‘Everything is carrying on at present as if it would be all right at the end,’ he wrote on 5 March. He mentioned hopes in the U-boats, but was evidently sceptical. He did not know how anyone could still believe Goebbels, still proclaiming the impact of V-weapons. He was equally dubious about talk of ‘an aeroplane that they call Germany’s bird of fate’, something to change the course of the war. If a change was to come, it had to be very soon, he remarked drily. He just carried on with his duties. ‘My people understand me,’ he added. He immersed himself in his work, ‘acting as if everything were as it is written in the newspaper’. But he refrained from criticizing Goebbels’ speech at the end of February, leaving open the outcome of future developments and whether the Führer and Goebbels might prove right in the end. Perhaps there would after all be a change in fortune. ‘The Führer claims it will be so. I’m just a poor fool with no sixth sense who unfortunately sees nothing,’ he remarked, with scarcely veiled sarcasm. He had not imagined the Americans crossing the Rhine so quickly. ‘But it’s not fully out of the question that we could still master this situation,’ he added, again seeming to doubt his own words. There were still those, he acknowledged, who shared Hitler’s confidence in final victory; plainly, he was not among their number. It was obvious to him that Hitler would not capitulate. He thought it would end with a battle on the Obersalzberg. There were ‘wonderful things in preparation’, but they would come too late. Even now, however, there were signs that he had not altogether given up hope. Conflict between the Russians and the Americans would still give Germany a chance, just as a motor-race could be decided by a puncture 100 metres from the finishing line. Away from such reveries, work seemed pointless. He was just going through the motions. Orders by now had in any case little effect. An ‘ostrich-policy’ operated as people buried their heads in the sand.59
Pollex could entertain his quasi-philosophical reflections, well away from the front. Colonel-General Gotthard Heinrici, brought in on 20 March by Hitler to replace Himmler – whose command of Army Group Vistula had laid bare his evident incapacity for military leadership – and use his recognized abilities as a defensive strategist to try to hold the front in Pomerania, made his assessments much closer to the action. An archetypal Prussian career officer who had served in the First World War and had long experience of command in the Second, Heinrici was a strong patriot but had always kept his distance from the Party. Soon after the war, in British captivity, he provided his own explanation for the continued fight down to the end, however despairing the situation. He praised the fighting spirit, determination and resolute defence of German troops on the Oder against greatly superior enemy might. He was well aware of the deficiencies in armaments, the lack of fighting experience of around half his troops, and the fact that some of the more experienced soldiers, having narrowly survived so many battles, had lost the will to fight to the last as the end approached. None of this overshadowed, however, the overall strategic picture, which, he said, was clear both to the leadership and to the ordinary soldier. As long as German forces could hold the Rhine, the defence of the Oder did not seem hopeless, and was certainly worth fighting for. Once the enemy was over the Rhine and pressing on towards the Elbe, however, ordinary soldiers inevitably asked themselves whether there was any point to carrying on. What made them do so he attributed primarily to their sense of ‘patriotic duty to halt the advance of the Russians’. It was clear to every soldier what could be expected from the Russians. And it was seen as imperative to protect the civilian population as far as possible from the sort of horror that had occurred east of the Oder. Beyond that, he said, the military leadership believed that it could not undermine any possible bargaining position in negotiations through premature collapse. When hopes that the Oder could be held proved vain and German defences were smashed, disintegration swiftly followed. ‘If the soldier decided to fight on, then this was no longer to halt the enemy but to save his own life or not to fall into Soviet captivity.’ Terror, he stated, was no longer sufficient to compel soldiers to fight. Survival alone was now the driving force.60
After the war, Dönitz argued – attributing much responsibility to the Allied insistence on unconditional surrender – that ‘no one in authority could have signed an instrument of capitulation without knowing full well that its terms would be broken’ by soldiers in the east refusing to accept orders to stay and enter Soviet captivity and instead, like the civilian population, choosing to flee westwards.61 Whatever his self-justificatory motivation in such remarks (which clash with his contemporary demands for a fanatical fight to the last), Dönitz did have a point in the implication that the millions still serving on the eastern front would have felt betrayed and might well have taken matters into their own hands in trying to get to the west. Whether this would have been worse for them than what did actually happen is a moot point.
