Before the Allies could tackle the crossing of the Rhine, they faced tenacious defences west of the great river from north to south. In Alsace, French and American troops had already forced the Germans back across the Rhine near Colmar in early February. The main Allied attack began, however, further north, on 8 February. Despite initial slow progress against fierce resistance, abetted by bad weather and the opening of dams to hamper tank and troop movements, Canadian and British forces pushing south-eastwards from the Nijmegen area and Americans pressing north-eastwards from around Düren took Krefeld on 2 March and by 10 March had encircled nine German divisions near Wesel, capturing 53,000 prisoners, though many German troops were nonetheless able to retreat over the Rhine, destroying the bridges as they went. By this time, once the Americans had reached the Rhine south of Düsseldorf on 2 March, a long stretch of Germany’s most important river was in Allied hands, and with that a vital artery for delivery of Ruhr coal and steel blocked. On 5 March, American troops broke through weak defences (many manned by the Volkssturm) to reach Cologne. The following morning the retreating Germans blew up the Hohenzollern bridge in the city centre, the last remaining crossing in the Rhine metropolis. The problem for the Allies of gaining a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Rhine was, however, soon solved by a slice of good luck. German troops retreating at Remagen, farther south, between Bonn and Koblenz, had failed to detonate the explosives laid and the Americans, to their great surprise finding the bridge intact on 7 March, crossed and swiftly formed a small bridgehead on the eastern bank. Desperate German attempts to clear it meant that precious reserves were sucked into Remagen, to no avail.
Farther south, Trier fell on 1 March. General Patton’s 3rd US Army, after struggling since mid-February to overcome strong resistance, was able to force the defenders back across the Rhine and Mosel by 10 March – the day after Field-Marshal von Rundstedt had been relieved of his command for the last time and replaced as Commander-in-Chief West by the tough Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring, adjudged to have acquitted himself well in the rearguard action in northern Italy. Three days later the Americans were crossing the Mosel and preparing to attack the Saarland, still producing about a tenth of German iron and steel. Kesselring refused to evacuate such a vital industrial area. Intense fighting followed, but there could be only one outcome. The German forces eventually retreated into the eastern Saarland, then the Palatinate, and finally across the Rhine, suffering severe losses (also inflicting them on the enemy). By 25 March the Saar was lost to Germany. By that time the Americans had also occupied Kaiserslautern, Worms and Mainz. Meanwhile, Koblenz had fallen on 17 March.
Six days later the entire stretch of the Rhine from Koblenz to Ludwigshafen was in American hands, and a second bridgehead over the river had been established at Oppenheim, south of Mainz, where troops had crossed in assault boats in a daring manoeuvre on the night of 22/3 March. That day, the British commander, Field-Marshal Montgomery, led his forces over the Lower Rhine at Wesel and by the end of March had consolidated an extensive bridgehead on the eastern bank of the river. The basis for the assault on the Reich’s biggest industrial region, the Ruhr, was thereby laid. Farther south, now the Americans were over the Rhine, fierce German resistance was unable to halt their progress deep into the western parts of the Reich. Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Frankfurt am Main were in American hands by 29 March, Heidelberg two days later. From here on, the advance into central Germany and, to the south into Bavaria, would rapidly unfold.
In the defence of Rhine positions, the Germans had suffered appalling losses, with more than 60,000 men killed or wounded and 293,000 taken prisoner. The loss of tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry as the troops had been hastily forced back over the Rhine and Mosel was huge. German fighting-power, weak enough at the onset of the Allied offensive, was now drastically diminished. Even the paper strength of the divisions, itself much reduced during the fighting of February and March, belied the reality that only a minority – many of them raw recruits – were by now capable of frontline service. Defences otherwise were dependent upon the poorly equipped Volkssturm and hastily assembled units transferred from the Luftwaffe and navy.
If Allied superiority on all fronts in manpower and armaments was ultimately simply overpowering, the characteristic refusal by Hitler and the High Command of the Wehrmacht to countenance tactical retreats until it was too late exacerbated the losses. Coupled with this was the rejection of all entreaties by Guderian and others to withdraw German forces still located outside the Reich’s borders. These included, most prominently, 200,000 battle-hardened troops stranded in Courland, together with forces occupying the Low Countries, Scandinavia and still fighting in northern Italy. The main reason for the catastrophe nevertheless lay in the consistent refusal by the Reich’s leadership to surrender and determination to fight on when any realistic hope had long been extinguished.7
By the end of March, then, Germany’s enemies were across the Oder in the east and across the Rhine in the west. That even now there was a readiness to fight on when little if anything could be gained, though continued destruction and heavy loss of life were thereby guaranteed, is little less than astonishing. The readiness should not, however, be mistaken for widespread popular commitment to the German war effort. In the east, it is true, fear of the Soviets was a strong deterrent to defeatism and willingness to surrender. For most people, however, whether in the army or among the civilian population, there was simply no alternative but to struggle on under the terroristic grip of the regime in the dwindling parts of the Reich that were still not occupied.
