Reinhardt’s nerves were jangling as he struggled to cope with the crisis. They were not improved when on 19 January he witnessed terrible scenes of devastation after fleeing civilians had been hit by a bombing raid that left a trail of corpses, wrecked vehicles and horses torn in pieces by the roadside.97 He asked himself in a letter to his wife how it was possible to carry on under such a heavy and painful burden. He gave his own answer: ‘the machine of duty, the will and the unquestioned “must” application of the last ounce of strength work automatically within us. Only seldom do you think about the big “what now”.’98
Another entreaty from Reinhardt on the evening of 20 January to withdraw the increasingly imperilled 4th Army to safer lines in the Masurian Lakes was bluntly rebuffed by Hitler – a decision found incomprehensible by the leadership of Army Group Centre since the situation was becoming critical and encirclement almost certain. Guderian promised to try to persuade Hitler to change his mind, but held out little hope. Reinhardt spent another sleepless night. ‘Still no permission to retreat,’ he noted in his diary on 21 January. ‘I’m now in the most severe anguish over whether I should disobey.’ That morning he again begged Guderian and the head of the OKH command staff, General Walther Wenck, to get him an immediate decision, ‘otherwise trust in the leadership will collapse altogether’. ‘Unbelievably tense hours’ went by. Reinhardt smoked one cigarette after another until he had none left. Guderian rang mid-morning to say that Hitler had again rejected a withdrawal of the 4th Army.
Reinhardt decided once more to speak directly with Hitler in an attempt to ‘save what can be saved’. He had another long struggle to try to surmount Hitler’s stubborn rejection of retreat to the Masurian Lakes district as the only hope of holding the front. He found the conversation distressing, he wrote to his wife, ‘because I fought so much with my entire feelings and sense of duty and conflicts of conscience between wanting and having to obey and feeling of responsibility for my task’. The turning point in the discussion came when Reinhardt vehemently claimed that, if the withdrawal did not happen, East Prussia and the Army Group would collapse. He had, Reinhardt continued, been bombarded with requests for support from his subordinate commanders and had to say that the question of confidence from below was now a serious factor. He knew of no solution other than the one he had proposed. If this were again to be rejected, he feared he would lose control. After almost two hours Hitler conceded. He gave permission for the retreat to the lakes. ‘Thank God!’ Reinhardt noted. ‘I was near despair. Is suicide desertion? Now probably yes! Thank God,’ he repeated, ‘that the crisis of confidence has been overcome. I wouldn’t have been able to face my commanders. They doubted me, justifiably. Now God must help us see that it is not all too late.’99
It was too late. No sooner had Hitler finally agreed to allow the 4th Army to pull back to the fortified zone centred on Lötzen than further Soviet advances endangered the area. Already that same evening, 21 January, Reinhardt acknowledged that the Lötzen position was no longer safe, and a move westwards to the ‘Heilsberg triangle’ was imperative. As he travelled to Königsberg next day in a heavy snowstorm, Reinhardt was dismayed at the sight of the refugees in the appalling weather. It upset him, he told his wife, that ‘they were driven off and roughly handled by us if they were blocking our roads with their vehicles and holding up vital troop movements’. The threat to the 4th Army was, meanwhile, becoming graver. Impassable roads meant Reinhardt could not reach the 4th Army’s commander, General Hoßbach, on 23 January to assess the overall situation. By that evening, as further depressing news of Soviet advances came in, Reinhardt, blaming the belated permission to retreat, recorded in his diary: ‘We are, then, encircled.’
His view by now was that a ‘breakthrough to the west’, which Hoßbach had urged as the only hope, had to be undertaken. He informed the OKH of the decision that evening – though he omitted to mention his conviction that his forces were too weak both to attempt this and at the same time to hold Königsberg and the Samland. Nor – since it was plain that Hitler would reject the move out of hand – did he report the intention to give up the Lötzen area and retreat entirely to a new defensible position near Heilsberg. The OKH agreed, unaware of the full extent of the crisis, and promised to send forces eastwards from the Elbing area to meet up with the 4th Army pushing westwards. When he and Hoßbach met next morning, Reinhardt, no doubt put under pressure to act by Hoßbach, whose confidence in his Commander-in-Chief had been waning over recent days, gave the order to accelerate the breakout. Reinhardt worried that it was being attempted too late and continued to fret about whether he ought to have disobeyed Hitler’s earlier persistent refusal to allow a retreat. ‘I cannot survive this catastrophe,’ he lamented. ‘I’ll be blamed, even though my conscience is clear, except that I was perhaps, from a sense of duty, too obedient.’