In the east especially, a passionate desire for an end to the war, detestation of the Party, criticism of the regime, and even loss of faith in Hitler were perfectly compatible with soldiers’ continued determination to repel the Russian invaders on Reich soil who posed such a threat to families and homes. And ultimately, as Heinrici points out, when all idealism had vanished and pure desperation took hold, soldiers fought on for self-survival.
In the west, the situation was different. Certainly, on the western front, despite the attempts of propaganda, equivalent anxieties about falling into the hands of the Americans or the British rarely existed beyond the ranks of Party functionaries. Once the enemy had reached German soil and then crossed the Rhine, there was, even so, still much determination to repel the invader. Unable to see beyond the immediate battlegrounds, many soldiers were compelled to believe, beyond what their senses were telling them, that they were still fighting to gain time – for the leadership to fend off the Soviets, seek a worthwhile peace settlement, see the breakup of the enemy coalition. Who knew exactly? Moreover, units on the western front also included many soldiers whose homes and families were in eastern or central regions of Germany and who saw fighting on as necessary as long as the British, Americans and French remained in alliance with the Soviets. Some unquestionably thought the western Allies would eventually see sense and realize that the real war was against Russia. ‘Germany is saving Europe and England and America from being gobbled up by Bolshevik Russia,’ claimed officers captured in the west. ‘The British and Americans will one day … awaken to the real situation and will join the Germans in holding off Russia.’62 Beyond such motives were more immediate, unpolitical feelings: the unwillingness, as in most armies, to leave close friends and comrades in the lurch. The sense of comradeship often provided its own motivation for fighting on when idealism was lacking.
And ultimately there was the sense that there was nothing to be done about it. There was no potential for mutiny or rising to overthrow the regime. The scale of harsh repression was simply too great. Stepping out of line was little less than suicidal. And when it happened, desertion was usually an individual act, not mass mutiny. It reflected a desperate attempt at personal survival, not a collapse of the military order.63 Apart from the savagery of reprisals and fears for one’s family, the capacity to organize any mutiny was as good as absent, in part because the sheer intensity of the fighting and scale of losses at the front left no chance to organize political action, partly too because constant losses left little continuity in the manpower of troop units. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to struggle on.
The situation in 1945 contrasted sharply with the revolutionary conditions of 1918.64 ‘In 1918 we experienced more open revolutionary tendencies,’ commented one cavalry general in British captivity in March 1945. ‘As the end drew near, the men were already behaving in a very insolent fashion. They don’t do that now.’65 In the last months of the First World War, there had been a gathering collapse of authority in the military command. Perhaps as many as a million soldiers in the final weeks, encouraged by the stirring revolutionary mood at home, among workers a
nd soldiers in home-based garrisons, and aware of peace demands in the Reichstag, voted with their feet against continuing to fight. In 1918 military discipline had been much in line with that of the other belligerent powers, losses were smaller, German cities had not been reduced to rubble, civil society was largely intact, pluralist politics continued to exist; most crucially, there had been no brutal Russian occupation of eastern Germany and threat to the Reich capital itself, and there had been no western invasion of the Reich. German troops could return home seemingly undefeated in the field.
There had also been the Workers’ Councils in factories, bodies to give voice to the simmering unrest and to organize mass strikes and protest meetings. There had been no equivalent of the Nazi Party ensuring through its ruthless hold over the population that ‘organizational space’ to engender a popular uprising was totally unavailable. Not least, there was no equivalent to the terroristic police apparatus of 1945. In 1918, rejection of the Kaiser and Germany’s ruling class, extensive within the army and within the population, could be openly expressed and ultimately transformed into revolutionary action. In 1945, detestation of Hitler and the regime or heated criticism of policies that had produced the misery of a lost war were sentiments best swallowed. The faintest whiff of insurrectionary sentiment could spell instant brutal retaliation.
