks. – BAB, R55/601, fo. 215, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.11.44.
91. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, Gefr. Michael M., 11.11.44.
92. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, Kanonier Felix S., 10.11.44.
93. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 199, pt. II, p. 5 (20.12.44), in English.
94. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Kriegstagebuch, entry for 26.12.44. Pollex, born in 1898, had served briefly as senior quartermaster (Oberquartiermeister) with Army Group Centre in 1942 before being transferred to the Army General Staff and later in the year being promoted to the rank of colonel. In December 1944 he was sent to Döberitz to take charge of officer training courses (Regimentskommandeur-Lehrgang) then moved on 9 January 1945 to become Chief of Staff to the Chef der deutschen Wehrmachtrüstung.
95. Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005, pp. 171, 432–3 (1.1.45) (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007, p. 127).
96. Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Fluchten aus dem Konsens zum Durchhalten: Ergebnisse, Probleme und Perspektiven der Erforschung soldatischer Verweigerungsformen in der Wehrmacht 1939–1945’, in Ralf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, p. 594; Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Die Wehrmacht in der Endphase: Realität und Perzeption’, Aus Parlament und Zeitgeschichte, 32–3 (1989) (4.8.89), pp. 42–3. General Schörner justified his ferocious military discipline to his own subordinate leading officers in Courland by the need to combat the rapidly growing number of deserters. – BA/MA, RH19/III/727, fo. 49–49v, Schörner to all his generals, 5.12.44.
97. Kunz, p. 267.
98. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, diary entry for 8.12.44.
99. Hastings, p. 228. Major Hasso Viebig, commanding officer of the 277th Grenadier-Division, recalled in British captivity four months after the offensive the determination of the troops, exhilarated that they were advancing again. – Neitzel, Abgehört, p. 200 and p. 539 n. 158. See also Zimmermann, p. 94 for the initial boost to morale from the offensive.
100. For the course of the offensive, see DZW, 6, pp. 128–34, DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 625–32; Jung, chs. 4–7; Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 310–12; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 766–8; Stephen B. Patrick, ‘The Ardennes Offensive: An Analysis of the Battle of the Bulge’, in Nofi, pp. 206–24; and Hastings, ch. 8. Peiper’s panzer regiment was responsible for the deaths of more than 400 American and Belgian prisoners in all. – DZW, 6, p. 130. The Malmédy massacre of 84 prisoners is judiciously discussed by Michael Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant: Jochen Peiper, Panzer Leader, Staplehurst, 1995, pp. 88–97.
101. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 241, pt. II, p. 3 (30.1.45), diary entry of Lt. Behmen, 18th Volksgrenadier Division, in English.
102. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 217, pt. II, p. 5 (6.1.45), in English.
103. BAB, R55/793, fos. 16–18, Material for Propagandists, No. 19 (11.12.44). Such propaganda had nevertheless limited effect. Goebbels noted in mid-December that the population in the west had no fear of the Anglo-Americans and farmers were reluctant, therefore, to be evacuated. – TBJG, II/14, p. 402 (12.12.44).
104. LHC, Dempsey Papers, No. 246, pt. II, p. 3 (4.2.45), in English.
105. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, Gefr. W.P., 17.12.44.
106. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, Gefr. S.F., 17.12.44.
107. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, Uffz. Werner F., 19.12.44.
108. TBJG, II/14, pp. 429, 433 (17.12.44), 438–9 (18.12.44), 445 (19.12.44); von Oven, pp. 526–9 (17.12.44, 20.12.44).
109. See VB, 19.12.44, where the headline simply read, ‘German Offensive in the West’.
110. BAB, R55/601, fos. 249–50, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 19.12.44. See also Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, pp. 316–17.
111. TBJG, II/14, p. 450 (20.12.44), and, still in the same vein, p. 468 (23.12.44).
112. Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 183, report for 18–24.12.44 (2.1.45).
113. NAL, FO898/187, summary of German media reports, fo. 315 (18–26.12.44).
114. TBJG, II/14, p. 452 (20.12.44).
115. DRZW, 7 (Vogel), p. 631.
116. IWM, Box 367/27, p. 7, Speer Ministry Interrogation Reports, deposition of Saur, 11–13.6.45. According to Goebbels’ aide Rudolf Semmler, the offensive was by 21 December ‘already seen to be a definite failure’. – Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels – the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, p. 171 (21.12.44).
117. Speer, p. 425.
118. Guderian, p. 381.
119. DRZW, 7 (Vogel), p. 629; Hastings, p. 261.
120. DZW, 6, p. 133, and p. 137 for the figures that follow.
121. TBJG, II/14, pp. 436–7 (29.12.44). He had acknowledged a ‘somewhat more critical’ situation six days earlier (p. 469 (23.12.44)) and a deterioration on 28.12.44 (pp. 480–81). Wehrmacht propaganda agents in Berlin also commented at this time on the confidence of soldiers returning from the front, but hinted that the enthusiasm at home had waned. – Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 193, report for 25–31.12.44 (3.1.45).
122. TBJG, II/14, p. 500 (31.12.44).
123. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, fo. 78 (1.1.45).
124. BAB, R55/612, Echo zur Führerrede, summary report to Goebbels, fos. 22–3, 2.1.45; fos. 17–102 for replies of propaganda offices to request for information on the reception of Hitler’s speech and that of Goebbels himself, 1–2.1.45.
125. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, pp. 2179–85 for the text of the speech.
126. BHStA, Minn 72417, unfoliated, 28.11.44–5.1.45.
127. BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 20, Lammers to Highest Reich Authorities, 17.12.44.
128. TBJG, II/14, pp. 282 (27.11.44), 328–9 (2.12.44), 370–72 (7.12.44); David Irving, Göring: A Biography, London, 1989, pp. 447–8, 476.
129. Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, pb. edn., London, 1994, pp. 418–19.
130. Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, p. 291.
131. The Bormann Letters, pp. 152 (26.12.44), 158 (1.1.45)
132. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, London, 1956, pp. 238–9 (10.12.44); BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 115, Berger to Himmler, for rumours of Himmler’s disgrace (21.12.44). Himmler had been appointed in November to be Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine. As head of the Replacement Army, and Chief of Police, Himmler was seen to be in a good position to raise a makeshift army as a defence force to help the German 19th Army try to hold back the Allied drive into Alsace. The newly created Army Group Upper Rhine, stationed in an area between the Black Forest and the Swiss frontier, was heavily patched together from stragglers, Volksgrenadier and anti-aircraft units, border police, non-German battalions from the east, and Volkssturm men. Refusing to leave his Black Forest headquarters, Himmler created a vacuum which fostered intrigue at Führer Headquarters, possibly involving Bormann and some disaffected influential SS leaders. – Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, London, 1972, pp. 509–11; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 546, 554–6. Berger requested Himmler to cut short his activity as Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine and return to Führer Headquarters. His request, he said, ‘comes not only from the fabrication of rumours promoted by certain sides with all energy – Reichsführer-SS is in disgrace, the Wehrmacht lobby – Keitel – has indeed triumphed – but because I sense that if Reichsführer-SS is not at Headquarters our political work, as the basis of everything, suffers immeasurably’. Himmler replied (fo. 116), via his personal adjutant, SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Brandt, on 29 December, stating that it would only be a short time before he could place the command of Army Group Upper Rhine in other hands, and that he might have the opportunity to speak briefly about the matter to Berger. Letter and telephone, he added, cryptically, were ‘not suitable for this topic’. Himmler’s short-lived command of Army Group Upper Rhine, as part of the weak and brief German offensive in Alsace in January, ended in failure. But whatever rumours there had been, they had evidently not undermined his standing with Hitler. According to Goebbels, Hitler was ‘extraordinarily satisfied’ with the work of the Reichsführer. – Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 736–7.
133. TBJG, II/14, pp. 497–8 (31.12.44); von Oven, pp. 529–30 (26.12.44), 534–6 (28.12.44).
134. Speer, pp. 425–7.
135. NAL, WO204/6384, interview with SS-Obergruppenführer Wolff, fo. 2, 15.6.45.
136. Guderian, pp. 382–4. It has been adjudged that ‘the fatal role of the Ardennes offensive was indirectly to weaken the eastern front’ through binding forces needed for defence against the Red Army. – Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945, London, 1998, p. 264. However, as Jung, p. 201, points out, even had the Ardennes offensive proved more successful, the transfer of exhausted Wehrmacht units to the east would not have sufficed to hold off the Soviet offensive. See also Henke, p. 342.
137. DZW, 6, p. 135; Warlimont, pp. 491–4; IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s notes on Hitler’s briefings, 22.12.44 (not published in the Nuremberg Trial documentation).
138. Jung, p. 229 (Kreipe diary, 2.11.44).
139. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 398.
CHAPTER 5. CALAMITY IN THE EAST
1. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 382.
2. Guderian, p. 382.
3. DZW, 6, pp. 498–9.
4. DZW, 6, pp. 503, 509; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 498, 502–4, 531; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, p. 449.
5. Erickson, pp. 447–9.
6. See Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), pp. 212–19.
7. Jürgen Förster, ‘The Final Hour of the Third Reich: The Capitulation of the Wehrmacht’, Bulletin of the International Committee for the History of the Second World War, Montreal (1995), pp. 76–7.
8. IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s ‘Notizen zum Kriegstagebuch’, ‘Lage am 22.1.45’ (23.1.45), not printed in the published trial documents. According to Goebbels, Hitler stated that the first priority was possession of oil, then coal, then a functioning armaments industry. – TBJG, II/15, p. 218 (25.1.45). Hungary produced some 22 per cent of the petrol and 11 per cent of the diesel demand of the Reich. – Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Strategie der Selbstvernichtung: Die Wehrmachtführung im “Endkampf” um das “Dritte Reich” ’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, p. 226.
9. Guderian, pp. 382–7, 392–3.
10. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, London, 1982, pp. 531–2; DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 605.
11. Schwendemann, ‘Strategie’, p. 231.
12. The coffins of Hindenburg and his wife were initially transported to Potsdam’s garrison church, then shortly afterwards moved secretly to a safer location in a salt mine near Bernterode (a small town in Thuringia). The Americans found the coffins there on 27 April, the names scrawled on them in red crayon, and in May took them west to Marburg, where the former Reich President and his wife were finally reburied, unobtrusively, at night, in August 1946. – Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis, Oxford, 2009, pp. 193–6.
13. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Das Kriegsende in Ostpreußen und in Südbaden im Vergleich’, in Bernd Martin (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg und seine Folgen: Ereignisse – Auswirkungen – Reflexionen, Freiburg, 2006, p. 96.
14. Where not otherwise indicated, the above description of the military course of events draws upon DZW, 6, pp. 498–517; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 491–542, 568ff.; Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiße, ed. Theodor Schieder et al., pb. edn., Munich, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 16E–23E; Erickson, ch. 7; Guderian, pp. 389ff.; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 267–79; Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945, London, 1998, pp. 264–71; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, chs. 9–10; and Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007, chs. 3–4.
15. Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007, pp. 435–8; Kurt Dieckert and Horst Grossmann, Der Kampf um Ostpreußen: Ein authentischer Dokumentarbericht, Munich, 1960, pp. 119–20.
16. Hastings, pp. 322–3.
17. Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 320 n. 168; Meindl, pp. 441–2.
18. Meindl, p. 445. According to Noble, p. 210, Koch initially moved to the comfort of a Pillau hotel, but this was bombed a few days later. See also Isabel Denny, The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City: The Battle for Königsberg, 1945, London, 2007, pp. 201–2. In early February, Koch moved his staff to Heiligenbeil to help organize the evacuation of refugees over the ice of the Haff. – Meindl, p. 447.
19. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf und Zusammenbruch im deutschen Osten’, Freiburger Universitätsblätter, 130 (1995), p. 19; Hans Graf von Lehndorff, Ostpreußisches Tagebuch: Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945–1947, pb. edn., Munich, 1967, pp. 18 (23.1.45), 40 (7.2.45).
20. Some of many examples in Edgar Günther Lass, Die Flucht: Ostpreußen 1944/45, Bad Nauheim, 1964, pp. 85–7.
21. Lehndorff, pp. 24–5 (28.1.45).
22. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 28 (testimony from 1951).
23. Christian Tilitzki, Alltag in Ostpreußen 1940–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte der Königsberger Justiz 1940–1945, Leer, 1991, pp. 300–304 (report of the Generalstaatsanwalt, 18.1.45). See also Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, Spiegel Special 2, Hamburg, 2002, p. 46. Gauleiter Koch encouraged the judicial authorities to take a pragmatic view of the looting in the circumstances. Lehndorff, p. 27 (29.1.45), in his field hospital in Königsberg after a bombing raid, recorded his despair at the looting; also pp. 28–9 (30.1.45). Later accounts have at times minimized the looting of apartments in Königsberg, emphasizing the severe punishment for ‘plunderers’. – Hans-Burkhard Sumowski, ‘Jetzt war ich ganz allein auf der Welt’: Erinnerungen an eine Kindheit in Königsberg 1944–1947, Munich, 2009, p. 61.
24. Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, pp. 44–5.
25. Denny, p. 199.
26. Lehndorff, p. 18 (23.1.45).
27. Beevor, p. 49.
28. Dieckert and Grossmann, p. 129; Lehndorff, p. 39 (7.2.45).
29. Lehndorff, pp. 19, 21 (24, 26.1.45).
30. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 144–6.
31. Lehndorff, p. 23 (27.1.45).
32. DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 272; Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 20.
33. Lass, pp. 246ff.
34. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 79 (testimony from 1952).
35. Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 20.
36. Franz W. Seidler and Alfred M. de Zayas (eds.), Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Hamburg, 2002, p. 220. Vivid descriptions of the mass flight from East Prussia and conditions in the province are provided in the account compiled only a few years after the events by Jürgen Thorwald, Es begann an der Weichsel: Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, pb. edn., Munich, 1995 (1st edn., 1949), pp. 123–99; and in Guido Knopp, Die große Flucht: Das Schicksal der Vertriebenen, Munich, 2001, pp. 57–85. A good description of the horrific treks is provided by Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, ch. 4.
37. Manfred Zeidler, Kriegsende im Osten: Die Rote Armee und die Besetzung Deutschlands östlich von Oder und Neiße 1944/1945, Munich, 1996, pp. 135–8.
38. Zeidler, pp. 140–41.
39. Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 22.
40. A few of many examples in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 194, 297; vol. 2, pp. 159–64, 224–34; Lass, pp. 87, 121.
41. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 266.
42. Barbara Johr, ‘Die Ereignisse in Zahlen’, in Helke Sander and Barbara Johr (eds.), Befreier und Befreite: Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder, Munich, 1992, pp. 47–8, 58–9.
43. The above account of the plight of the East Prussian refugees, where not otherwise indicated, is based on Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 33E–41E, 60Eff., 79Eff., and the reports, pp. 21–154. Figures on Germans deported are in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 83E, and Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 24 (estimating up to as many as 400,000). A number of later graphic oral accounts are given by Hastings, pp. 319ff.
44. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 26E–32E, 345–404. See also Noble, p. 204 for the refusal of the Gauleiter, Emil Stürtz, to allow precautionary evacuation.
45. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Pfarrer Heinrich M., 28.1.45, giving the example of the Blechhammer and Heydebreck synthetic fuel plant in Upper Silesia. The enormous industrial complex at Blechhammer, near Cosel, about 75 kilometres from Auschwitz, had in its heyday nearly 30,000 workers, nearly 4,000 of whom were, shortly before the evacuation in January 1945, prisoners in an outlying camp attached to Auschwitz III (Monowitz). On Blechhammer, see Ernest Koenig, ‘Auschwitz III – Blechhammer. Erinnerungen’, Dachauer Hefte, 15 (1999), pp. 134–52; and Andrea Rudorff, ‘Blechhammer (Blachownia)’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 5, Munich, 2007, pp. 186–91. A week earlier, Speer had reported to Hitler on the importance of the plant’s production of aircraft fuel, urging concentration of the entire Luftwaffe ‘in this decisive struggle’ for its defence, and seeking the Führer’s opinion. He had told the works the same day that he and Colonel-General Schörner would decide when the factory should be put out of action, though only in such a way that would render deployment by the Soviets impossible for two to three weeks. – BAB, R3/1545, fos. 3–7, Speer to von Below, for immediate presentation to the Führer; Speer to the Werke Blechhammer und Heydebreck, both 21.1.45.
46. Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, p. 44.
47. Paul Peikert, ‘Festung Breslau’ in den Berichten eines Pfarrers 22. Januar bis 6. Mai 1945, ed. Karol Jonca and Alfred Konieczny, Wrocław, 1993, p. 29; BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Pfarrer Heinrich M., 28.1.45; Knopp, Die große Flucht, p. 158. Those who managed to find a place on a train then faced a long and grim journey through the bitter cold. Some refugees arrived in Dresden with children who had frozen to death on the way and had to ask railway personnel for cardboard boxes to serve as coffins. – Reinhold Maier, Ende und Wende: Das schwäbische Schicksal 1944–1946. Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen, Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1948, p. 172 (5.3.45).
48. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 51E–59E, 405–77; Friedrich Grieger, Wie Breslau fiel…, Metzingen, 1948, pp. 7–8; Ernst Hornig, Breslau 1945: Erlebnisse in der eingeschlossenen Stadt, Munich, 1975, pp. 18–19; Peikert, pp. 29–31; Knopp, Die große Flucht, pp. 158–62; Noble, p. 202; Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942–49, London, 1994, pp. 60–61, 72–4 (where the number of those forced to march off in the direction of Kanth, 25 kilometres south-west of Breslau, is given as 60,000, of whom 18,000 were estimated to have perished, and the numbers of civilians in the city when it was cut off at 150,000–180,000).
49. Hastings, pp. 328–32. Unclarity about the numbers actually on board means the death toll is uncertain. Estimates vary widely. Dieckert and Grossmann, pp. 130–31, have 904 from 5,000 surviving; Seidler and de Zayas, p. 222, indicate a complement of 6,600 on board, of whom 1,200 were saved and 5,400 drowned. Guido Knopp, Der Untergang der Gustloff, 2nd edn., pb., Munich, 2008, pp. 9, 156, reckons the losses to have been as high as 9,000, and (p. 12) that as many as 40,000 refugees lost their lives in this and other sinkings in the last months of the war. Michael Schwartz in DRZW, 10/2, p. 591, also accepts a figure of 9,000 dead, but halves the number of refugee victims in sea disasters to 20,000. One of the officers responsible for checking the passengers on board the Gustloff claimed to have noted the last figure for registrations as 7,956. This was twenty hours before the Gustloff set sail, and one estimate suggests that a further 2,000 people were allowed on board before departure, making the total number, including crew, more than 10,000. – Knopp, Die große Flucht, p. 104. Denny, pp. 202–3, has 996 from 9,000 saved. Bessel, p. 75, has 1, 239 rescued from over 10,000 on board. Beevor, p. 51, places the number of deaths between 6,600 and 9,000. Two of the subsequent worst disasters occurred almost at the end of the war, with the sinking off Lübeck through British air attack of the Thielbek (50 survivors from 2,800 on board) and the Cap d’Arcona (4,250 dead from 6,400 on board). The victims were almost all prisoners who had been evacuated by their SS guards from Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg on the approach of British forces. – David Stafford, Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation, London, 2007, pp. 291–301.
50. Under Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg, the Pomeranian Party leadership, as elsewhere, had exacerbated the plight of the population by refusing to give timely orders for evacuation. – Noble, pp. 205–8.
51. For the above, where not otherwise indicated, Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 41E–51E, 155–201.
52. Beevor, pp. 48–9.
53. Andreas Kossert, ‘ “Endlösung on the Amber Shore”: The Massacre in January 1945 on the Baltic Seashore – a Repressed Chapter of East Prussian History’, Leo Baeck Year Book, 40 (2004), pp. 3–21 (quotations, pp. 15–17); and Andreas Kossert, Damals in Ostpreußen: Der Untergang einer deutschen Provinz, Munich, 2008, pp. 148–53; Schmuel Krakowski, ‘Massacre of Jewish Prisoners on the Samland Peninsula – Documents’, YVS, 24 (1994), pp. 349–87; Reinhard Henkys, ‘Ein Todesmarsch in Ostpreußen’, Dachauer Hefte, 20 (2004), pp. 3–21; the eyewitness account by a former member of the Hitler Youth who had been involved in the atrocity, Martin Bergau, ‘Tod an der Bernsteinküste: Ein NS-Verbrechen in Ostpreußen’, in Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Als die Erde brannte: Deutsche Schicksale in den letzten Kriegstagen, Munich, 2005, pp. 99–112; the early account, from 1952, of the former Landrat of the Samland District in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 136; Martin Bergau, Der Junge von der Bernsteinküste: Erlebte Zeitgeschichte 1938–1948, Heidelberg, 1994, pp. 108–15, 249–75; and Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944–printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 132–40. This terrible episode was also described in Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London, 2005, pp. 284–6. Though most eyewitness accounts concur that the mass shooting took place during the night of 31 January–1 February, some imply that it was slightly later. – Henkys, p. 16. Bergau, and, based on his accounts, Kossert, reckon the number of survivors to have been as low as 15, but Blatman, p. 139, citing the conclusions reached by the court which in 1967 tried and convicted one of the perpetrators, gives an estimated figure of around 200.
54. VB, South German edn., 15.1.45; Die Wehrmachtberichte 1939–1945, vol. 3: 1. Januar 1944 bis 9. Mai 1945, Munich, 1989, p. 402 (15.1.45).
55. This was registered in British monitoring of the German press: NAL, FO 898/187, PWE, fos. 222–4, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, 14.8.44–7.5.45.
56. BAB, R55/601, fos. 272–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report (24.1.45).
57. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvNB/OP, 9.2.45.
58. BAB, R55/793, fos. 7–8, ‘Material für Propagandisten, Nr. 25: Betr. Bolschewistische Greuel’, 16.1.45.
59. TBJG, II/15, p. 190 (23.1.45), p. 216 (25.1.45). By early February Goebbels had changed his mind. He now thought it important to emphasize the Bolshevik atrocities and did not think that publicizing them would produce panic. – TBJG, II/15, pp. 322–3 (6.2.45).
60. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvNB/OP, 10.3.45. Colonel Curt Pollex, based in Berlin, noted that Soviet atrocities, exploited by German propaganda, were causing ‘total panic’. – BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Auszüge aus Briefen, fo. 14, 23.1.45. For the mood of panic spread by refugees and fear of the Russians, see also Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 645–6, 649–60 (25.1.45, 29.1.45).
