Whatever their varying attitudes towards Hitler and National Socialism, ranging from fanatical commitment to little more than contempt, no general – and the same applied to the vast majority of the soldiers in their commands – wanted to see Germany defeated, least of all to be subjugated by the Bolsheviks. The consequence of doing all in their power to prevent this happening was the prolongation of the war, and of the lifespan of the Nazi regime, with all the suffering this entailed. Hopes that, even now, something could be salvaged from the war and Germany ‘saved’ outweighed the desire for an end to Nazism. For some, indeed, there was no estrangement from Nazism and the lingering dream that a miracle could still happen. In his retirement near Würzburg after his dismissal for ‘failure’ in East Prussia, Colonel-General Reinhardt, for example, could plaintively ask ‘when and how the salvation that we still believe in will come’. A week later, just like Hitler and Goebbels, he saw in President Roosevelt’s death on 12 April ‘a glimmer of hope’.33
Meanwhile, the deadly machinery of war ground on. Reserves of manpower were exhausted.34 Orders were still going out involving the Party in cooperating with the Wehrmacht to round up ‘stragglers’ and send them back to the front.35 But whatever the brutal methods used, the numbers amounted to a mere drop in the ocean. At the end of February, Hitler had approved using 6,000 boys born in 1929, some of them therefore not yet sixteen years old, to strengthen rear defensive lines, as well as the training of a ‘Women’s Battalion’.36 But by April boys were being sent out to fight not in the rear, but in the front lines. The Reich Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, agreed at the end of March to establish ‘panzer close-combat units’ of the Hitler Youth. At the start of April the first battalion of 700 Hitler Youth was ferried out on lorries to fight as close-combat troops to shoot down tanks near Gotha.37 When the Soviet offensive began, fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds were to find themselves facing up to the onslaught from Russian tanks. The Waffen-SS were still press-ganging young Germans to join up a month later even as the Soviets were battling their way into the centre of Berlin.38 It was far from the case, however, that all young Germans had to be coerced into almost suicidal combat. Whether through indoctrination in the Hitler Youth, idealism, or a sense of adventure, many went willingly to the front, some ready even at this desperate stage of the war to offer the last sacrifice for their country.39 Few could have been prepared for what lay in store. Most of the Hitler Youth recruits were in any case far from being fanatics ready to die for their country, and were just frightened, disorientated boys, forced into action and often wantonly slaughtered in a hopeless cause.40
Improvisation was by now the order of the day. In the south of Germany, the Volkssturm were used to carry out road repairs after bombing raids to enable troop movements to continue. Most road-workers were by this time in any case serving with the Volkssturm, it was pointed out. Orders were still being dispatched for the hasty erection of tank barriers by means of the ‘ruthless and comprehensive deployment of the entire population’. The dearth of equipment for the fighting troops was partly to be made good by distribution from Wehrmacht stores in the path of enemy advance. In Württemberg, Army Group G was grateful to come across 100,000 pairs of boots to replace the down-at-heel footwear of the troops, along with large amounts of leather clothing.41
Astonishingly, Hitler himself had to order, in the last week of his life, that all stocks of weapons and equipment left lingering for more than a week on wagons at railway stations should be unloaded and supplied to the troops.42 None of this was any more than papering over the cracks. But it contributed towards enabling some sort of a fighting force to continue operations in the increasingly desperate circumstances. And pretences had to be maintained. Remarkably, amid the extraordinary shortages of men and matériel in a lost war, preparations were still made in mid-April for an exhibition of the latest armaments models to be displayed in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery for Hitler’s usual birthday inspection on 20 April.43
Generalizations about mentalities among the rank-and-file of the armed forces are obviously hazardous. And however varied the political attitudes of individual soldiers, sailors and airmen, the overwhelming number probably simply accepted that they had no choice but to do what they were ordered to do: fight on. The character of the fronts certainly affected attitudes. There was almost certainly greater tenacity, determination to fight, and even belief in Hitler among those directly facing the Red Army in the east, where the ideological conflict was most pronounced, than among the troops on the collapsing western front. How representative was a letter home at the beginning of April from an NCO serving with the 12th Panzer Division cut off in Courland cannot be known, but it indicates that Nazified ideas were still present in his unit: ‘Some will regard the war in these critical days as lost,’ he wrote.
