50. Messerschmidt, ‘Deserteure im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, p. 61; Haase, p. 85 and p. 100 n. 26; DRZW, 9/1 (Echternkamp), p. 50. While the western liberal democracies executed few soldiers, Germany was not alone among authoritarian regimes in its draconian punishment. Japan executed 22,253 soldiers; estimates (though detailed research remains to be carried out) suggest that as many as 150,000 may have been executed in the Soviet Union. – Ulrich Baumann and Markus Koch (eds.), ‘Was damals Recht war…’: Soldaten und Zivilisten vor Gerichten der Wehrmacht, Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008, p. 184.
51. e.g. BAB, R55/620, fo. 132, SD report to State Secretary Dr Naumann, Propaganda Ministry, ‘Stimmung und Haltung der Arbeiterschaft’ (reported opinion among workers in Mecklenburg), 1.3.45.
52. BA/MA, N60/17, NL Schörner, letter from Schörner to Oberst i.G. Thilo von Trotha, Generalstab des Heeres, Chef Operations-Abt., 22.2.45. Partially quoted also in Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 113.
53. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 163–165v, PK Bekanntgabe 149/45g, 19.3.45, attaching a copy of Schörner’s four-page message dated 27.2.45.
54. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Colonel Curt Pollex, Auszüge aus Briefen, fo. 35, 18.2.45.
55. BAB, R55/610, fos. 156–9, correspondence related to propaganda in the Ruhr, 19.12.44–12.1.45.
56. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 584 (22.2.45).
57. See Bormann’s attempt to check the spread of rumour, in BAB, NS6/353, fos. 16–17, ‘Bekämpfung beunruhigender Gerüchte über die Frontlage’, 1.2.45.
58. IfZ, Fa 91/2, fos. 278–81, ‘Vorlage: Sondereinsatz Politischer Leiter an Brennpunkten der Ost- und Westfront’, 17.2.45.
59. BAB, R55/608, fos. 35–6, Chef des Propagandastabes, Mundpropagandaanweisung, betr. Kriegslage, 17.2.45.
60. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8, Reich Minister of the Interior to Reich Defence Commissars, etc., 28.2.45.
61. BA/MA, RH19/IV/228, fo. 10, Hinweis für die NS-Führung der Truppe, 4.2.45.
62. DZW, 6, p. 627, citing a letter to Bormann of Joachim Albrecht Eggeling, Gauleiter of Halle-Merseburg, 10.2.45.
63. BAB, NS6/137, fos. 40–41, Flugblatt (im Entwurf): ‘An die Verteidiger von Berlin’, 24.2.45.
64. Quoted in Steinert, p. 559.
65. TBJG, II/15, p. 352 (10.2.45).
66. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 137–138v, PK Anordnung 79/45g, Standgerichte, 15.2.45, and ‘Verordnung über die Errichtung von Standgerichten vom 15. February 1945’, Reichsgesetzblatt, Teil 1, Nr. 6, 20.2.45, p. 30; printed in Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 161–2.
67. BAB, NS19/3705, fo. 4, Vorbereitungen auf Feindoffensive im Westen, Fernschreiben from Bormann to the western Gauleiter, undated appendix to his letter to Himmler, 8.2.45.
68. Henke, p. 845.
69. Henke, p. 846.
70. Haase, p. 86.
71. ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, p. 483; also printed in Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 163–4. For the operation of the summary courts martial, see Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945, pp. 411–15; and also Jürgen Zarusky, ‘Von der Sondergerichtsbarkeit zum Endphasenterror: Loyalitätserzwingung und Rache am Widerstand in Zusammenbruch des NS-Regimes’, in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jörg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Göttingen, 2006, p. 114. The extension to the ‘flying courts martial’ is indicated in Bormann’s circular to the Gauleiter, NS6/354, fo. 88v, RS 123/45g, 9.3.45.