61. VB, South German edn., 9.2.45.
62. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Josef E., 21.1.45.
63. Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst – Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, pp. 138–9 (28.1.45) and p. 268 nn. 282–6. The letter was returned, marked ‘Wait for New Address’. Whether the soldier survived is not known.
64. BStA, MA 106695, report of the RPvOB, 9.2.45.
65. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvOF/MF, 8.2.45.
66. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen 1942–1945, pb. edn., Munich, 1981, pp. 228 (25.1.45), 229 (30.1.45).
67. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, p. 124 (22.1.45).
68. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 249, pt. II, p. 9 (in English).
69. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. von Stemann, p. 193.
70. Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, pp. 219–20, 229 (23.1.45, 1.2.45).
71. Andreas-Friedrich, p. 126 (31.1.45).
72. Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 219 (23.1.45), pp. 228–9 (1.2.45).
73. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. von Stemann, p. 197.
74. Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 235–6 (7.2.45).
75. Echternkamp, p. 129 (20.1.45).
76. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. von Stemann, p. 200.
77. IWM, ‘Aus deutschen Urkunden 1935–1945’, unpub. documentation, n.d. (c. 1945–6), pp. 66–7, 276–8.
78. Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 218 (22.1.45), 236 (7.2.45).
79. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Gisela K., 3.2.45.
80. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Luise G., 3.2.45.
81. Heinrich Breloer (ed.), Mein Tagebuch: Geschichten vom Überleben 1939–1947, Cologne, 1984, p. 228 (27.1.45).
82. For a good description in one region, see Jill Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis, London, 2006, pp. 304–12.
83. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Gefr. Heinrich R., 23.1.45.
84. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Sold. Willy F., 30.1.45.
85. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Fw. Hugo B., 2.2.45.
86. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Lt. Thomas S., 23.1.45.
87. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Hptm. Emerich P., 20.1.45.
88. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Uffz. Hans ——, 24.1.45.
89. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, O’Gefr. Otto L., 24.1.45.
90. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Gren. Kurt M., 30.1.45.
91. Quoted Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 243, and see also, for racial stereotypes, pp. 269–70.
92. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, fo. 88, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, 25.1.45.
93. NAL, WO219/1587, fo. 860, SHAEF, Directorate of Army Psychiatry Research Memorandum 45/03/12, January 1945.
94. Kunz, pp. 299–300.
95. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, ‘Kalenderblätter 1945’, fo. 81 (14.1.45); N245/2, Briefe, fo. 41 (15.1.45); N245/15, Generalleutnant Otto Heidkämper (former Chief of Staff of Army Group Centre), ‘Die Schlacht um Ostpreußen’ (1953), fo. 32; Guderian, pp. 382–3; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 536–7.
96. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, ‘Kalenderblätter 1945’, fo. 82 (16–17.1.45); N245/15, Heidkämper, fos. 40–43.
97. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, Briefe, fo. 41 (19.1.45).
98. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, Briefe, fo. 41 (20.1.45).
99. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, Briefe, fo. 41v (21.1.45); N245/3, NL Reinhardt, ‘Kalenderblätter 1945’, fos. 82–3 (20–21.1.45); N245/15, Heidkämper, fos. 53–7.
100. The above account relies, except where otherwise stated, on BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, ‘Kalenderblätter 1945’, fos. 83–4 (22–7.1.45); N245/2, NL Reinhardt, Briefe, fos. 41–2 (22.1.45, 26.1.45); N245/15, Heidkämper, fos. 68–72, 76–87; N24/39, ‘Erinnerungen von General d.I. a.D. Friedrich Hoßbach’, typescript (May 1945), pp. 45–6, 68. See also Friedrich Hoßbach, Die Schlacht um Ostpreußen, Überlingen, 1951, pp. 51–73; Guderian, pp. 400–401; Dieckert and Grossmann, pp. 94–5, 110-18; DZW, 6, p. 511.
101. e.g. BA/MA, RH21/3/730, fos. 3–6, ‘Auskünfte Gen.Major Mueller-Hillebrand (Chef des Stabes) über den Einsatz der 3. Pz. Armee in Ostpreußen, Sept. 1944–Feb. 1945’ (1955); ‘Auszug aus einem Bericht von Oberst i.G. Mendrzyk O.Qu. bei der 3. Panzer-Armee’.
102. Quoted Schwendemann, ‘Das Kriegsende in Ostpreußen’, p. 98.
103. Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, p. 43. I am most grateful to Dr Schwendemann for the reference to the source for these comments, BA/MA, RH20/4/617, unfoliated, Notizen über Ferngespräche 14–25.1.45, Gesprächsnotizen vom 24.1.45 (Hoßbach addressing leading officers at 16.00 hours that day, and speaking to Reinhardt that evening at 22.15 hours), and to Dr Jürgen Förster for obtaining for me a copy of the document.
104. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Auszüge aus Briefen, fo. 12, 22.1.45.
105. N24/39, NL Hoßbach, ‘Erinnerungen’, pp. 46–7; Hoßbach, p. 70. That Rendulic´ had a less than complete comprehension of the situation in East Prussia when he arrived there seems clear. He had as recently as 17 January been appointed by Hitler as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Courland, and had been in Courland no more than twelve hours when, on 26 January, he was suddenly informed that he had to take over the command of Army Group North, besieged in East Prussia. – Lothar Rendulic´, Gekämpft, Gesiegt, Geschlagen, Wels, 1952, pp. 331–2, 336.
106. Guderian, pp. 400–401. Rendulic´, pp. 337–55, provides a description of his period, a little over six weeks, in command in East Prussia, until 12 March, though it contains only a few inconsequential lines on Hoßbach’s dismissal on p. 343.
107. Guderian, p. 394.
108. Hastings, p. 283; Roland Kaltenegger, Schörner: Feldmarschall der letzten Stunde, Munich and Berlin, 1994, pp. 265–6; Siebel-Achenbach, pp. 59, 71–2. Hitler had initially intended Field-Marshal Model to take over the command. It was decided, however, that he was urgently needed in the west, so the command was given to Schörner. – TBJG, II/15, pp. 135 (16.1.45), 138 (17.1.45).
109. Quoted DRZW, 10/2 (Kunz), p. 39.
110. BA/MA, N60/74, NL Schörner, ‘Tragödie Schlesien, März 1945’, fo. 2 (1958).
111. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 157–8, Bormann, Bekanntgabe 28/45, Ungehorsam und falsche Meldungen, containing Keitel’s order in appendix; also IfZ, Fa-91/4, fo. 1069.
112. Himmler’s command had, it seems, already been agreed some days earlier, in the main, according to Goebbels, because ‘a firm hand’ was needed to turn troops ‘flooding back’ from the path of the Soviets into new fighting units. Goebbels even suggested making Himmler Commander-in-Chief of the Army, to relieve Hitler of this duty, but Hitler was unwilling to go so far and stated that Himmler first had to prove he could master operational command. – TBJG, II/15, pp. 165 (20.1.45), 181 (22.1.45), 195 (23.1.45).
113. DZW, 6, p. 513.
114. IWM, FO645/155, interrogations of Karl Dönitz, 30.9.45, p. 5; 2.10.45, p. 2 (in English).
115. IfZ, ZS 1810, Bd. II, fo. 54, Dönitz interview with Barry Pree, 18.11.74.
116. Quoted Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 20; also Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, p. 45.
117. Goebbels thought Göring, when he spoke with him on 27 January, ‘almost defeatist’ and depressed, hoping even now that Hitler would try to find a political solution. – TBJG, 15/II, p. 250 (28.1.45)
118. DZW, 6, p. 572.
119. DRZW, 9/1 (Heinemann), p. 884.
120. DRZW, 9/1 (Heinemann), p. 882.
121. DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), p. 559.
122. DZW, 6, pp. 575, 591.
123. David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, p. 131.
124. Quoted DZW, 6, p. 513.
125. DZW, 6, pp. 513–14.
CHAPTER 6. TERROR COMES HOME
1. See in general, for a similar interpretation, Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2001.
2. For the malevolent depiction of Jews, which showed no diminution as Jews were deported from Germany, see Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, Cambridge, Mass., 2006, and Herf’s contribution, ‘ “Der Krieg und die Juden”: Nationalsozialistische Propaganda im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in DRZW, 9/2, pp. 159ff.
3. BAB, NS19/2454, fos. 1–3v: SS-Kriegsberichter-Abteilung, SS-Standarte ‘Kurt Eggers’, 26–30.1.45.
4. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht. Dokumente, ed. Gerhard Förster and Richard Lakowski, Berlin, 1975, p. 144 (5.2.45).
5. NAL, WO219/4713, SHAEF reports, 15.2.45, 20.2.45. The threat of ‘family liability’ (Sippenhaft) against soldiers judged to be failing in their duty had been issued on numerous occasions by Wehrmacht commanders as a deterrent. It was indeed carried out in some cases, though these were exceptions rather than the rule. See Robert Loeffel, ‘Soldiers and Terror: Re-evaluating the Complicity of the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany’, German History, 27 (2009), pp. 514–30.
6. Account (in English) of a prisoner of war, captured in the west, who had returned from the eastern front: LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 273, pt. II, p. 7 (3.3.45).
7. BAB, NS6/135, fos. 44, 118–21, Gauleitung Mageburg-Anhalt, report of 16.2.45; report of Landratsamt in Mähr.-Schönberg, 17.2.45.
8. BAB, NS6/135, fo. 11, Auszug aus einem Bericht des Pg. Waldmann, Inspektion-Mitte, 7.3.45 (referring to impressions gathered in early February).
9. BAB, NS19/3705, fos. 6–13, ‘Beobachtungen im Heimatkriegsgebiet’, 22.2.45 and covering letter of Bormann to Himmler, 1.3.45.
10. BAB, NS19/2068, fos. 6–6v, 20–20v, ‘Meldungen aus dem Ostraum’, Müllrose, 16.2.45, Mark Brandenburg, 21.2.45. Reports of widespread looting in the Oder area as an indication of demoralization also in DZW, 6, p. 514. According to Goebbels’ aide, Wilfred von Oven, writing in mid-February, ‘the morale of the German soldiers on the eastern front is becoming worse by the day’. – Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Tübingen, 1974, p. 578 (11.2.45).
11. BAB, R55/601, fo. 284, Tätigkeitsbericht der RPÄ, 21.2.45.
12. Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, pp. 236–7 (7.2.45).
13. Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 251 (23.2.45).
14. BHStA, MA 106695, report of RPvOB, 9.2.45. And see further examples in Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, pp. 819–20, and Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, pp. 546ff.
15. BAB, R55/620, fos. 129–131v, SD report to State Secretary Dr Naumann, Propaganda Ministry, ‘Situation in Wien’, 1.3.45. The popular mood in Vienna had been especially poor, according to a report the previous September, when it was claimed that there was widespread defeatism, making the population open to Communist agitation. – BAB, NS6/166, fos. 23–7, Kaltenbrunner to Bormann, 14.9.44. And see Ludwig Jedlicka, ‘Ein unbekannter Bericht Kaltenbrunners über die Lage in Österreich im September 1944’, in Ludwig Jedlicka, Der 20. Juli 1944, Vienna, 1985, pp. 82–6; and Timothy Kirk, Nazism and the Working Class in Austria, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 130–32.
16. StAM, LRA 29656, fo. 573, SD-Außenstelle Berchtesgaden, 7.3.45.
17. NAL, WO219/1587, SHAEF summary of intelligence reports from informants, 20–25.2.45.
18. Goebbels noted that ‘the fiasco of the East Prussian treks is mainly put down to the Party, and the Party leadership in East Prussia is thoroughly lambasted’. – TBJG, II/15, p. 374 (13.2.45).
19. BAB, NS19/3833, fo. 1, Gottlob Berger to SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Brandt, 18.2.45.
20. BAB, NS6/135, fo. 44, report from Gauleitung Magdeburg-Anhalt, 16.2.45.
21. StAM, NSDAP 35, unfoliated, Gauorganisationsleiter München-Oberbayern to Kreisleiter, etc., 21.2.45. At the beginning of January, the Gauleiter had sharply criticized the wearing of ‘fantasy uniforms’ and ‘costuming’ as Party officials created their own colour or cut of uniform. – StAM, NSDAP 52, unfoliated, Gauorganisationsleiter München-Oberbayern to Gauamtsleiter and Kreisleiter, 3.1.45.
22. See Henke, p. 829.
23. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, London, 2008, pp. 528–9. Frank was eventually arrested by American troops on 4 May, tried at Nuremberg, and hanged for his part in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
24. IfZ, NO-3501, report of SS-Staf. Hübner, 16.3.45; National Archives, Washington, NND 871063, arrest and interrogation reports on Greiser, 17.5.45, 1.6.45; Jürgen Thorwald, Es begann an der Weichsel: Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, pb. edn., Munich, 1995 (1st edn., 1949), pp. 69–79; Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland, Oxford, 2010, pp. 298–304.
25. TBJG, II/15, pp. 223 (25.1.45), 231–2 (26.1.45), 357 (11.2.45); von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 551 (23.1.45)
26. BAB, R55/622, fos. 181–2, survey of letters sent to the RPÄ. And see BAB, NS6/135, fos. 30–32, report of 20.2.45 from Lieutenant Klein, NS-Führungsstab OKH Potsdam, on negative impressions of Party members, notably an SS-Obersturmführer, during treks from the Wartheland between 19 and 25 January. Remarkably, as late as 20 February, a month after he had fled, Greiser submitted a final report, from the security of Karlsbad, to Himmler and Bormann on the setting up and deployment of the Volkssturm in the Warthegau. – BAB, R43II/692b, fos. 109–24 (20–21.2.45).
27. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 30–30v, PK Rundschreiben 65/45, 12.2.45. Only a few days later the Party Chancellery received another dismal report of the failings of the authorities in the Warthegau in January. – BAB, NS6/135, fos. 30–32, report by Lieutenant Horst Klein, NS-Führungsstab OKH Potsdam, with an attached recommendation for Pg. Willi Ruder for the Party, in order to restore confidence in it, to take drastic action against all leading Party members seen to have failed in their duties.
28. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 572 (7.2.45).
29. IfZ, Fa 91/4, fos. 1075–8, GBV an die Obersten Reichsbehörden, 1.2.45; 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, p. 152.
30. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 152–4.
31. e.g. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 15, PK Rundschreiben 43/45, 30.1.45; fo. 49, PK Rundschreiben 86/45, 17.2.45; fo. 106, Anordnung 23/45, 21.1.45.
32. BAB, NS6/354, fo. 134, PK Anordnung 48/45g, 1.2.45.
33. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 121–2, PK Anordnung 98/45, 23.2.45.
34. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 65–66v, PK Rundschreiben 113/45, ‘25. Jahrestag der Verkündung des Parteiprogramms’, 24.2.45.
35. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 157–8, PK Bekanntgabe 28/45, 26.1.45 and Anlage.
36. One of these, Feldjägerkommando II, based behind the lines of Army Group Centre, reported picking up 136,000 soldiers in February, leading to almost 200 facing trial and 46 death sentences. It regarded the ratio of those arrested to the number of troops fighting as unexceptional, given the military situation. – DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 638.
37. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen 1942–1945, pb. edn., Munich, 1981, p. 228 (25.1.45).
38. IfZ, Fa-91/5, fo. 1239, Aufruf Himmlers, 31.1.45; BAB, R55/610, fos. 161ff., RPÄ Danzig to State Secretary Dr Naumann, Propaganda Ministry, 31.1.45, attaching Himmler’s proclamation.
39. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 60–61v, PK Rundschreiben 59/45g, ‘Erfassung von versprengten Wehrmachtangehörigen’, 6.2.45, and attached Anlage reproducing OKW order of 2.2.45. A month later, on 5 March, Field-Marshal Keitel passed on Hitler’s order that all financial support for the families of prisoners entering captivity without being wounded or having demonstrably fought to the last was to be halted. – Printed in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 163.
40. Andreas Kunz, ‘Die Wehrmacht in der Agonie der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944/45: Eine Gedankenskizze’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, p. 103 n. 26.
41. BAB, NS19/3705, fos. 1–5, Bormann to Himmler, ‘Vorbereitungen für die bevorstehende Feindoffensive im Westen’, and attached Rundschreiben to the western Gauleiter, 8.2.45.
42. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 135–6, PK Anordnung 67/45g, 13.2.45.
43. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 81–4, PK Rundschreiben 92/45g, Rs., 20.2.45.
44. StAM, NSDAP 35, Gauleitung München-Oberbayern, Rundschreiben Nr. 5, 22.2.45.
45. BAB, NS19/2721, fo. 4–4v, Oberbefehlshaber der Heeresgruppe Weichsel, 12.2.45.
46. TBJG, II/15, p. 459 (9.3.45). Bodies of uniformed German soldiers hanging from a bridge across the Oder near Frankurt in mid-February were said to have led to thousands of ‘stragglers’ reporting for further frontline service. – Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 246 (16.2.45).
47. BAB, NS6/756, fos. 2–6, Bormann, ‘Verstärkung der kämpfenden Truppe’, 28.2.45.
48. Norbert Haase, ‘Justizterror in der Wehrmacht’, in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jörg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Göttingen, 2006, pp. 84–5, reckons that half a million German soldiers might have been sentenced by military courts over the duration of the war, implying, therefore, that the numbers down to the end of 1944 doubled in the last four months. There were eighteen times as many death sentences as in the period from June 1941 to November 1944. Fritz Wullner, NS-Militärjustiz und das Elend der Geschichtsschreibung, Baden-Baden, 1991, p. 461, estimates a figure of around 300,000 deserters down to the end of 1944. For the organization of the terror apparatus within the Wehrmacht, including the extended use of the Geheime Feldpolizei, see John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, pp. 139–65.
49. Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Fluchten aus dem Konsens zum Durchhalten: Ergebnisse, Probleme und Perspektiven der Erforschung soldatischer Verweigerungsformen in der Wehrmacht 1939–1945’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, pp. 594–6, 599; Otto Hennicke, ‘Auszüge aus der Wehrmachtkriminalstatistik’, Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte, 5 (1966), pp. 442–50; Manfred Messerschmidt and Fritz Wullner, Die Wehrmachtjustiz, Baden-Baden, 1987, p. 91; Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, p. 63. The figure of 35,000 underestimates the scale of desertion. One estimate places the figure at more than 100,000. – Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Deserteure im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Wolfram Wette (ed.), Deserteure der Wehrmacht, Essen, 1995, p. 62. A further 35,000 were sentenced for other contraventions of military law (Ziemann, p. 604). On the procedures for carrying out the death penalty in the Wehrmacht, see Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945, Paderborn, 2005, pp. 393–400.
50. Messerschmidt, ‘Deserteure im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, p. 61; Haase, p. 85 and p. 100 n. 26; DRZW, 9/1 (Echternkamp), p. 50. While the western liberal democracies executed few soldiers, Germany was not alone among authoritarian regimes in its draconian punishment. Japan executed 22,253 soldiers; estimates (though detailed research remains to be carried out) suggest that as many as 150,000 may have been executed in the Soviet Union. – Ulrich Baumann and Markus Koch (eds.), ‘Was damals Recht war…’: Soldaten und Zivilisten vor Gerichten der Wehrmacht, Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008, p. 184.
51. e.g. BAB, R55/620, fo. 132, SD report to State Secretary Dr Naumann, Propaganda Ministry, ‘Stimmung und Haltung der Arbeiterschaft’ (reported opinion among workers in Mecklenburg), 1.3.45.
52. BA/MA, N60/17, NL Schörner, letter from Schörner to Oberst i.G. Thilo von Trotha, Generalstab des Heeres, Chef Operations-Abt., 22.2.45. Partially quoted also in Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 113.
53. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 163–165v, PK Bekanntgabe 149/45g, 19.3.45, attaching a copy of Schörner’s four-page message dated 27.2.45.
54. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Colonel Curt Pollex, Auszüge aus Briefen, fo. 35, 18.2.45.
55. BAB, R55/610, fos. 156–9, correspondence related to propaganda in the Ruhr, 19.12.44–12.1.45.
56. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 584 (22.2.45).
57. See Bormann’s attempt to check the spread of rumour, in BAB, NS6/353, fos. 16–17, ‘Bekämpfung beunruhigender Gerüchte über die Frontlage’, 1.2.45.
58. IfZ, Fa 91/2, fos. 278–81, ‘Vorlage: Sondereinsatz Politischer Leiter an Brennpunkten der Ost- und Westfront’, 17.2.45.
59. BAB, R55/608, fos. 35–6, Chef des Propagandastabes, Mundpropagandaanweisung, betr. Kriegslage, 17.2.45.
60. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8, Reich Minister of the Interior to Reich Defence Commissars, etc., 28.2.45.
61. BA/MA, RH19/IV/228, fo. 10, Hinweis für die NS-Führung der Truppe, 4.2.45.
62. DZW, 6, p. 627, citing a letter to Bormann of Joachim Albrecht Eggeling, Gauleiter of Halle-Merseburg, 10.2.45.
63. BAB, NS6/137, fos. 40–41, Flugblatt (im Entwurf): ‘An die Verteidiger von Berlin’, 24.2.45.
64. Quoted in Steinert, p. 559.
65. TBJG, II/15, p. 352 (10.2.45).
66. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 137–138v, PK Anordnung 79/45g, Standgerichte, 15.2.45, and ‘Verordnung über die Errichtung von Standgerichten vom 15. February 1945’, Reichsgesetzblatt, Teil 1, Nr. 6, 20.2.45, p. 30; printed in Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 161–2.
67. BAB, NS19/3705, fo. 4, Vorbereitungen auf Feindoffensive im Westen, Fernschreiben from Bormann to the western Gauleiter, undated appendix to his letter to Himmler, 8.2.45.
68. Henke, p. 845.
69. Henke, p. 846.
70. Haase, p. 86.
71. ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, p. 483; also printed in Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 163–4. For the operation of the summary courts martial, see Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945, pp. 411–15; and also Jürgen Zarusky, ‘Von der Sondergerichtsbarkeit zum Endphasenterror: Loyalitätserzwingung und Rache am Widerstand in Zusammenbruch des NS-Regimes’, in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jörg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Göttingen, 2006, p. 114. The extension to the ‘flying courts martial’ is indicated in Bormann’s circular to the Gauleiter, NS6/354, fo. 88v, RS 123/45g, 9.3.45.