Paradoxically, therefore, increasing defeatism among ordinary soldiers not only failed to prompt them to lay down their arms or rise in mutiny against their superior officers but was compatible with continued readiness to fight on. Exhausted, demoralized troops provided no basis for insurrection. If one sentiment could sum up the myriad views of soldiers, it was probably fatalism – hoping for the best because that was all anyone could do. They saw no alternative but to carry on. Change could only come from above, but there were no indications that it ever would.
IV
For the civilian population, the sense of helplessness as the maelstrom gathered force was almost totally embracing. In bomb-ravaged big cities, conditions by March 1945 were intolerable, though the countryside, for all its privations, fared better. The misery was near universal as people simply awaited the end of the war, unable to do anything to hasten it, left to their fate to face the continued bombing and the inroads of the enemy, with all the uncertainty, anxiety and – in the east – downright fear that entailed. The only hope was that the war would soon end and that the British and Americans would arrive before the Russians.66 A graphic display of feeling in one Alpine village, said to mirror ‘the true attitude of the people’, was the refusal of the soldiers, Volkssturm men and civilians assembled for Heroes’ Memorial Day on 11 March to return the ‘Sieg Heil’ to the Führer at the end of the Wehrmacht commander’s speech.67 The SD summed up attitudes at the end of March: no one wanted to lose the war, but no one believed Germany could now win it; the leadership was to blame (confidence in it had collapsed ‘like an avalanche’ in recent days), there was much criticism of the Party, ‘certain leaders’ and propaganda; the Führer was still ‘the last hope’ of millions – a necessary ritualistic concession in such reports – but was more vehemently ‘by the day included in the question of confidence and the criticism’; finally, the feeling that fighting on was pointless was by now eating at the readiness to continue, at self-belief and at belief in other people.68
Shortage of food was becoming a big issue in the cities. Owing to lack of transport, acute shortages – exacerbated by hoarding, especially by military personnel – had existed in Rhineland cities before the Allies arrived.69 ‘Hunger, terror from the air and the military situation’ determined the popular mood, according to a report from Stuttgart in late March. ‘A large section of the population is already completely at an end as regards bread, fats and foodstuffs.’70 There were serious worries about food supplies in Berlin, too, as rations were reduced again.71 Many claimed they already had nothing to eat – though ‘painted and powdered ladies wearing expensive furs and afternoon dresses’ were said still to frequent the few remaining restaurants.72 Anxieties were said to be mounting over likely future acute shortages. The Allies, it is true, had reported adequate supplies of food hidden away – some of it allegedly looted from the homes of neighbours who had evacuated – when they marched through the Rhineland.73 But even in the country, where farmers especially always seemed to have sufficient in store, the diminished rations were making themselves felt. ‘Just enough if you can sleep the whole day,’ bemoaned one worker in south Germany, where there was much ‘bad blood’ over shortages of potatoes and other foodstuffs.74 Many individuals tried to pretend that they had lost their ration cards as applications for substitute cards soared after the drop in rations was announced.75 Directives from Bormann – perhaps emanating from Hitler himself – instructing the Gauleiter to coordinate measures to make more use of wild vegetables, fruits, berries, mushrooms and herbs to mitigate food-ration reductions, and wild medicinal herbs to compensate for shortage of medicines, were unlikely to have been warmly welcomed.76
Cuts in electricity and gas supplies and severe coal shortages were commonplace in big cities. Drains were often blocked by bomb damage. Water could in some places be had only from standpipes in the street. People in some rural areas had to resort to cooking on stoves fired with peat.77 Schools and universities had mainly closed by now. Some schools were requisitioned as field hospitals for the wounded.78 Floods of refugees placed a massive additional burden on housing and other public services. Welfare work was made more difficult by the lack of unified control, resulting – typical for the Third Reich – in conflicting demands from different agencies.79 Hospitals could not cope with the high numbers of casualties from air raids. In early March, Bormann ordered the incorporation of the personnel of hospitals and clinics into the Volkssturm.80 There was huge disruption of the railways. If a journey had to be undertaken and even if a place on a train could be found, delays of many hours were to be expected. People coped as best they could under the extremely difficult circumstances. But the cuts in public services had complicating side effects. Electricity cuts meant, for instance, that shops were shutting early, when it became too dark for business, leaving no possibility for those in work to buy food in the early evening hours. And once the electricity was restored, in mid-evening, there was often an air-raid alarm so that people had no time to eat.81