72. See Henke, pp. 846ff., for examples of their practice.
73. Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, Bonn, 1985, pp. 270–71, p. 430 n. 3.
74. BAB, R43II/650c, fos. 119–25, Kampfkommandant Reichskanzlei, Führerbefehl v. 4.2.45 über ‘Verteidigung der Reichskanzlei bei inneren Unruhen’, 4–10.2.45.
75. NAL, WO208/5622, fo. 122A, 29.8.44. The general in question, Dietrich von Choltitz, had been the Wehrmacht commander in Paris at the time of the city’s liberation in August 1944.
76. Jill Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis, London, 2006, p. 285.
77. Von Kardorff, pp. 208–9 (30.11.44).
78. Herbert, pp. 327–35; Andreas Heusler, ‘Die Eskalation des Terrors: Gewalt gegen ausländische Zwangsarbeiter in der Endphase des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, pp. 172–82.
79. Quoted Gerhard Paul and Alexander Primavesi, ‘Die Verfolgung der “Fremdvölkischen”: Das Beispiel der Staatspolizeistelle Dortmund’, in Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.), Die Gestapo: Mythos und Realität, Darmstadt, 1995, p. 398.
80. Gerhard Paul, ‘ “Diese Erschießungen haben mich innerlich gar nicht mehr berührt”: Die Kriegsendphasenverbrechen der Gestapo 1944/45’, in Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.), Die Gestapo im Zweiten Weltkrieg: ‘Heimatfront’ und besetztes Europa, Darmstadt, 2000, p. 548.
81. Paul and Primavesi, p. 399; also Paul, p. 549; Bessel, p. 55.
82. Cited Paul, p. 550.
83. For the special circumstances in Cologne, see Bernd-A. Rusinek, ‘ “Wat denkste, wat mir objerümt han”: Massenmord und Spurenbeseitigung am Beispiel der Staatspolizeistelle Köln 1944/45’, in Paul and Mallmann, Die Gestapo: Mythos und Realität, pp. 402–16.
84. Paul, pp. 553–7; Herbert, pp. 336–7; Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 332–3.
85. IWM, F.2, AL 1753, statistics from SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, totalling 511,537 men and 202,674 women, 714,211 in all on 15 January 1945, guarded by 37,674 men and 3,508 women; Martin Broszat, ‘Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager 1933–1945’, in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau, 1965, vol. 2, p. 159; Wachsmann, p. 395; Daniel Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche – Entscheidungsträger, Mörder und Opfer’, in Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 2, Göttingen, 1998, p. 1067; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, Sphere Books edn., London, 1971, pp. 501, 639 n. 30; Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford, 2010, p. 418.
86. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, London, 1956, p. 277 (12.3.45), and also p. 275 (2.3.45); and DZW, 6, p. 643 (where Himmler’s reference to a Führer order is dated 5.3.45). Himmler saw Kersten at the sanitorium in Hohenlychen every morning from 4 to 13 March (BAB, NS19/1793, Termine des Reichsführer-SS, fos. 5–15). No specific written order from Hitler for the murder of camp prisoners has come to light, though a general – almost certainly verbal – directive that prisoners were not to be left behind on approach of the enemy seems to have been known to high-ranking SS officers, and may well have been used as an implicit order to kill those in their charge if there was a danger of the camp falling into enemy hands. In practice, however, there were only a few cases of the murder of all prisoners before evacuation. The actual decisions over life and death for the prisoners were taken lower down the leadership ladder, at the local level. – Daniel Blatman, ‘Rückzug, Evakuierung und Todesmärsche 1944–1945’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 1, Munich, 2005, pp. 300–301.
87. Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte, Hamburg, 1999, pp. 272–3.
88. No explicit written order to this effect has been found (other than for prisons in the General Government of Poland). – Paul, pp. 550–51 and nn. 31–3; Gabriele Hammermann, ‘Die Todesmärsche aus den Konzentrationslagern 1944/45’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, pp. 122–3, 125; Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, pp. 1068–70, 1086; Eberhard Kolb, ‘Die letzte Kriegsphase: Kommentierende Bemerkungen’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, p. 1131; DZW, 6, p. 643.
