The resignation, apathy, dislocation and sheer fatigue at the attritional suffering – quite apart from the suffocating repression of the regime – meant, however, that the collapsing morale could not be converted into a revolutionary fervour. Reports by observers from neutral countries smuggled out to the western Allies provided graphic descriptions of the depressed mood in Berlin as preparations were made for the defence of the city, the chaotic situation on the railways, panic buying of food in central Germany and the appalling living conditions throughout the country. But such reports were adamant that there was no possibility of an internal revolution.17
Even so, the Nazi authorities were taking no chances. For them, the alarm bells were now ringing loudly, despite repeated routine protestations about the ‘solid inner bearing’ of the people. A worrying indicator was the crumpling of the Party’s authority and collapse in its standing. This had largely disintegrated in the west the previous autumn. Now it was the same in the east – and increasingly everywhere. Refugees flooding in from the east were from late January onwards pouring out their bile on the failings of Party officials in the botched evacuations – prominent among them as a target the East Prussian Gauleiter, Erich Koch.18 Relations between the army and the Party were tense. Given the current mood on the eastern front, Himmler was told (in response to a suggestion that Party leaders should be sent to serve effectively as political commissars with the troops) that individuals in Party uniform would be killed.19 The Party uniform, it was claimed, acted like a red rag to soldiers.20 It was little different among the civilian population. Party functionaries, well aware of their unpopularity, had to be reminded by the Munich Gauleiter, Paul Giesler, of their obligation to wear their uniform on duty – and ordinary Party members their badge at all times – under penalty of exclusion from the Party.21 The intense hatred and contempt for the representatives of a Party by now widely seen as responsible for Germany’s ruination was meanwhile as good as ubiquitous. Cases of what were understandably seen as gross dereliction of duty by Party leaders scandalized the population and pushed their public standing still further into the mire.22
Hans Frank, Hitler’s viceroy in the General Government of Poland, was hugely corrupt even by Nazi standards. In his domain almost 2 million Jews had been gassed to death in the camps at Belz˙ec, Sobibor and Treblinka and a reign of terror imposed on the subjugated Polish population. Frank fled on 17 January from the Wawel Castle in Kraków, where he had lived since 1939 in untold luxury and despotic splendour. He and his large entourage headed first to a castle at Seichau in Silesia. When they moved again on 23 January, they left behind rooms littered with the remnants of large stores of food and wine, much of it squandered in a lavish farewell party, to the fury of a local population that had been forced to acclimatize to the privations of war. Lorry-loads of valuables and looted art treasures were sent on to Frank’s eventual residence amid the Bavarian lakes.23
However, it was the flight by Gauleiter Arthur Greiser from his headquarters in Posen in mid-January that gained particular notoriety. Greiser, who was to be executed in 1946 by the Poles upon whom he had inflicted years of torment and suffering in the ‘Warthegau’, had been one of the most ruthless of the Nazi provincial rulers. He was proud of having the ear of Hitler and Himmler, and had played a significant part in establishing the Chełmno death camp in his region, where more than 150,000 Jews were gassed between the end of 1941 and 1944. With the Red Army rapidly advancing and by 17 January almost at the borders of his Gau, Greiser still kept up appearances about the strength of German defences. Inwardly, he was close to panic. Unwilling to see his Gau as the first to be evacuated, he refused to give the necessary orders. A partial and belated order for the easternmost parts of the Gau was eventually given on the night of 17/18 January, after Greiser had witnessed thousands of troops running away. But most of the population were unaware of their peril. He still professed to his staff that Posen would be defended. In reality, he knew that there was no possibility of stemming the Soviet onslaught. On 20 January, Greiser called Führer Headquarters and gained Hitler’s approval, passed on to him by Bormann, to evacuate the Party offices in Posen and move his entourage to more secure surrounds in Frankfurt an der Oder. Greiser told his staff that he was being recalled to Berlin by order of the Führer to undertake a special task for Himmler. That evening, accompanied by an aide, he fled from Posen. Whatever lorries could be found were sequestrated for the transfer of the property and files of the Gau offices; the initial objections of the military authorities were overcome on the grounds that the evacuation was an order of the Führer. Greiser’s flight left the Gau in chaos and a frantic stampede of the population trying to escape by whatever means they could. Most were overtaken by Soviet troops. Around 50,000 died fleeing from the Warthegau.24
The Hitler order was a complication when criticism of Greiser arose within the Party itself. It transpired, however, that Greiser had engineered the permission to leave at a time when evacuation was being refused to ordinary citizens – Posen had been designated a fortress town, to be held at whatever cost – and had misled Hitler into believing that the fall of the city was imminent. (In fact, the Red Army was then still about 130 kilometres away, and Posen did not finally capitulate until late February.) Goebbels, long an admirer of Greiser but aware of the damage he had now caused the Party, regarded the Gauleiter’s action as shameful, cowardly and deceitful. He thought Greiser should be put before the People’s Court (where a death sentence would have been the certain outcome), but could not persuade Hitler – presumably embarrassed by his own authorization – to impose the severe punishment he felt was merited.25 As it was, the ‘Greiser case’, propaganda agencies reported, was still ‘doing the rounds’ weeks later, amplifying the accounts from refugees about ‘the failure of the NSDAP in the evacuation of entire Gaue’.26 Bormann was forced to issue a circular to the Party, attempting to counter the negative rumours about the behaviour of the political leaders in the Warthegau. He defended Greiser, stating that he was prepared to serve with the military command in Posen but left the city on the express orders of the Führer. He threatened harsh punishment for any functionaries leaving the population in the lurch.27
Greiser was, in fact, far from the last of the Party ‘bigwigs’ to leave his charges stranded after demanding of them that they should hold out to the last. But he was, for Goebbels, ‘the first serious disappointment’, an indicator that ‘everything was breaking up’ and the end was not far off.28
III
The signs that the determination to hold on was starting to wobble even within the Party itself now prompted moves to shore up the faltering morale by strenuous and repeated exhortation – backed at every point by merciless punishment for those seen to fail in their duty.
