The End

  133. Von Oven, pp. 652–4 (22.4.45). See also Semmler, pp. 185–6 (25.2.45). According to the former Gauleiter of Süd-Hannover-Braunschweig, Hartmann Lauterbacher, Erlebt und mitgestaltet, Preußisch Oldendorf, 1984, p. 320, Goebbels told him at their last meeting, on 12 April, that all six of the children had cyanide capsules knitted into their clothes so that none of them could fall alive into the hands of the Russians.

  134. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, p. 166 (21.4.45).

  135. DZW, 6, p. 707.

  136. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fos. 11–15, 39–40, 54 (15.5.45).

  137. DZW, 6, p. 734.

  138. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fos. 52–7 (15.5.45).

  139. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fos. 22–5, 39–41 (15.5.45).

  140. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, NL265/108, fo. 29 (15.5.45).

  141. DZW, 6, pp. 705–26, DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 656–73, Erickson, pp. 577–618, and Beevor, ch. 21, provide detailed descriptions of the battle of Berlin.

  142. Jodl admitted this to Colonel-General Heinrici on 13 May 1945. – BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 57–8 (15.5.45).

  143. Steiner had well-warranted reasons for not undertaking the attack and was despairing at being given an order which was, as all with any insight into the position knew, impossible to carry out. See BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 19–22 (15.4.45).

  144. The uncertainty, also regarding Göring’s position, produced by Hitler’s breakdown is plainly summarized in the report sent three days later to Hitler by General Karl Koller, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe. – IWM, EDS, F.3, AL 1985 (2), ‘An den Führer. Bericht über die wesentlichen Punkte der Vorgänge am 22.4. und meiner Meldung an den Herrn Reichsmarschall am 23.4.’ (25.4.45). A brief description of Hitler’s remarks, recorded by an eyewitness, Oberleutnant Hans Volck, adjutant to the Luftwaffe Operations Staff, is in IWM, EDS, F.3, AL 1985 (1), ‘Meldung über Führerlage am 22.4.1945. Lagebeginn: etwa 15.30 Uhr’ (25.4.45). There are minor discrepancies between Koller’s report and his subsequent publication, Karl Koller, Der letzte Monat: Die Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des ehemaligen Chefs des Generalstabes der deutschen Luftwaffe vom 14. April bis zum 27. Mai 1945, Mannheim, 1949, pp. 28–32.

  145. Speer, pp. 479, 484.

  146. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 38–9 (15.4.45).

  147. BA/MA, NL Heinrici, N265/108, fos. 41–4 (15.4.45).

  148. IfZ, ZS 145, Bd. III, Schwerin von Krosigk, fo. 61 (7.12.62).

  149. IfZ, ZS 988, Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, interrogation by Dr Robert Kempner, fos. 4, 7, 10 (5.3.47).

  150. Krosigk wrote to Speer on 29 March, in the framework of discussions over ‘scorched earth’, suggesting that intensified Allied bombing had been caused by the desire not to let German industry fall into Soviet hands, and that the more Germany’s industrial potential was preserved the greater the bargaining position with the west would be. On 6 April, urgently seeking a meeting with Goebbels, he pressed for action to create the conditions for Britain to break away from the enemy coalition, which he thought was eminently possible. He wrote again to Goebbels on 14 April, describing Roosevelt’s death as a ‘present from God’ that had to be actively exploited, recommending an approach from the Pope to America, which, he claimed, had an interest in German industry as a barrier to a strengthened Soviet state. – All in IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369.

  151. IfZ, ZS 145, Bd. III, Schwerin von Krosigk, fos. 58–61 (7.12.62).

  152. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fo. 328836, file note, presumably for Gauleiter Wahl, 20.4.45.