89. Kommandant
in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss, ed. Martin Broszat, pb. edn., Munich, 1963, p. 145 n. 1; Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, London, 2007, p. 648; Daniel Blatman, ‘The Death Marches, January–May 1945: Who Was Responsible for What?’, YVS, 28 (2000), pp. 168–71, 198–9.
90. Rudolf Höss gives a vivid impression of the chaos in Kommandant in Auschwitz, pp. 145–7.
91. Walter Schellenberg, Schellenberg, pb. edn., London, 1965, pp. 167–70; Peter R. Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich, Princeton, 1984, pp. 228–30; Friedländer, pp. 621–5, 647–8; Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 728–30; Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, London, 1972, pp. 524–5; Hammermann, p. 126; Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, New Haven, 1994, pp. 239–51; Simone Erpel, Zwischen Vernichtung und Befreiung: Das Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück in der letzten Kriegsphase, Berlin, 2005, pp. 97–154 (where the number of camp prisoners saved by such action by the end of the war, most notably through the Swedish initiative, is given as 15,345, of whom 7,795 were Scandinavians – a proportion which, however, as she points out, underrates the number of non-Scandinavians rescued). Intelligence reports to the western Allies claimed that the negotiations about the liberation of a number of Jews had caused a ‘sensation’ in Berlin, and had been condemned by leading Nazis, including Julius Streicher. – NAL, WO219/1587, fo. 734, SHAEF report, 25.2.45.
92. Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, pp. 1069–72; and Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944-printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 96–100, 127–31.
93. Orth, p. 279.
94. Wachsmann, pp. 324–5.
95. Wachsmann, pp. 325–33.
96. Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, London, 2005, p. 301, based upon figures supplied by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
97. Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History, London, 2005, p. 124.
98. Andrzej Strzelecki, ‘Der Todesmarsch der Häftlinge aus dem KL Auschwitz’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, p. 1103; Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager-Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp. 966–7.
99. Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 146 (where Höss also used the term ‘columns of misery’).
100. ITS, Tote 80, fo. 00030a, Häftlingstransport von Birkenau nach Gablonz, 2.4.46. See also Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 146; and Czech, p. 968.
101. Monika Richarz, Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte 1918–1945, Stuttgart, 1982, pp. 443–6 (account by Paul Heller based on diary jottings kept at the time).
102. Richarz, pp. 448, 450–51.
103. Strzelecki, p. 1102; Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, pp. 112, 140.
104. Richarz, p. 452.
105. ITS, Tote 80, fo. 60282a, Marches de la Mort, Groß-Rosen – Leitmeritz, 4.4.46.
106. Isabell Sprenger, ‘Das KZ Groß-Rosen in der letzten Kriegsphase’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, pp. 1113–24. On one march alone (p. 1122), 500 out of 3,500 died.
107. Orth, pp. 282–7; Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, pp. 126–32; Blatman, ‘The Death Marches’, pp. 174–9. See also Olga M. Pickholz-Barnitsch, ‘The Evacuation of the Stutthof Concentration Camp’, Yad Vashem Bulletin, 16 (1965), pp. 37–9. According to the SS’s figures, the prisoners in Stutthof had numbered 18,436 men and 30,199 women (48,635 persons in all) on 15 January 1945. – IWM, F.2, AL 1753, SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-hauptamt List of Concentration Camps with numbers of guards and prisoners 1. & 15.1.45. When the evacuations began, this number had fallen to 46,331 prisoners. – Blatman, ‘The Death Marches’, p. 175, based (cf. n. 43) on the last roll-call of 24.1.45.
108. Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, p. 140.
