137. DZW, 6, p. 135; Warlimont, pp. 491–4; IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s notes on Hitler’s briefings, 22.12.44 (not published in the Nuremberg Trial documentation).
138. Jung, p. 229 (Kreipe diary, 2.11.44).
139. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 398.
CHAPTER 5. CALAMITY IN THE EAST
1. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 382.
2. Guderian, p. 382.
3. DZW, 6, pp. 498–9.
4. DZW, 6, pp. 503, 509; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 498, 502–4, 531; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, p. 449.
5. Erickson, pp. 447–9.
6. See Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), pp. 212–19.
7. Jürgen Förster, ‘The Final Hour of the Third Reich: The Capitulation of the Wehrmacht’, Bulletin of the International Committee for the History of the Second World War, Montreal (1995), pp. 76–7.
8. IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s ‘Notizen zum Kriegstagebuch’, ‘Lage am 22.1.45’ (23.1.45), not printed in the published trial documents. According to Goebbels, Hitler stated that the first priority was possession of oil, then coal, then a functioning armaments industry. – TBJG, II/15, p. 218 (25.1.45). Hungary produced some 22 per cent of the petrol and 11 per cent of the diesel demand of the Reich. – Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Strategie der Selbstvernichtung: Die Wehrmachtführung im “Endkampf” um das “Dritte Reich” ’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, p. 226.
9. Guderian, pp. 382–7, 392–3.
10. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, London, 1982, pp. 531–2; DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 605.
11. Schwendemann, ‘Strategie’, p. 231.
12. The coffins of Hindenburg and his wife were initially transported to Potsdam’s garrison church, then shortly afterwards moved secretly to a safer location in a salt mine near Bernterode (a small town in Thuringia). The Americans found the coffins there on 27 April, the names scrawled on them in red crayon, and in May took them west to Marburg, where the former Reich President and his wife were finally reburied, unobtrusively, at night, in August 1946. – Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis, Oxford, 2009, pp. 193–6.
13. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Das Kriegsende in Ostpreußen und in Südbaden im Vergleich’, in Bernd Martin (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg und seine Folgen: Ereignisse – Auswirkungen – Reflexionen, Freiburg, 2006, p. 96.
14. Where not otherwise indicated, the above description of the military course of events draws upon DZW, 6, pp. 498–517; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 491–542, 568ff.; Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiße, ed. Theodor Schieder et al., pb. edn., Munich, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 16E–23E; Erickson, ch. 7; Guderian, pp. 389ff.; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 267–79; Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945, London, 1998, pp. 264–71; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, chs. 9–10; and Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007, chs. 3–4.
15. Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007, pp. 435–8; Kurt Dieckert and Horst Grossmann, Der Kampf um Ostpreußen: Ein authentischer Dokumentarbericht, Munich, 1960, pp. 119–20.
16. Hastings, pp. 322–3.
17. Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 320 n. 168; Meindl, pp. 441–2.
18. Meindl, p. 445. According to Noble, p. 210, Koch initially moved to the comfort of a Pillau hotel, but this was bombed a few days later. See also Isabel Denny, The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City: The Battle for Königsberg, 1945, London, 2007, pp. 201–2. In early February, Koch moved his staff to Heiligenbeil to help organize the evacuation of refugees over the ice of the Haff. – Meindl, p. 447.
19. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf und Zusammenbruch im deutschen Osten’, Freiburger Universitätsblätter, 130 (1995), p. 19; Hans Graf von Lehndorff, Ostpreußisches Tagebuch: Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945–1947, pb. edn., Munich, 1967, pp. 18 (23.1.45), 40 (7.2.45).
20. Some of many examples in Edgar Günther Lass, Die Flucht: Ostpreußen 1944/45, Bad Nauheim, 1964, pp. 85–7.
21. Lehndorff, pp. 24–5 (28.1.45).
22. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 28 (testimony from 1951).