  153. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/37, unfoliated, note of telephone call from the Kreisleiter of Lindau, n.d., c. 24–6.4.45. Lindau, where reports suggested that up to 60 per cent of the population could be seen as pro-Nazi, remained a trouble spot for the French occupying authorities (in a region that gave them some security headaches) for some weeks after the end of the war. There were some disturbances, cases of apparent arson, and a French officer was shot dead by a fourteen-year-old former member of the Hitler Youth. Much of the town’s population was for a short time forcibly evacuated and only allowed to return, two days later, after grovelling pleas for clemency. French troops arriving in the meantime had ransacked much of the empty town. The whole affair was an embarrassment to the French, and shocked American and Swiss observers. – Perry Biddiscome, Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement 1944–1946, Toronto and Buffalo, NY, 1998, pp. 260–63.

  154. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 2, pp. 236–52; IfZ, ED 195, Slg. Schottenheim, vol. 1, pp. 87–91 (written to show the author, Dr Otto Schottenheim, a doctor and the Nazi mayor of Regensburg since 1933, in the best light); Henke, p. 854; Dieter Albrecht, ‘Regensburg in der NS-Zeit’, in Dieter Albrecht (ed.), Zwei Jahrtausende Regensburg, Regensburg, 1979, p. 200, also for Ruckdeschel quotation: ‘Regensburg wird verteidigt werden bis zum letzten Stein.’ For Schottenheim, who died in 1980 an honoured citizen despite his Nazi past, see Helmut Halter, Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz: Kommunalpolitik in Regensburg während der NS-Zeit, Regensburg, 1994, pp. 77–87, and Albrecht, pp. 195–6. Ruckdeschel was sentenced in 1948 for his part in the Regensburg killings to eight years in a penitentiary (a sentence extended to thirteen years in a further trial the following year for ordering the execution of a civilian in Landshut on 29 April 1945). – Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 2, pp. 234–346; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 3, ed. Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1969, pp. 763–94. Ruckdeschel died peacefully in Wolfsburg in 1986. – Miller and Schulz, vol. 1.

  155. Troll, pp. 660–71; Henke, pp. 854–61; Heike Bretschneider, Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus in München 1933–1945, Munich, 1968, pp. 218–39; Klaus Tenfelde, ‘Proletarische Provinz: Radikalisierung und Widerstand in Penzberg/Oberbayern 1900 bis 1945’, in Broszat, Fröhlich and Grossmann, vol. 4, pp. 374–81; Georg Lorenz, Die Penzberger Mordnacht vom 28. April 1945 vor dem Richter, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1948, pp. 5–11; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 3, pp. 100–101; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 13, ed. Irene Sagel-Grande, H. H. Fuchs, and C. F. Rüter, Amsterdam, 1975, pp. 532–40. A sixteenth victim was shot ‘while in flight’. – Tenfelde, pp. 378, 380. The post-war trials relating to the murders in Altötting and Munich are in StAM, Staatsanwaltschaften 34876/25 (Altötting) and StAM, Staatsanwaltschaften 6571, 18848/2–3, ‘Fall Salisco’ (Munich). For an assessment of varied forms of resistance towards the end of the war, see Edgar Wolfrum, ‘Widerstand in den letzten Kriegsmonaten’, in Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Bonn, 1994, pp. 537–52. The Penzberg mine was not destroyed at the end of the war, and ceased production only in 1966. – Tenfelde, p. 382.

  156. Das letzte halbe Jahr, p. 334 (10.4.45).

  157. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 39.

  158. Ingrid Hammer and Susanne zur Nieden (eds.), Sehr selten habe ich geweint: Briefe und Tagebücher aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg von Menschen aus Berlin, Zurich, 1992, p. 358 (23.4.45).

  159. Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945, pb. edn., Munich, 2008, p. 30 (23.4.45).