72. See Henke, pp. 846ff., for examples of their practice.
73. Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, Bonn, 1985, pp. 270–71, p. 430 n. 3.
74. BAB, R43II/650c, fos. 119–25, Kampfkommandant Reichskanzlei, Führerbefehl v. 4.2.45 über ‘Verteidigung der Reichskanzlei bei inneren Unruhen’, 4–10.2.45.
75. NAL, WO208/5622, fo. 122A, 29.8.44. The general in question, Dietrich von Choltitz, had been the Wehrmacht commander in Paris at the time of the city’s liberation in August 1944.
76. Jill Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis, London, 2006, p. 285.
77. Von Kardorff, pp. 208–9 (30.11.44).
78. Herbert, pp. 327–35; Andreas Heusler, ‘Die Eskalation des Terrors: Gewalt gegen ausländische Zwangsarbeiter in der Endphase des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, pp. 172–82.
79. Quoted Gerhard Paul and Alexander Primavesi, ‘Die Verfolgung der “Fremdvölkischen”: Das Beispiel der Staatspolizeistelle Dortmund’, in Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.), Die Gestapo: Mythos und Realität, Darmstadt, 1995, p. 398.
80. Gerhard Paul, ‘ “Diese Erschießungen haben mich innerlich gar nicht mehr berührt”: Die Kriegsendphasenverbrechen der Gestapo 1944/45’, in Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.), Die Gestapo im Zweiten Weltkrieg: ‘Heimatfront’ und besetztes Europa, Darmstadt, 2000, p. 548.
81. Paul and Primavesi, p. 399; also Paul, p. 549; Bessel, p. 55.
82. Cited Paul, p. 550.
83. For the special circumstances in Cologne, see Bernd-A. Rusinek, ‘ “Wat denkste, wat mir objerümt han”: Massenmord und Spurenbeseitigung am Beispiel der Staatspolizeistelle Köln 1944/45’, in Paul and Mallmann, Die Gestapo: Mythos und Realität, pp. 402–16.
84. Paul, pp. 553–7; Herbert, pp. 336–7; Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 332–3.
85. IWM, F.2, AL 1753, statistics from SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, totalling 511,537 men and 202,674 women, 714,211 in all on 15 January 1945, guarded by 37,674 men and 3,508 women; Martin Broszat, ‘Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager 1933–1945’, in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau, 1965, vol. 2, p. 159; Wachsmann, p. 395; Daniel Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche – Entscheidungsträger, Mörder und Opfer’, in Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 2, Göttingen, 1998, p. 1067; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, Sphere Books edn., London, 1971, pp. 501, 639 n. 30; Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford, 2010, p. 418.
86. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, London, 1956, p. 277 (12.3.45), and also p. 275 (2.3.45); and DZW, 6, p. 643 (where Himmler’s reference to a Führer order is dated 5.3.45). Himmler saw Kersten at the sanitorium in Hohenlychen every morning from 4 to 13 March (BAB, NS19/1793, Termine des Reichsführer-SS, fos. 5–15). No specific written order from Hitler for the murder of camp prisoners has come to light, though a general – almost certainly verbal – directive that prisoners were not to be left behind on approach of the enemy seems to have been known to high-ranking SS officers, and may well have been used as an implicit order to kill those in their charge if there was a danger of the camp falling into enemy hands. In practice, however, there were only a few cases of the murder of all prisoners before evacuation. The actual decisions over life and death for the prisoners were taken lower down the leadership ladder, at the local level. – Daniel Blatman, ‘Rückzug, Evakuierung und Todesmärsche 1944–1945’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 1, Munich, 2005, pp. 300–301.
87. Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte, Hamburg, 1999, pp. 272–3.
88. No explicit written order to this effect has been found (other than for prisons in the General Government of Poland). – Paul, pp. 550–51 and nn. 31–3; Gabriele Hammermann, ‘Die Todesmärsche aus den Konzentrationslagern 1944/45’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, pp. 122–3, 125; Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, pp. 1068–70, 1086; Eberhard Kolb, ‘Die letzte Kriegsphase: Kommentierende Bemerkungen’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, p. 1131; DZW, 6, p. 643.
89. Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss, ed. Martin Broszat, pb. edn., Munich, 1963, p. 145 n. 1; Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, London, 2007, p. 648; Daniel Blatman, ‘The Death Marches, January–May 1945: Who Was Responsible for What?’, YVS, 28 (2000), pp. 168–71, 198–9.
90. Rudolf Höss gives a vivid impression of the chaos in Kommandant in Auschwitz, pp. 145–7.
91. Walter Schellenberg, Schellenberg, pb. edn., London, 1965, pp. 167–70; Peter R. Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich, Princeton, 1984, pp. 228–30; Friedländer, pp. 621–5, 647–8; Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 728–30; Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, London, 1972, pp. 524–5; Hammermann, p. 126; Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, New Haven, 1994, pp. 239–51; Simone Erpel, Zwischen Vernichtung und Befreiung: Das Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück in der letzten Kriegsphase, Berlin, 2005, pp. 97–154 (where the number of camp prisoners saved by such action by the end of the war, most notably through the Swedish initiative, is given as 15,345, of whom 7,795 were Scandinavians – a proportion which, however, as she points out, underrates the number of non-Scandinavians rescued). Intelligence reports to the western Allies claimed that the negotiations about the liberation of a number of Jews had caused a ‘sensation’ in Berlin, and had been condemned by leading Nazis, including Julius Streicher. – NAL, WO219/1587, fo. 734, SHAEF report, 25.2.45.
92. Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, pp. 1069–72; and Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944-printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 96–100, 127–31.
93. Orth, p. 279.
94. Wachsmann, pp. 324–5.
95. Wachsmann, pp. 325–33.
96. Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, London, 2005, p. 301, based upon figures supplied by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
97. Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History, London, 2005, p. 124.
98. Andrzej Strzelecki, ‘Der Todesmarsch der Häftlinge aus dem KL Auschwitz’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, p. 1103; Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager-Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp. 966–7.
99. Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 146 (where Höss also used the term ‘columns of misery’).
100. ITS, Tote 80, fo. 00030a, Häftlingstransport von Birkenau nach Gablonz, 2.4.46. See also Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 146; and Czech, p. 968.
101. Monika Richarz, Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte 1918–1945, Stuttgart, 1982, pp. 443–6 (account by Paul Heller based on diary jottings kept at the time).
102. Richarz, pp. 448, 450–51.
103. Strzelecki, p. 1102; Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, pp. 112, 140.
104. Richarz, p. 452.
105. ITS, Tote 80, fo. 60282a, Marches de la Mort, Groß-Rosen – Leitmeritz, 4.4.46.
106. Isabell Sprenger, ‘Das KZ Groß-Rosen in der letzten Kriegsphase’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, pp. 1113–24. On one march alone (p. 1122), 500 out of 3,500 died.
107. Orth, pp. 282–7; Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, pp. 126–32; Blatman, ‘The Death Marches’, pp. 174–9. See also Olga M. Pickholz-Barnitsch, ‘The Evacuation of the Stutthof Concentration Camp’, Yad Vashem Bulletin, 16 (1965), pp. 37–9. According to the SS’s figures, the prisoners in Stutthof had numbered 18,436 men and 30,199 women (48,635 persons in all) on 15 January 1945. – IWM, F.2, AL 1753, SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-hauptamt List of Concentration Camps with numbers of guards and prisoners 1. & 15.1.45. When the evacuations began, this number had fallen to 46,331 prisoners. – Blatman, ‘The Death Marches’, p. 175, based (cf. n. 43) on the last roll-call of 24.1.45.
108. Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, p. 140.
109. Hammermann, pp. 140–41; Sprenger, pp. 120–21; Katharina Elliger, Und tief in der Seele das Ferne: Die Geschichte einer Vertreibung aus Schlesien, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2006, pp. 71–4 (where she mentions seeing as a girl the column of misery of Auschwitz prisoners passing through her village, near Ratibor in Silesia, and throwing bread down before hastily closing her window as the guard reacted negatively).
110. See Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, London, 1995, pp. 112–33, for an assessment of Harris and Allied bombing strategy, concluding (p. 133) that ‘the air offensive was one of the decisive elements in Allied victory’. The policy of ‘area bombing’ of cities had already been decided – following a change in tactics suggested by Churchill’s scientific adviser Lord Cherwell (earlier known as Professor Frederick Lindemann) on account of the failure of precision bombing – just before Harris took over Bomber Command on 22 February 1942. Harris, who had an excellent rapport with Churchill at this time, was the inspirational driving force behind the implementation of the policy, dedicating himself ‘to the vital necessity of striking at Germany in her homeland, where it would really hurt’. – Henry Probert, Bomber Harris: His Life and Times, London, 2001, pp. 122, 126–46; Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45, London, 2009, pp. 246–9.
111. Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945, pb. edn., London, 2005, p. 216.
112. Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 197–8, 280–81, 414.
113. Taylor, p. 427.
114. Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945, pb. edn., Berlin, 2004, pp. 108–9, 312–16; Taylor, p. 428.
115. Rüdiger Overmans, ‘Die Toten des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Deutschland’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz, Munich and Zurich, 1989, p. 860; Friedrich, p. 63; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 868; United States Strategic Bombing Survey, New York and London, 1976, vol. 4, pp. 7–10.
116. Müller and Ueberschär, p. 160 (report from 1955 by Theodor Ellgering, who in 1945 was Geschäftsführer des Interministeriellen Luftkriegsausschusses der Reichsregierung in Berlin, on his impressions on entering Dresden immediately after the raid to organize the grim salvage operations).
117. Based on Taylor, chs. 21–4. See also Götz Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg, Weimar, Cologne and Vienna, 1994, esp. chs. 9–12; Friedrich, pp. 358–63; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), pp. 777–98; Olaf Groehler, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland, Berlin, 1990, pp. 400–12; Rolf-Dieter Müller, Der Bombenkrieg 1939–1945, Berlin, 2004, pp. 212–20; Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (eds.), Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, London, 2006, esp. pp. 18–77 (contributions by Sebastian Cox and Sönke Neitzel) and pp. 123–42 (Richard Overy’s discussion of the post-war debate); and Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (London, 2004), pp. 382–7.
118. Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol. 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 661, 669, 675–6 (13–14.2.45, 19.2.45). Discrimination against Jews even went so far as to refuse them entry to ‘aryan’ shelters during air raids. – Klemperer, p. 644 (20.1.45).
119. This paragraph is based on Taylor, pp. 397–402, 508. An eighteen-year-old soldier, shocked to the core by what he saw in Dresden, noted in his diary that there was talk of over 200,000 dead. – Klaus Granzow, Tagebuch eines Hitlerjungen 1943–1945, Bremen, 1965, p. 159 (18.2.45).The propaganda claims of up to a quarter of a million victims are judiciously assessed and dismissed by Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Der Feuersturm und die unbekannten Toten von Dresden’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 59 (2008), pp. 169–75. An evaluation of all available evidence, and of the wildly differing figures given for the numbers of dead (with some claims of half a million dead), by a specially nominated Historians’ Commission which reported in 2010, arrived at the figure of 25,000 – the estimate already made in the official investigations of 1945–6. – www.dresden.de/de/02/035/01/2010/03/pm_060.php, ‘Pressemitteilungen. 17.03.2010. Dresdner Historikerkommission veröffentlicht ihren Abschlussbericht’.
120. Taylor, p. 463.
121. Friedrich, pp. 331–3, 533–6.
122. Friedrich, pp. 312–16.
123. Taylor, pp. 413–14; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 798.
124. Taylor, ch. 15.
125. Taylor, pp. 412–24, 506. Goebbels’ aide, Wilfred von Oven, estimated in his diary entry for 15 February a total of 200,000–300,000 victims, and went on to write of a historically unprecedented killing of ‘300,000 women, children and defenceless civilians within a few hours’. – Von Oven, Finale Furioso, pp. 580–82 (15.2.45).
126. Das Reich, 4.3.45, p. 3, with the headline: ‘The Death of Dresden. A Beacon of Resistance’. The bombing, the article claimed, was an attempt to compel capitulation through mass murder so that the ‘death sentence’ could be carried out on what was left. ‘Against this threat’, it concluded, ‘there is no other way out than through fighting resistance.’ See also Bergander, pp. 184–5; and Taylor, p. 425.
127. Klemperer, p. 676.
128. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, letters of DRK-Schwester Ursel C., 16.2.45, 20.2.45; O’Gefr. Rudolf L., 16.2.45, 18.2.45; O’Gefr. Ottmar M., 26.2.45. Only a single letter in Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst – Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, p. 152, mentions the bombing of Dresden, but then only to indicate worry about the population and relatives in the area. One letter that came into the hands of the British army, dated 20 February, though sent from Unna in Westphalia and with no direct reference to the attack on Dresden, did speak of bitterness and sense of impotence at the ‘terror-flights’ heading for Germany, but determination to fight on and conviction of victory. – LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 288 Pt. II, p. 8 (18.3.45). The Berlin population seems to have been understandably concerned about the raids on the capital but, to go from reports covering February 1945, no comments about Dresden were registered by the Wehrmacht agents gathering information on popular opinion in the city, though some general feeling was expressed (e.g. p. 252) that the war was almost over and it was pointless to continue. – Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 248–93. The Government Presidents of Bavarian provinces gave no indication, in their reports for March 1945, of reactions of the population, preoccupied with its own concerns, to the Dresden bombing.
129. BAB, R55/622, fo. 181, Briefübersicht Nr. 10, 9.3.45.
130. See von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 579 (12.2.45), for Goebbels’ fury at Ley’s public claim that holding the Red Army at the Oder had been ‘The German Miracle’, at a time when tens of thousands were fleeing in panic and trying desperately to reach the western banks of the Oder.
131. Cited in Taylor, p. 428; Erich Kästner, Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch, Berlin, 1961, pp. 55–6 (8.3.45); Jacob Kronika, Der Untergang Berlins, Flensburg, 1946, p. 70 (22.3.45). Goebbels, often frustrated by Ley’s outspoken statements, noted in his diary the outrage at the latter’s comments about Dresden. – TBJG, II/15, p. 457 (9.3.45). Ley’s article, ‘Without Baggage’ (‘Ohne Gepäck’) had appeared on 3 March in Der Angriff, 53, p. 2. In a broadcast from the encircled Breslau two days later, Gauleiter Hanke picked up the theme, declaring that what had once been seen as essential cultural property (unerläßliche Kulturgüter) could be now viewed on closer inspection as ‘the thoroughly dispensable matter of civilization’ (durchaus entbehrliches Zivilisationsgut). – Kästner, p. 47 (5.3.45).
132. See David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, London, 1996, p. 503.
133. BAB, NS19/1022, fo. 5, Brandt to Berlepsch, 3.1.45. The Lebensleuchter appears to have taken the form of a large candle in an elaborate Nordic-styled holder. According to a file notice, Himmler agreed a few days later to have all children of teachers at ‘NAPOLAs’ (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten) – Party schools (by this time under SS control) – presented with the ‘light of life’. SS-Obergruppenführer Heißmeyer, head of the NAPOLAs, was to give a list of the children to Himmler’s adjutant, SS-Standartenführer Dr Rudolf Brandt. The number of candleholders available was, however, Brandt warned, currently very small and they were intended only for a third or fourth war child, so that he did not know whether Himmler’s promise could be fulfilled. Heißmeyer said he would acquire the requisite details under a pretext and leave it to Brandt to decide to what extent the distribution of the candleholders could be carried out. The file notice on this absurd issue appears to have been consulted on the first day of February, March and April 1945, presumably with little or no action to follow. – BAB, NS19/424, fo. 2, Vermerk, 9.1.45.
134. BAB, NS19/1318, fo. 3, Brandt to Berger, 10.1.45.
135. BAB, NS19/2903, fo. 3, Brandt to Justizwachtmeister Ernst Krapoth, Oberhausen, 1.3.45.
136. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 435.
137. H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, pb. edn., London, 1962, pp. 119–20, 134, 140.
138. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/368 (2), unfoliated, Krosigk: Memorandum zur heutigen Finanz- und Währungslage, 10.1.45; IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I.14/368 (1), unfoliated, distributed to Bormann, Goebbels, Göring, Economics Minister Walther Funk, and Price Commissar Hans Fischböck (8.2.45). In post-war interrogations, Krosigk reaffirmed the sharp deterioration in Reich finances after July 1944 on account of the worsening military situation. People were not saving; money had to be printed. There was a huge and growing tax deficit by early 1945. – Ardsley Microfilms, Irving Collection, D1/Göring/1, Krosigk interrogation, 4.6.45; according to Funk (interrogation 4.6.45), holdings in gold had dropped from 900 million Marks in 1940 to 400 million by 1944.
139. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/368 (1), Krosigk to Speer, 26.2.45 (also in M.I. 14/285 (no. 26), Personal Papers of Albert Speer); Krosigk to Bormann, 26.2.45, 27.2.45; Krosigk to Funk, 28.2.45; Krosigk to Dr Gerhard Klopfer, head of the legal section of the Party Chancellery and a key right-hand man of Bormann, 27.2.45. See also Speer’s letter to Krosigk on the financial situation, BAB, R3/1624, fo. 5, 14.2.45, and Speer, p. 435. Krosigk had sought a meeting with Speer on 13 February. – IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369, unfoliated, Krosigk to Speer, 13.2.45.
140. TBJG, II/15, p. 613 (28.3.45).
141. The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, p. 170 (4.2.45).
142. The Bormann Letters, p. 173 (5.2.45).
143. The Bormann Letters, p. 177 (7.2.45).
144. The Bormann Letters, p. 186 (19.2.45). When she fled to the Tyrol in late April, accompanied by her nine children, Gerda Bormann took both her own and her husband’s letters with her. She died of cancer in March 1946, but her papers, including the letters, were saved by sympathizers. See The Bormann Letters, pp. viii, xxii–xxiii.
145. TBJG, II/15, pp. 328–9 (7.2.45), 334–5 (8.2.45), 357, 359 (11.2.45). Goebbels admitted that he needed a new directive from Hitler if he were to overcome obstacles to meet the target of 768,000 men needed by the following August and force the armaments industry to give up a monthly quota of 80,000 men, which they were resisting. His frustrations were recorded by von Oven, Finale Furioso, pp. 575–7 (8.2.45).
146. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 587 (25.2.45).
147. TBJG, II/15, p. 364 (12.2.45).
148. Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels – the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, pp. 183–4 (18–20.2.45); Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels, Munich and Zurich, 1990, pp. 581–2. The suggestion appealed to Hitler, and was dropped only when it was pointed out by his military advisers that such an appalling breach of the Geneva Convention could backfire drastically, since the Allies might use their superiority in the air to start using gas and chemical warfare and, anyway, held more prisoners than those in German hands. – IMT, vol. 35, pp. 181–6, doc. 606-D. Hitler had already told Goebbels before the attack on Dresden that, should the British go over to gas warfare he would have 250,000 British and American prisoners of war shot. – TBJG, II/15, p. 368 (12.2.45).
149. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 571 (7.2.45).
150. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, pp. 587–8 (25.2.45); and see also p. 577 (9.2.45). Goebbels suggested in mid-February providing an opening to the British, but Hitler thought – as he invariably did – that the right point for this had not been reached. In any case, Goebbels had just told Hitler that it was crucial to hold the west; that was more important than losing territory in the east. – TBJG, II/15, pp. 367–8 (12.2.45).
151. TBJG, II/15, pp. 337 (8.2.45), 366 (12.2.45).
152. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 582 (16.2.45).
153. TBJG, II/15, pp. 379–81 (13.2.45).
154. TBJG, II/15, p. 383 (28.2.45).
155. BAB, R3/1535, fos. 18–28, Zur Rüstungslage Februar–März 1945, with statistical appendices, fos. 29–31, quotation fo. 28, 30.1.45.
156. TBJG, II/15, p. 290 (1.2.45).
157. Speer, p. 432.
158. Speer, p. 428, refers to Hitler’s clash with an angry Guderian over withdrawal of troops from the Courland, which the latter had pressed for, as a possible sign of a drop in authority. The fact was, however, that Hitler’s word was final. The troops cut off in the Courland remained there.
159. TBJG, II/15, pp. 311 (5.2.45), 338 (8.2.45).
160. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 588 (25.2.45). Forster claimed to have told Hitler directly to seek negotiations with the western powers. However, Hitler’s secretary Christa Schroeder, Er war mein Chef: Aus dem Nachlaß der Sekretärin von Adolf Hitler, Munich and Vienna, 1985, p. 74, recalled what was, presumably, a subsequent meeting from which Forster, who had been determined to tell Hitler in most forthright terms of the despairing situation in Danzig, came away revitalized and certain that Hitler could save Danzig.
161. Karl Wahl, ‘… es ist das deutsche Herz’: Erlebnisse und Erkenntnisse eines ehemaligen Gauleiters, Augsburg, 1954, p. 385. Almost twenty years later Wahl produced a very similar, but if anything even more apologetic, version of the meeting, in Karl Wahl, Patrioten oder Verbrecher, Heusenstamm bei Offenbach am Main, 1973, pp. 155–61.
162. Wahl, ‘… es ist das deutsche Herz’, p. 386.
163. Rudolf Jordan, Erlebt und erlitten: Weg eines Gauleiters von München bis Moskau, Leoni am Starnberger See, 1971, pp. 251–8 (quotations, pp. 257–8).
164. TBJG, II/15, p. 323 (6.2.45); Speer, p. 431.
165. TBJG, II/15, p. 377 for Hitler’s recognition that Yalta meant there would be no break in the coalition; and p. 381 for the communiqué, and Goebbels’ reaction to it. A British intelligence report on 22 February suggested that ‘the very hopelessness of Germany’s fate after the war may be one of the reasons for the continuance of a struggle which daily becomes more desperate’. – Hastings, Armageddon, p. 417. For the negotiations at Yalta, see DRZW, 10/2 (Loth), pp. 289–300. The outcome of the Conference was not immediately made known to the German public, though detailed information – gleaned in the main from illicit listening to foreign broadcasts – soon seeped out. – Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 251–2 (23.2.45).
166. Speer, p. 433.
CHAPTER 7. CRUMBLING FOUNDATIONS
1. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, fo. 151, 7.4.45.