But the war is only lost if we surrender. Even should Germany capitulate, would the war be over for us? No, the horror would be only just really beginning and we would not even have weapons to defend ourselves. As long as we have weapons and the firm belief in our good cause, nothing is lost. I believe firmly in a decisive shift in fortunes. Providence, which sent us the Führer, will not allow all the terrible sacrifices to have been in vain and will never abandon the world to the annihilatory terror of Bolshevism.44
There were, however, contrasting attitudes, even among soldiers in the east. Reflective diary entries in mid-April from an NCO based in Prague, with obvious anti-Nazi feelings, display critical distance from the regime, a realistic view of the hopelessness of the position, and a sense that the fate now embracing the Reich had been earned by the crimes in the east that Germans had committed. He estimated that about 10 per cent of the soldiers, with reference to statements by Hitler and Goebbels, still believed in ‘a technical miracle’. Remarkably, there was speculation about the splitting of the atom, and that Germany possessed a weapon of such force that it would make England disappear from the face of the earth. Even worse than such talk, the diarist thought, was that a great sector of the German population, while not believing in the existence of such a weapon, regretted that Germany did not have one which it could use to destroy all its enemies in one strike: then ‘we would be the victors’. In such notions he saw the extent of the brutalization and moral decay which Nazi education had produced. ‘This people will have nothing to complain of in its own fate,’ he commented. He had heard in the last days several times from older soldiers who had experienced the first two years of the Russian campaign the saying that all guilt is avenged on earth. They saw reports, he thought partly exaggerated, of Bolshevik atrocities in the occupied eastern parts of Germany as proof of this. ‘Many think consciously of the things that they themselves saw or had to carry out and which have to be set against what is allegedly taking place now. “We are guilty ourselves, we’ve earned it” – that’s the bitter recognition that many struggle through to.’45
Two days later the same soldier commented on the fighting in central Germany and the surrender of Königsberg, with the attendant condemnation to death in absentia of the German commandant and arrest of his family. He saw the demands of the Nazi leadership to defend every town and village to the last as leaving no lingering doubt about ‘the fanatical will and the method to try to counter the imminent threat of collapse. Everyone not involved in the defence or acting against the decreed measures will be threatened with death.’ However, he thought there was growing acceptance of unconditional surrender, and that mass desertion and internal unrest would spread in the following days. The signs of rising anger were evident. People were saying more openly what they had earlier secretly thought, and ‘the insight into the true situation and the intentions of our leadership is growing’. ‘In these days the last arguments are being knocked out of even the most hard-nosed optimist,’ he wrote. ‘Soon nobody and nothing will be able to justify further resistance. The slogan of heroic downfall will then in its naked madness be plain to the entire people.’46
However divided they were i
n their political stance, for soldiers awaiting the Red Army’s Oder offensive, east of Berlin, a prominent motive for continuing to fight was unquestionably defence of the homeland against a hated enemy. More telling in the heat of battle was the group cameraderie of the fighting unit. And most important of all in the last resort was the desire for self-preservation. German soldiers were well aware that they could expect no quarter from the Red Army if they were captured. They often knew, sometimes at first hand, of earlier German atrocities in the east. What awaited them on capture, they were sure, was death or at best indefinite slave labour far away in the Soviet Union.
Propaganda vilifying the enemy and depicting the horrors awaiting them should the Bolsheviks prevail, rammed home to the troops in pep-talks from NSFOs, naturally, then, fell on its most fertile ground in the east. For troops being pushed relentlessly back in north-western, central and southern Germany there was a less clear focus. Fear of the enemy was far less pronounced. At the same time, revulsion at the notion that foreign enemies were occupying German soil doubtless spurred on many. A group of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys, evacuated from the Ruhr, who volunteered for service in the SS in Lower Franconia in early April 1945, had themselves mixed motives. Some were ardent Nazis, others sought cameraderie and adventure. But all of them wanted to ‘save the Fatherland’.47 There were still, if in a minority, plenty of ardent Nazis present in the armed forces, especially among younger soldiers. In one letter that came into British hands in April, a lieutenant serving in Lower Saxony told his parents in Westphalia: ‘I simply cannot believe that the Führer will sacrifice us senselessly. Nobody will be able to rob me of my faith in “Him”. He is my All…. Who knows what experiences I shall have before we meet again, but I am an officer and will gladly do all I can for my Fatherland, more – much more, even – than duty requires.’48 Volunteers were not lacking for service as suicide-pilots, with the aim of ramming their fighters into Allied bombers. More than 2,000 men immediately came forward, motivated by the loss of their homeland in the east, the death of their families through Allied bombing, or Nazi fanaticism. The kamikaze-style tactic proved unsuccessful and the self-sacrifice pointless: only eight bombers were brought down through ramming, at a cost of 133 German planes and the lives of seventy-seven pilots.49 Waffen-SS units still showed astonishing levels of morale, fighting-power and commitment to the regime, as well as utter ruthlessness in blowing up houses where white flags were flying and taking reprisals against individuals raising them. In varying degrees, differing from person to person, ideological commitment, fanatical loyalty, a sense of comradely duty, fear of the consequences of non-compliance and sheer lack of alternative drove on the German will to resist.50
Perhaps, other than a vague notion that their actions were helping somehow to ‘save’ Germany, many soldiers in the west had no clear rationale for why they were still fighting. For in the west, too, self-preservation was the most prominent motive, according to a survey of 12,000 soldiers’ letters during March. In almost all, the wish was expressed to survive the last phase of the war and rejoin their families.51
An impression of a disintegrating army can be glimpsed from the diary account, cited on occasion in earlier chapters, of Lieutenant Julius Dufner. By April 1945, Dufner was based in the Bergisches Land south of Remscheid, near Wermelskirchen, then in nearby Solingen as Model’s orders came through for the dissolution of Army Group B. On 13 April he heard rumours that soldiers had thrown away their weapons and that the war in the west was over. As troops retreated, men and women were exhorting them to lay down their arms, offering accommodation and civilian clothing. Two days later there were further rumours, that Hitler, Göring and Goebbels had been shot or committed suicide. Inhabitants were pulling down tank barriers in Solingen. Wehrmacht goods were being distributed to the local population. Children were running round in steel helmets discarded by soldiers. Hatred against the Party was now able to find voice. ‘Everything smelling of the Party was seen as fair game,’ he noted. By 16 April nearly all the soldiers were wearing civilian clothes and acting as if they had been dismissed from army service, though an actual order to that effect had still not come through. Their senior officer, a major, was dressed in an ill-fitting suit and sports cap, giving up any pretence at command. The last munition dump was detonated. The following day, 17 April, in the ruined city centre of Solingen, as German prisoners were loaded onto lorries to be taken into captivity, and American GIs, smoking Camel cigarettes and chewing gum, took over the town, he set out for home in Baden (where he arrived nearly a fortnight later) in civilian clothing, and on the bicycle that he had obtained by offering his motorbike and 100 Reich Marks in exchange. For him, the war was over.52 Other soldiers, particularly those tensely awaiting the battle on the Oder, were less lucky.
