Speer was clear-sighted enough to see the scale of the mounting disaster. But his strenuous efforts to keep the collapsing war economy functioning never wavered. Whatever motives he had, his efforts helped to maintain his position of power and influence at a time when they were under threat.46 To one so power-conscious, this mattered. Of course, Speer and his able subordinates in the Armaments Ministry, realists as most of them were (apart, perhaps, from the incorrigible super-optimist Saur), knew full well that they could not prevent the inexorable disintegration of the war economy. Without their extraordinary endeavours and capacity for improvisation, however, it is difficult to see how the German war effort could have staggered on until May 1945.
III
The other members of the power quadrumvirate – Goebbels, Himmler and Bormann – also strived to the utmost during the fraught autumn weeks to ensure there was no slackening of the war effort. They gave no hint whatsoever that the war was unwinnable, maintaining a complete grip on the population through propaganda, organization and unrelenting coercion.
One task was to provide the Gauleiter, crucial figures in the power apparatus in the regions, with the backing they felt they needed. Towards the end of October, Bormann had passed on to Himmler a copy of a communication from Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian, the provincial boss of the Düsseldorf area and spokesman of the western Gauleiter, about the ‘extremely serious and difficult situation’ caused by air raids on cities and the transport network. Florian stated that this could not be mastered, and could become threatening, unless accelerated aid from the Reich were forthcoming. Meetings with individual ministers or their officials had so far been without powers of decision. The western Gauleiter now sought ‘new ways’ to persuade Hitler to order a meeting of ministers, to be chaired by Bormann, to coordinate measures on food, transport, armaments, labour and other urgent issues without delay. Bormann agreed to the meeting but at Hitler’s request handed responsibility for it to Himmler.47
The meeting took place on 3 November, attended by representatives of the Party, the Wehrmacht, business, and State Secretaries from relevant ministries in the insignificant location of Klein-Berkel in Lower Saxony, not far from Hameln in the Hanover area, well secluded from the threat of air raids. One of Himmler’s bright ideas was that towns away from the beleaguered western and eastern areas could sponsor a lorry carrying an electricity generator. The town’s name would be proudly displayed on the vehicle, which would come with a driver. ‘In this way’, Himmler suggested, ‘something could be done in good spirit and with humour.’ Just as unpromising was his suggestion of creating mobile flak units on trains and lorries to shoot down low-flying bombers. This initiative was to be accompanied by a competition for sharpshooters, organized by the Party, with the winners rewarded with the Iron Cross Second Class. Another suggestion unlikely to be overwhelmed by a rush of volunteers was the setting up of short training sessions on defusing bombs so that ordinary citizens, not just specialists, could help save lives – although often at the expense of their own. Lessons could be learnt from the Russians, who, if no motorized vehicles were available, used ponies and traps, sledges and even prams to carry munitions to the front. ‘We have a lot to learn in improvisation,’ remarked Himmler.
Manpower had to be pumped into the Gaue of Essen, Düsseldorf and Cologne-Aachen for fortification work to free up labour from these areas to repair the railways. Keeping coal moving and the arteries to the front open was vital. Men were to be housed in barracks and fed in canteens. He would have Bormann dispatch 100,000 men from the Gaue in central Germany to help build the entrenchments. Himmler undertook to provide additional labour from Polish, Slovakian and Russian prisoners of war for railway work. He would also supply around 500–600 prisoners currently held in four goods trains belonging to the SS Railway Construction Brigade, and find another ten trains stuffed with prisoners to complement them. Another 40,000 workers were to be drawn from the mammoth construction body, the Organisation Todt, and 500 vehicles commandeered from Italy to move them around. He exhorted the Gauleiter to coordinate emergency food distribution following air raids to ensure that one area was not privileged over another.
He emphasized the value of the Volkssturm (to be provided, he declared, with 350,000 rifles before the end of the year). The Warsaw rising had shown – to Germany’s cost, he implied – that there was no better defensive position than a ruined city. The Volkssturm existed to mobilize the endless resources within the German people for patriotic defence. Fighting to the last bullet in the ruins to defend every German city had to be in deed, not just words. It is hard to imagine that his own words were greatly reassuring for his audience. He ended with a rhetorical flourish, perhaps heard with differing levels of conviction, evoking patriotic defence, a vision of the future and loyalty to Hitler. ‘We will defend our land, and are at the start of a great world empire. As the curve sometimes goes down, so one day it will go up again.’ He believed all present agreed that the difficulties, however great, could be mastered. ‘There are no difficulties that cannot be mastered by us all with dogged tenacity, optimism and humour. I believe all our concerns are small compared with those of one man in Germany, our Führer.’ All that was to be done was no more than duty towards ‘the man whom we have to thank for the resurrection of Germany, the essence of our existence, Adolf Hitler’.48
Himmler had naturally been unable to offer any panacea and was in no position to meet the Gauleiter’s demands, given the scale of the transport crisis. The Gauleiter were far from satisfied. All they gained was the hope that sufficient aid would come from the Reich to tide over the worst of the crisis. For the rest, they had to resort to ‘self-help’ and passing on to the District Leaders responsibility for repairs to the railway in their own areas. The meeting, Goebbels concluded, had come to nothing.49
If the Gauleiter were left to cope as best they could, Himmler’s address had nevertheless ruled out any alternative to retaining a positive and constructive approach to the worst difficulties. As high representatives of the regime, they were expected not to bow to problems – a sign of weakness and lack of resolve – but to show initiative in finding improvised solutions. Not least, Himmler appealed to their loyalty to Hitler, whose ‘charismatic authority’ rested ultimately on the personal bonds built into the Nazi system. And as arch-loyalists for many years, who owed their power entirely to Hitler, and who had nothing to lose, the Gauleiter were far from ready to contemplate deserting him. Their bonds to Hitler might have weakened. But they had not broken. The public face of the regime was still not flinching.