2. On all fronts, the Germans could muster in early 1945 almost 320 weakened divisions, including those tied up in peripheral areas such as Norway and the Courland. East and west, their enemies faced them with around 630 full-strength divisions, nearly 500 of them on the eastern front alone. – http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html.
3. The film was awarded a number of prizes. It appears, however, to have run for only a few days in Berlin, and to have been shown mainly for Party members and for the Wehrmacht. See David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945, Oxford, 1983, p. 234. Hitler, according to Goebbels, was delighted at the impact of the film, which was said to have made a huge impression on the General Staff. – TBJG, II/15, p. 370 (12.2.45).
4. BAB, NS6/134, fo. 14, Kurzlage des Ob.d.M., 17.3.45. Himmler requested, though with little effect, assistance from Karl Kaufmann, Gauleiter of Hamburg and Reich Commissar for Shipping, on 8 March in providing ships to transport refugees from Danzig. – BAB, NS19/2606, fos. 60–61, Himmler’s request – passing on one to him from Gauleiter Albert Forster – and reply from Kaufmann, 8.3.45.
5. Goebbels wanted to block mention of the evacuation in the Wehrmacht report. ‘On account of the strong psychological effects of the Kolberg film, we can do without that at present,’ he noted. – TBJG, II/15, p. 542 (20.3.45).
6. BA/MA, N647/13, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 12, fo. 13.
7. The above course of military events draws upon: DZW, 6, pp. 517–61; DRZW, 10/1(Zimmermann), pp. 409–43, (Lakowski), pp. 550–608; DRZW, 8 (Ungváry), pp. 919–43; Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 418–35; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, pp. 411–29; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 280–306; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, pp. 443–7, 508–26; Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, pp. 343–64, 377–90; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 798–802, 810–14; Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007, ch. 8; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, ch. 12.
8. Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, p. 378.
9. BAB, NS6/137, fo. 6, Vermerk from Willi Ruder, head of the Arbeitsstab für NS-Führungsfragen in the Party Chancellery, 5.3.45; fo. 29, draft circular for distribution to the Gauleiter, 5.3.45.
10. The V1 cruise-missile and V2 rocket had long since failed to live up to expectations. Shortages of fuel and pilots greatly restricted the deployment of the Me262 fighter, jet-propelled and with higher speeds than anything the Allies could match. Only 200 or so were used, with heavy losses, and prototype new rockets and planes were barely in production by the time hostilities ceased. – DRZW, 10/1(Boog), pp. 828–9. Only a handful of the fleet of new, technologically advanced U-boats, which Dönitz persuaded Hitler would prove so crucial, were available by the end of the war. – Howard D. Grier, Hitler, Dönitz and the Baltic Sea: The Third Reich’s Last Hope, 1944–1945, Annapolis, Md., 2007, pp. xviii–xix, 170–79.
11. BAB, NS6/137, fos. 19–21, draft of propaganda directives for the Wehrmacht, 9.3.45.
12. BAB, NS6/136, fos. 1, 16–19, Parteirednereinsatz, 6.3.45,13.3.45, 24.3.45.
13. BAB, NS6/137, fos. 9–14, Vorlage, probably for Pg. Gerhard Klopfer, from SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr Beyer, of SD office III/V, with attached partial copy of the sketch of a lecture by SS-Obersturmbannführer von Kilpinski and covering letter of 19.3.45 from Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the SD, 20.3.45.
14. BAB, R55/610, fos. 182–3, Westfalen-Süd, Merkpunkte zur Versammlungsaktion Februar/März 1945, 12.3.45.
15. Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, p. 310 (31.3.45).
16. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, fos. 123–7 (entries for 5, 7, 9, 12.3.45). Hitler did not lay the wreath in Berlin on the final ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’. Göring substituted for him.
17. BAB, R55/622, fo. 181, Briefübersicht Nr. 10, 9.3.45.
18. BAB, NS6/137, Der Reichspropagandaleiter der NSDAP an alle Gaupropagandaleiter, 5.3.45.
19. TBJG, II/15, p. 471 (11.3.45).
20. Guderian, p. 427.
21. BAB, NS6/169, fos. 115–21, Guderian to Bormann, 26.2.45; Bericht des Dienstleiters der Partei-Kanzlei, Pg. Mauer, undated. The characteristic demeaning of General Staff officers, part of the standard reportage of Party propagandists, is repeated, for example, in NS6/374, fo. 18, report to Dr Gerhard Klopfer, head of Abteilung III (Staatliche Angelegenheitern) in the Party Chancellery, by Oberleutnant Koller, part of the Sondereinsatz team, 16.3.45, and in NS6/140, fos. 44–5, Vorlage for Bormann, signed by Willi Ruder, 6.3.45, offering critical comments on General Staff officers attending an NSFO course in Egerndorf. Even Goebbels rejected the constant attempt to make Wehrmacht officers the scapegoats for the military defeats of the previous two years as a crass oversimplification, with harmful consequences for the authority of officers. – TBJG, II/15, p. 406 (3.3.45). The Party Chancellery itself thought the repeated talk about sabotage and failure of officers (which for long it had promoted) had to be halted if trust between the Party leadership and the Wehrmacht was to be improved. – NS6/137, fo. 27, Vorlage for Bormann, 7.3.45.
22. BAB, NS19/2068, fos. 57, 65, Meldungen aus dem Ostraum, 15.3.45 (includes reports from Danzig, Stettin and Küstrin); in addition, for Küstrin, NS6/135, fos. 190, 192–8, part of a long report for Borman from the Kreisleiter of Küstrin-Königsberg, 5.4.45.
23. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 100–101v, Bormann: Rundschreiben 156/45g, Plünderungen durch deutsche Soldaten in geräumten Gebieten, to Gauleiter and other Party functionaries, 24.3.45, attaching a copy of Keitel’s order of 8.3.45 threatening punishment by court martial for any soldier suspected of looting. See also NS6/135, fo. 83, Pg. Noack (of Abt. IIF of the Party Chancellery, Arbeitsstab für NS-Führungsfragen) to NS-Führungsstab der Wehrmacht, reporting complaints about plundering of property by soldiers, 14.3.45; and fo. 199, Vermerk für Pg. Stosch, re plundering, 19.3.45.
24. DZW, 6, pp. 549–50; Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005, p. 190, 9.3.45 (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007, pp. 141–2).
25. BAB, NS6/135, fos. 79, 97, Erfahrungs- und Stimmungsberichte über die Haltung von Wehrmacht und Bevölkerung, 23.3.45, 29.3.45.
26. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, O’Wm. Peter B., 9.3.45.
27. Henke, p. 806 and n. 132.
28. BAB, R55/601, fos. 295–7, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda reports, 21.3.45.
29. BAB, NS6/169, fos. 4–9, Bericht des Hauptgemeinschaftsleiters Twittenhoff über den Sondereinsatz der Partei-Kanzlei in Hessen-Nassau, for period 24–30.3.45. The consequence of providing a realistic description was the recommendation that Twittenhoff was not suitable for further work in the ‘Special Action’ of the Party Chancellery.
30. BAB, NS6/169, fo. 49, Vorlage an Reichsleiter Bormann, 19.3.45; fo. 51, Sprenger to Bormann, 14.3.45.
31. DZW, 6, pp. 550–51; 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht. Dokumente, ed. Gerhard Förster and Richard Lakowski, Berlin, 1975, pp. 212–14, Staff of Army Group G to Gauleiter Gustav Simon about signs of a hostile attitude towards German troops and flight, in drunken condition, of the Volkssturm at the attack of the Americans on Trier. For further examples of a negative stance of the civilian population towards the Wehrmacht – even one case, in Göttingen, when civilians were said to have fired on their own tanks – see John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, p. 75.
32. BAB, NS6/51, fos. 1–3, Letter from Hauptmann Heinz Thieme, Pzjäger Abt. 246, SD agent, Abt. Ostland, to Bormann, 15.3.45.
33. Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, p. 559; Neitzel, Abgehört, p. 190 (9.3.45) (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals, p. 141). See also Saul K. Padover, Psychologist in Germany: The Story of an American Intelligence Officer, London, 1946, pp. 219, 230, 270, for his experiences of defeatist attitudes and Germans welcoming the arrival of the Americans.
34. See John Zimmermann, ‘Die Kämpfe gegen die Westalliierten 1945 – ein Kampf bis zum Ende oder die Kreierung einer Legende?’ in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, pp. 130–31.
35. TBJG, II/15, p. 406 (3.3.45).
36. Katharina Elliger, Und tief in der Seele das Ferne: Die Geschichte einer Vertreibung aus Schlesien, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2006, p. 107.
37. Workers in Berlin were reported in March as saying that no punishment was severe enough for the cowardice of deserters. – Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 277 (3.3.45).
38. IfZ, Fa-91/2, fos. 330–31, Parteikanzlei, Vermerk für Pg. Walkenhorst, 10.3.45. For Hanke’s brutal rule in Breslau in the last months of the war, see Guido Knopp, Der Sturm: Kriegsende im Osten, pb. edn., Berlin, 2006, pp. 150–62.
39. DZW, 6, p. 548, for Rundstedt’s order. For Kesselring’s advocacy, after taking command in the west, of ruthlessness towards deserters and those seen to be failing in their duty, see Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, pp. 276, 279. Hitler’s order to establish the ‘flying court martial’ is printed in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, pp. 163–4; see also Neitzel, Abgehört, pp. 202–3, 540 n. 161 (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals, pp. 150–51). Hübner, a fanatic who had long been involved in attempts to instil Nazi ideology into the troops, was given unrestricted powers to impose the death penalty. – DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 580–82; Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945, Paderborn, 2005, p. 413. Flying courts martial had been in use by Army Group North since 3 February. – BAB, NS6/354, fo. 88, RS 123/45g, Maßnahmen zur Stärkung der Front durch Erfassung Versprengter (passing on to the Gauleiter an order of the Commander-in-Chief Army Group North, Colonel-General Lothar Rendulic´), 9.3.45.
40. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 229–30.
41. Henke, p. 348.
42. DZW, 6, p. 548.
43. DZW, 6, p. 522; Stettin/Szczecin 1945–1946, Rostock, 1994, pp. 35, 37.
44. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 163–165v, PK Bekanntgabe 149/45g, 19.3.45, transmission by Bormann of Schörner’s secret circular of 27 February.
45. DZW, 6, p. 539.
46. Zimmermann, Pflicht, p. 338; Christopher Clark, ‘Johannes Blaskowitz – der christliche General’, in Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.), Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches, Berlin, 1995, pp. 35, 43.
47. DZW, 6, p. 545.
48. Quoted in DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 316; and Zimmermann, Pflicht, p. 293.
49. BAB, R3/1623a, fo. 71a, Bormann to the Gauleiter, Reichsleiter, Reich Youth Leader, etc., 30.3.45, passing on Jodl’s circular of the previous day to commanders of the Army Groups and the Defence Districts in the west. Jodl still believed that any sacrifice was worthwhile to win time and bring about a split in the unnatural enemy coalition. – Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 313–14, 319.
50. For the unprompted initiatives of the generals in the last phase to ensure the continued, utmost military effort, see DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 307–36.
51. BAB, NS6/134, fo. 19, Dönitz, Kurzlagebericht vom 4.3.45.
52. DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 554, 584–6. See, for Dönitz’s fanatical leadership of the navy, Sönke Neitzel, ‘Der Bedeutungswandel der Kriegsmarine im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, pp. 259–62.
53. Kathrin Orth, ‘Kampfmoral und Einsatzbereitschaft in der Kriegsmarine 1945’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, pp. 137–55.
54. BA/MA, N574/22, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Die Generale’, 25.7.49.
55. BA/MA, N574/19, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Kriegsende in Italien’, fos. 44–5 (1950). See also DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 321; and Zimmermann, Pflicht, pp. 297–8.
56. Neitzel, Abgehört, pp. 180–81, 185 (quotation, p. 186) (28–31.1.45, 18–20.2.45) (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals, p. 138). Also NAL, WO208/
4365, reports of monitored conversations of prisoners of war, nos. 251–3, 28–31.1.45. A former corps commander, a lieutenant-general, later told his British captors that Rundstedt had favoured capitulation after the failure of the Ardennes offensive, and reckoned with the support of a majority of the higher ranking members of the officer’ corps, but knew that the hold of the Nazi regime meant that there was no chance of undertaking negotiations and that no member of the Wehrmacht would be authorized to contact the Allies for such a purpose. – LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 317 pt. II, p. 5, (16.4.45).
57. Neitzel, Abgehört, pp. 184–5, 187 (14–15.2.45, 2–3.3.45) (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals, pp. 137, 139).
58. NAL, WO208/5543, interrogation reports on German prisoners of war, 16.4.45, ‘Enemy Expectations, Intentions and Sources of Information’, 16.3.45.
59. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, fos. 43, 44, 47, 49–51, 54, 57, 59–61, 65, entries for 3.3.45, 5.3.45, 8.3.45, 12.3.45, 21.3.45, 25.3.45, 27.3.45, 31.3.45.
60. BA/MA, N265/118, NL Heinrici, fo. 74a–b (1952).
61. Karl Dönitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, Da Capo edn., New York, 1997, p. 432.
62. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 307, pt. II, app. A (6.4.45).
63. Andreas Kunz, ‘Die Wehrmacht in der Agonie der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944/45: Eine Gedankenskizze’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 131.
64. See Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage, pp. 36–44.
65. Neitzel, Abgehört, p. 189, 9.3.45 (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals, p. 141).
66. Steinert, pp. 570–71.
67. StAM, LRA 29656, fo. 576, report of SD-Außenstelle Berchtesgaden, 4.4.45; fo. 592, report of Gendarmerie-Posten Markt Schellenberg, 24.3.45.
68. MadR, 17, pp. 6732–40 (report to the Propaganda Ministry, 28.3.45, undated SD report from the end of March); see also Steinert, pp. 572–6; and Henke, pp. 815–16.
69. BAB, R55/603, fos. 533–8, extracts from weekly Tätigkeitsberichte der Reichspropagandaämter of 20–23 March (4.4.45).
70. Quoted Steinert, p. 570.
71. NAL, FO898/187, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fos. 79–80, 140–41, monitoring of German press reports (26.2.45–4.3.45, 26.3.45–1.4.45).
72. Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 281 (3.3.45), 311 (31.3.45); LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 291 pt. II, p. 5, (21.3.45), citing a report of 7 March sent by the Berlin correspondent of a Swedish newspaper.
73. NAL, WO219/4713, SHAEF reports on conditions in the newly occupied areas, 14.3.45.
74. StAM, LRA 29656, fos. 574, 580, report of SD-Außenstelle Berchtesgaden, 7.3.45.
75. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 528, unfoliated, Bayerische Staatsminister für Wirtschaft, Landesernährungsamt Bayern, Abt. B, 22.3.45.
76. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 146, Anordnung 184/45, 26.3.45.
77. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 308, pt. II, p. 8 (7.4.45), citing a letter from Vreden, a small town close to the Dutch border, from 19 March as an example typical of the situation just east of the Rhine before the Allied offensive.
78. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369, correspondence of Krosigk and Education Minister Bernhard Rust, etc., 23–6.3.45.
79. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 75, Bormann, Rundschreiben 125/45 (10.3.45).
80. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 686/1, unfoliated, draft order of Bormann, in cooperation with the Reichsführer-SS and the Reichsgesundheitsführer, Heranziehung der Gefolgschaftsmitglieder der Krankenhäuser, Kliniken usw. zum Dienst im Deutschen Volkssturm, 9.3.45.
81. BAB, R55/603, fo. 529, Reichspropagandaamt Mark Brandenburg, Referat Volkssturm, to Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, Berlin, 5.3.45.
82. An example: the owner of two major newspapers, the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten and München-Augsburger Abendzeitung, desperate to receive reports from the Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro but unable to contact Berlin could only do so when the Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria, Paul Giesler, gave him special permission to telephone from his command post twice a day – StAM, NSDAP 13, fos. 144530–33, exchange of letters from Gauleiter Giesler and Herr Direktor A. Salat, Firma Knorr & Hirth, 2–14.3.45.
83. BAB, R470 altR48/11, Reichspostminister an die Presidenten der Reichspost-Direktion, 26.3.45.
84. See Dietmar Süß, ‘Der Kampf um die “Moral” im Bunker: Deutschland, Großbritannien und der Luftkrieg’, in Frank Bajohr and Michael Wildt (eds.), Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt am Main, 2009, pp. 129–35.
85. DZW, 6, p. 628; Oron J. Hale, The Captive Press in the Third Reich, Princeton, 1973, pp. 306–7.
86. DRZW, 9/1 (Blank), p. 415.
87. For example, instructions were sent out in early March to local authorities in Bavaria to alter arrangements for budgetary plans for 1945, emphasizing that local taxes should be passed on time to the towns and rural districts. – StAM, LRA 31908, unfoliated, Deutscher Gemeindetag, Dienststelle Bayern, Haushaltspläne der Gemeinden und Gemeindeverbände für 1945, 7.3.45. The Landrat in Berchtesgaden was still enquiring on 28 April 1945 when building work on new barracks, commissioned the previous August to extend accommodation for evacuees, would begin. – StAM, LRA 31645, unfoliated, Landrat Berchtesgaden to OT-Sonderbauleitung, 28.4.45.
88. On the policing of air-raid shelters, see DRZW, 9/1 (Blank), pp. 385–8.
89. By late March firemen in small communities of Sachsen-Anhalt were complaining that they were being called away from their work, where they were urgently needed, almost daily and often unnecessarily, at the ‘pre-alarm’ stage by the frequency of air raids. – IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369, Krosigk to Goebbels, 26.3.45. Some people registered for voluntary fire service to try to escape recruitment to the Volkssturm. – StAM, LRA 31919, Gauleitung München to HSSPF Mühe on training of Volkssturm and air protection, including attempted regulation by the Regierungspräsident of Oberbayern of air protection service and service of voluntary firemen in the Volkssturm of 30.12.44 and the dispute of firemen serving in the Volkssturm of 25 and 31.1.45 and 21.2.45.
90. DRZW, 9/1 (Blank), p. 384.
91. Bernhard Gotto, Nationalsozialistische Kommunalpolitik: Administrative Normalität und Systemstabilisierung durch die Augsburger Stadtverwaltung 1933–1945, Munich, 2006, p. 373, surmises, most likely correctly, that Party representatives in Augsburg operated more through ‘actionism’ than idealism in the very last phase of the war.
92. For the organizational and controlling functions of the Party’s Block Leaders (who in the mid-1930s had numbered around 200,000), see Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann, ‘Der “Blockwart”: Die unteren Parteifunktionäre im nationalsozialistischen Terror- und Überwachungsapparat’, Vf Z, 48 (2000), pp. 594–6.
93. Pätzold and Weißbecker, p. 375. See also Herwart Vorländer, Die NSV: Darstellung und Dokumentation einer NS-Organisation, Boppard, 1988, p. 183 for the NSV’s mobilizing and control function. Unpaid workers for the NSV and the German Red Cross numbered more than a million. Although the NSV welfare activity was always underpinned by Nazi racial objectives, the work that it carried out in the crisis conditions of the last months of the war made it popular, even among many Germans who were negatively disposed towards the regime. – Vorländer, Die NSV, pp. 173–6, 186; Herwart Vorländer, ‘NS-Volkswohlfahrt und Winterhilfswerk des deutschen Volkes’, Vf Z, 34 (1986), pp. 376–80; Armin Nolzen, ‘Die NSDAP und die deutsche Gesellschaft im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, pp. 192–3.
94. See DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), p. 191; and Armin Nolzen, ‘Von der geistigen Assimilation zur institutionellen Kooperation: Das Verhältnis zwischen NSDAP und Wehrmacht, 1943–1945’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, pp. 90–92.
95. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369, Krosigk to Speer, 13.2.45.
96. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369, Krosigk to Goebbels, 22.3.45.
97. This paragraph, when not otherwise referenced, is based on Dieter Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, pp. 529–30.
98. Jill Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis, London, 2006, p. 324.
99. Gotto, p. 363.
100. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/30, fos. 328904–6, Wahl to Bormann, 17.3.45; also Gotto, pp. 374–5.
101. StAA, Kreisleitung Augsburg-Stadt, 1/8, fos. 300554–5, Rundspruch an alle Kreisleiter, 30.3.45. Every Gau was to produce 100 ‘volunteers’, and Wahl laid down – on what criteria it is not clear – the contingents from each district in his region. He criticized the Kreisleiter in mid-April for doing too little to gain recruits. – Gotto, p. 375.
102. Perry Biddiscombe, Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement 1944–1946, Toronto and Buffalo, NY, 1998, pp. 12–14 (where the derivation of the name is discussed).
103. Biddiscombe, pp. 38, 128, 134–9.
104. TBJG, II/15, pp. 630 (30.3.45), 647 (31.3.45). For Ley’s extreme radicalism in advocating a fight to the last, see Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, pp. 291–2.
105. Biddiscombe, pp. 266–8; Henke, pp. 837–45.
106. Biddiscombe, p. 276, and ch. 5 for many instances of minor, uncoordinated and sporadic resistance to the Allied occupiers by former Hitler Youth members, former SS men and other Nazi diehards that punctuated the late spring and summer of 1945 and beyond, though they were only tangentially related to the Werwolf groups that had been established in the last weeks of the war.
107. Biddiscombe, p. 282, uses Allied assessments to suggest that 10–15 per cent of Germans supported the partisan movement, though this probably conflates general backing for continued resistance to the Allies and support for the regime with specific support for Werwolf activities. See Henke, pp. 948–9, for a more dismissive appraisal of support.
108. TBJG, II/15, pp. 422, 424 (5.3.45). Hitler had also thought the Mosel could be defended. – TBJG, II/15, p. 533 (18.3.45).
109. As suggested by Bernd Wegner, ‘Hitler, der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Choreographie des Untergangs’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 26 (2000), pp. 493–518; also in DRZW, 8, pp. 1192–1209.
110. TBJG, II/15, p. 479 (12.3.45).
111. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2212.