Next day, 25 January, Reinhardt faced a further inner conflict. He had suffered a severe head injury that morning when he was badly cut by flying glass following a grenade explosion at a field headquarters he was visiting. Bloodied and haggard, he pleaded in vain with Guderian to withdraw the front further. Guderian, backing Hitler’s stance, insisted on holding the position on the lakes near Lötzen. Reinhardt, from his sickbed, struggled again the following afternoon to gain a favourable decision from the OKH as the threat to the 4th Army worsened. He was promised a decision by 5 p.m., which he had said was the last possible moment. At 5.30 p.m. Hitler’s order eventually came through, but permitted only a limited withdrawal to positions which, in fact, had already been overrun by the Red Army. Hitler continued to insist on holding the position around Lötzen. Reinhardt told Hoßbach, repeatedly pressing for a decision, that if he had received none by 7.15 p.m. he would order the withdrawal himself. Amid rising tension, both Guderian and Wenck at the OKH, remarkably, were unavailable to speak to Reinhardt on the telephone. Hoßbach rang at 7 p.m. to say he needed immediate permission to break out; he could wait no longer. Reinhardt gave the order. He had no choice, he noted; the advantage of the position on the lakes had in any case been lost. He had no forces strong enough to retain it. ‘My conscience is clear in favour of the attack… on which everything depends,’ he added. ‘I firmly believe that the success and sustaining of our attack is more important to the Führer than the lake position.’ He was wrong. Hitler, feeling he had been deceived, exploded in blind fury at the news that the 4th Army had given up Lötzen, accusing Reinhardt and Hoßbach of treason. He later calmed down. But a scapegoat was needed. That night the loyalist, if conscience-stricken, Reinhardt, along with his Chief of Staff, Heidkämper, was dismissed.
VI
Striking throughout the drama was not only Hitler’s absurd obtuseness in refusing to concede sensible withdrawals, but also Reinhardt’s unhappiness at having to entertain the idea of disobedience even in such extremes. Significant, too, is that Reinhardt and the leadership of Army Group Centre felt they could rely upon no support from the OKH or from the military entourage around Hitler. The distrust of Burgdorf, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, was plain. But so too was the feeling that Guderian, as Chief of the General Staff, would side with Hitler. When, therefore, the complete withdrawal of the 4th Army to the Heilberg area was recognized as the only remaining option, even if it meant the loss of Königsberg and the Samland, this had to be kept not only from Hitler, but also from the OKH. Gauleiter Koch, still trumpeting the need to hold onto ‘Fortress East Prussia’ down to the last man, had also to be kept in the dark, since he would immediately tell Hitler. The lines of military as well as political command that kept Hitler’s leadership position untouchable and ensured that his orders were carried out, however nonsensical, remained, then, intact throughout the crisis. Hoßbach embellished his own reputation by claiming after the war that he had disobeyed Hitler in unilaterally ordering the attack to the west to break out of the encirclement. In reality, however, down to Reinhardt’s dismissal on 26 January he was acting with the full support of his Commander-in-Chie
f. The decision, reluctantly to act against Hitler’s wishes because he felt he had no choice, appears to have been in the first instance Reinhardt’s, rather than Hoßbach’s.