  160. Anonyma, pp. 9–15, 20, 24–5, 34, 39 (20–25.4.45).

  161. VB, Munich edn., 20, 24, 25.4.45.

  162. Anonyma, pp. 19–20 (21.4.45), 30 (23.4.45), 43 (26.4.45); Kronika, pp. 138, 152–3 (23.4.45).

  163. Andreas-Friedrich, pp. 166–7 (21.4.45).

  164. ‘Full of anxiety we went back into the cellar and awaited what might come,’ noted one diarist. – Hammer and zur Nieden, p. 364 (26.4.45)

  165. Longerich, pp. 750–51; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 593–8.

  166. KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, p. 416A, Beitrag zum Kriegstagebuch Skl. am 2. Mai 1945; Heereslage vom 1.5.45; Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende: Legenden und Dokumente, Munich, 1999, pp. 282–3.

  CHAPTER 9. LIQUIDATION

  1. Kathrin Orth, ?
??Kampfmoral und Einsatzbereitschaft in der Kriegsmarine 1945’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, p. 141.

  2. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 2.5.45.

  3. BA/MA, NL Schörner, N60/18, unfoliated, Tagesbefehl, 3.5.45.

  4. Cited in Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, p. 141.

  5. BA/MA, N245/3, fo. 88, NL Reinhardt, Kalenderblätter for 1.5.45. The news of Hitler’s death also came as no surprise to Colonel-General Lothar Renduli´c when he heard it on 1 May in Austria. Discipline among his troops was unaffected, though Hitler’s death was seen to improve the prospects of a political way out through cooperation with the west. – Lothar Rendulic´, Gekämpft, Gesiegt, Geschlagen, Wels, 1952, p. 378.

  6. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.

  7. Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945, Berlin, 2005, pp. 210–12 (Eng. language edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007, pp. 156–8).

  8. Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, p. 582.

  9. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Eveline B., 6.5.45. Erich Kästner, Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch, Berlin, 1961, p. 116 (2.5.45), remarked that people were greeting each other jokingly with ‘Heil Dönitz’. The accordion-player had changed, he commented, but the tune was the same.

  10. Cited Bessel, p. 141.

  11. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, pp. 188–9 (2.5.45).

  12. Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst – Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, p. 252, letter from Gerda J., Hamburg/Altona, 7.7.45. This was only an inspired guess at what had happened. Precise details of Hitler’s suicide were not known at this time beyond the small circle of those directly involved in the last drama in the bunker.

  13. Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945, pb. edn., Munich, 2008, p. 143 (5.5.45).

  14. Die Niederlage 1945: Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Percy Ernst Schramm, Munich, 1962, p. 419.

  15. Herbert Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches – Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Rückschau, Munich and Zurich, 1995, p. 11.

  16. Herbert Kraus, ‘Großadmiral Karl Dönitz’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite, vol. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, p. 51.

  17. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 419.

  18. DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 61.

  19. Jürgen Förster, ‘Die Wehrmacht und das Ende des “Dritten Reichs” ’, in Arnd Bauerkämper, Christoph Kleßmann and Hans Misselwitz (eds.), Der 8. Mai 1945 als historische Zäsur: Strukturen, Erfahrung, Deutungen, Potsdam, 1995, p. 57.

  20. Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, pp. 3–4, 8–11.

  21. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Deutsche Menschen vor der Vernichtung durch den Bolschewismus zu retten”: Das Programm der Regierung Dönitz und der Beginn einer Legendenbildung’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 16.

  22. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.

  23. Quoted in DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 55; see also, for Dönitz’s unquestioning loyalty to Hitler and his fanatical exhortations to fight on, pp. 57–60, 67.

  24. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62, 7.12.62.

  25. KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, pp. 333–4-A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45. Dönitz had already a week earlier, at the Soviet breakthrough on the Oder front, provided naval forces for the fight on land. – Schwendemann, pp. 14–15.

  26. BA/MA, RM7/851, Seekriegsleitung, fo. 169, Hitler to Dönitz, 29.4.45; Schwendemann, p. 15.

  27. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2237.

  28. Major-General Dethleffsen recalled shortly after the war his own lack of surprise since he had heard hints earlier in April from the Chief of the General Staff, Hans Krebs, that Dönitz was being viewed by Hitler as his successor. Others, however, according to Dethleffsen, were more taken by surprise at the appointment. – BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.