On 23 January, Wilhelm Stuckart, as acting Reich Plenipotentiary for Administration (deputizing for Himmler in the latter’s capacity as Reich Minister of the Interior), demanded that administrative officials of state authorities in the eastern Gaue (including Mark Brandenburg and Berlin) carry out their duties to the last possible minute in areas threatened by the enemy before then attaching themselves to the fighting troops. Rigorous measures were to be taken against those seen to fail. When Stuckart circulated his missive to the highest state authorities on 1 February, he included a copy of Himmler’s order, issued two days earlier, stipulating that anyone leaving his position in any military or civilian office without being ordered to do so should be punished by death. An added list of ‘punishments’ specified that those guilty of cowardice and dereliction of duty were to be shot immediately. To reinforce the message, Himmler drew attention to the examples from the town of Bromberg, where Party and state officials had behaved less than heroically on the approach of the Red Army. The police chief had apparently deserted his post. A local army commander had gone against orders in retreating from a defensive position. The Government President (head of the regional administration) and the mayor of Bromberg were subsequently degraded a
nd sent to serve in punishment battalions faced with especially dangerous tasks, as was the Party’s District Leader, having first been expelled from the Party. All had been forced to attend the execution of the Police President, SS-Standartenführer Carl von Salisch, shot by firing squad for cowardice. The army commander was also shot.29 On 11 February, Himmler put out a proclamation to the officers of Army Group Vistula, whose command he had just taken over, expecting of them ‘a model of bravery and steadfastness’ in the decisive phase of the struggle against the ‘Jewish-Bolshevik danger’, and a ‘fanatical will to victory and burning hatred against these Bolshevik sub-animals’, but reminding them that the police chief in Bromberg had been shot for not fulfilling the demands of his office.30
Bormann was by now, on Hitler’s behalf, repeatedly instructing Party leaders on the need for exemplary behaviour (also from their wives, some of whom had left threatened areas before evacuation orders had been issued), again with the threat of severe reprisals for those found lacking.31 He felt it necessary to pass on Hitler’s reminder that all orders were binding, to be implemented ‘if necessary by draconian measures’ and to be carried out by subordinates ‘without contradiction’ and swiftly. The German people had to understand more than ever at this time ‘that it was led by a strong and determined hand’, that ‘signs of disintegration and arbitrary actions would be ruthlessly nipped in the bud’ and that neglect by subordinate organs of the Party would ‘on no account be tolerated’.32 Any Party leader failing in his duties, abandoning his people to find safety for himself and his family or gain some other advantage, distancing himself from the NSDAP, or ‘fleeing as a coward instead of fighting to the last’ was to be evicted from the Party, brought before the courts for judgement and subject to ‘the most severe punishment’.33 In his circular – stated to be not for publication – on 24 February 1945, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the Party Programme, Bormann reminded all Party members in unequivocal terms that anyone thinking of himself, of quitting and making off, would be a ‘traitor to the people and murderer of our women and children’. Only steadfastness down to death without concern for one’s own life served as a defence against ‘the elemental storm from the steppes, the methods of the inner-Asiatic hordes’. The Führer demanded, and the people expected, of every Party leader ‘that he holds out to the end and is never concerned for his own salvation’. For the Party rank-and-file, too, the call of the hour meant to follow unconditionally the sense of higher duty. ‘Anyone seeking to save his life is with certainty, also through the verdict of the people, condemned to death. There is only one possibility of staying alive,’ he declared (with some contradiction); ‘the readiness to die fighting and thereby to attain victory.’34 For now, the Party still – just about – held together.