112. TBJG, II/15, pp. 422–3 (5.3.45).
113. TBJG, II/15, p. 425 (5.3.45). For Goebbels’ fantasies of heroism as the end approached and his wife’s reluctant determination to stay in Berlin and accept not only her own death, but that of her children, see Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels, Munich and Zurich, 1990, pp. 587–8. Magda had apparently accepted both the certainty of Germany’s defeat and that death ‘by our own hand, not the enemy’s’ was the only choice left. – David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, London, 1996, p. 506 (though based on recollections, reproduced in an article on Magda in a periodical in 1952 (Irving, p. 564 n. 9), of her sister-in-law Eleanor (Ello) Quandt, whose testimony as Irving acknowledges (p. 564 n. 19) was not always reliable).
114. TBJG, II/15, pp. 426–7 (5.3.45), 525 (17.3.45), 532–3 (18.3.45); and see Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, pb. edn., London, 1994, p. 422; Reimer Hansen, ‘Ribbentrops Friedensfühler im Frühjahr 1945’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 18 (1967), pp. 716–30; and Hansjakob Stehle, ‘Deutsche Friedensfühler bei den Westmächten im Februar/März 1945’, VfZ, 30 (1982), pp. 538–55; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 783–4.
115. IfZ, ZS 1953, ‘Iden des März. Ein zeitgeschichtliches Fragment über den letzten Kontaktversuch Ribbentrops mit Moskau in der Zeit vom 11.–16. März 1945’, fos. 1–13 (no date, probably early 1950s). For a description of Mme Kollontay, ‘the grand old lady of Soviet diplomacy’, and for Ribbentrop’s vain attempts to instigate some form of negotiated peace with the Soviet Union in early 1945, see Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Die Chance des Sonderfriedens: Deutsch-sowjetische Geheimgespräche 1941–1945, Berlin, 1986, pp. 58–61, 268–75.
116. TBJG, II/15, pp. 450–51 (8.3.45).
117. BA/MA, RH21/3/420, fos. 34, 40, post-war account (1950) by Colonel-General Erhard Raus (former Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd Panzer Army in East Prussia, who had taken command in Pomerania of remaining forces of the 11th SS-Panzer Army) of his meetings with Himmler on 13.2.45 and 7.3.45, and his report to Hitler on 8.3.45.
118. Guderian, p. 426.
119. The above paragraph is based on: Folke Bernadotte, The Fall of the Curtain, London, 1945, pp. 19–47; Walter Schellenberg, Schellenberg, pb. edn., London, 1965, pp. 171–5; Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs 1940–1945, London, 1956, pp. 271–83; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 565–6, 578–9; and Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 742–8, 967–8 nn. 131–2. In a post-war interrogation, Schellenberg – who was keen to assert both his own importance and his attempts to influence a negotiated settlement – claimed that in December 1944, in the Reichführer’s presence, he even touched on the possibility of the elimination of Hitler. – IWM, FO645/161, interrogation 13.11.45, p. 15 (1945–6).
120. DZW, 6, p. 152.
121. John Toland, The Last 100 Days, London, 1965, pp. 73, 238–44, 478–81; Padfield, pp. 573–8; Weinberg, p. 818; Peter R. Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich, Princeton, 1984, pp. 242–5; BA/MA, N574/19, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Kriegsende in Italien’, fos. 41–6.
122. For interesting speculation on Speer’s power ambitions at this juncture, see DRZW, 10/2 (Müller), pp. 74–84; and Müller’s remarks in the conclusion to the volume, p. 718.
123. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 442.
124. He had engineered Hitler’s approval to his new responsibilities on 14 February, exploiting the illness of the Transport Minister Julius Heinrich Dorpmüller. – DRZW, 10/2 (Müller), p. 82.
125. BAB, R3/1623a, fos. 18–23, Aktennotiz Speer, 7.3.45. That very day, Paul Pleiger, head of the Reich Association of Coal, pointed out to Speer how serious the coal situation was following the loss of Upper Silesia, the transport problems that had effectively ruled out Ruhr coal, and the big drop in production from the Saarland. Unless things improved, he pointed out, it would be impossible to provide coal for armaments or avoid the collapse of transport, electricity and gas. – IWM, F.3, M.I. 14/163, Pleiger to Speer, 7.3.45. On 14 March Hitler ordered that because of severely reduced transport capacity, priorities in areas to be evacuated had to be determined by their value for the prosecution of the war: the Wehrmacht, coal, then food materials. Refugees could be accommodated only where there was available space. In passing on the order next day to relevant authorities, Speer pointed out that it was on his suggestion. – BAB, R3/1623a, fos. 27–8.
126. TBJG, II/15, pp. 579 (23.3.45), 603 (27.3.45).
127. TBJG, II/15, pp. 500–501 (14.3.45), 511–12 (15.3.45).
128. BAB, R3/1623a, fos. 31–8, OKH, Chef Transportwesens/General der Pioniere und Festungen, draft, no precise date in March given; Speer to Gen.stab des Heeres-General der Pioniere und Festungen, 15.3.45; OKH, Chef Transportwesens/Gend di Pi u Fest, 14.3.45; Speer, p. 442; Guderian, pp. 422–3.
129. BAB, R3/1536, fos. 3–12; IMT, vol. 41, pp. 420–25. Drafts (fos. 28–30) were appended of orders limiting destruction and giving Speer the powers to decide on exceptions to immobilization; Speer, pp. 442–3.
130. See Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Drastic Measures to Defend the Reich at the Oder and the Rhine…”: A Forgotten Memorandum of Albert Speer of 18 March 1945’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38 (2003), pp. 597–614; also Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Verbrannte Erde”? Hitlers “Nero-Befehl” vom 19. März 1945’, in Kriegsende Deutschland, p. 163; and, for a different interpretation, DRZW, 10/2 (Müller), pp. 86–8. An extract from the memorandum was already published by Gregor Janssen, Das Ministerium Speer: Deutschlands Rüstung im Krieg, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, 1968, p. 311, though without commentary, beyond pointing (p. 310) to its connection with Keitel’s order that morning to evacuate the population from the fighting zone west of the Rhine. Dietrich Eichholtz, Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1939–1945, vol. 3: 1943–1945, Berlin, 1996, p. 662 n. 212, confines himself to the comment that Speer had ‘doubtless tactical aims’ with the memorandum. Neither Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, London, 1995, pp. 476–7, nor Joachim Fest, Speer: Eine Biographie, Berlin, 1999, pp. 336–8, mentions it.
131. BAB, R3/1537, fos. 3–6 (18.3.45).
132. Hitler spoke to Goebbels in highly negative terms in late March about Speer being ‘unreliable’ and ‘failing’ at a critical time and showing a ‘defeatist’ character, tendencies ‘incompatible with the National Socialist view of the war’. – TBJG, II/15, pp. 619–20 (28.3.45).
133. This is the gist of Müller’s interpretation in DRZW, 10/2, p. 87.
134. For Speer’s late conversion to the need to save the ‘means of existence of the … people in a lost war’, see Henke, pp. 431–2.
135. BAB, R3/1538, fo. 16, handwritten letter by Speer to Hitler, 29.3.45.
136. Schwendemann, ‘ “Drastic Measures” ’, p. 605, suggests, perhaps going too far, that Speer was seeking ‘to show Hitler a way out, by offering the Führer his services as a kind of saviour, thus securing his favour’.
137. Speer, pp. 444–5; BAB, R3/1623a, fos. 39–43, two Fernschreiben of Keitel, 18.3.45; implementation order of Bormann, 19.3.45.
138. BAB, R3/1623a, fos. 46–7, ‘Zerstörungsmaßnahmen im Reichsgebiet’, Lt.-Gen. August Winter (Deputy Chief of the OKW Operations Staff) to Speer, 20.3.45, passing on Hitler’s order of the previous day (printed in IMT, vol. 41, pp. 430–31, and Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939–1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos dep Wehrmacht, ed. Walther Hubatsch, pb. edn., Munich, 1965, pp. 348–9).
139. BAB, R3/1538, fos. 14–15, Speer to Hitler, 29.3.45; IMT, vol. 41, pp. 425–9; Speer, pp. 445–6.
140. See Henke, pp. 432–5; DRZW, 10/2 (Müller), p. 93; and Eichholtz, pp. 663–9. In some factories, crucial component parts were taken out of machines and hidden so that they could later be reinstated. – Zimmermann, Pflicht, p. 60.
141. Speer, pp. 450–59; BAB, R3/1661, fos. 5–8, Reiseprogramm Speer, Schulze-Fielitz, Hupfauer, etc., 22–5.3.45; fos. 20–22, Walter Rohland: Niederschrift über die Ereignisse vom 15.3 bis 15.4.45; R3/1623a, fo. 50, Bormann to the Gauleiter, passing on Hitler’s evacuation orders with the stipulation that the evacuation was not a matter for debate, and that the accommodation of the evacuees within Germany simply ‘had to be mastered’ through improvisation; IMT, vol. 41, pp. 491–3 (Rohland’s testimony at Nuremberg).
142. Speer, pp. 448, 453–4, for Model’s stance. The Wehrmacht’s head of transport spoke of creating ‘a transport desert’ in abandoned areas. – BAB, R3/1623a, fo. 59, Chef des Transportwesens der Wehrmacht, Fernschreiben 29.3.45 (referred to in Speer, p. 459).
143. Speer, pp. 454–5; BAB, R3/1626, fo. 14, unknown eyewitness account, 13.9.45.
144. Speer, pp. 457–61 (quotation p. 460).
145. This is how Hitler saw it, in speaking of the matter to Goebbels soon afterwards. – TBJG, II/15, p. 643 (31.3.45). Speer’s own depiction of his defiance was almost certainly at least in part contrived. See DRZW, 10/2 (Müller), pp. 94–5.
146. Speer registered with a note in his files Hitler’s agreement that ‘scorched earth’ was pointless for a small area like Germany and could only have an effect in a huge country like Russia. He immediately transmitted Hitler’s amended order leaving implementation in Speer’s hands. – BAB, R3/1623a, fos. 75, 78–80, 85–6 (30.3.45). On 3 April (fos. 106, 108) he replied to the request from Gauleiter Ueberreither (Niederdonau) for clarification on destruction of waterworks and power stations in his region by stating: ‘According to the Führer order of 30.3.45 there is no scorched earth’, and stipulating only temporary immobilization which ‘fulfils the stated aim of the Führer’.
147. The OKW stipulated on 3 April that, despite the Führer order for the destruction of all installations that might be useful to the enemy, it could prove expedient in some cases to limit this to a ‘lengthy breach’ (nachhaltige Unterbrechung) which could be repaired for German use if there was a probability of retaking the bridges. The Wehrmacht was keen to establish its sole responsibility for the destruction of military installations. A few days later, a revised directive emphasized the need to destroy operationally important bridges, as determined by the OKW, with the most severe punishment for failure to carry this out. – KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, pp. 46 (3.4.45), 75–7 (5.4.45), 128 (8.4.45).
148. Henke, p. 434. A far more positive interpretation of Speer’s motives is provided in the early assessment by Reimer Hansen, ‘Albert Speers Konflikt mit Hitler’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 17 (1966), pp. 596–621, based heavily upon the documents and evidence presented to the Nuremberg Trials. Later research – particularly since the publication of Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos, Berne and Munich, 1982 – has tended to be far more critically disposed towards Speer. See, for example, Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ‘When Did Albert Speer Give up?’ Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 391–7, and, more recently, the contribution by Rolf-Dieter Müller to DRZW, 10/2.
149. TBJG, II/15, p. 613 (28.3.45).
150. See also on this point, DRZW, 10/2 (Müller), p. 92.
CHAPTER 8. IMPLOSION
1. Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, p. 338 (10.4.45).
2. For destruction in the Tiergarten and Grunewald and the nightly activity in the city (‘eine hektische Genußsucht’), see the diary entries of the Danish correspondent Jacob Kronika, Der Untergang Berlins, Flensburg, 1946, pp. 79, 91, 98–9, 149 (30.3.45, 7.4.45, 10.4.45, 23.4.45). A description – though perhaps drawing in part on distorted memory – of Berlin, shortly before the Soviet attack, can be found in IWM, ‘Second World War Memoirs of P. E. v. Stemann’, Berlin correspondent between 1942 and 1945 of the Danish newspaper Berlinske Tidende, fos. 236–7. Vivid depictions of the city in April 1945 are provided by David Clay Large, Berlin, New York, 2000, pp. 358–9, and Roger Moorhouse, Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital 1939–45, London, 2010, pp. 365–9.
3. Goebbels remarked in his diary on the emptiness of Berlin’s streets at Easter 1945 (TBJG, II/15, p. 668, 5.4.45).
4. Quoted in Moorhouse, p. 367.
5. TBJG, II/15, p. 692.
6. A fitting term, used by Hans Mommsen, ‘The Dissolution of the Third Reich: Crisis Management and Collapse, 1943–1945’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Washington DC, 27 (2000), p. 20, and Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich, Lexington, Ky., 2004, ch. 5.
7. DZW, 6, p. 561; and NAL, WO219/1651, fo. 145, SHAEF digests of post-war interrogations of Jodl and Kesselring, 23.5.45.
8. American losses in the battle for the Ruhr totalled around 10,000 men. – DZW, 6, p. 564.
9. For the behaviour of French troops, see Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Das Kriegsende in Ostpreußen und in Südbaden im Vergleich’, in Bernd Martin (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg und seine Folgen: Ereignisse – Auswirkungen – Reflexionen, Freiburg, 2006, pp. 101, 104; and Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, pp. 116–17, 158–9. Evidently, the very skin colour of the North African soldiers in the French army gave rise to great anxiety among the population which had often never before seen other than white people. This may have led to exaggeration of the numbers of rapes said to have been perpetrated by ‘colonial’ troops. Numerous parish reports indicating rape and looting – though there were many cases where none were reported – are contained in Josef F. Göhri, Die Franzosen kommen! Kriegsereignisse im Breisgau und in der Ortenau, Horb am Neckar, 2005, pp. 17, 24–5, 43, 46, 50, 53, 60, 82, 88, 91, 94, 98, 119, 124–5; and Hermann Riedel, Halt! Schweizer Grenze!, Konstanz, 1983, pp. 233, 237–8, 263, 305 (where more than 200 cases were mentioned). See also Bernd Serger, Karin-Anne Böttcher and Gerd R. Ueberschär (eds.), Südbaden unter Hakenkreuz und Trikolore: Zeitzeugen berichten über das Kriegsende und die französische Besetzung 1945, Freiburg in Breisgau, Berlin and Vienna, 2006, pp. 253, 257, 269, 311–25; Manfred Bosch, Der Neubeginn: Aus deutscher Nachkriegszeit. Südbaden 1945–1950, Konstanz, 1988, p. 34; Der deutsche Südwesten zur Stunde Null, ed. Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 1975, pp. 102–3; Paul Sauer, Demokratischer Neubeginn in Not und Elend: Das Land Württemberg-Baden von 1945 bis 1952, Ulm, 1979, pp. 18–20; Von der Diktatur zur Besatzung: Das Kriegsende 1945 im Gebiet des heutigen Landkreises Sigmaringen, ed. Landkreis Sigmaringen, Sigmaringen, 1995, pp. 92–3.
10. The above, where not otherwise indicated, is based on DZW, 6, pp. 561–71; DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 443–60; Fritz, chs. 3–6; Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 425–32; The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, Oxford, 1995, pp. 481–5; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. 481–502.
11. Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939–1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Walther Hubatsch, pb. edn., Munich, 1965, pp. 355–6. Dönitz and Kesselring were given full powers over the defence of their own zone only in the event that a break in communications prevented the transmission of Hitler’s orders and decisions. Otherwise Hitler’s own unified operational leadership was to remain unaltered. On 20 April, in line with the expectation that he would leave for the south, Hitler empowered Dönitz, in the north, to issue directives on defence to the civilian authorities in his ‘zone’. In the military sphere, Dönitz’s remit was confined to the navy, since Hitler finally decided on 25 April to remain in Berlin and to retain his operational direction of the Wehrmacht via the OKW in Rheinsberg. – Herbert Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches – Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Rückschau, Munich and Zurich, 1995, pp. 7–8 and p. 20 n. 17. The split of the Reich became reality with the meeting of Soviet and American troops at Torgau on 25 April.
12. DZW, 6, p. 523. A graphic description of the last days in Königsberg before the capitulation (and criticism of Lasch’s reluctance to capitulate until the last minute, and to save his own skin) is provided by Michael Wieck, Zeugnis vom Untergang Königsbergs: Ein ‘Geltungsjude’ berichtet, Heidelberg, 1988, pp. 168–222.
13. His wife and daughter were arrested and placed in a military prison. News of their punishment was publicized. – Robert Loeffel, ‘Soldiers and Terror: Re-evaluating the Complicity of the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany’, German History, 27 (2009), pp. 527–8.
14. Schwendemann, p. 97.
15. In the proclamation, Hitler raised once more the spectre of the extermination of the German people that, he claimed, would follow Bolshevik conquest. ‘While old men and children are murdered,’ he railed, ‘women and children are denigrated to barrack-whores. The rest will march off to Siberia.’ Alerting the troops to any sign of treachery from their own officers, Hitler ordered that any officer not well known to the men giving orders for retreat was to be ‘dispatched on the spot’. – Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, pp. 2223–4.
16. Drawing on DZW, 6, pp. 686–705; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 631–49; DRZW, 8 (Ungváry), pp. 944–55; Gruchmann, pp. 434–6; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., 2003, pp. 563–77; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 307–20; The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, pp. 125–7; Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007, chs. 15–16; Karl-Heinz Frieser, ‘Die Schlacht um die Seelower Höhen im April 1945’, in Roland G. Foerster (ed.), Seelower Höhen 1945, Hamburg, 1998, pp. 129–43; Manfried Rauchensteiner, Der Krieg in Österreich 1945, 2nd edn., Vienna, 1984, ch. 6; Theo Rossiwall, Die letzten Tage: Die militärische Besetzung Österreichs 1945, Vienna, 1969, pp. 78–183.
17. For sketches of the man and his career, see: Sam L. Lewis, ‘Albert Kesselring – Der Soldat als Manager’, in Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.), Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches, Berlin, 1995, pp. 270–87; Elmar Krautkrämer, ‘Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring’, in Gerd. R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite, vol. 1: Von den Anfängen des Regimes bis Kriegsbeginn, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 121–9; and Shelford Bidwell, ‘Kesselring’, in Correlli Barnett (ed.), Hitler’s Generals, London, 1990, pp. 265–89.
18. BAB, R3/1661, fo. 20, ‘Niederschrift über die Ereignisse vom 15.3. bis 15.4.1945’, no date, signed by Walther Rohland (entry for 23.4.45); Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 446. Kesselring passed on Hitler’s ‘scorched earth’ order of 19 March next day to his subordinate commanders. – Krautkrämer, p. 128 n. 10.
19. Speer, pp. 463–4. General Westphal later pointed out that Kesselring, on taking over from Rundstedt as Commander in Chief West, replied sceptically to the attempt to provide him with a realistic briefing of the situation by stating that the Führer had given him a different account. – Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, p. 327.
20. The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, Greenhill Books edn., London, 1997, pp. 266, 269.
21. Joachim Ludewig, ‘Walter Model – Hitlers bester Feldmarschall?’ in Smelser and Syring, p. 368.
22. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht. Dokumente, ed. Gerhard Förster and Richard Lakowski, Berlin, 1975, p. 230 (18.3.45).
23. Quoted DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 332 (29.3.45); see also Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Krieg in der Trümmerlandschaft: “Pflichterfüllung” wofür?’ in Ulrich Borsdorf and Mathilde Jamin (eds.), Über Leben im Krieg: Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp. 171, 177.
24. Carlo D’Este, ‘Model’, in Barnett, p. 329; Kesselring, pp. 250–55, attributed much of the blame for the plight of Army Group B to Model’s operational decisions.
25. BAB, R3/1626, fos. 15–17, ‘Kapitulationsverhandlungen mit Generalfeldmarschall Model und Gauleiter Hoffmann’, notes compiled in internment in ‘Dustbin’, June 1945, by Rohland. And R3/1661, fo. 21, ‘Niederschrift über die Ereignisse vom 15.3. bis 15.4.1945’, no date, signed by Walther Rohland (entries for 31.3, 2.4, 8.4, 13.4.45); Walter Rohland, Bewegte Zeiten, Stuttgart, 1978, pp. 105–7. Model also refused to entertain the plea in a personal letter to him from US Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway on 17 April, declaring that his oath to the Führer meant he must fight to the end. – Hastings, p. 482; Messerschmidt, p. 177.
26. Ludewig, pp. 382–4; Rohland, p. 107; Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 263–8; John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, p. 2. The order to make families the guarantors of soldiers fighting to the last was signed by Keitel on Hitler’s behalf on 5 March. – 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, p. 207. Strikingly, the initiative for this came from within the Wehrmacht. – Ulrike Hett and Johannes Tuchel, ‘Die Reaktionen des NS-Staates auf den Umsturzversuch vom 20. Juli 1944’, in Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Bonn, 1994, p. 387.
27. Cited DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 327 (7.4.45).
28. DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 331–2.
29. IWM, EDS, F.3, AL2697, ‘Doenitz orders Resistance to the last. 3 Orders – 7, 11, and 19 April 1945’.
30. KTB/SLK, part A, vol. 68, pp. 331–2A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45.
31. BA/MA, N265/112, NL Heinrici, fos. 1–17 (written during captivity, 1945–7 and incorporating memoirs of Colonel Eismann). Though entitled ‘Der Vortrag bei Hitler am 4.IV.1945’, the meeting appears in fact (see fo. 20) to have taken place not on the 4th but on 6 April. Heinrici had already composed a briefer, though in essentials similar, account of the meeting on 12 May 1945 (BA/MA, N265/108, fos. 3–9, where he dates it to ‘about ten days before the beginning of the battle for Berlin’).
32. BA/MA, N265/112, NL Heinrici, fos. 23–4. Speer, p. 471, dates the meeting to the 15th, not 14 April (as Heinrici has it), and mentions the discussion only of sparing the destruction of Berlin’s installations, not the issue of killing Hitler (which he alludes to, however, elsewhere in his memoirs). In later drafts of parts of his memoirs dating from 1966 or thereabouts, Heinrici again mentions the discussion with Speer about killing Hitler and his rejection of political murder because of his Christian convictions. He adds two points which were not mentioned in his earlier version. An assassination attempt would have been pointless, because of Hitler’s security, greatly tightened since July 1944. And, should such an attempt have nevertheless succeeded, the result would have been revolution 100 kilometres behind the front lines against the Russians. The ensuing chaos would have removed from the leadership all possibility of successful negotiations over an armistice. Whether such notions were in his mind in April 1945 or not is unclear. He drew the conclusion, in the later memoirs, that he had no alternative but to carry out his commission to hold the Oder line to the best of his ability. – BA/MA, N265/26, fos. 22–3 (c. 1966). On Speer’s claims to have considered assassinating Hitler, see Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos, Berne and Munich, 1982, pp. 147–51.
33. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, Kalenderblätter 1945, fo. 87, entries for 5.4.45, 13.4.45.
34. A telex from the Army Personnel Office on 13 April assigned small numbers of officers to the ‘Führer-Reserve’ of several Army Groups but pointed out that they now had to manage their own manpower resources and could not reckon with further allocations in the foreseeable future. – IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/163, FS to OB Nordwest, etc., 13.4.45. Seven new divisions were somehow thrown together in early April and given light armaments. But they were made up of seventeen-year-olds. They were meant for the defence of Thuringia, but would not be ready for service for a fortnight. – TBJG, II/15, p. 685 (8.4.45). By that time, Thuringia was lost.
35. e.g. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/42, Gaustabsamt Gau Schwaben to named Kreisleitungen, 11.4.45.
36. BAB, NS6/756, fos. 2–6, Verstärkung der kämpfenden Truppe, 28.2.45.
37. BAB, NS6/135, fo. 160, Vorlage (for Bormann), re Panzernahbekämpfungstrupp der Hitler-Jugend, 3.3.45.
38. Information from Dr Hermann Graml, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, on his own experience in the Reich Labour Service in the last days of April 1945. Heavy pressure was put on boys to join. It could be resisted if sufficient determination were shown, for example by emphasizing strong allegiance to the Catholic Church, or, as in Dr Graml’s case, by producing call-up papers for the Wehrmacht. A contemporary in Württemberg claimed much later to recall that her then seventeen-year-old brother received a letter in February 1945 telling him that he had volunteered for the Waffen-SS, which had not been the case. He hurriedly volunteered for the Reich Labour Service to avoid it. – Zeitzeugen berichten… Schwäbisch Gmünd – Erinnerungen an die Zeit von 1930 bis 1945, ed. Stadtarchiv Schwäbisch Gmünd, Schwäbisch Gmünd, 1989, p. 312.
39. See the testimony assembled in Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London, 2005, pp. 268–9, 294–7, 303, 307.
40. Günter C. Behrmann, ‘ “Jugend, die meinen Namen trägt”: Die letzten Kriegseinsätze der Hitlerjugend’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 175.
41. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/43, Strassen- und Flußbauamt, Neu-Ulm, 13.4.45; Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/28, fos. 328841–2, 328845, Heeresgruppe G to Gauleitung Schwaben, 13.4.45, Bormann to all Gauleiter, 13.4.45, passing on Keitel’s directive of 10.4.45; fos. 328807–8, Bormann’s order to ten named Gauleiter in central and southern Germany, 13.4.45; Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fo. 328843, Aktnotiz für den Gauleiter: Versorgungslage der Wehrmacht und ziviler Behörden, 16.4.45; fo. 328835, note for Gauleiter Wahl from the Kreisleiter of Neu-Ulm, who, since the enemy was approaching, saw the need to call on the Volkssturm and the people’s levy to undertake entrenchment work and increase the number of barriers, 20.4.45.
42. BAB, R3/1622, fo. 102, Speer directive, transmitting Hitler’s order, 24.4.45; printed in ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, p. 497.
43. BAB, R3/1618, fo. 22, re Führer-Vorführung, 12.4.45.
44. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Uffz. Werner F., 1.4.45. Most soldiers’ letters, and those they received, were unpolitical in content and dealt in the main with inconsequential family or private matters. A report from one censors’ office for March stated on the basis of intercepted and controlled mail that 91.8 per cent of letters checked over the month were ‘colourless’, 4.7 per cent positively disposed towards the regime and 3.5 per cent negative (the last figure certainly underplaying true sentiments, given the dangers of expressing criticism). A separate control, under slightly different criteria, for the last eight days of March gave results of 77.08 per cent ‘colourless’, 8.82 per cent ‘positive’, 6.64 per cent ‘negative’ and 7.46 per cent ‘neutral’. The report included 113 varied extracts from the letters. – BA/MA, RH20/19/245, fos. 31–43, Feldpostprüfstelle bei AOK.19, Monatsbericht für März 1945, 3.4.45. For the organization of post to and from the front, see Richard Lakowski and Hans-Joachim Büll, Lebenszeichen 1945: Feldpost aus den letzten Kriegstagen, Leipzig, 2002, pp. 18–29.
45. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 10.4.45.
46. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 12.4.45.
47. Fritz, pp. 90–91.
48. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 319, pt. II, pp. 8–9 (18.4.45). The fate of the officer is not known.
49. TBJG, II/15, pp. 658 (1.4.45), 684, 687 (8.4.45), 692 (9.4.45); DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), pp. 830–83; Christian Hartmann and Johannes Hürter, Die letzten 100 Tage des Zweiten Weltkriegs, Munich, 2005, entry for Day 33, 7 April 1945. Hartmann and Hürter give the figure of 23 bombers destroyed. This seems close to the actual American figure of 17 bombers and 5 fighters destroyed in the air-battle, though most of these losses were apparently not directly caused by ramming. Some months earlier, a young man, a journalism student whose brother had fallen on the eastern front, and evidently a keen Nazi, expressed his disappointment to the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, at being rejected for suicidal service as a one-man torpedo because there had been too many applicants. Love of Germany, he said, was his motive. – BAB, NS19/2936, handwritten letter, no date (end of 1944 or beginning of 1945).
50. Fritz, pp. 72, 78–9, 88–9, 92.
51. Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 254.
52. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, fos. 154–61, entries for 13–20.4.45. Goebbels referred earlier in the month to the demoralization of the troops in Gau Weser-Ems, similar, he said, to reports that had until then come in from western parts of the Reich, as soldiers went about in loose groups, some throwing away their weapons, and engaging in looting. – TBJG, II/15, p. 673 (4.4.45).
53. TBJG, II/15, pp. 654–5, 659–60 (1.4.45). According to the diary notes of Goebbels’ aide, Rudolf Semmler, reports were emerging in early April from every town or village where American or British troops were approaching ‘that large numbers of the population are showing white flags and sheets’. – Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels – the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, p. 190 (5.4.45). See the diary entries reproduced in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Irina Renz, ‘Vormittags die ersten Amerikaner’: Stimmen und Bilder vom Kriegsende 1945, Stuttgart, 2005, pp. 119, 125, 133, for examples of joy or relief at the arrival of American troops.
54. IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2682, Bormann to Kaltenbrunner, 4.4.45.
55. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/28, fo. 328839, Schulz to Gauleitung Schwaben, 8.4.45, with handwritten note by Wahl at foot.
56. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/43, fos. 00991, 00999, Kreisleiter to all Bürgermeister, Ortsgruppenleiter and Ortsamsleiter der NSV, 18.4.45, and (undated) order of Kreisleiter.
57. TBJG, II/15, pp. 612–13 (28.3.45), a comment also related to Hitler’s orders for the destruction of industry.
58. TBJG, II/15, p. 684 (8.4.45). The difficulties of feeding refugees sent to the Allgäu in the Alpine region of southern Bavaria led to demands for the influx to be halted. – StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fos. 328886–7, report of Landesbauernführer Pg. Deininger on ‘Ernährungslage’, 14.4.45.
59. IfZ, Fa-91/5, fo. 1120d, Lagemitteilung Gauleiter Eigruber, 9.4.45; BAB, NS6/277, fo. 101–101v, Dienstleiter Hund, Parteikanzlei München, to GL Wächtler, Bayreuth, 10.4.45; fo. 31, Hund to Pg. Zander, Dienststelle Berlin, 10.4.45; fos. 8–9, Lagebericht of Gauleitung Salzburg, 10.4.45, Fernschreiben, Hund to Bormann, 14.4.45; fo. 11, Aktenvermerk, 17.4.45. Gauleiter Hugo Jury in Gau Niederdonau also sought advice from Bormann (fo. 92) about where to send 30,000 refugees from Silesia, currently in the District Iglau in the Protectorate who had to be brought into the Reich. He said he would do his utmost to accommodate those who came from his Gau, but was evidently unwilling to receive those from outside. Gauleiter Eigruber later recalled the chaotic conditions as tens of thousands of Hungarian refugees, and 15,000 Jews from the Lower Danube and Styria who were dispatched to Mauthausen concentration camp, were sent to his domain, which had no food for them. – IWM, FO645/156, interrogation of August Eigruber, 3.11.45.
60. BAB, NS6/277, fo. 130, Funkspruch Walkenhorsts an Reichsleiter Bormann, 5.4.45 (also IfZ, Fa-91/5, fo. 1106). Also: fos. 110–12, Vermerk for Bormann from Pg. Zander, 5.4.45; fo. 113, Walkenhorst, telefonische Vorlage an den Reichsleiter, 5.4.45; fo. 15, Aktenvermerk referring to the inability of Gauleiter Siegfried Uiberreither of Styria to reach Berlin with an urgent message for General Jodl; fo. 4, Pg. Walkenhorst zur telefonischen Durchgabe nach Berlin (on varied communications difficulties and attempts to overcome them), 12.4.45.
61. TBJG, II/15, p. 677 (4.4.45).
62. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 346–8.
63. BAB, NS6/756, fos. 7–9, Vermerk für Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Parteifeindliche Einstellung der Wiener Arbeiterbevölkerung nach den Luftangriffen, 10.3.45. See also fos. 14–15 for a report dated the previous day by Gauleiter Ernst-Wilhelm Bohle, head of the Nazi Party’s Auslandsorganisation, on his impressions of Hungarian women and other foreigners behaving as if Vienna were a holiday resort, and fos. 12–13 for an account sent to Walkenhorst on 2 April of the poor situation in the city and lack of leadership of the Wehrmacht and of the Party. See also TBJG, II/15, pp. 687, 693 (8–9.4.45). A brief indication of the collapse in Vienna as seen by the regime is provided by Karl Stadler, Österreich 1938–1945 im Spiegel der NS-Akten, Vienna, 1966, pp. 401–4. See also, for the rapidly worsening conditions and mounting problems for the Nazi leadership in Vienna in the weeks before the city fell, Rauchensteiner, pp. 154–7, 163–6.
64. TBJG, II/15, pp. 666, 680 (2.4.45, 4.4.45).
65. TBJG, II/15, pp. 683, 687, 693 (8.4.45, 9.4.45).
66. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 103, RS 211/45, ‘Einsatzpflicht der Politischen Leiter’, 15.4.45. A month earlier, referring to previous similar directives, Bormann (fo. 80, Rundschreiben 140/45, ‘Persönlicher Einsatz der Hoheitsträger’, 17.3.45) had exhorted high-standing representatives of the Party to cooperate with troops in assisting the population in the fighting zone and to set an example of fighting morale.
67. TBJG, II/15, p. 659 (1.4.45).
68. TBJG, II/15, p. 672 (4.4.45).
69. For example, despite their exhortations, accompanied by threats, to hold out, most of the Kreisleiter in Württemberg fled as Allied troops approached. – Christine Arbogast, Herrschaftsinstanzen der württembergischen NSDAP: Funktion, Sozialprofil und Lebenswege einer regionalen Elite 1920–1960, Munich, 1998, p. 260. One Kreisleiter from the Black Forest, who turned up in Munich to offer his services to the Party Chancellery, was immediately ordered to return to serve with the Volkssturm and warned that his arrival in an official car could be seen as nothing other than flight. – BAB, NS6/277, fo. 24, Aktenvermerk, 20.4.45.
70. IfZ, ZS 597, fo. 113 (1950); TBJG, II/15, p. 672 (4.4.45); Karl Höffkes, Hitlers politische Generale: Die Gauleiter des Dritten Reiches. Ein biographisches Nachschlagewerk, Tübingen, 1986, pp. 112–13. The Security Police had disbanded their office on 7 March, and, destroying records, fled in civilian clothes with false identity cards. – NAL, KV3/188, interrogation of Ostubf. Karl Hans Paul Hennicke, head of SD-Abschnitt Köln-Aachen, 11.4.45.
71. Ralf Blank, ‘Albert Hoffmann als Reichsverteidigungskommissar im Gau Westfalen-Süd, 1943–1945: Eine biografische Skizze’, in Wolf Gruner and Armin Nolzen (eds.), ‘Bürokratien’: Initiative und Effizienz. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, vol. 17, Berlin, 2001, pp. 201–2.
72. Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007, p. 452.
73. Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Tübingen, 1974, pp. 635–7 (12.4.45); Meindl, p. 455; Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 240; Isabel Denny, The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City: The Battle for Königsberg, 1945, London, 2007, p. 230; Speer, p. 498. Whether, as Oven claimed (p. 636), Koch had influenced Hitler in condemning General Lasch, commander of Königsberg, to death in absentia for his ‘cowardly’ capitulation is doubted by Meindl, p. 454.
74. Höffkes, p. 24.
75. BAB, NS6/277, fos. 76–8 (17.4.45). Printed in Karl Kunze, Kriegsende in Franken und der Kampf um Nürnberg im April 1945, Nuremberg, 1995, pp. 217–19.
76. Kunze, pp. 243–4, 265, 283–5; Höffkes, p. 156. The local attempts of courageous individuals and groups of citizens in Central Franconia to prevent the mania of Nazi fanatics from bringing about the destruction of their towns can be seen in Hans Woller, Gesellschaft und Politik in der amerikanischen Besatzungszone: Die Region Ansbach und Fürth, Munich, 1986, pp. 46–57.
77. Ernst Hornig, Breslau 1945: Erlebnisse in der eingeschlossenen Stadt, Munich, 1975, pp. 129–31; Hans von Ahlfen and Hermann Niehoff, So kämpfte Breslau: Verteidigung und Untergang von Schlesiens Hauptstadt, Munich, 1959, p. 83; Friedrich Grieger, Wie Breslau fiel…, Metzingen, 1948, pp. 23–4; Joachim Konrad, ‘Das Ende von Breslau’, Vf Z, 4 (1956), p. 388.
78. TBJG, II/15, pp. 692–3 (9.4.45). Höffkes, p. 122, dates the award to 12 April, though Goebbels refers to the granting of the honour already on 9 April.
79. BAB, R3/1625, fo. 2, Speer to Hanke, 14.4.45.
80. After his flight from Breslau, Hanke was captured on 6 May by Czech partisans, though not recognized, and was killed early the following month while trying to escape. – Höffkes, pp. 122–3; Michael D. Miller and Andreas Schulz (eds.), Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and their Deputies, CD-ROM, n.d. (c. 2004), vol. 1.
81. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 151, Anordnung of Bormann to all Reichsleiter, Gauleiter and Verbändeführer, 1.4.45; also in IfZ, Fa-91/4, fo. 1099.
82. Ferdinand Stadlbauer, ‘Die letzten Tage des Gauleiters Wächtler’, Waldmünchner Heimatbote, 12 (1985), pp. 3–10; Höffkes, pp. 360–61; Joachim Lilla, Die Stellvertretenden Gauleiter und die Vertretung der Gauleiter der NSDAP im ‘Dritten Reich’, Koblenz, 2003, pp. 100–101.
83. Text in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen: Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen 1945–1966, Register, ed. C. F. Rüter and D. W. De Mildt, Amsterdam and Munich, 1998, p. 199; Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, p. 787. Himmler’s draft of 29.3.45, and the OKW telex and draft sent to him, are in BA/MA, RH/20/19/196, fos. 103–5.
84. Reproduced in Fritz Nadler, Eine Stadt im Schatten Streichers, Nuremberg, 1969, p. 41; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Register, p. 199. Himmler’s decree of the same day, ordering that ‘every village and town will be defended and held with all possible means’ is printed in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Register, p. 200 and in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 171.
85. See, for example, the good local study by Herfried Münkler, Machtzerfall: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches dargestellt am Beispiel der hessischen Kreisstadt Friedberg, Berlin, 1985.
86. Heinz Petzold, ‘Cottbus zwischen Januar und Mai 1945’, in Werner Stang and Kurt Arlt (eds.), Brandenburg im Jahr 1945, Potsdam, 1995, pp. 121–4.
87. Norbert Buske (ed.), Die kampflose Übergabe der Stadt Greifswald im April 1945, Schwerin, 1993, pp. 15–30, 37.
88. Henke, pp. 843–4; Zimmermann, Pflicht, pp. 360, 363.
89. Paul Sauer, Württemberg in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Ulm, 1975, pp. 492–4; Andreas Förschler, Stuttgart 1945: Kriegsende und Neubeginn, Gudensberg-Gleichen, 2004, pp. 8–19; Jill Stephenson, ‘ “Resistance” to “No Surrender”: Popular Disobedience in Württemberg in 1945’, in Francis R. Nicosia and Lawrence D. Stokes (eds.), Germans against Nazism, Oxford and Providence, RI, 1990, pp. 357–8; Jill Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis, London, 2006, pp. 324–5.
90. Hildebrand Troll, ‘Aktionen zur Kriegsbeendigung im Frühjahr 1945’, in Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich and Anton Grossmann (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. 4, Munich and Vienna, 1981, pp. 650–54; Fritz, pp. 140–49.
91. Serger, Böttcher and Ueberschär, pp. 255–7, diary entry of Gertrud Neumeister, 17.4.45.
92. See Henke, pp. 844–61; Fritz, ch. 5; Elisabeth Kohlhaas, ‘ “Aus einem Haus, aus dem eine weiße Fahnen erscheint, sind alle männlichen Personen zu erschießen”: Durchhalteterror und Gewalt gegen Zivilisten am Kriegsende 1945’, in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jörg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Göttingen, 2006, pp. 51–79; Egbert Schwarz, ‘Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches: Untersuchung zu Justiz und NS-Verbrechen in der Kriegsendphase März/April 1945’, MA thesis, University of Düsseldorf, 1990, pp. 14–19, 23–7, 35–8 (a regional study of Northern Rhineland-Westphalia); and DZW, 6, pp. 652–4, for numerous examples.
93. Troll, p. 652; Fritz, p. 146.
94. Zeitzeugen berichten… Schwäbisch Gmünd, pp. 43, 49, 77, 83–4; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 2, ed. Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1969, pp. 77–101; Albert Deible, Krieg und Kriegsende in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Schwäbisch Gmünd, 1954, pp. 26–8, 34–5, 66–8; Kohlhaas, p. 51.
95. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 1, ed. Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1968, pp. 505–29; Henke, pp. 848–9; Kohlhaas, p. 51, has fourteen victims, though this figure must include those shot at but not actually hit. As in so many cases, the Kreisleiter had given the order ‘to defend the town to the last drop of blood’, whereas most people were wholly opposed to such a stance. – Robert Bauer, Heilbronner Tagebuchblätter, Heilbronn, 1949, p. 46. Drauz was executed in 1946, his main accomplice sentenced to fifteen years in a penitentiary. For Drauz, notable for his fanaticism, see also Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front, pp. 332–3.
96. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 10, ed. Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, H. H. Fuchs and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1973, pp. 205–40; Henke, pp. 851–3.
97. BBC Archives, The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997), written and produced for BBC2 by Laurence Rees, interview of Walter Fernau by Detlef Siebert, n.d., c. 1997, roll 219, pp. 211, 213; roll 221, pp. 352–3. See also the book of the series: Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, London, 1997, pp. 232–4 and 247. Much of the lengthy interview (rolls 217–21, 403pp., in German, with English translation) gives Fernau’s own account of the operation of Helm’s ‘flying court martial’ and the trial and execution of Karl Weiglein. Fernau was sentenced in 1952 to six years in a penitentiary for his part in the affair (and in a further case).
98. Jürgen Zarusky, ‘Von der Sondergerichtsbarkeit zum Endphasenterror: Loyalitätserzwingung und Rache am Widerstand im Zusammenbruch des NS-Regimes’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, pp. 116–17; Andreas Heusler, ‘Die Eskalation des Terrors: Gewalt gegen ausländische Zwangsarbeiter in der Endphase des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, p. 180.
99. Zarusky, p. 113.
100. For numerous cases of mass killing of prisoners in April 1945, see Gerhard Paul, ‘ “Diese Erschießungen haben mich innerlich gar nicht mehr berührt”: Die Kriegsendphasenverbrechen der Gestapo 1944/45’, in Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.), Die Gestapo im Zweiten Weltkrieg: ‘Heimatfront’ und besetztes Europa, Darmstadt, 2000, pp. 554–60.
101. Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 336–7.
102. Eberhard Kolb, ‘Bergen-Belsen: Die Errichtung des Lagers Bergen-Belsen und seine Funktion als “Aufenthaltslager” (1943/44)’, in Martin Broszat (ed.), Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Stuttgart, 1970, p. 151; Eberhard Kolb, Bergen-Belsen 1943 bis 1945, Göttingen, 1985, pp. 47–51. For Himmler’s orders, see Eberhard Kolb, Bergen-Belsen: Geschichte des ‘Aufenthaltslagers’ 1943–1945, Hanover, 1962, pp. 157–60.
103. Kolb, Bergen-Belsen 1943 bis 1945, p. 48; Katrin Greiser, Die Todesmärsche von Buchenwald: Räumung, Befreiung und Spuren der Erinnerung, Göttingen, 2008, p. 134.
104. Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte, Hamburg, 1999, pp. 301–5, 308, 311–12; Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, p. 745.
105. Orth, p. 307.
106. Orth, pp. 307–8, 311; IMT, vol. 11, p. 450 (testimony of Rudolf Höß). The order to ‘secure’ the concentration camps in an emergency – presumed to be a prisoners’ uprising – had been first issued on 17 June 1944, though this made no explicit mention of what should happen to the prisoners. – IfZ, Nbg-Dok., PS-3683, ‘Sicherung der Konzentrationslager’ (not in the published trial volumes), by which Himmler gave responsibility for security measures involving the concentration camps to the Higher SS and Police Leaders; Orth, p. 272. According to the testimony of Höß, this left up to them the question of whether a camp should be evacuated or handed over. In early 1945, with the approach of the enemy, the situation changed. In January and February 1945 commandants carried out new instructions to kill ‘dangerous’ prisoners. Himmler’s agreement in March, with the intention of using Jews as pawns in possible negotiations with the western Allies, then temporarily blocked ideas of killing all concentration camp prisoners. – Orth, pp. 296–305. But in April there was another shift. The order indicating that there had been a reversion to the earlier stance was apparently issued on 18 April (not 14 April as often stated) and received in the camp at Flossenbürg the following day. A German text of this order has never surfaced, though its authenticity has been ascertained on the basis of several near contemporary partial translations. – Stanislav Zamecnik, ‘ “Kein Häftling darf lebend in die Hände des Feindes fallen”: Zur Existenz des Himmler-Befehls vom 14–18. April 1945’, Dachauer Hefte, 1 (1985), pp. 219–31. See also DZW, 6, pp. 647–8.