The notion of the power of will to overcome difficulties, central to the operation of ‘charismatic authority’ throughout the system, ran in its essence completely counter to impersonal bureaucratic administration – the basis of all modern states. The Party had always distinguished between the positive, desirable qualities of ‘leadership of people’ (Menschenführung) and the negative, arid attributes of mere ‘administration’. Leaders, at whatever level, ‘made things happen’. Bureaucrats simply administered rules and regulations which invariably, unless overridden by ‘will’, blocked initiative and sapped dynamism. Yet the Party, despite its unbureaucratic ethos, in seeking to implement the wishes and long-term goals of the Führer had, of course, in reality always been intensely bureaucratic as an organization. The tension in trying bureaucratically to work towards unbureaucratic ends had been there from the start, had increased greatly after the takeover of power and had intensified dramatically in conditions of total war.50
In late 1944, when less and less could be achieved, the Party bureaucracy went into overdrive.51 Time and energy were expended by a bloated Party officialdom on the most trivial matters. The Party Chancellery squandered countless hours, for instance, drawing up regulations on the minutiae of Volkssturm service – stipulating duties, regulating training periods, laying down rules about clothing and equipment, dealing with exemptions and, among the most notable absurdities, designating letter
heads and service seals and providing detailed descriptions of the insignia to be used by different ranks.52 Goebbels described the bureaucracy involved as ‘laughable’.53 But it was unrelenting. When Bormann moved to Hitler’s new field headquarters at Ziegenberg, near Bad Nauheim in Hessen, prior to the start of the Ardennes offensive, he found ‘teleprinters were unsuitably installed, no teleprinter cables connected, neither typewriter desks nor shelves set up in the tiny room where my typists have to work’.54 Even so, the bureaucratic output from his Party Chancellery continued unabated.
The regime’s unfolding of bureaucratic, controlling energy at all levels was little short of astonishing. Orders poured out. Every official, however minor, groaned under the suffocating load of paperwork on the desk (despite efforts to save paper).55 The Reich Post Minister wrote to all the offices of state, at both Reich and regional levels, complaining bitterly that the postal system was greatly overburdened through the increase in bureaucracy. ‘A swelling mass of communications like an avalanche’ was how he described it, at precisely a time when the damage to the rail network and postal installations, together with loss of personnel to the Wehrmacht, had gravely affected the efficiency of the service.56 His urgent entreaties to reduce the level of post fell on deaf ears.
More and more was controlled, orchestrated, regulated, ordained, militarized, directed and organized, yet less and less resulted from all the effort – except, crucially, the stifling of all remaining limited levels of personal free space in the system. If ‘total society’ has a meaning in the sense that little or nothing not subjected to regime control existed any longer, and that opinion deviating from the official stance could be openly expressed only at great personal risk, then Germany towards the end of 1944 was approaching such a state.
As living conditions worsened drastically under the pounding from Allied bombs, the pressure on the population intensified. The total-war effort, for instance, far from subsiding after the extreme exertions of the late summer, redoubled its attempt in the autumn to dredge up all possible remaining reserves of manpower for the Wehrmacht. Goebbels pointed out at the beginning of November that by this time 900,000 extra men had been provided for the Wehrmacht. But he admitted it was not enough. The losses in the previous three months had numbered 1.2 million. He wanted Hitler’s support for pressing a reluctant Speer to surrender more men from the armaments sector. Speer eventually agreed to give up 30,000 men, though only temporarily until they could be redeployed once the transport situation had improved. Goebbels could not accept the condition, so the matter was left to be resolved by Hitler. As so often, no decision was forthcoming.57
More important for Goebbels, however, was for him to have authority from Hitler to ‘comb out’ the Wehrmacht for additional personnel to be sent to the front, as he had done earlier in the civilian sector. He finally managed to gain Hitler’s signature to a decree to this effect on 10 December. Goebbels felt revitalized, bursting with new energy, and determined to overcome all opposition within the army itself to raise new forces for Hitler. He expected – once more working through a small directing staff and the Gauleiter at the regional level – to attain very positive results in the New Year. He was convinced that only his total-war drive had made the coming western offensive at all possible. He now hoped, he said, to be able to give the Führer the basis of an offensive army in the east, as the ‘combing out’ of the civilian sector had provided one for the west.58
It was, of course, wishful thinking. But in these weeks Goebbels veered between an evident sense of realism about Germany’s plight, brought home to him most forcefully through the destruction of one German city after another through Allied bombing (which, unlike Hitler, he saw at first hand in visits to bombed-out localities), and continued hope that willpower, shored up by propaganda, would sustain the fight, whatever the odds, until the shaky enemy coalition cracked. ‘The political crisis in the enemy camp grows daily’ was only one of repeated assertions that the internal divisions, and the losses they were suffering, would split the coalition before long.59 Numerous diary entries hint at scepticism about Germany’s position. And when he viewed the impressive new, highly modern U-boats being built in Bremen at the end of November, he sighed despairingly that it was all too late.60 Yet he had far from given up hope. Following a long talk with Hitler – lasting deep into the night – a few days later, when the embattled Führer exuded confidence, expounded excitedly on the forthcoming offensive and envisioned a grandiose rebuilding of German cities and revitalization of culture after the war, Goebbels was so excited that he could not sleep.61 He was still, as he always had been, in thrall to Hitler.