As discipline slackened worryingly in the Wehrmacht, too, there was a similar resort to threats of drastic sanctions. Hitler let it be known through Keitel, at the time that the eastern front was collapsing and his own orders were being challenged by his generals in East Prussia, that if military leaders failed to carry out commands unconditionally or transmit absolutely reliable dispatches he would demand ‘the most ruthless punishment of those guilty’ and would expect the courts to be severe enough to pass the death sentence.35
One plain indicator of the collapsing front was the enormously swollen number of ‘stragglers’ heading back to Germany. Though many had genuinely become separated from their units, others were feigning detachment from their units in the hope of avoiding further front service. The distinction between those who had deserted and those who, genuinely or not, had ‘lost’ their units was increasingly blurred. Intensified efforts were now made to pick up ‘stragglers’ and return them to the front, sometimes using special military police detachments.36 Even on the wildly overcrowded station in Breslau in late January, as desperate evacuees fought to get on the last trains west, military police were searching for anyone in uniform to send them back to fight the Russians.37 At the end of the month, Himmler appealed to the German people to adopt a hard line towards ‘shirkers’, ‘cowards’ and ‘weaklings’ who were failing in their duty. He urged women, especially, to show no sympathy for ‘shirkers’ who tagged onto evacuation treks travelling westwards. ‘Men who take themselves from the front are not deserving of bread from the homeland,’ he declared. They had instead to be reminded of their honour and duty, be treated with contempt and be sent back to the front.38 The Wehrmacht laid down detailed regulations for seizing ‘stragglers’ and returning them to frontline duty, ominously adding ‘in so far as in individual cases judgement by a military court is not necessary’.39
The commandant of Schneidemühl, a designated fortress, was commended by Himmler in late January for shooting down retreating soldiers with a pistol then hanging a notice round their necks saying ‘this is what happens to all cowards’.40 The ‘bitter experiences in the east’, Bormann noted, showed that in the face of enemy inroads ‘there is no longer an absolute reliance on the steadfastness of the front troops’. Consequently, in early February, in preparation for the expected enemy offensive in the west, he asked Himmler to provide an increased number of ‘interception squads’ of the kind that had been successful in the collapse in France the previous summer to pick up retreating soldiers ‘through rigorous intervention’ and return them to ‘joyful fulfilment of their duty’. The squads were to be backed up, he told the western Gauleiter, by all the force at the disposal of the police and Volkssturm.41 From the local level upwards, regular reports were to be sent to the Gauleiter in the eastern regions, and from there to military commanders, on the ‘stragglers’ caught. Western Gauleiter were also to pay particular attention to the problem on account of expected hostilities in the region.42
A few days later, Himmler transmitted an order to the Higher SS and Police Leaders in the western regions advocating use of maximum severity, in tandem with the military authorities, in rounding up ‘stragglers’ and ‘shooting looters and deserters on the spot’, in order to remove any obstacles from the western front in the forthcoming ‘heavy attacks’. Bormann had the order passed on in 130 copies to all Party leaders at central and regional level.43 ‘Should anyone intervene too harshly’, Himmler stated, in ‘combing out towns and barracks for so-called stragglers or soldiers journeying about with pretended march and travel orders’, it was better than not intervening at all.44 He had by then, on 12 February, announced the implementation in Army Group Vistula of an order, which he found ‘so excellent’, put out for Army Group Centre by the inimitable Colonel-General Schörner. Among the exhortations, in classical Nazi diction, to fanatical hatred against the enemy and the need for iron resolve with ‘our homeland at stake’, was the threat that ‘stragglers who don’t immediately register for redeployment or follow orders’ would be placed before a court martial and charged with cowardice.45 The result in such an event was invariably a foregone conclusion. Schörner’s way of dealing with ‘trained stragglers’, as he dubbed them, was even in Goebbels’ eyes ‘fairly brutal’. ‘He lets them be hanged from the next tree with a notice attached saying: “I’m a deserter and have refused to protect German women and children.” That, naturally, has a good deterrent effect on other deserters or those who think of deserting,’ the Propaganda Minister observed.46
At the end of February, Bormann reckoned there were up to 600,000 soldiers in the Reich avoiding front service. A priority throughout the Reich was to track them down and round them up. The public had to be made aware of the problem and a tough approach adopted, in contrast to 1917–18. Drastic measures were necessary if ducking out of duty was not to spread. ‘Every shirker has to be aware that he will with great probability be caught in the homeland and then without doubt will lose his life.’ At the front, there was the mere possibility that he would die. At home, avoiding his duty, he would certainly do so, and in dishonour. Only when this message sank in ‘shall we master this cowardice disease’, he concluded.47
Some estim
ates put the number of deserters down to the end of 1944 at more than a quarter of a million. This can be no more than informed guesswork, and may well include honest ‘stragglers’ as well as those who, for whatever reason, could take no more and took enormous risks to lay down their arms. The figure relates, however, to the period before the collapse of the eastern front in January sent the numbers of ‘stragglers’ (and those actually deserting) spiralling – perhaps doubling – in the last four months of the war.48 If the overall scale of the phenomenon must remain no more than an approximation, at least the figures for those punished for desertion by military courts – though not arbitrarily shot or otherwise ‘executed’ in arbitrary action – are known. Compared with 18 cases in the German army in the First World War, those in the Wehrmacht sentenced for desertion during the Second World War numbered, in a sharply rising trend, some 35,000. Around 15,000 of these received the death penalty.49