41. Heinrich Breloer (ed.), Mein Tagebuch: Geschichten vom Überleben 1939–1947, Cologne, 1984, p. 334.
42. Steinert, p. 479.
43. Ortwin Buchbender and Reinhold Sterz (eds.), Das andere Gesicht des Krieges: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe 1939–1945, Munich, 1982, pp. 21–2.
44. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 72, appendix B, letter (in English translation) to Hfw. Ludwig E., 21.7.44.
45. BA/MA, MSg2/5284, fo. 603, diary of Major Max Rohwerder, entries for 20–21.7.44.
46. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, vol. 2, fo. 20, entries for 20–21.7.44. Biographical details about Dr Julius Dufner, born on 25 January 1902, whose diary entries will find reference in the following chapters, are sparse. The first entry in ‘Mein Kriegstagebuch’, MSg2/2696, fo. 1, for 12.11.40, says he was called up to 3.Inf.Ers.Batl.14 in Konstanz. Later in the war, on 11.3.44, he is mentioned (fo. 190) as a participant in a meeting on that date as Lieutenant ‘O.Zahlm.d.R. [Oberzahlungsmeister (head of payments section) in the Reserve] Dr. Dufner, 1.Fest.Pi.Stab. 15, Stabsgruppe [pioneer corps]’. I am grateful to Jürgen Förster for his help in tracing Dufner in the Kartei of the BA/MA in Freiburg. His diary entries (MSg2/2697, fo. 182) were typed up in 1971, ‘according to his continuously kept diary’.
47. Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Die Wehrmacht: Vom Realitätsverlust zum Selbstbetrug’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches – Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Ein perspektivische Rüchschau, Munich and Zurich, 1995, pp. 240–41.
48. Förster, p. 136.
49. DRZW, vol. 8 (Frieser), pp. 539 ff. for the disaster of the 3rd Panzer Army at Vitebsk in late June.
50. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, Persönliches Kriegstagebuch, fo. 75, 20–21.7.44.
51. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, Auszugsweise Abschriften von Briefen an seine Frau, letter to his wife, fo. 39, 17.8.44.
52. BA/MA, N647/12, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 11, fos. 77–8, 83–4, entries for 21.7.44, 5.8.44. Balck later described Hitler as ‘the cement that bound people and Wehrmacht insolubly together’. – Quoted in John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, p. 2.
53. BA/MA, N24/39, NL Hoßbach, typescript, 19.5.45 (four-page interpolation following p. 5).
54. ‘Führer-Erlasse’, p. 433.
55. Kroener, pp. 710–11, 730.
56. Förster, p. 134, and pp. 138–45 for the significance of Himmler’s new powers within the army; also Longerich, Himmler, pp. 717, 719–21. There was, understandably, little initial enthusiasm among the higher ranks of the Wehrmacht for Himmler’s takeover (though they were said to have been won over by a speech he made to generals and other officers at a training course in Sonthofen). – BAB, NS19/3271, fo. 31, Auszug aus der Meldung des SD-Leitabschnittes Danzig, SD report from Danzig, 14.9.44.
57. Kroener, p. 714; Longerich, Himmler, p. 722. There was, in fact, a dispute within the high ranks of the SS over responsibilities in recruitment for the Replacement Army. The head of the SS Central Office (responsible for recruitment to the Waffen-SS), Gottlob Berger, successfully extended his own powers in this area not only towards the army, but also towards Jüttner, who in practice was more conciliatory towards the interests of the Replacement Army than his rival within the SS leadership. – Kroener, pp. 714–15. Berger’s ambitions to take over all matters concerning recruitment and training for the Replacement Army are evident in his letter to Himmler of 1.8.44 in BAB, NS19/2409, fo. 6.
58. BAB, NS19/4015, fos. 13–32, Himmler speech to officers of Chief of Army Armaments, 21.7.44.
59. BAB, NS19/4015, fos. 42–7, Himmler speech at Grafenwöhr, 25.7.44; IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2708, Himmler speech at Bitsch, 26.7.44 (printed in Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Aussprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson, Frankfurt am Main, 1974, pp. 215–37). Himmler did not conceal his contempt when, this time addressing Party leaders in early August, he castigated the air of defeatism which the officers of the General Staff had spread in the army since the beginning of the war in the east. – Theodor Eschenburg, ‘Die Rede Himmlers vor den Gauleitern am 3. August 1944’, Vf Z, 1 (1953), pp. 362–78.