109. Hammermann, pp. 140–41; Sprenger, pp. 120–21; Katharina Elliger, Und tief in der Seele das Ferne: Die Geschichte einer Vertreibung aus Schlesien, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2006, pp. 71–4 (where she mentions seeing as a girl the column of misery of Auschwitz prisoners passing through her village, near Ratibor in Silesia, and throwing bread down before hastily closing her window as the guard reacted negatively).
110. See Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, London, 1995, pp. 112–33, for an assessment of Harris and Allied bombing strategy, concluding (p. 133) that ‘the air offensive was one of the decisive elements in Allied victory’. The policy of ‘area bombing’ of cities had already been decided – following a change in tactics suggested by Churchill’s scientific adviser Lord Cherwell (earlier known as Professor Frederick Lindemann) on account of the failure of precision bombing – just before Harris took over Bomber Command on 22 February 1942. Harris, who had an excellent rapport with Churchill at this time, was the inspirational driving force behind the implementation of the policy, dedicating himself ‘to the vital necessity of striking at Germany in her homeland, where it would really hurt’. – Henry Probert, Bomber Harris: His Life and Times, London, 2001, pp. 122, 126–46; Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45, London, 2009, pp. 246–9.
111. Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945, pb. edn., London, 2005, p. 216.
112. Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 197–8, 280–81, 414.
113. Taylor, p. 427.
114. Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945, pb. edn., Berlin, 2004, pp. 108–9, 312–16; Taylor, p. 428.
115. Rüdiger Overmans, ‘Die Toten des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Deutschland’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz, Munich and Zurich, 1989, p. 860; Friedrich, p. 63; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 868; United States Strategic Bombing Survey, New York and London, 1976, vol. 4, pp. 7–10.
116. Müller and Ueberschär, p. 160 (report from 1955 by Theodor Ellgering, who in 1945 was Geschäftsführer des Interministeriellen Luftkriegsausschusses der Reichsregierung in Berlin, on his impressions on entering Dresden immediately after the raid to organize the grim salvage operations).
117. Based on Taylor, chs. 21–4. See also Götz Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg, Weimar, Cologne and Vienna, 1994, esp. chs. 9–12; Friedrich, pp. 358–63; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), pp. 777–98; Olaf Groehler, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland, Berlin, 1990, pp. 400–12; Rolf-Dieter Müller, Der Bombenkrieg 1939–1945, Berlin, 2004, pp. 212–20; Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (eds.), Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, London, 2006, esp. pp. 18–77 (contributions by Sebastian Cox and Sönke Neitzel) and pp. 123–42 (Richard Overy’s discussion of the post-war debate); and Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (London, 2004), pp. 382–7.
118. Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol. 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 661, 669, 675–6 (13–14.2.45, 19.2.45). Discrimination against Jews even went so far as to refuse them entry to ‘aryan’ shelters during air raids. – Klemperer, p. 644 (20.1.45).
119. This paragraph is based on Taylor, pp. 397–402, 508. An eighteen-year-old soldier, shocked to the core by what he saw in Dresden, noted in his diary that there was talk of over 200,000 dead. – Klaus Granzow, Tagebuch eines Hitlerjungen 1943–1945, Bremen, 1965, p. 159 (18.2.45).The propaganda claims of up to a quarter of a million victims are judiciously assessed and dismissed by Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Der Feuersturm und die unbekannten Toten von Dresden’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 59 (2008), pp. 169–75. An evaluation of all available evidence, and of the wildly differing figures given for the numbers of dead (with some claims of half a million dead), by a specially nominated Historians’ Commission which reported in 2010, arrived at the figure of 25,000 – the estimate already made in the official investigations of 1945–6. – www.dresden.de/de/02/035/01/2010/03/pm_060.php, ‘Pressemitteilungen. 17.03.2010. Dresdner Historikerkommission veröffentlicht ihren Abschlussberic
ht’.
120. Taylor, p. 463.
121. Friedrich, pp. 331–3, 533–6.
122. Friedrich, pp. 312–16.
123. Taylor, pp. 413–14; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 798.