23. Christian Tilitzki, Alltag in Ostpreußen 1940–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte der Königsberger Justiz 1940–1945, Leer, 1991, pp. 300–304 (report of the Generalstaatsanwalt, 18.1.45). See also Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, Spiegel Special 2, Hamburg, 2002, p. 46. Gauleiter Koch encouraged the judicial authorities to take a pragmatic view of the looting in the circumstances. Lehndorff, p. 27 (29.1.45), in his field hospital in Königsberg after a bombing raid, recorded his despair at the looting; also pp. 28–9 (30.1.45). Later accounts have at times minimized the looting of apartments in Königsberg, emphasizing the severe punishment for ‘plunderers’. – Hans-Burkhard Sumowski, ‘Jetzt war ich ganz allein auf der Welt’: Erinnerungen an eine Kindheit in Königsberg 1944–1947, Munich, 2009, p. 61.
24. Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, pp. 44–5.
25. Denny, p. 199.
26. Lehndorff, p. 18 (23.1.45).
27. Beevor, p. 49.
28. Dieckert and Grossmann, p. 129; Lehndorff, p. 39 (7.2.45).
29. Lehndorff, pp. 19, 21 (24, 26.1.45).
30. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 144–6.
31. Lehndorff, p. 23 (27.1.45).
32. DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 272; Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 20.
33. Lass, pp. 246ff.
34. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 79 (testimony from 1952).
35. Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 20.
36. Franz W. Seidler and Alfred M. de Zayas (eds.), Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Hamburg, 2002, p. 220. Vivid descriptions of the mass flight from East Prussia and conditions in the province are provided in the account compiled only a few years after the events by Jürgen Thorwald, Es begann an der Weichsel: Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, pb. edn., Munich, 1995 (1st edn., 1949), pp. 123–99; and in Guido Knopp, Die große Flucht: Das Schicksal der Vertriebenen, Munich, 2001, pp. 57–85. A good description of the horrific treks is provided by Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, ch. 4.
37. Manfred Zeidler, Kriegsende im Osten: Die Rote Armee und die Besetzung Deutschlands östlich von Oder und Neiße 1944/1945, Munich, 1996, pp. 135–8.
38. Zeidler, pp. 140–41.
39. Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 22.
40. A few of many examples in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 194, 297; vol. 2, pp. 159–64, 224–34; Lass, pp. 87, 121.
41. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 266.
42. Barbara Johr, ‘Die Ereignisse in Zahlen’, in Helke Sander and Barbara Johr (eds.), Befreier und Befreite: Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder, Munich, 1992, pp. 47–8, 58–9.
43. The above account of the plight of the East Prussian refugees, where not otherwise indicated, is based on Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 33E–41E, 60Eff., 79Eff., and the reports, pp. 21–154. Figures on Germans deported are in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 83E, and Schwendemann, ‘Endkampf’, p. 24 (estimating up to as many as 400,000). A number of later graphic oral accounts are given by Hastings, pp. 319ff.
44. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 26E–32E, 345–404. See also Noble, p. 204 for the refusal of the Gauleiter, Emil Stürtz, to allow precautionary evacuation.
45. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Pfarrer Heinrich M., 28.1.45, giving the example of the Blechhammer and Heydebreck synthetic fuel plant in Upper Silesia. The enormo
us industrial complex at Blechhammer, near Cosel, about 75 kilometres from Auschwitz, had in its heyday nearly 30,000 workers, nearly 4,000 of whom were, shortly before the evacuation in January 1945, prisoners in an outlying camp attached to Auschwitz III (Monowitz). On Blechhammer, see Ernest Koenig, ‘Auschwitz III – Blechhammer. Erinnerungen’, Dachauer Hefte, 15 (1999), pp. 134–52; and Andrea Rudorff, ‘Blechhammer (Blachownia)’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 5, Munich, 2007, pp. 186–91. A week earlier, Speer had reported to Hitler on the importance of the plant’s production of aircraft fuel, urging concentration of the entire Luftwaffe ‘in this decisive struggle’ for its defence, and seeking the Führer’s opinion. He had told the works the same day that he and Colonel-General Schörner would decide when the factory should be put out of action, though only in such a way that would render deployment by the Soviets impossible for two to three weeks. – BAB, R3/1545, fos. 3–7, Speer to von Below, for immediate presentation to the Führer; Speer to the Werke Blechhammer und Heydebreck, both 21.1.45.
46. Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, p. 44.
47. Paul Peikert, ‘Festung Breslau’ in den Berichten eines Pfarrers 22. Januar bis 6. Mai 1945, ed. Karol Jonca and Alfred Konieczny, Wrocław, 1993, p. 29; BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Pfarrer Heinrich M., 28.1.45; Knopp, Die große Flucht, p. 158. Those who managed to find a place on a train then faced a long and grim journey through the bitter cold. Some refugees arrived in Dresden with children who had frozen to death on the way and had to ask railway personnel for cardboard boxes to serve as coffins. – Reinhold Maier, Ende und Wende: Das schwäbische Schicksal 1944–1946. Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen, Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1948, p. 172 (5.3.45).
48. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 51E–59E, 405–77; Friedrich Grieger, Wie Breslau fiel…, Metzingen, 1948, pp. 7–8; Ernst Hornig, Breslau 1945: Erlebnisse in der eingeschlossenen Stadt, Munich, 1975, pp. 18–19; Peikert, pp. 29–31; Knopp, Die große Flucht, pp. 158–62; Noble, p. 202; Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942–49, London, 1994, pp. 60–61, 72–4 (where the number of those forced to march off in the direction of Kanth, 25 kilometres south-west of Breslau, is given as 60,000, of whom 18,000 were estimated to have perished, and the numbers of civilians in the city when it was cut off at 150,000–180,000).
49. Hastings, pp. 328–32. Unclarity about the numbers actually on board means the death toll is uncertain. Estimates vary widely. Dieckert and Grossmann, pp. 130–31, have 904 from 5,000 surviving; Seidler and de Zayas, p. 222, indicate a complement of 6,600 on board, of whom 1,200 were saved and 5,400 drowned. Guido Knopp, Der Untergang der Gustloff, 2nd edn., pb., Munich, 2008, pp. 9, 156, reckons the losses to have been as high as 9,000, and (p. 12) that as many as 40,000 refugees lost their lives in this and other sinkings in the last months of the war. Michael Schwartz in DRZW, 10/2, p. 591, also accepts a figure of 9,000 dead, but halves the number of refugee victims in sea disasters to 20,000. One of the officers responsible for checking the passengers on board the Gustloff claimed to have noted the last figure for registrations as 7,956. This was twenty hours before the Gustloff set sail, and one estimate suggests that a further 2,000 people were allowed on board before departure, making the total number, including crew, more than 10,000. – Knopp, Die große Flucht, p. 104. Denny, pp. 202–3, has 996 from 9,000 saved. Bessel, p. 75, has 1, 239 rescued from over 10,000 on board. Beevor, p. 51, places the number of deaths between 6,600 and 9,000. Two of the subsequent worst disasters occurred almost at the end of the war, with the sinking off Lübeck through British air attack of the Thielbek (50 survivors from 2,800 on board) and the Cap d’Arcona (4,250 dead from 6,400 on board). The victims were almost all prisoners who had been evacuated by their SS guards from Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg on the approach of British forces. – David Stafford, Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation, London, 2007, pp. 291–301.
50. Under Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg, the Pomeranian Party leadership, as elsewhere, had exacerbated the plight of the population by refusing to give timely orders for evacuation. – Noble, pp. 205–8.