II
All the indications point to a slump in morale within the Wehrmacht, especially in the west, as the defences gave way and the enemy pressed into the Reich. It was matched by the state of civilian morale. The regime reacted to try to combat the signs of disintegration, as always, through ramping up still further its propaganda efforts and through ferocious repression to serve as a deterrent.
The Party went to great lengths in March 1945 to intensify propaganda efforts to sustain and improve the fighting spirit within the Wehrmacht and among the civilian population. At the start of the month, Bormann sought support from the Gauleiter for a new propaganda drive that aimed to avoid any empty slogans but to reinforce a fanatical will to resist. A ‘Special Action of the Party Chancellery’ was set up to organize intensive propaganda activity through deputations of Party functionaries (in Wehrmacht uniform) and army officers.8 Propaganda, it was accepted, had to be improved.9 Based on recommendations from Goebbels, it had also to be far more realistic than hitherto – an oblique recognition of some of the failings of hopelessly optimistic prognoses. Soldiers had to be given answers to the central questions preoccupying them: whether there was still a point in fighting; and whether the war could be won. A number of themes had to be highlighted: that Germany still had enough supplies of armaments and food and sufficient reserves of manpower and matériel (none of which was true, belying the emphasis on realism); the development of new ‘miracle’ weapons (on which there was by now all too justified widespread disbelief);10 the effectiveness of the ‘Panzerfaust’ (the German type of bazooka, widely associated with the Volkssturm’s despairing defensive efforts); and the fact that the Americans had to deploy their forces over a huge area (which, of course, had not stopped them making massive inroads through German defences).11
None of this was much of a recipe to restore the rapidly waning confidence and slumping morale. Party speakers serving with the Wehrmacht were selected to address the troops – all the more necessary since transport difficulties were preventing written material from reaching them. In the Gau of Hessen-Nassau, arrangements were made to bus Party speakers chosen by the Reich propaganda leadership to frontline troop units. The leaflets such speakers were to distribute included reminders to ‘think of the mass murder of Dresden’ to encourage them in the belief that the British and Americans, as their destruction of the homeland through terror-bombing showed, were no
better than the Bolsheviks. The only lesson was to stand and fight to the last.12
Another approach was to try to deflect attention from complaints and grievances by turning the spotlight on the enemy. This included disparaging the Americans as inferior to the Germans in every respect other than the sheer might of their weaponry, and the claim that Britain was at the limits of its tolerable losses. More remarkably, criticism of German mishandling of occupied territories was to be met with assertions that German measures had, in fact, been superior to those of the Allies, that ‘we could in any case have a really good conscience in the question of treatment of most of the peoples hostile to us’. Understanding for the tasks of the Party and its achievements in the war effort could be improved through comparing these with the running of the First World War.13
The ‘speaker action’ included advice on how to deal with commonplace criticisms. Defeatist talk, for instance, had to be met with insistence that only determination and the will to resist could master the crisis. Blame attached to the Party for the war was to be countered by emphasizing that war had been declared on Germany, not the other way round, and that the enemy aimed to destroy not just the leadership but the very existence of Germany; that it would be far worse than after 1918. A rejoinder to the widespread view that the ‘air terror’ was the most unbearable burden of all and accompanying expressions about unfulfilled promises was that hardships had temporarily to be endured to allow time to produce better weapons. Pessimistic remarks that Germany had been unable to do this with its industry intact and could therefore hardly hope to do so with so much of it destroyed were to be turned round by saying that the loss of territories meant a smaller industrial output sufficed. Finally, dejection at enemy inroads in east and west had to be faced down by instilling confidence that counter-measures had been taken and would become stronger, that the fight was continuing at the front and at home, and that it was necessary to hold out to allow time for military and political decisions to ripen. The tenor of all speeches had to be an insistence that Germany would not lose the war, but would still win it. The people had to be given the conviction that there was a united fighting community which would on no account give in, but would be determined to endure the war with all means in order to gain victory.14
Little of this could sound convincing to any but the wilfully blind and obtuse. People in Berlin likened propaganda to a band playing on a sinking ship.15 Most soldiers as well as civilians could see the hopelessness of the situation and form their own judgements on the feeble attempts of propaganda to contradict the glaringly obvious. The diary entries of a junior officer on the western front, who kept a careful eye on propaganda statements, comparing them with reality as he saw it, give one impression of feelings as the Americans advanced through the Rhineland. ‘Wherever you go, only one comment: an end to the insanity,’ he observed on 7 March, the day after Cologne had fallen. He did admit, however, that the occasional optimist, such as one of his comrades, a former Hitler Youth leader and ‘a great show-off’, still existed – though such figures could provide no grounds for their optimism. He could barely believe the reports of street-fighting in the ruins of Bonn. ‘Ruins!’ he remarked. ‘That is the legacy for people after the war. How differently Ludendorff acted [at the end of the First World War] when he recognized that all was lost. To some extent still conscious of his responsibility.’ The unspoken criticism of Hitler was obvious. Commenting on what proved to be the last ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’ on 11 March, the diarist noted: ‘How the dead are being misused, their memory and their sacrifice…. There should and must now be an end.’16