107. IMT, vol. 11, p. 450 (Höß testimony); Orth, p. 312; Daniel Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, in Jane Caplan and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds.), Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories, London and New York, 2010, p. 175; DZW, 6, pp. 647–8.
108. Orth, p. 307.
109. Orth, pp. 305–9. The conditions in Buchenwald during the final days and the liberation of the camp are vividly described by a prisoner at the time, Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager, pb. edn., Munich, 1974, pp. 335–43.
110. Orth, pp. 312–28. The western Allies went to considerable lengths after the war to establish the precise routes of the marches, the numbers killed in each place they passed through, and the exact place of burial of those murdered. The extensive files are housed at the ITS, especially Bestand ‘Tote’ (83 boxes) and ‘Evak’ (9 boxes).
111. Greiser, p. 138.
112. Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, p. 174.
113. Unpublished ‘Reminiscences’ (1989) of Dr Michael Gero, Hamburg, pp. 111–12, most kindly sent to me by Mr George Burton, the son of one of the prisoners so casually and brutally murdered. What happened to the blond SS murderer is not known.
114. Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, pp. 176–7, 180–81.
115. Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, pp. 177–8; Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, pb. edn., London, 1997, p. 364; Greiser, pp. 136, 140, concludes that, as regards Buchenwald prisoners, non-Jews were no less exposed to the torment than Jews were.
116. ITS, Tote 80, fo. 00044a, Celle, (1946–7), estimates the death toll from the bombing raid at a thousand prisoners. Later estimates have varied wildly, but the most likely assessments seem to be 400–500. – Bernhard Strebel, Celle April 1945 Revisited, Bielefeld, 2008, pp. 114–15.
117. Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944–printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 282–8 (quotation, p. 286). Strebel (whose book offers a careful assessment of the available evidence for the dire events in Celle) estimates (p. 115) around 200 victims of the massacre. See also ‘Hasenjagd’ in Celle: Das Massaker am 8. April 1945, Celle, 2005, for eyewitness accounts and an assessment of how the town subsequently dealt with the memory of the massacre.
118. Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, pp. 318–61; Joachim Neander, Das Konzentrationslager ‘Mittelbau’ in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, 1997, pp. 466–77; Joachim Neander, Gardelegen 1945: Das Ende der Häftlingstransporte aus dem Konzentrationslager ‘Mittelbau’, Magdeburg, 1998, pp. 27–35, 40–45; Diana Gring, ‘Das Massaker von Gardelegen’, Dachauer Hefte, 20 (2004), pp. 112–26; Goldhagen, pp. 367–8; Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2001, p. 246; DZW, 6, p. 648.
119. Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg, IV 409 AR-Z/ 78/72, fos. 1192, 1234; IV 409 AR-Z/105/72 1 fo. 96. I am grateful for these references to Dr Simone Erpel.
120. Both quotations in Greiser, p. 258. A fourteen-year-old boy on the march from Flossenbürg in mid-April recalled that ‘most Germans regard us prisoners as criminals’. – Heinrich Demerer, ‘Erinnerungen an den Todesmarsch aus dem KZ Flossenbürg’, Dachauer Hefte, 25 (2009), p. 154.
121. Goldhagen, p. 365, and p. 587 n. 23; Simone Erpel, Zwischen Vernichtung und Befreiung: Das Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück in der letzten Kriegsphase, Berlin, 2005, pp. 176–7.
122. Cited Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, p. 286.
123. ITS, Tote 83, Hütten, fo. 00011a–b (1.4.46, though the evidence is weakened by the fact that the former mayor and Wehrmacht officer were signatories to the report).
124. ITS, Tote 4, Altendorf, fos. 00088a–00099b (July 1947).
125. Some instances are presented in Greiser, pp. 259–75, and in Delia Müller and Madlen Lepschies, Tage der Angst und der Hoffnung: Erinnerungen an die Todesmärsche aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück Ende April 1945, Berlin, n.d., pp. 56–7, 87, 89–90. Heinrich Demerer recalled sympathetic faces among civilians watching the marching prisoners and frequently being given bread by civilians, though he thought it was because he was so small, since the other prisoners received virtually nothing as they passed by. – Demerer, pp. 152, 154. Memories of the Ravensbrück death marches provide instances where children at the time recollected their parents putting water and boiled potatoes on the streets for prisoners. The former prisoners themselves, on the other hand, recall, not such instances of aid, but the rejection of the bystanders. – Simone Erpel, ‘Machtverhältnisse im Zerfall: Todesmärsche der Häftlinge des Frauen-Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrück im April 1945’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, p. 198.
126. Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, p. 180; and see Goldhagen, p. 365.
127. Ardsley Microfilms, Irving Collection, Reel 1, R97481, Göring interrogation, 24.5.45.
128. This is the speculation of Rolf-Dieter Müller in DRZW, 10/2, pp. 102–4. Speer acknowledged in his post-war trial that he still had conflicting feelings and was after all that had happened even now ready to place himself at Hitler’s disposal. – IMT, vol. 16, p. 582. Schmidt, pp. 162–3, suggests that Speer sought to influence Hitler to appoint Dönitz as his successor, in the expectation that he himself would play an important role in the administration.
129. Speer, pp. 487–8.
130. BAB, NS19/3118, fo. 3, Himmler’s order of 24.1.45, reminding SS men of Hitler’s order of 25.11.44 (fo. 2) on required behaviour of officers, NCOs and men ‘in an apparently hopeless situation’.
131. Von Oven, pp. 647, 650 (19–20.4.45).
132. Von Oven, pp. 646–7 (18.4.45). Goebbels had also ensured that his diaries had been copied onto glass plates in an early form of microfiche. – TBJG, Register, Teil III, Elke Fröhlich, ‘Einleitung zur Gesamtedition’, pp. 37–47. His posthumous image was much on Goebbels’ mind at this time. Speaking to his staff on 17 April and referring to the new colour film Kolberg, which had been produced to bolster willingness to hold out and defy the odds, the Propaganda Minister reportedly stated: ‘Gentlemen, in a hundred years’ time they will be showing another fine colour film describing the terrible days we are living through. Don’t you want to play a part in this film, to be brought back to life in a hundred years’ time? Everybody now has the chance to choose the part which he will play in the film a hundred years hence. I can assure you it will be a fine and elevating picture. And for the sake of this prospect it is worth standing fast. Hold out now, so that a hundred years hence the audience does not hoot and whistle when you appear on the screen.’ The fifty or so men who heard this did not know whether to laugh or swear. – Semmler, p. 194 (17.4.45).
133. Von Oven, pp. 652–4 (22.4.45). See also Semmler, pp. 185–6 (25.2.45). According to the former Gauleiter of Süd-Hannover-Braunschweig, Hartmann Lauterbacher, Erlebt und mitgestaltet, Preußisch Oldendorf, 1984, p. 320, Goebbels told him at their last meeting, on 12 April, that all six of the children had cyanide capsules knitted into their clothes so that none of them could fall alive into the hands of the Russians.
134. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, p. 166 (21.4.45).
135. DZW, 6, p. 707.
136. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fos. 11–15, 39–40, 54 (15.5.45).
137. DZW, 6, p. 734.
138. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fos. 52–7 (15.5.45).
139. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fos. 22–5, 39–41 (15.5.45).
140. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fo. 29 (15.5.45).
141. DZW, 6, pp. 705–26, DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 656–73, Erickson, pp. 577–618, and Beevor, ch. 21, provide detailed descriptions of the battle of Berlin.
142. Jodl admitted this to Colonel-General Heinrici on 13 May 1945. – BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 57–8 (15.5.45).
143. Steiner had well-warranted reasons for not undertaking the attack and was despairing at being given an order which was, as all with any insight into the position knew, impossible to carry out. See BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 19–22 (15.4.45).
144. The uncertainty, also regarding Göring’s position, produced by Hitler’s breakdown is plainly summarized in the report sent three days later to Hitler by General Karl Koller, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe. – IWM, EDS, F.3, AL 1985 (2), ‘An den Führer. Bericht über die wesentlichen Punkte der Vorgänge am 22.4. und meiner Meldung an den Herrn Reichsmarschall am 23.4.’ (25.4.45). A brief description of Hitler’s remarks, recorded by an eyewitness, Oberleutnant Hans Volck, adjutant to the Luftwaffe Operations Staff, is in IWM, EDS, F.3, AL 1985 (1), ‘Meldung über Führerlage am 22.4.1945. Lagebeginn: etwa 15.30 Uhr’ (25.4.45). There are minor discrepancies between Koller’s report and his subsequent publication, Karl Koller, Der letzte Monat: Die Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des ehemaligen Chefs des Generalstabes der deutschen Luftwaffe vom 14. April bis zum 27. Mai 1945, Mannheim, 1949, pp. 28–32.
145. Speer, pp. 479, 484.
146. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 38–9 (15.4.45).
147. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 41–4 (15.4.45).
148. IfZ, ZS 145, Bd. III, Schwerin von Krosigk, fo. 61 (7.12.62).
149. IfZ, ZS 988, Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, interrogation by Dr Robert Kempner, fos. 4, 7, 10 (5.3.47).
150. Krosigk wrote to Speer on 29 March, in the framework of discussions over ‘scorched earth’, suggesting that intensified Allied bombing had been caused by the desire not to let German industry fall into Soviet hands, and that the more Germany’s industrial potential was preserved the greater the bargaining position with the west would be. On 6 April, urgently seeking a meeting with Goebbels, he pressed for action to create the conditions for Britain to break away from the enemy coalition, which he thought was eminently possible. He wrote again to Goebbels on 14 April, describing Roosevelt’s death as a ‘present from God’ that had to be actively exploited, recommending an approach from the Pope to America, which, he claimed, had an interest in German industry as a barrier to a strengthened Soviet state. – All in IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369.
151. IfZ, ZS 145, Bd. III, Schwerin von Krosigk, fos. 58–61 (7.12.62).
152. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fo. 328836, file note, presumably for Gauleiter Wahl, 20.4.45.
153. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/37, unfoliated, note of telephone call from the Kreisleiter of Lindau, n.d., c. 24–6.4.45. Lindau, where reports suggested that up to 60 per cent of the population could be seen as pro-Nazi, remained a trouble spot for the French occupying authorities (in a region that gave them some security headaches) for some weeks after the end of the war. There were some disturbances, cases of apparent arson, and a French officer was shot dead by a fourteen-year-old former member of the Hitler Youth. Much of the town’s population was for a short time forcibly evacuated and only allowed to return, two days later, after grovelling pleas for clemency. French troops arriving in the meantime had ransacked much of the empty town. The whole affair was an embarrassment to the French, and shocked American and Swiss observers. – Perry Biddiscome, Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement 1944–1946, Toronto and Buffalo, NY, 1998, pp. 260–63.
154. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 2, pp. 236–52; IfZ, ED 195, Slg. Schottenheim, vol. 1, pp. 87–91 (written to show the author, Dr Otto Schottenheim, a doctor and the Nazi mayor of Regensburg since 1933, in the best light); Henke, p. 854; Dieter Albrecht, ‘Regensburg in der NS-Zeit’, in Dieter Albrecht (ed.), Zwei Jahrtausende Regensburg, Regensburg, 1979, p. 200, also for Ruckdeschel quotation: ‘Regensburg wird verteidigt werden bis zum letzten Stein.’ For Schottenheim, who died in 1980 an honoured citizen despite his Nazi past, see Helmut Halter, Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz: Kommunalpolitik in Regensburg während der NS-Zeit, Regensburg, 1994, pp. 77–87, and Albrecht, pp. 195–6. Ruckdeschel was sentenced in 1948 for his part in the Regensburg killings to eight years in a penitentiary (a sentence extended to thirteen years in a further trial the following year for ordering the execution of a civilian in Landshut on 29 April 1945). – Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 2, pp. 234–346; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 3, ed. Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1969, pp. 763–94. Ruckdeschel died peacefully in Wolfsburg in 1986. – Miller and Schulz, vol. 1.
155. Troll, pp. 660–71; Henke, pp. 854–61; Heike Bretschneider, Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus in München 1933–1945, Munich, 1968, pp. 218–39; Klaus Tenfelde, ‘Proletarische Provinz: Radikalisierung und Widerstand in Penzberg/Oberbayern 1900 bis 1945’, in Broszat, Fröhlich and Grossmann, vol. 4, pp. 374–81; Georg Lorenz, Die Penzberger Mordnacht vom 28. April 1945 vor dem Richter, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1948, pp. 5–11; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 3, pp. 100–101; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 13, ed. Irene Sagel-Grande, H. H. Fuchs, and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1975, pp. 532–40. A sixteenth victim was shot ‘while in flight’. – Tenfelde, pp. 378, 380. The post-war trials relating to the murders in Altötting and Munich are in StAM, Staatsanwaltschaften 34876/25 (Altötting) and StAM, Staatsanwaltschaften 6571, 18848/2–3, ‘Fall Salisco’ (Munich). For an assessment of varied forms of resistance towards the end of the war, see Edgar Wolfrum, ‘Widerstand in den letzten Kriegsmonaten’, in Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Bonn, 1994, pp. 537–52. The Penzberg mine was not destroyed at the end of the war, and ceased production only in 1966. – Tenfelde, p. 382.
156. Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 334 (10.4.45).
157. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 39.
158. Ingrid Hammer and Susanne zur Nieden (eds.), Sehr selten habe ich geweint: Briefe und Tagebücher aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg von Menschen aus Berlin, Zurich, 1992, p. 358 (23.4.45).
159. Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945, pb. edn., Munich, 2008, p. 30 (23.4.45).
160. Anonyma, pp. 9–15, 20, 24–5, 34, 39 (20–25.4.45).
161. VB, Munich edn., 20, 24, 25.4.45.
162. Anonyma, pp. 19–20 (21.4.45), 30 (23.4.45), 43 (26.4.45); Kronika, pp. 138, 152–3 (23.4.45).
163. Andreas-Friedrich, pp. 166–7 (21.4.45).
164. ‘Full of anxiety we went back into the cellar and awaited what might come,’ noted one diarist. – Hammer and zur Nieden, p. 364 (26.4.45)
165. Longerich, pp. 750–51; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 593–8.
166. KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, p. 416A, Beitrag zum Kriegstagebuch Skl. am 2. Mai 1945; Heereslage vom 1.5.45; Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende: Legenden und Dokumente, Munich, 1999, pp. 282–3.
CHAPTER 9. LIQUIDATION
1. Kathrin Orth, ‘Kampfmoral und Einsatzbereitschaft in der Kriegsmarine 1945’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, p. 141.
2. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 2.5.45.
3. BA/MA, NL Schörner, N60/18, unfoliated, Tagesbefehl, 3.5.45.
4. Cited in Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, p. 141.
5. BA/MA, N245/3, fo. 88, NL Reinhardt, Kalenderblätter for 1.5.45. The news of Hitler’s death also came as no surprise to Colonel-General Lothar Renduli´c when he heard it on 1 May in Austria. Discipline among his troops was unaffected, though Hitler’s death was seen to improve the prospects of a political way out through cooperation with the west. – Lothar Rendulic´, Gekämpft, Gesiegt, Geschlagen, Wels, 1952, p. 378.
6. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.
7. Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005, pp. 210–12 (Eng. language edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007, pp. 156–8).
8. Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, p. 582.
9. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Eveline B., 6.5.45. Erich Kästner, Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch, Berlin, 1961, p. 116 (2.5.45), remarked that people were greeting each other jokingly with ‘Heil Dönitz’. The accordion-player had changed, he commented, but the tune was the same.
10. Cited Bessel, p. 141.
11. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, pp. 188–9 (2.5.45).
12. Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst – Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, p. 252, letter from Gerda J., Hamburg/Altona, 7.7.45. This was only an inspired guess at what had happened. Precise details of Hitler’s suicide were not known at this time beyond the small circle of those directly involved in the last drama in the bunker.
13. Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945, pb. edn., Munich, 2008, p. 143 (5.5.45).
14. Die Niederlage 1945: Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Percy Ernst Schramm, Munich, 1962, p. 419.
15. Herbert Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches – Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Rückschau, Munich and Zurich, 1995, p. 11.
16. Herbert Kraus, ‘Großadmiral Karl Dönitz’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite, vol. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, p. 51.
17. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 419.
18. DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 61.
19. Jürgen Förster, ‘Die Wehrmacht und das Ende des “Dritten Reichs” ’, in Arnd Bauerkämper, Christoph Kleßmann and Hans Misselwitz (eds.), Der 8. Mai 1945 als historische Zäsur: Strukturen, Erfahrung, Deutungen, Potsdam, 1995, p. 57.
20. Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, pp. 3–4, 8–11.
21. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Deutsche Menschen vor der Vernichtung durch den Bolschewismus zu retten”: Das Programm der Regierung Dönitz und der Beginn einer Legendenbildung’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 16.
22. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.
23. Quoted in DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 55; see also, for Dönitz’s unquestioning loyalty to Hitler and his fanatical exhortations to fight on, pp. 57–60, 67.
24. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62, 7.12.62.
25. KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, pp. 333–4-A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45. Dönitz had already a week earlier, at the Soviet breakthrough on the Oder front, provided naval forces for the fight on land. – Schwendemann, pp. 14–15.
26. BA/MA, RM7/851, Seekriegsleitung, fo. 169, Hitler to Dönitz, 29.4.45; Schwendemann, p. 15.
27. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2237.
28. Major-General Dethleffsen recalled shortly after the war his own lack of surprise since he had heard hints earlier in April from the Chief of the General Staff, Hans Krebs, that Dönitz was being viewed by Hitler as his successor. Others, however, according to Dethleffsen, were more taken by surprise at the appointment. – BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.
29. IWM, FO645/155, interrogation of Karl Dönitz, 12.9.45, pp. 19–20.
30. Karl Dönitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, Da Capo edn., New York, 1997, p. 442.
31. See Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 101 and Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, pp. 9, 11. It has, however, been suggested – if without supporting evidence – that Dönitz’s presumption that Hitler wanted him to pave the way for a capitulation might have been gleaned before the Grand-Admiral left for Plön, or from conversations with Himmler. – Jörg Hillmann, ‘Die “Reichsregierung” in Flensburg’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 41. Hitler’s desperate comment, during his temporary breakdown on 22 April, that there was no more fighting to be done – a view he swiftly revised – and that should it come to negotiations Göring would be better than he was, can scarcely be regarded as evidence for a mandate to come to terms with the enemy at his death. See Reimer Hansen, Das Ende des Dritten Reiches: Die deutsche Kapitulation 1945, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 48–50; Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Regierung Dönitz: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches, 5th edn., Leoni am Starnberger See, 1981, p. 46; Marlis Steinert, Die 23 Tage der Regierung Dönitz, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1967, p. 45.
32. DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 469–70; DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 626; Schwendemann, p. 15.
33. See Hitler’s Testament: Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, p. 2237 (not, however, known to Dönitz at the time).
34. Schwendemann, pp. 27–8.
35. IWM, FO645/158, interrogation of Wilhelm Keitel, 10.10.45, p. 27.
36. IfZ, ZS 1810, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, Bd. II, fo. 55, interview for the Observer, 18.11.74.
37. One woman in Berlin wrote as late as 21 May that ‘there is still no certain news about Adolf’. – Anonyma, p. 221.
38. See Christian Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (2006), pp. 153–73, and Goeschel’s monograph, Suicide in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2009, ch. 5, for extensive analysis of the phenomenon. See also Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, London, 2008, pp. 728–33.
39. Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany, pp. 153–4.
40. Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1945: Die letzten Aufzeichnungen, Hamburg, 1977, pp. 549, 556.
41. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, p. 2237.
42. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 155.
43. MadR, 17, p. 6737.
44. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 158; Jacob Kronika, Der Untergang Berlins, Flensburg, 1946, p. 41 (6.3.45): ‘Alle Berliner wissen, daß die Russen in Kürze in Berlin eindringen werden – und nun sehen sie keine andere Möglichkeit, als sich Zyankali zu verschaffen.’
45. Anonyma, pp. 171, 174 (9.5.45), 207 (17.5.45); Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 160; Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany, pp. 158–9.
46. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, pp. 162–3 and n. 57.
47. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 169.
48. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, pp. 964–5; and see Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, pp. 169–70.
49. ‘Tief vergraben, nicht dran rühren’, Spiegel Special, 2 (2005), p. 218. I am most grateful to Klaus Wiegrefe and Michael Kloft for this reference. See also for the atmosphere of panic and numerous suicides, many out of fear of being raped by soldiers of the Red Army, Joachim Schulz-Naumann, Mecklenburg 1945, Munich, 1989, pp. 161, 165, 173, 241–2 (accounts given in the 1980s).
50. Based on the recollections of the events in ‘Tief vergraben, nicht dran rühren’, Norbert Buske, Das Kriegsende 1945 in Demmin: Berichte, Erinnerungen, Dokumente, Schwerin, 1995, pp. 9–14, 17–40, 43, 44 n. 3, 48–50, nn. 27–39; and the eyewitness account of Waltraud Reski (née Gülzow), interviewed by Tilman Remme, in BBC Archives, The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997), written and produced for BBC2 by Laurence Rees, roll 263, pp. 1–42 (quotation, p. 29). See also Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 166.
51. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 420.
52. BA/MA, N54/8, NL Keitel, ‘Die letzten Tage unter Adolf Hitler’, fo. 19.
53. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 447 (16.5.45); 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht. Dokumente, ed. Gerhard Förster and Richard Lakowski, Berlin, 1975, pp. 422–5.
54. Hillmann, pp. 46–7; DZW, 6, p. 770; Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 429–30 (5.5.45).
55. BA/MA, N54/8, NL Keitel, ‘Die letzten Tage unter Adolf Hitler’, fo. 19.
56. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. I, fo. 24, Eidesstattliche Erklärung, Nuremberg 1.4.49 im Spruchverfahren gegen Ernst Wilhelm Bohle.
57. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62, 7.12.62.
58. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 431–2, Dönitz-Tagebuch, Tagesniederschrift 6.5.45; IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62, 7.12.62.
59. Hillmann, pp. 5–7. Dönitz had initially wanted to change the leadership of the Wehrmacht. He and Krosigk agreed that Keitel and Jodl would be dismissed and replaced by Field-Marshal Erich von Manstein as the new head of the Wehrmacht. But the whereabouts of Manstein (according to one version) could not be located. – Walter Baum, ‘Der Zusammenbruch der obersten deutschen militärischen Führung 1945’, Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau, 10 (1960), p. 255. In another account, Manstein said he had been summoned by the OKW to meet Dönitz without being given a reason. He could not attend that day and heard no more about it. Dönitz told Krosigk that Manstein had declined to take over from Keitel, which was not the case. – Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Es geschah in Deutschland, Tübingen and Stuttgart, 1951, p. 374.
60. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62v, 7.12.62; Schwendemann, p. 18.
61. IfZ, ZS 1810, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, Bd. II, fos. 60–61, ‘Letzte Kriegszeit als Ob.d.M. Zeit als Staatsoberhaupt’, no date; Lüdde-Neurath, pp. 81–2.
62. Müller and Ueberschär, p. 103. Major-General Dethleffsen recalled some months later (BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57) that he had been unable to resist pointing out to the NSFO of Army Group Vistula on hearing the news of Hitler’s death that he should think overnight of a new form of greeting since ‘Heil Hitler’ was now out of date. The thought turned out to be a little premature.
63. DZW, 6, p. 776, lists some of the sentences by military courts and the executions that followed.
64. IWM, EDS, H1, 2.5.45. Printed in 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 361–4. When Dönitz had consulted Ribbentrop about a new Foreign Minister, the latter had been able to think of no one more suitable for the post than himself. – Lüdde-Neurath, p. 82.
65. The ‘Tagesniederschriften’, taken down by Dönitz’s adjutant, Korvettenkapitän Walter Lüdde-Neurath, exist in BA/MA, N374/8, NL Friedeburg with copies in IWM, EDS, F.3, AL2893. They are quoted here from the printed version in Die Niederlage 1945, p. 421 (2.5.45). Hillmann sees Dönitz’s attempt to work through partial capitulations as continuity rather than ‘a new characteristic of policy’, since most of Hitler’s paladins had at one time or another tried to gain a ‘separate peace’ or partial capitulation. This overlooks the fact that, before Hitler’s death, such actions remained ‘unofficial’, undertaken behind his back, or were blocked at the outset, whereas once Dönitz became head of state they became overnight official policy. – Hillmann, pp. 48–9. Dönitz repeated in a statement soon after the end of the war that he regarded an immediate total capitulation as impossible for Germany. The horror at what the Soviets had done was so strong that an immediate general capitulation, abandoning the soldiers in the east and the refugee civilian population to the Red Army, ‘would have been a crime against my German people’, and the order would not have been followed by German troops, who would have continued to try to fight their way to the west. – IfZ, ZS 1810, Karl Dönitz, Bd. II, ‘Kriegsende 1945’, 22.7.45, fo. 3.
66. DZW, 6, p. 426.
67. NAL, Premier 3/221/12, nos. 3736–7, fos. 413–15, Churchill to Eden, 16.4.45, fos. 392–3, Eisenhower to Combined Chiefs of Staff, 23.4.45, fo. 361, Eisenhower to Combined Chiefs of Staff, 1.5.45. See also Bob Moore, ‘The Western Allies and Food Relief to the Occupied Netherlands, 1944–45’, War and Society, 10 (1992), pp. 106–9. I am grateful to Bob Moore for providing me with these references.
68. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 421 (2.5.45), 425 (3.5.45); BAB, R3/1625, fos. 4–5, Blaskowitz to Lüdde-Neurath, n.d. (30.4.45; the original telex in BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 177, has no date, though 30.4 is pencilled in the top right-hand corner); Seyß-Inquart ‘an den Führer’ (i.e. to Dönitz), 2.5.45. For Blaskowitz’s stance in the last days of the war, see John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, pp. 340–41.
69. Keitel pointed out that the news took Dönitz by surprise but that he supported it. – BA/MA, N54/8, NL Keitel, ‘Die letzten Tage unter Adolf Hitler’, fo. 20.
70. BA/MA, N574/19, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Kriegsende in Italien’ (1948), fo. 45; also Förster, p. 56.
71. BA/MA, N574/19, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Kriegsende in Italien’ (1948), fos. 53–4.
72. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/284 (A), Kaltenbrunner to Hitler, 1.5.45.
73. DZW, 6, pp. 152–3.
74. BA/MA, N574/19, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Kriegsende in Italien’, fos. 56–9.
75. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/284 (A), Kesselring to Dönitz, Keitel and Deputy Chief, Wehrmacht Operations Staff, General Winter, 2.5.45.
76. BA/MA, N574/19, NL Vietinghoff, ‘Kriegsende in Italien’ (1948), fos. 60–62. For Kesselring’s account, see The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, Greenhill Books edn., London, 1997, pp. 288–9. See also, for the capitulation in Italy, DZW, 6, pp. 749–52; DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 472.
77. BA/MA, RW44II/3, fo. 20, Winter to Jodl, 2.5.45.
78. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 423 (2.5.45); Schwendemann, p. 18.
79. BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 13, for Dönitz’s order for the capitulation of the city, issued the previous day, 2 May.
80. BA/MA, RM7/854, fos. 33, 36, reports of Kdr. Adm. Deutsche Bucht, 4.5.45. Serious disintegration within the 3rd Panzer Army in Mecklenburg had already been reported on 27 April by General Hasso von Manteuffel, who spoke of scenes which he had not even seen in 1918. – 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 343–4; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), p. 655.
81. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 429 (5.5.45); BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 24, for the earlier confirmation order of 3.5.45 to scuttle ships. A directive had already been issued on 30 April that ‘in the event of an unforeseen development of the situation’ on the codeword ‘Rainbow’, all ships, including U-boats, were immediately to be sunk. The demand to hand over all weapons, including U-boats, was seen by Keitel and Jodl as incompatible with German honour. Dönitz accepted the demand only with extreme reluctance. Some 185 U-boats were, in fact, scuttled by their commanders with the Dönitz administration turning a blind eye, before the order to hand them over could take effect. – KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, p. 421A, Funksprüche der Skl., 3.5.45; Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, ‘Persönliche Erinnerungen’, part 2: ‘25 Jahre Berlin 1920 bis 1945’, unpublished typescript, n.d., p. 324; DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), pp. 166–7.
82. DZW, 6, p. 742. This figure includes SS and OT members. Howard D. Grier, Hitler, Dönitz and the Baltic Sea: The Third Reich’s Last Hope, 1944–1945, Annapolis, Md., 2007, p. 218, has a Wehrmacht strength of 350,000 troops.
83. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 423 (3.5.45), 426–7 (4.5.45), 430 (5.5.45); DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 472–4; DZW, 6, pp. 773–4; Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, pp. 496–7; Schwendemann, pp. 18–19.
84. BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 117, Chef OKW, 6.5.45.
85. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 425 (3.5.45).
86. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 432 (6.5.45); DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 474–5; DZW, 6, p. 758; Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 102–3; Schwendemann, p. 23.
87. BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 71, Keitel telegraph, 5.5.45.
88. BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 48, FS Chef SKL, 4.5.45.
89. According to the OKW’s calculations, 1,850,000 soldiers belonged to the army in the east on 7 May 1945. – DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), p. 675.
90. DZW, 6, pp. 745, 761, 763; Schwendemann, p. 24, for the figures given above, representing the OKW’s estimates on 8 May. According to DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), p. 674, the size of Army Group Centre was estimated at between 600,000 and 650,000 men on 7 May.
91. DZW, 6, p. 740; Müller and Ueberschär, p. 108. On Hela, the commander reported on 3 May that, short of men and weapons, the troops there were facing ‘certain destruction’. – BA/MA, RW44I/33, fo. 26, KR Blitz von General der Panzertruppe, AOK Ostpreußen an Obkdo. d. WMFStOber (H) Nordost, 3.5.45. There were some 150,000 soldiers and 50,000 refugees on Hela at the time. – Schwendemann, p. 23.
92. BA/MA, RW44I/86, fo. 5, Bev. Gen. Kurland, gez. Möller, Brigadeführer, an Dönitz, 5.5.45.
93. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 426–7 (4.5.45).
94. DZW, 6, p. 758; Rendulic´, pp. 378–81; Schwendemann, pp. 25–6.
95. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 429 (5.5.45). Löhr’s request to be allowed to offer Field-Marshal Alexander his cooperation in an attempt to ‘prevent the total Bolshevization of Austria’ is printed in KTB/SKL, part A. vol. 68, p. 439A.
96. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 430 (6.5.45); Schwendemann, p. 20.
97. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 425 (3.5.45).
98. DZW, 6, p. 761; Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 427–8 (4.5.45).
99. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 422 (2.5.45).
100. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 423 (3.5.45).
101. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 431 (6.5.45).
102. DZW, 6, pp. 758–67; Müller and Ueberschär, p. 104.
103. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 430–31 (6.5.45).
104. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 432–3 (7.5.45). Eisenhower had given Jodl half an hour to reach a decision, but communications difficulties with Flensburg delayed the arrival of his message and receipt of Dönitz’s approval. – DZW, 6, p. 774. See also Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 331–3.
105. Reproduced in facsimile in Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 178–9. Britain had introduced ‘double summer time’ during the Second World War. This placed Britain one hour ahead of Central European Time.
106. Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 106, 180–81; Schwendemann, p. 30; Baum, p. 261. For a description of the scene, see G. Zhukov, Reminiscences and Reflections, vol. 2, Moscow, 1985, pp. 399–400; also Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007, pp. 403–5.
107. Speer, pp. 498–9.
108. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/284 (A), report on a discussion between Keitel and General Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov, deputy commissar of the NKVD (the Soviet internal security organization, headed by Lavrenty Beria); printed in KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, pp. 469–71A. Authentication of part of a jawbone which the Soviets had found in the garden of the Reich Chancellery as belonging to Hitler was only made a few days later. Stalin and the Soviet authorities continued for years to disbelieve accounts of Hitler’s death.
109. BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 120, Kriegstagebuch Seekriegsleitung, 7.5.45; KTB/OKW, vol. 4/2, pp. 1482–3 (7.5.45); Schwendemann, p. 25.
110. Schwendemann, p. 26.
111. Klaus Granzow, Tagebuch eines Hitlerjungen 1943–1945, Bremen, 1965, p. 177 (5.5.45).
112. BA/MA, NL Schörner, N60/18, unfoliated, proclamation by Schörner to soldiers of Army Group Centre, 5.5.45.
113. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 431.
114. Schwendemann, p. 25.
115. DZW, 6, p. 767.
116. BA/MA, RW44I/54, unfoliated 4pp. ‘Aufzeichnung über die Dienstreise des Oberst i.G. Meyer-Detring zu Feldmarschall Schörner am 8.5.45 (p. 3: Unterredung mit Feldmarschall Schörner); Die Niederlage 1945, p. 438, for Meyer-Detring’s report to Dönitz.
117. BA/MA, NL Schörner, N60/18, unfoliated, proclamation by Schörner to soldiers of Army Group Centre, 5.5.45; printed in Roland Kaltenegger, Schörner: Feldmarschall der letzten Stunde, Munich and Berlin, 1994, pp. 297–8.
118. In a case that raised great public interest, with much support for Schörner as well as heated criticism of his actions, the former field-marshal was found guilty in October 1957 of condemning to death without a court, then the hanging, of a corporal said to have fallen asleep, drunk, at the wheel of his lorry in March 1945. He was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment, of which he served two before being released on health grounds. The Federal Republic refused him a pension. He lived a secluded existence in Munich supported by friends and former military comrades, until his death in 1973 at the age of eighty-one. – Peter Steinkamp, ‘Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite, vol. 2: Von Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 240–42; Klaus Schönherr, ‘Ferdinand Schörner – Der idealtypische Nazi-General’, in Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.), Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches, Berlin, 1995, pp. 506–7. See also, for the controversy around Schörner’s trial, Kaltenegger, Schörner, pp. 330–54.
119. DZW, 6, p. 767; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), p. 673; Schwendemann, p. 31; Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942–49, London, 1994, pp. 77–8.
120. BA/MA, NL Schörner, N60/74, ‘Mein Verhalten bei der Kapitulation im Mai 1945’ and ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Kapitulation’, both 10.3.58.
121. Steinkamp, p. 238. Kaltenegger, Schörner, pp. 306–7, 315, supports Schörner’s own account. See also Roland Kaltenegger, Operation ‘Alpenfestung’: Das letzte Geheimnis des ‘Dritten Reiches’, Munich, 2005, pp. 336–46.
122. One ordinary soldier in Schörner’s army noted in his diary how he and a few comrades were ordered out of the lorry in which they were leaving, desperately trying to reach the Americans after the dissolution of his unit had been determined. The staff officers of his company then climbed in and drove off. ‘We are the cheated ones,’ the soldier concluded. – Granzow, p. 179 (9.5.45).
123. Schwendemann, p. 27.
124. DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), p. 677. According to a report for the navy leadership, ships shuttling backwards and forwards across the Baltic ferried out between 11 and 17 May 109,205 soldiers, 6,887 wounded and 5,379 civilian refugees. – BA/MA, RM7/854, fo. 333, Lage Ostsee, 18.5.45.
125. Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 107–8.
126. DRZW, 10/2 (Overmans), pp. 502–3.
127. See Schwendemann, p. 27.
128. Neitzel, Abgehört, p. 49.
129. KTB/OKW, vol. 4/2, pp. 1281–2 (9.5.45); repr. in Müller and Ueberschär, p. 181; Die Wehrmachtberichte 1939–1945, vol. 3: 1. Januar 1944 bis 9. Mai 1945, Munich, 1989, p. 569 (9.5.45).
130. Dönitz, p. 471.
131. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 440, 445 (12.5.45, 15.5.45). Dönitz was still insisting on 18 May that there should be no concession to Allied demands to remove ‘emblems of sovereignty’ from German military uniforms. – 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 411–13.
132. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 439 (11.5.45).
133. Speer, pp. 499–500, for a description of the continued Dönitz administration; Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 433–49, for the entries in Dönitz’s diary on the workings of his administration between 8.5.45 and 17.5.45.
134. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 446 (16.5.45). For the continuity in Dönitz’s political ideas, see Steinert, pp. 283–6, and also Lüdde-Neurath, p. 81.
135. BAB, R3/1624, fos. 10–13, Speer to Krosigk, 15.5.45; Dönitz, p. 471; and see Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos, Berne and Munich, 1982, pp. 167–71.
136. Speer, p. 500.
137. IWM, EDS, F.3., M.I. 14/950, memorandum of Stuckart, 22.5.45; Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 433–5, 441–2 (8.5.45, 12.5.45) for discussions of Dönitz’s resignation. See also Dönitz, p. 472.
138. Description from David Stafford, Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation, London, 2007, pp. 407–8. See also Dönitz, pp. 473–4. For divisions of opinion within the Allied leadership on how to deal with the Dönitz administration, and the steps leading to the arrest of its members, see Marlis Steinert, ‘The Allied Decision to Arrest the Dönitz Government’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 651–63.
139. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, New York and London, 1976, vol. 4, p. 7. The figure given there for those killed, 305,000 people, has been shown to be too low. See Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945, pb. edn., Berlin, 2004, p. 63, who puts the figure at between 420,000 and 570,000, and DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 868, which estimates the civilian dead – not the total number – at 380,000–400,000. Rüdiger Overmans reckons the losses at between 400,000 and 500,000. – ‘Die Toten des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Deutschland’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz, Munich and Zurich, 1989, p. 860. See also Rüdiger Overmans, ‘55 Millionen Opfer des Zweiten Weltkrieges? Zum Stand der Forschung nach mehr als 40 Jahren’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 48 (1990), pp. 107, 109. Yet a further estimate puts the most likely figure at 406,000, though an upper limit has ranged as high as 635,000. Most were killed in the last phase of the war. – Dietmar Süß, ‘Die Endphase des Luftkriegs’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 55. More than half the civilian deaths from bombing occurred in the last eight months of the war. – Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London, 2005, pp. 264 and 430 n. 4.
140. Bessel, p. 69. Establishing reliable figures for the number of deaths of refugees fleeing in the last months of the war is extraordinarily difficult. The far higher figures frequently given often extend the categories of refugee and the time and geographical areas covered to include, for instance, the ‘resettlement’ of Balts of German extraction following the Nazi–Soviet Pact, Soviet Germans deported by Stalin, and Germans expelled from the east after the war. The closest estimate to deaths arising from refugee flight appears to be 473,000. – Overmans, ‘Die Toten des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Deutschland’, p. 868; Overmans, ‘55 Millionen Opfer des Zweiten Weltkrieges?’, p. 110.
141. Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Munich, 1999, pp. 238–9, 316, 318, 321. According to Overmans’ calculations (p. 265), of the total German military deaths (5,318,000) the eastern front accounted for 51.6 per cent (2,743,000), fighting in the final phase (Jan.–May 1945) 23.1 per cent (1,230,000) and the western theatre 6.4 per cent (340,000).
142. Allied worries about an insurrection never materialized, though Werwolf was still taken seriously in the weeks after the capitulation. – Bessel, pp. 175–6; Perry Biddiscombe, Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement 1944–1946, Toronto and Buffalo, NY, 1998, pp. 279–82.
143. See Bessel, ch. 7, ‘The Beginning of Occupation’, for a good summary of the early stages.
144. Die Niederlage 1945, pp. 439, 447 (11.5.45, 16.5.45).
145. Bessel, p. 167.
146. Anonyma, p. 183 (11.5.45).
147. StAM, LRA 31391, unfoliated, report of Evang. luth. Pfarramt Berchtesgaden, 25.6.46; report of the Catholic parish of St Andreas, 24.6.46.
148. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 1.
149. NAL, WO208/5622, C.S.D.I.C. (U.K.) report, 13.5.45, comments of Vice-Admiral Frisius.
150. A. J. and R. L. Merritt (eds.), Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys, 1945–1949, Urbana, Ill., 1970, pp. 32–3. Experiences of occupation and the inevitable hardships of daily life in ruined cities – shortages of food and housing, a valueless currency, and a standard of living frequently lower than it had been before 1944–5 – together with a sense of national humiliation and the creation of denazification trials often seen to be aimed at the ‘little man’ who, it was felt, had been forced to comply with the demands of the regime, were among the factors that played their part in enhancing a rosy view of the ‘good years’ of National Socialism, before the disasters of the last phase of the war.
151. See also Peter Fritsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2008, pp. 301–2.
152. ‘Tief vergraben, nicht dran rühren’, p. 218.
153. Cited in Otto Dov Kulka, ‘The German Population and the Jews: State of Research and New Perspectives’, in David Bankier (ed.), Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, New York, Oxford and Jerusalem, 2000, p. 279.
154. For a similar point made about 1918, see Michael Geyer, ‘Endkampf 1918 and 1945: German Nationalism, Annihilation, and Self-Destruction’, in Alf Lüdtke and Bernd Weisbrod (eds.), No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, Göttingen, 2006, pp. 90–91.
CONCLUSION: ANATOMY OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
1. A point well made by Bernd Wegner, ‘The Ideology of Self-Destruction: Hitler and the Choreography of Defeat’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London, 26/2 (2004), pp. 19–20. See also Wegner’s reflections in DRZW, 8, pp. 1185–91.
2. Hans Rothfels, The German Opposition to Hitler, pb. edn., London, 1970, p. 146, was adamant ‘that Casablanca destroyed any hope of a tolerable peace which might still have been entertained by the German Resistance movement’. Adam von Trott tried in June 1944 to persuade the western Allies to drop the demand, arguing that many in the opposition felt they could not risk an internal rising otherwise. In the event, of course, they did precisely this, despite the demand. Whether in fact the demand for unconditional surrender had any significant impact on the resistance movement remains nevertheless unclear. – Anne Armstrong, Unconditional Surrender: The Impact of the Casablanca Policy upon World War Two, New Brunswick, NJ, 1961, pp. 205, 212–13.
3. See DRZW, 6 (Boog), p. 85; also Reimer Hansen, Das Ende des Dritten Reiches: Die deutsche Kapitulation 1945, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 20–23, 36–9, 224–5; and Reimer Hansen, Der 8. Mai 1945: Geschichte und geschichtliche Bedeutung, Berlin, 1985, pp. 10–13, 22–3.
4. To mitigate the possibility of their demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ stimulating resistance, both Churchill and Roosevelt sought in public statements to reassure the German people that the stipulation did not mean that they would be ‘enslaved or destroyed’. – Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate, London, 1951, pp. 616–18.
5. MadR, 17, p. 6734 (late March 1945).
6. See the comments of Rolf-Dieter Müller in DRZW, 10/2, pp. 705, 716.
7. See Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘Auf dem Weg zu einer “nationalsozialistischen Volksarmee”: Die soziale Öffnung des Heeresoffizierkorps im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Martin Broszat, Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Hans Woller (eds.), Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland, Munich, 1988, pp. 653, 658–9, 671–3, 676–7; and MacGregor Knox, ‘1 October 1942: Adolf Hitler, Wehrmacht Officer Policy, and Social Revolution’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 801–25 (figures on size of the officer corps, p. 810).
8. Klaus-Jürgen Müller, ‘The Wehrmacht: Western Front’, in David Wingeate Pike (ed.), The Closing of the Second World War: Twilight of a Totalitarianism, New York, 2001, pp. 55–6.
9. See the reflections on ‘duty’, a leitmotiv of the book, in John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, pp. 469–70.
10. Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005.
11. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 434.
12. In his testimony at Nuremberg, Speer had explicitly ruled out the possibility of any group being able to confront Hitler with a demand to end the war. – IMT, vol. 16, p. 542. Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Speers Rüstungspolitik im Totalen Krieg’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, 59 (2000), p. 362, points out that, although all Hitler’s subordinate leaders played at one time or another with the aim of finding a way out of the war other than total defeat and destruction, there was, in contrast to Italy, no body which could take action against the Dictator. Speer, he adds, ‘evidently at no point thought of acting against his mentor’.
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