The aim of Army Group Centre’s leadership in retreating to Heilsberg was to move to a more defensible position. Once there, further consideration could be given to whether there was anything left of East Prussia to try to save. Hoßbach’s view, so he wrote shortly after the war, was more radical still. He knew East Prussia was lost, he stated. He saw the only option as trying to save the German forces trapped there so that they could fight again.100
This became an end in itself. Desperation produced its own dynamic. Hoßbach, like other military leaders, later claimed that the reason he had fought on was to protect and save the civilian population. The truth was different: saving the army came first. Of course, commanders, as Reinhardt’s diary notes and letters as well as other contemporary accounts make plain, were frequently shaken and saddened by the plight of the refugees in the depths of the East Prussian winter. Retreating soldiers often did what they could to carry refugees with them or help where they could, though this amounted to little. The misery they witnessed had a depressing effect on troop morale.101 Unquestionably, the Wehrmacht wanted where possible to prevent the population falling into the hands of the Soviets. But the streams of refugees on the frozen roads threatened to hamper the breakthrough to the west. Reinhardt’s orders on 22 January showed where the priorities lay. ‘Treks that disturb troop movements on the main roads’, ordered Reinhardt, ‘are to be removed from these roads… It’s painful, certainly. But the situation demands it.’102 ‘The civilian population has to keep back,’ Hoßbach in turn told his subordinate commanders of the 4th Army two days later. ‘It sounds horrible, but can’t unfortunately be altered, since, tough though it is, it’s a matter now after the loss of East Prussia of getting the military forces there back to the homeland with some fighting power.’ ‘Treks have to get down off the roads,’ he put it bluntly to Reinhardt later the same evening.103 Repeatedly, the retreating army put the order into practice, manhandling refugees and their carts off the roads as they forced their way westwards.
Military logic can, of course, at times determine that the civilian population has to suffer in the short term to allow the armed forces to reorganize in order to benefit that population in the longer term. But there was little sign of clear strategic thinking in the mayhem of East Prussia in January 1945. Rescuing the troops so that they could fight again, Hoßbach’s avowed aim, did not attempt to explain the purpose of fighting on. Precise motivation is not easy to discern, for leaders or for troops. Gaining time until the enemy coalition split was becoming a fainter hope by the day. ‘Now it’s a question of holding in the west and developing German partisan war in the east,’ one colonel stated – the only hope in ‘a fight to the death’. This still left the ultimate purpose unsaid, and was in any case an aim rapidly being overtaken by events.104 ‘Defence of the Fatherland’ was an abstraction. And where would it be defended? At the Oder (and the Rhine)? Within the Reich itself? In the Reich capital until all was destroyed? The savagery of the Soviet attack, and the dread of falling into enemy hands, a sense of self-preservation, loyalty to immediate comrades facing the same fate, and anxieties about loved ones back home provided sufficient motivation for most ordinary soldiers – when they reflected at all on why they were continuing the fight. For those leading them, there was perhaps another element. Reinhardt’s diary remark that an almost automated sense of duty drove on his actions, with little or no thought to further consequences, probably applied to most military leaders, and not just on the eastern front.
This meant that the military leadership, devoid of any alternative strategy for ending the war, was objectively continuing to work towards the regime’s only remaining goal – of fighting to the last, whatever the cost in material destruction and human lives. Hitler’s decisions during the January crisis in the east furthered that goal alone. As always, generals found wanting were discarded as easily as used shell-cartridges, even if, like Reinhardt, their task had been hopeless. Hitler replaced Reinhardt with Colonel-General Lothar Rendulic´, a trusted Austrian, tough, shrewd and capable – though no more capable than Reinhardt had been of mastering the impossible task in East Prussia. In Hoßbach’s view, he arrived without any understanding of the overall situation, had no relationship with the troops now placed under his command, ‘probably acted on binding orders of Hitler’ and greatly overestimated the strength of the forces at his disposal. He clashed immediately with Hoßbach over the intended breakthrough to the west at the cost of abandoning Königsberg and the Samland to their fate, saying he would not support a move he described as ‘worthy of death’.105 Only now did Hoßbach act independently, against the wishes of the Army Group leadership. The breakout went ahead, but, lacking in sufficient strength, was already floundering by 30 January when Hoßbach, too, was sacked and replaced by General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, competent though without experience of high command, who broke off the attempt to reach the Vistula.106
Further south, an enraged Hitler had already dismissed the chief of Army Group A, Colonel-General Harpe, blamed for the abandonment of Warsaw despite the order to hold the city at all costs.107 His replacement, the commander who most epitomizes Nazi values, the brutal Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner, lost no time in imposing his own ruthless discipline on retreating troops, mercilessly rounding up deserters and carrying out exemplary executions.108 He demanded of his subordinate officers that they put down immediately any sign of desertion or indiscipline without concern for the fine points of a legal trial. Justice was subordinate to the general interest. ‘After all, war is also not “fair”,’ he reasoned.109 Much later, when he returned from imprisonment in Russia and was facing trial in West Germany, Schörner claimed that on taking up his command he found demoralization of troops, millions of refugees on the roads preventing ordered troop movements and disintegration of fighting units. He had been able to restore the situation and through tough measures had eventually stabilized the front. His aim, he stated, had nothing now to do with ‘final victory’ or the regime, but was solely the prevention of the Red Army advancing into Germany and saving hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Bolsheviks.110 This conveniently overlooked his determination, even at this desperate stage, to do all he possibly could to implement Hitler’s ‘fight to the last’ policy in the most fanatical fashion.