Reports reaching the Propaganda Ministry in early March told of many soldiers looking bleakly towards a bitter end to the war.17 Goebbels himself acknowledged in early March in exhorting Party propagandists to ever greater exertions that troop morale was a problem in parts of the army.18 On 11 March he noted that ‘the morale of our troops and our population in the west has suffered exceptionally…. Something can only now be achieved in the west through brutal measures, otherwise we’ll no longer be master of the developing situation.’19 Hitler briefly contemplated scrapping the Geneva Convention, which stipulated good treatment for prisoners of war, to encourage his soldiers to fight as hard on the western as on the eastern front.20 But there were problems in the east, too. Guderian felt forced to provide a vehement denial of a scathing report about defeatist attitudes even among the general staff of Schörner’s Army Group Centre. Though the report was inevitably coloured by the usual Party antagonism towards General Staff officers, the officers’ recorded criticism of the poor quality and wavering resolve among the infantry is unlikely to have been fabricated.21
In Danzig, there was talk of ‘a second Stalingrad’, since the army gave the impression of being paralysed and lacking in initiative. Hundreds of soldiers were said to have deserted their posts at Küstrin (described as no more than ‘one single heap of rubble’ at the end of the siege), where there were plain signs of demoralization. They had fled westwards along with Volkssturm men only to be picked up by the Security Police and forced back into their units. Given the reported scale of looting by German troops in Küstrin, people muttered grimly that the Russians could be no worse.22 Looting of houses and other property by retreating soldiers was by now, however, almost everywhere a commonplace occurrence, despite the threat of severe sanctions for those involved.23 There were other indications of army indiscipline. A Party District Leader in the Halle-Merseburg region reported a minor mutiny of 200 soldiers from a panzer division, and complained about the inability of police checks at stations to pick up deserters. At the fall of Trier, most of the Volkssturm defenders were said to have gone over to the enemy. Others did all they could to avoid military duty.24 German troops on the Mosel, surprised by American tanks, had simply fled in whatever vehicles were to hand, leaving their arms and equipment behind.25
Of course, there were plenty of exceptions to the widespread longing of so many ordinary soldiers for the end of the war. One long letter home from a battalion sergeant-major based in Wiesbaden, just after the Americans had crossed the Rhine at Remagen, reveals an undiluted Nazi mentality and sense of unbroken defiance – though his own comments make plain that he was a rarity among his comrades, and he admitted that ‘we can no longer rely 100 per cent on our soldiers’. He scorned American hopes, as he saw them, that Germans would lay down their weapons, or would fight with them against the Russians, as ‘Jewish tricks’. Though he admitted the situation was extremely grim, he refused, he said, to lose his belief
that we’ll nevertheless win the war. I know that I’m laughed at by many people or thought mad. I know that there are only a few apart from me who have the courage to claim this, but I say it over and again: the Führer is no scoundrel, and not so bad as to lie to an entire people and drive it to death. Up to now the Führer has always given us his love and promised us freedom and carried out all his plans. And if the Führer prays to God that He may pardon him the last six weeks of this war of the nations then we know that there must and will be an awful and terrible end for our enemies.
It was, therefore, imperative to stay ‘brave and strong. What use are all our material advantages if we end up later somewhere in Siberia?’ he added. He was confident that Germany would strike back within the next few weeks with new weapons that would ‘end this desolate situation’ and decisively turn the war in Germany’s favour. ‘We must firmly believe in Germany’s future – believe and ever more believe. A people that has so courageously lost so much blood for its greatness cannot perish…. Only our faith makes us strong, and I rely on the words of the Führer that at the end of all the fighting there will be German victory.’26
As the Allies crossed the Rhine and pushed into Germany, such naivety was distinctly a minority taste. By the end of March, only 21 per cent of a sample of soldiers captured by the western Allies still professed faith in the Führer (a drop from 62 per cent at the beginning of January), while 72 per cent had none.
A mere 7 per cent still believed in German victory; 89 per cent had no such belief.27 A detailed report to the Propaganda Ministry from Hessen-Nassau in late March, as the Americans were advancing into the Main valley, painted a dismal picture of disintegration, antipathy between the military and Party leadership in the area, organizational disorder, and civilians refusing orders to evacuate, on the grounds that they had nowhere to go and, in any case, ‘it’s all over’. Many people, propaganda offices reported in March, had given up hope and there was a widespread view that the war was lost for Germany – though there remained a readiness, it was claimed, to continue doing their duty since it was recognized that capitulation would mean the ‘complete destruction of the German people’.28
The defeatism was furthered, and much bitterness caused, by troops fleeing eastwards as fast as they could go, leaving badly trained and poorly equipped Volkssturm units behind and displaying a complete lack of ‘comradely’ behaviour towards the wounded and civilian evacuees as they brusquely commandeered vehicles for their retreat.29 The long-serving Gauleiter of the area, Jakob Sprenger (who had already requested permission to set up summary courts martial in his Gau), added that the morale of the troops was influenced by the defeatism of the civilian population. The sense that defeat, at least at the hands of the western Allies, would mean the end of German existence was scarcely apparent. White flags had been shown in various places on the approach of enemy troops and the erection of tank barriers blocked.30