51. For the above, where not otherwise indicated, Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 41E–51E, 155–201.
52. Beevor, pp. 48–9.
53. Andreas Kossert, ‘ “Endlösung on the Amber Shore”: The Massacre in January 1945 on the Baltic Seashore – a Repressed Chapter of East Prussian History’, Leo Baeck Year Book, 40 (2004), pp. 3–21 (quotations, pp. 15–17); and Andreas Kossert, Damals in Ostpreußen: Der Untergang einer deutschen Provinz, Munich, 2008, pp. 148–53; Schmuel Krakowski, ‘Massacre of Jewish Prisoners on the Samland Peninsula – Documents’, YVS, 24 (1994), pp. 349–87; Reinhard Henkys, ‘Ein Todesmarsch in Ostpreußen’, Dachauer Hefte, 20 (2004), pp. 3–21; the eyewitness account by a former member of the Hitler Youth who had been involved in the atrocity, Martin Bergau, ‘Tod an der Bernsteinküste: Ein NS-Verbrechen in Ostpreußen’, in Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Als die Erde brannte: Deutsche Schicksale in den letzten Kriegstagen, Munich, 2005, pp. 99–112; the early account, from 1952, of the former Landrat of the Samland District in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 136; Martin Bergau, Der Junge von der Bernsteinküste: Erlebte Zeitgeschichte 1938–1948, Heidelberg, 1994, pp. 108–15, 249–75; and Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944–printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 132–40. This terrible episode was also described in Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London, 2005, pp. 284–6. Though most eyewitness accounts concur that the mass shooting took place during the night of 31 January–1 February, some imply that it was slightly later. – Henkys, p. 16. Bergau, and, based on his accounts, Kossert, reckon the number of survivors to have been as low as 15, but Blatman, p. 139, citing the conclusions reached by the court which in 1967 tried and convicted one of the perpetrators, gives an estimated figure of around 200.
54. VB, South German edn., 15.1.45; Die Wehrmachtberichte 1939–1945, vol. 3: 1. Januar 1944 bis 9. Mai 1945, Munich, 1989, p. 402 (15.1.45).
55. This was registered in British monitoring of the German press: NAL, FO 898/187, PWE, fos. 222–4, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, 14.8.44–7.5.45.
56. BAB, R55/601, fos. 272–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report (24.1.45).
57. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvNB/OP, 9.2.45.
58. BAB, R55/793, fos. 7–8, ‘Material für Propagandisten, Nr. 25: Betr. Bolschewistische Greuel’, 16.1.45.
59. TBJG, II/15, p. 190 (23.1.45), p. 216 (25.1.45). By early February Goebbels had changed his mind. He now thought it important to emphasize the Bolshevik atrocities and did not think that publicizing them would produce panic. – TBJG, II/15, pp. 322–3 (6.2.45).
60. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvNB/OP, 10.3.45. Colonel Curt Pollex, based in Berlin, noted that Soviet atrocities, exploited by German propaganda, were causing ‘total panic’. – BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Auszüge aus Briefen, fo. 14, 23.1.45. For the mood of panic spread by refugees and fear of the Russians, see also Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 645–6, 649–60 (25.1.45, 29.1.45).
61. VB, South German edn., 9.2.45.
62. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Josef E., 21.1.45.
63. Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst – Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, pp. 138–9 (28.1.45) and p. 268 nn. 282–6. The letter was returned, marked ‘Wait for New Address’. Whether the soldier survived is not known.
64. BStA, MA 106695, report of the RPvOB, 9.2.45.
65. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvOF/MF, 8.2.45.
66. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen 1942–1945, pb. edn., Munich, 1981, pp. 228 (25.1.45), 229 (30.1.45).
&n
bsp; 67. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, p. 124 (22.1.45).
68. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 249, pt. II, p. 9 (in English).
69. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. von Stemann, p. 193.
70. Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45, ed. Wolfram Wette, Ricarda Bremer and Detlef Vogel, Essen, 2001, pp. 219–20, 229 (23.1.45, 1.2.45).
71. Andreas-Friedrich, p. 126 (31.1.45).
72. Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 219 (23.1.45), pp. 228–9 (1.2.45).
73. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. von Stemann, p. 197.
74. Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 235–6 (7.2.45).
75. Echternkamp, p. 129 (20.1.45).
76. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. von Stemann, p. 200.
77. IWM, ‘Aus deutschen Urkunden 1935–1945’, unpub. documentation, n.d. (c. 1945–6), pp. 66–7, 276–8.