A source of particular concern to the millions of families desperate for news of sons, brothers, fathers or other close relatives at the front was that postal services were in a state of near collapse. By late March, post offices had often been put out of action by bombing. Telephone, telegraph and rail communications had largely broken down for ordinary citizens, and often, too, for public authorities and businesses.82 The Reich Post Minister, Wilhelm Ohnesorge, laid down stipulations for ensuring a minimum postal service. If trains were unavailable, motor vehicles had to be used to shuttle post to the nearest functioning railway station. If no vehicles were available, local transport had to be requisitioned. In the last resort, the most urgent post was to be carried by bicycle or on foot in rucksacks.83
There was, it is true, still a veneer of what passed for ‘normality’ in the diminishing parts of Germany not under occupation or sucked into the fighting zones, though anything resembling civic society had long since vanished. One of the few places bomb-threatened people of big cities found any semblance of communal activity in these weeks was in the air-raid shelter.84 Work itself, however hard, tedious and long, must have been for many a distraction from the heavy worries and burdens of daily life. And wages and salaries continued to be paid as Germany collapsed. Newspapers still appeared – though by March there were only 814 of them (compared with 2,075 daily papers in 1937), and they were only two to four pages in length. Periodicals had been cut back still further because of the shortage of paper and other difficulties; only 458 out of 4,789 in pre-war times were still in circulation.85 Radio remained the most important means of communication (though power cuts meant big interruptions to programm
es), not just for propaganda but also for entertainment programmes. The main transmitters in big cities continued to function to the end. Not least, the radio was crucial for giving warnings of approaching bombers, while receivers in air-raid shelters passed on Party directives following raids.86 Despite stiff penalties, many continued surreptitiously to listen to enemy broadcasts, especially the BBC. People could still find escapism in the cinema. Entertainment films provided a temporary release from the horrors and misery of reality. They were more attractive than the ‘fight-on’ propaganda conveyed through films like Kolberg (which can only have reminded people of what was actually happening in the town at the time) or newsreels that could only show Germany’s desperate plight. However, bombing of cinema buildings, blackouts and air-raid alarms had taken their toll on attendance. And for those who did go to the cinema, leaving the building was to re-enter a reality beyond the imagination of any film producer.
Outside the most war-ravaged zones and the worst bombed areas of the big cities, a still functioning, if hugely creaking, bureaucracy and the far-reaching tentacles of Party control ensured that skeletal and emergency administration, accompanied by much hand-to-mouth improvisation, continued in some measure to operate.
Routine administration carried on – even with much reduced personnel through recruitment to the Wehrmacht. Forms, more of them than ever, had to be completed, reports filed, the myriad tasks of minor bureaucracy (which civil servants down the ranks had always done) still undertaken. The usual local health and social welfare, finance and economic issues, even building planning, continued amid the mayhem, however unreal it often seemed.87 And local police stations were still sending in their reports on maintenance of ‘order’ down to the end. Much of the work of local and regional authorities was, however, inevitably preoccupied with finding housing for those bombed out of their homes, trying to cope with the influx of refugees, organizing food rations and distribution of increasingly stretched provisions, regulating air-raid measures88 and the deployment of the hard-pressed fire service (many of whom were volunteers, taken out of their normal work for fire-brigade duties).89 Few of the lower-ranking civil servants were by now, if they ever had been, inspired by gung-ho Nazi propaganda and sloganeering about fighting to the last ditch. But hardly any would have contemplated doing anything other than what they saw as their duty to ensure that they carried out their work as conscientiously and efficiently as possible. They were merely small cogs in a big machine. But they did their best, even at this late stage, to ensure that the machine continued to function as well as possible.