Propaganda, in his view, had the vital task of reinforcing the will to resist, ‘in strengthening the backbone of the nation again and restoring its diminished self-confidence’.62 Ceremonies held throughout Germany where the newly created Volkssturm swore their oaths of allegiance – around 100,000 men in ten separate ceremonies in Berlin alone on Sunday, 12 November – were part of this task. In seasonal mist and with the ruins of the Wilhelmplatz as a macabre backdrop, Goebbels addressed the arrayed Volkssturm men from the balcony of the Propaganda Ministry. ‘Some are already armed,’ he recorded in his diary – unwittingly acknowledging the impoverished levels of support for the new organization. In fact, rifles, bazookas and some machine guns had been handed out just before the ceremony. Few of the men knew how to use them, but in any case they had to give them up again once the ceremony was over. Silence fell across the square as, lacking uniforms, they doffed their caps and hats in an oath to the Führer before marching past ‘in sacred earnestness’. Everything was filmed to make a big impression in the newsreels. The optical effect was excellent, remarked Goebbels’ aide Wilfred von Oven. But what the cameras did not show were young boys and soldiers on leave standing on the footpaths and doing their best not to laugh at the march-past. The Volkssturm was not worth ‘a shot of powder’ in von Oven’s view.63
As a further attempt to maintain fighting spirit, Goebbels had in 1943 commissioned the colour film Kolberg – a grand spectacular aimed at turning the defence of the Pomeranian coastal town of that name during the Napoleonic Wars into a heroic epic to inspire the present-day defenders of the Reich.64 By the end of 1944 the film – with an enormous cast of extras, apparently including 187,000 soldiers temporarily removed from active service at a time when new recruits for the front were being so desperately sought – was almost ready. Goebbels was hugely impressed, on seeing a rough-cut at the beginning of December, by what he called a ‘masterpiece’ that ‘answered all the questions now bothering the German people’. He had great expectations of the film, which he thought worth ‘a victorious battle’ in its likely impact on the mood of the public.65 But he feared ‘scenes of destruction and despair’ would have the effect that in the current situation many Germans would decide against viewing it.66 As the comment betrays, Goebbels was fully aware of the uphill task he faced in overcoming the deep pall of gloom in Germany as the disastrous year of 1944 neared its close.
IV
The reports reaching Goebbels from the regional propaganda offices left no doubt of the worrying state of morale. News of the success in repelling the Red Army in East Prussia made scarcely a dent in the depressed mood in early November. Feelings ranged from extreme anxiety about the future and anger at being left defenceless as bombs rained down on German cities to wearied resignation (also among Party members, especially in the west) and fatalism. Large parts of the population just wanted ‘peace at any price’.67 In western regions, where the population was most exposed to the nightly horror of devastation from the skies, now being inflicted upon most of Germany’s big industrial cities, the mood was at rock bottom. Amid the jangled nerves and constant worry, Goebbels noted, ‘outright anger towards the Party, held responsible for the war and its consequences’, could be heard.68
It was scarcely surprising. Cologne, for instance, was subjected to another huge attack on the night of 30 October in what one
witness described as the city’s ‘death blow’. The quarter of a million people still living there – until the heavy raids started there had been around 800,000 – had no gas or electricity. The little water available was only to be had at hydrants in the street. The NSV distributed meagre food rations to people standing in queues. Almost all remaining habitable parts of the city were now destroyed. There was a stampede to leave as masses of refugees gathered with their few possessions at the Rhine bridges. But an immediate organized evacuation was impossible because of lack of transport. The rail crisis meant trains could not be laid on. Any military vehicle going east was stopped and loaded to capacity with those fleeing the city. There was much bitterness directed at the regime and a sense of the futility of the conflict. The exodus lasted for more than a week. Cologne was now ‘virtually a ghost city’. As Goebbels put it, ‘this lovely Rhine metropolis has at least for the time being to be written off’.69