On 25 January Hitler took the opportunity of the personnel changes to redesignate the Army Groups, bringing them more in line with reality. Army Group A, taken over by Schörner, became Army Group Centre; Army Group Centre, placed under Rendulic´, was renamed Army Group North; and Army Group North, stranded in Courland despite Guderian’s entreaties to evacuate the 200,000 or so much-needed troops trapped there for better deployment on the heavily stretched fronts elsewhere, was turned into Army Group Courland under the command of Colonel-General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, who was moved to the frozen north from sunnier climes on the Italian front. The changes reflected the need felt by the leadership to combat signs of wavering morale and the potential collapse of the front from within through the imposition of ruthless discipline. ‘Triumph of the will’ through blind obedience was set to replace totally the imperatives of military professionalism. To reinforce this, the head of the OKW, Field-Marshal Keitel, demanded unconditional obedience in carrying out orders and ordered the imposition of the death penalty by military courts for anyone failing in this.111 In the most remarkable move, Hitler created a new force, Army Group Vistula, to shore up the tottering defences of north-eastern Germany and block the assault on the line of the Oder north of Glogau and Soviet penetration of West Prussia and Pomerania. Astonishingly, and in a move that smacked of desperation, he gave the command to Heinrich Himmler – skilled at the merciless treatment of helpless political and racial victims, certainly, but whose only experience of high-level frontline military leadership had been his brief and unsucces
sful command of the hastily assembled Army Group Upper Rhine in the preceding weeks. His role was to restore order to the wavering front and, through harsh discipline, ensure an unrelenting fight to the end.112 His troops consisted at first largely of what was left of the forces of the 9th and 2nd Armies, though by mid-February he commanded some forty divisions.113
One of Hitler’s firmest backers in the unconditional fight to the end was Grand-Admiral Dönitz, whose actions belie the post-war image he cultivated of the unpolitical, purely professional military man. Dönitz was a real hardliner, totally committed to the fight against Communism. He never wavered in his complete support for Hitler, whom, he said in post-war interrogations, he saw as a man of ‘extreme chivalry and kindness’. He insisted that his relations with Hitler had been purely those ‘of a soldier, who was in his activities entirely limited to his province; that is to his soldier’s interests’,114 and presented himself as primarily concerned only with the fate of the stricken civilian population of the east. He declared that, after the opening of the Soviet offensive on the eastern front in January, saving the inhabitants of the eastern provinces was the most important task for the German soldier, and he proudly recounted the navy’s role in ferrying more than 2 million Germans to the west in the remaining months of the war.115 Yet he reached agreement with Hitler on 22 January that dwindling coal reserves ‘must be reserved for military tasks and could not be used to take away refugees’. Transport of refugees by sea could only be undertaken as long as there was no hindrance to the fighting troops. Dönitz’s main priority was shipping provisions to the troops trapped in East Prussia and the Courland. Refugees desperately hoping for ships to take them from Pillau and other Baltic harbours had to wait.116