IV
The regime’s control in western areas was by now in an advanced stage of dissolution. Propaganda reports gave Goebbels an ‘alarming’ picture of demoralization. There was no longer reluctance to voice sharp criticism of Hitler himself, and no fear of the Americans. White flags were put out as they approached, and they were greeted with enthusiasm, regarded as protectors against the Soviets. The population were often directly opposed to their own troops who wanted to continue the fight, with a predictably depressing effect on the soldiers. There was a good deal of looting. Alongside the defeatism and widespread fatalism, many people were now talking of suicide as the best way out. Characteristically Nazified demands were voiced for drastic action against those seen as responsible for Germany’s plight. People pointed to the peremptory punishment of those who had failed to detonate the Remagen bridge and thereby allowed the Americans to cross the Rhine; they wanted similar treatment for those responsible for the ‘catastrophe in the air war’, even demanding the death penalty for Göring. Some believed – as did Hitler himself – that treason was behind the collapse on the western front.53
So negative were the reports reaching Bormann that he felt it necessary to write a lengthy complaint to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Security Police, at the tone of the ‘typical SD report’, which generalized broadly from a small number of individual cases to paint a bleak picture. Bormann accepted that some segments of the population – but not the population – had welcomed the Americans, though he attributed this to an inability to counter the propaganda effect of enemy radio and to the readiness of people to believe that the war would soon be over, and with that a release from the constant bombing raids. For his part, he was convinced that, as after 1918, there would soon be ‘a very strong sobering process’.54
According to General Schulz, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group G, in a telex on 8 April to Karl Wahl, Gauleiter of Swabia, ‘the fighting of the last days has clearly shown that the population in the zone close to the front uses all means to deter soldiers from any fighting and resistance in order to protect their property from destruction’. As a counter-measure, he urged the evacuation of the population near the combat zone. Wahl took the view that this did not yet apply to the population of his Gau.55 A few days later, he nevertheless complied with an order to evacuate a zone either side of the Danube as a preventive measure in case it was drawn into the fighting area. Women and children were ordered to leave within two hours on foot or bicycle since no transport was available, and to use side roads to keep the main routes clear for the troops.56 In many parts of the west, evacuation, as Goebbels acknowledged, was impracticable. ‘We’re issuing orders in Berlin that practically don’t even arrive, let alone can be carried out,’ he wrote, seeing in this ‘the danger of an extraordinary diminution of authority’.57 Removing a largely unwilling population was impossible. No transport was available. And there were no areas to send them to. Evacuation orders of the Führer could simply not be implemented and were quietly forgotten.58
In the south, following the collapse in Hungary and Austria, chaos arose from tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from the Soviets. Gauleiter August Eigruber of Gau Oberdonau complained bitter
ly to the Party Chancellery that Gau Bayreuth and Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria would not accept fifteen trainloads of refugees, numbering around 100,000 people, from Vienna, the Lower Danube and Hungary, nor, despite orders, send urgently needed cereals to Gau Upper Danube, which had no corn supplies left. The refugees had been left in railway sidings for several days. Munich eventually agreed to take its share. Gau Tirol was also forced into accepting some, though the Gauleiter, Franz Hofer, said that while he would do what he could for Germans, he could do nothing for Hungarians, Croats and Slovenes. No one wanted to take the Hungarians. Gauleiter Fritz Wächtler in Bayreuth stubbornly continued to refuse to cooperate. The Party Chancellery sought in vain to get him to respond to its demands, eventually sending a special courier to obtain a reply. Wächtler had also failed to provide the daily situation reports to which, it was said, the Führer attached great importance.59 His unwillingness or inability – Bayreuth was suffering severe air raids at the time – to comply with orders from Berlin was a further indication of the gathering dissolution of the regime.