60. BAB, NS19/3910, fo. 89, Himmler to Fegelein, 26.7.44.
61. ‘Führer-Erlasse’, p. 438.
62. BAB, R3/1522, fos. 48–9, Speer to Himmler, 28.7.44.
63. Hancock, p. 139.
64. Rebentisch, p. 515.
65. BAB, R43II/664a, ‘Totaler Kriegseinsatz’, fos. 81–91, fos. 117, 154 for the exemption for the Reich Chancellery, agreed by Hitler. Goebbels’ summary of the meeting is in TBJG, II/13, pp. 134–7 (23.7.44). And see Rebentisch, pp. 515–16; Hancock, pp. 137–8; and Elke Fröhlich, ‘Hitler und Goebbels im Krisenjahr 1944: Aus den Tagebüchern des Reichspropagandaministers’, Vf Z, 39 (1990), pp. 205–7.
66. TBJG, II/13, pp. 136–7 (23.7.44).
67. TBJG, II/13, pp. 153–5 (24.7.44).
68. BAB, R43II/664a, fos. 119–21 (and fos. 92–118 for drafts and preparatory material).
69. Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 94 (25.7.44).
70. TBJG, II/13, pp. 135, 137 (23.7.44).
71. BAB, R43II/664a, fos. 153–4; Rebentisch, pp. 516ff.; Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, pp. 195ff.
72. Von Oven, Mit Goebbels, pp. 120–21 (16.8.44).
73. Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, p. 197.
74. Hancock, pp. 157, 287 n. 27.
75. Hans Mommsen, ‘The Indian Summer and the Collapse of the Third Reich: The Last Act’, in Hans Mommsen (ed.), The Third Reich between Vision and Reality, Oxford and New York, 2001, p. 114.
76. BAB, NS6/167, fo. 95–95v, Bormann to the Gauleiter on the ‘new combing out action’, 19.7.44; TBJG, II/13, pp. 134 (23.7.44); Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, p. 196.
77. ‘Führer-Erlasse’, pp. 428–9. The role of the RVKs would be widened with the second decree (pp. 455–6) on ‘Collaboration of Party and Wehrmacht in an Operational Area within the Reich’ of 19 September. Bormann passed on to the Gauleiter Keitel’s guidelines for cooperation of 27 July (BAB, NS6/792, fo. 1–1v, Rundschreiben 163/44 gRs., Zusammenarbeit zwischen militärischen und zivilen Dienststellen, 1.8.44, also in NS19/3911, fos. 30–32). See also Förster, p. 133 and n. 9; Kroener, p. 668.
78. Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter, p. 196. One, among many, examples of the extended power of the Party was in the takeover of control by the Party Chancellery (delegated by Bormann to the Reich Defence Commissars) of air-raid protection and the necessary instruction of the population. See BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 54 Lammers to the Highest Authorities of the Reich, 27.7.44, passing on the Führer decree of two days earlier.
79. See Karl Teppe, ‘Der Reichsverteidigungskommissar: Organisation und Praxis in Westfalen’, in Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (eds.), Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers, Göttingen, 1986, p. 299 for the extended power the RVKs gained after Goebbels’ appointment as Total War Plenipotentiary.
80. The somewhat clumsy term was the invention of Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 2: 1933–1945, Newton Abbot, 1973, p. 474.
81. For Bormann’s centralization of Party control, see Orlow, pp. 465–8.
82. IfZ, ZS 988, Interrogation of Wilhelm Kritzinger, State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery, 5.3.47.
83. See Hans Mommsen, ‘The Dissolution of the Third Reich’, in Frank Biess, Mark Roseman and Hanna Schissler (eds.), Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity: Essays on Modern German History, Oxford and New York, 2007, pp. 110–13 (a reprint of ‘The Dissolution of the Third Reich: Crisis Management and Collapse, 1943–1945’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Washington DC, 27 (2000), pp. 9–23).
84. Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, pp. 401–2; Joachim Fest, Speer: Eine Biographie, Berlin, 1999, pp. 306–7.
85. Speer, Erinnerungen, pp. 405–7; and for the contradictions in the ‘total war’ effort, see Jan
ssen, pp. 274–82.
86. TBJG, II/13, p. 526 (20.9.44).
87. Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, p. 637.