  29. IWM, FO645/155, interrogation of Karl Dönitz, 12.9.45, pp. 19–20.

  30. Karl Dönitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, Da Capo edn., New York, 1997, p. 442.

  31. See Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 101 and Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches” ’, pp. 9, 11. It has, however, been suggested – if without supporting evidence – that Dönitz’s presumption that Hitler wanted him to pave the way for a capitulation might have been gleaned before the Grand-Admiral left for Plön, or from conversations with Himmler. – Jörg Hillmann, ‘Die “Reichsregierung” in Flensburg’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 41. Hitler’s desperate comment, during his temporary breakdown on 22 April, that there was no more fighting to be done – a view he swiftly revised – and that should it come to negotiations Göring would be better than he was, can scarcely be regarded as evidence for a mandate to come to terms with the enemy at his death. See Reimer Hansen, Das Ende des Dritten Reiches: Die deutsche Kapitulation 1945, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 48–50; Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Regierung Dönitz: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches, 5th edn., Leoni am Starnberger See, 1981, p. 46; Marlis Steinert, Die 23 Tage der Regierung Dönitz, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1967, p. 45.

  32. DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 469–70; DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), p. 626; Schwendemann, p. 15.

  33. See Hitler’s Testament: Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, p. 2237 (not, however, known to Dönitz at the time).

  34. Schwendemann, pp. 27–8.

  35. IWM, FO645/158, interrogation of Wilhelm Keitel, 10.10.45, p. 27.

  36. IfZ, ZS 1810, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, Bd. II, fo. 55, interview for the Observer, 18.11.74.

  37. One woman in Berlin wrote as late as 21 May that ‘there is still no certain news about Adolf’. – Anonyma, p. 221.

  38. See Christian Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (2006), pp. 153–73, and Goeschel’s monograph, Suicide in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2009, ch. 5, for extensive analysis of the phenomenon. See also Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, London, 2008, pp. 728–33.

  39. Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany, pp. 153–4.

  40. Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1945: Die letzten Aufzeichnungen, Hamburg, 1977, pp. 549, 556.

  41. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, p. 2237.

  42. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 155.

  43. MadR, 17, p. 6737.

  44. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 158; Jacob Kronika, Der Untergang Berlins, Flensburg, 1946, p. 41 (6.3.45): ‘Alle Berliner wissen, daß die Russen in Kürze in Berlin eindringen werden – und nun sehen sie keine andere Möglichkeit, als sich Zyankali zu verschaffen.’

  45. Anonyma, pp. 171, 174 (9.5.45), 207 (17.5.45); Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 160; Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany, pp. 158–9.

  46. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, pp. 162–3 and n. 57.

  47. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 169.

  48. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, pp. 964–5; and see Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, pp. 169–70.

  49. ‘Tief vergraben, nicht dran rühren’, Spiegel Special, 2 (2005), p. 218. I am most grateful to Klaus Wiegrefe and Michael Kloft for this reference. See also for the atmosphere of panic and numerous suicides, many out of fear of being raped by soldiers of the Red Army, Joachim Schulz-Naumann, Mecklenburg 194
5, Munich, 1989, pp. 161, 165, 173, 241–2 (accounts given in the 1980s).

  50. Based on the recollections of the events in ‘Tief vergraben, nicht dran rühren’, Norbert Buske, Das Kriegsende 1945 in Demmin: Berichte, Erinnerungen, Dokumente, Schwerin, 1995, pp. 9–14, 17–40, 43, 44 n. 3, 48–50, nn. 27–39; and the eyewitness account of Waltraud Reski (née Gülzow), interviewed by Tilman Remme, in BBC Archives, The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997), written and produced for BBC2 by Laurence Rees, roll 263, pp. 1–42 (quotation, p. 29). See also Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 166.

  51. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 420.