88. BAB, R3/1538, fo. 7, Speer handwritten letter to Hitler, 29.3.45.
89. See DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 755.
90. TBJG, II/13, p. 147 (23.7.44).
91. Guderian, p. 351.
92. BA/MA, RW4/57, fos. 27–31, Ansprache des Chefs WFSt Gen. Oberst Jodl, 24.7.44. For Jodl’s stance after the assassination attempt, see also Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 282–6.
93. BBC Archives, The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997), written and produced for BBC2 by Laurence Rees, Beta Tape 59, pp. 102–3: Karl Boehm-Tettelbach, Luftwaffe Operations Chief on OKW-Führungsstab, interview with Laurence Rees, c. 1995–6.
94. Orlow, p. 465; Kunz, p. 115; DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 623. Keitel and Bormann agreed that uniformed members of the Party and the Wehrmacht had the duty to greet each other with the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute to demonstrate the unity of political will and the common unbreakable loyalty to the Führer. Lammers extended this to civil servants. – BAB, R43II/1194b, fos. 90–94, text of Anordnung from Keitel and Bormann, fo. 93, 26.8.44.
95. TBJG, II/13, p. 146 (23.7.44).
96. Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination, Hamburg, 1969, pp. 433–7 (text of the order on p. 435); DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 625, (Heinemann), p. 884. Guderian’s own account of his appointment as Chief of the General Staff is in his Panzer Leader, pp. 339–44, though he does not mention this order. A brief, critical sketch of Guderian is provided by Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Heinz Guderian – “Panzerpapst” und Generalstabschef’, in Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.), Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches, Berlin, 1995, pp. 187–208. In the same volume, Peter Steinbach, ‘Hans Günther von Kluge – ein Zauderer im Zwielicht’, p. 308, describes Guderian as ‘the willingly deferential instrument of the undignified “self-cleansing” of the Wehrmacht from “traitors” until a few weeks from the end of the war’.
97. Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, p. 441. On the history (and pre-history) of the NSFOs generally, see Waldemar Besson, ‘Zur Geschichte des nationalsozialistischen Führungsoffiziers (NSFO)’, Vf Z, 9 (1961), pp. 76–116; Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘Adolf Hitler und der NS-Führungsoffizier (NSFO)’, Vf Z, 12 (1964), pp. 443–56; Volker R. Berghahn, ‘NSDAP und “geistige Führung” der Wehrmacht 1939–1943’, Vf Z, 17 (1969), pp. 17–71; Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, pp. 441–80; and the comprehensive treatment in DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 590–620.
98. See DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 620ff.
99. Kunz, p. 114.
100. Besson, p. 113; DRZW, 9/1 (Heinemann), p. 884.
101. Wolfram Wette, Die Wehrmacht: Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, p. 190. On p. 189, Wette gives the number of full-time (hauptamtliche) NSFOs as 623 at the end of 1944. It is unclear why there is a discrepancy with the figure of 1,074 given in DRZW, 9/1 (Förster). The training of the NSFOs was carried out by a staff based in the Party Chancellery. By the end of 1944 it had held thirteen training courses, attended by 2,435 participants. Some 1,300 lectures a week were given to members of the Wehrmacht on ideological matters. – Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, p. 371.
102. BA/MA, RH19/IV/250, fos. 41–2, Richtlinien für die NS-Führung, Nr. 6/44, Kommandeur der 242. Infanterie-Division, 22.7.44.
103. On a rough estimate – precision is impossible – some 700 officers were arrested and 110 executed for their participation in the attempted coup. – DRZW, 9/1 (Heinemann), pp. 882–3.
104. Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, p. 188. More critical towards Model than Görlitz’s biography are the biographical sketches in Smelser and Syring, pp. 368–87 (Joachim Ludewig), in Ueberschär, pp. 153–60 (Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. and Gene Mueller), and in Correlli Barnett (ed.), Hitler’s Generals, London, 1990, pp. 319–33 (Carlo d’Este).
105. Model’s ‘Tagesbefehl’ of 31.7.44, quoted in Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Die Wehrmacht in der Endphase: Realität und Perzeption’, Aus Parlament und Zeitgeschichte, 32–3 (1989), pp. 38–9 (4.8.89).
106. See Smelser and Syring, pp. 497–509 (Klaus Schönherr) and Ueberschär, pp. 236–44 (Peter Steinkamp). A largely sympathetic portrait of Schörner is provided in Roland Kaltenegger, Schörner: Feldmarschall der letzten Stunde, Munich and Berlin, 1994.
107. DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 596–600; Smelser and Syring (Schönherr), p. 504.
108. BA/MA, RH19/III/727, fos. 2–3, Tagesbefehle der Heeresgruppe Nord, 25, 28.7.44.
109. BA/MA, RH19/III/667, fo. 7, post-war recollections of Hans Lederer (1955): ‘Kurland: Gedanken und Betrachtungen zum Schicksal einer Armee’.
110. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), p. 464.
111. Warlimont, p. 462.
112. Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, p. 291, for Ley’s speech. The impact on the military was said to have been ‘simply catastrophic’. – Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Tübingen, 1974, p. 505 (29.10.44).
113. Orlow, pp. 462–5.
114. See Förster, pp. 132–3.
115. TBJG, II/13, p. 134 (23.7.44).
116. Förster, pp. 131, 134, 139.
117. NAL, WO208/5622, fo. 120A, not contained in the printed edition of these bugged conversations by Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005 (Eng. edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007).
CHAPTER 2. COLLAPSE IN THE WEST
1. The High Command of the Wehrmacht had expected to cut off the Americans by a counter-attack and was taken by surprise at the breakthrough to Avranches. – NAL, WO219/1651, fo. 144, SHAEF: interrogation of General Jodl, 23.5.45.
2. This was the tenor of his discussions with Jodl late on the evening of 31 July 1944. – BA/MA, 4/881, fos. 1–46; printed in Lagebesprechungen im Führerhauptquartier: Protokollfragmente aus Hitlers militärischen Konferenzen 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber, Berlin, Darmstadt and Vienna, 1963, pp. 242–71 (Eng. edn., Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, London, 2002, pp. 444–63). See Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 386, for Hitler’s thinking about a new offensive in the west; and DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 576–7, for the implications for a negotiated end.
3. DZW, 6, p. 105.
4. DZW, 6, p. 112.
5. Joseph Balkoski, ‘Patton’s Third Army: The Lorraine Campaign, 19 September–1 December 1944’, in Albert A. Nofi (ed.), The War against Hitler: Military Strategy in the West, Conshohocken, Pa., 1995, pp. 178–91. BA/MA, N647/12, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 11, fo. 90, diary entry for 21.9.44, shows Balck’s impressions on receiving the command of a ‘fresh and confident’ Hitler, and of the troops he was taking over as ‘mere shadows’. TBJG, II/13, p. 528 (20.9.44) gives Goebbels’ assessment of Balck as a ‘first-class general from the eastern front’.
6. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, p. 98. Lieutenant-General Siegfried Westphal, appointed at the beginning of September 1944 as Chief of Staff to Rundstedt in Oberkommando West, and struck on taking up the post by the poor morale of the retreating troops and the bloated numbers of the rear-lines staff, reckoned that a more determined advance by Eisenhower’s forces would have made it impossible to have built up a new front on the western borders of the Reich, and would have allowed an assault on the Reich itself that would have ended the war in the west. – Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, pp. 273, 279, 289.
7. The course of military events is
based upon: DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 550–80, 606–14; DZW, 6, pp. 105–19; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 688–702; Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 295–306; R. A. C. Parker, Struggle for Survival: The History of the Second World War, Oxford, 1990, pp. 200–208; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. 1–83; John Man, The Penguin Atlas of D-Day and the Normandy Campaign, London, 1994, chs. 6–7; The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, Oxford, 1995, pp. 809–12; Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009, chs. 19, 21–2, 24, 27.
8. The Luftwaffe, and its Commander-in-Chief, Hermann Göring, were widely blamed by the Nazi leadership, as well as much of the population, for Germany’s plight. A letter to Himmler from Gauleiter Joachim Albrecht Eggeling of Halle-Merseburg on 1 September pointed out the image of total impotence in air defences left by the repeated attacks on the hydrogenation plants in his Gau, and the popular view that the collapse of the front in France was solely attributable to the failure of the Luftwaffe. – BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 71–2, 1.9.44. Hitler himself attributed the crisis of the Luftwaffe to Göring’s ‘own absolute failure’. – TBJG, II/12, p. 520 (22.6.44). Speer and Himmler corresponded in September 1944 about the ‘lack of leadership in the Luftwaffe and air industry’. Himmler criticized poor planning, production mistakes, long delays in availability of new aircraft and weapons, and the attempt to deploy the prototype jet-fighter, the Me262, as a bomber (an absurd decision, however one that Hitler himself had insisted upon, against Speer’s advice). – BAB, NS19/3652, fos. 1–8, 26–8, Himmler to Speer, 5.9.44, and Speer’s reply, 8.10.44.