by Ian Kershaw
For the few Jews remaining within the Reich, living as pariahs, keen to keep a low profile, with almost no contact with non-Jews, it was a shadowy world, a completely uncertain, highly precarious, anxiety-ridden existence – though in ways that contrasted with the anxieties and uncertainties of the mass of the population. The academic Victor Klemperer, an intelligent observer living in Dresden whose marriage to a non-Jew had enabled him to avoid deportation, was full of apprehension simply at the late return of his wife from a rare and brief absence from their home. She was carrying parts of the secret diary he was keeping to be hidden by a friend in Pirna, not far away. If it should fall into the hands of the authorities it would spell death not just for himself, but for his wife and for friends he had mentioned by name.109 He and his wife did share with the mass of the population the fear of bombing. However, here too there were major differences. Bombing for Nazism’s victims was a sign of Germany’s impending defeat and personal liberation from a terroristic regime.110 But Klemperer’s existential fear was that he would survive a raid, be evacuated, separated from his wife and sent somewhere to be gassed.111 There was anxiety, too, shared with friends, about surviving another winter of war with provisions of food and fuel scarcely sufficient to keep a person alive. ‘Another winter is a horrible prospect,’ he wrote.112 Another acquaintance looked grimly into the future, foreseeing malnutrition, shortage of medicines, spread of epidemic diseases, no end to the war and eventually death for all remaining bearers of the yellow star. Klemperer was aware, if without detail, of the fate of the Jews of eastern Europe. In these very days he was given another report by a soldier on leave of ‘gruesome murders of Jews in the east’.113
His reaction to the events in East Prussia also contrasted with that of the non-Jewish population. While they had their fears of Bolshevism confirmed, his own worry was what the implications were for Jews. He remarked on the new agitation against Jews unleashed by Martin Mutschmann, the Gauleiter of Saxony, then added: ‘and the Bolshevik atrocities in East Prussia, about which the people probably believed, could be turned against us’.114
For the countless other victims of the regime – Jews, hundreds of thousands in concentration camps, more than 7 million foreign workers and prisoners of war,115 and further millions of former political opponents of the Nazis – the end of the war was a moment they yearned for. In autumn 1944, however, that end was still not in sight. Their misery was set to go on.
VI
Intense war-weariness was by now widespread throughout much of German society, within the civilian population and also among ordinary soldiers. One keen foreign observer in Berlin recalled, long after the events, his sense that autumn that Germans felt themselves to be in an avalanche gathering pace as it headed for the abyss. What made them carry on was a question repeatedly in his mind and that of his associates. Beyond terror he thought ‘inertia and habit’ – apathy and the need for some normality, a search for routine even in the midst of extreme abnormality, which he saw as ‘not a specific German, but a universal characteristic’ – provided some explanation.116 To such speculation could be added the sheer debilitating lethargy that arose from constant intense anxiety about the fate of loved ones, ever-present fear of bombing, the daily dislocations of sheltering from (or clearing up after) air raids, overwork and exhaustion, the queuing for greatly reduced rations, malnutrition, and the constant sense of helpless exposure to events beyond anyone’s control. Since there was no option, no obvious course of action open to individuals that would not result in self-destruction and would in any case change nothing, people simply got on with their lives as best they could.
Politically, the war-weariness meant extensive and growing aversion to the Nazi regime, though with no potential to turn sentiment into action. Not just the Nazi Party, but Hitler himself was drawn into the front line of criticism for bringing war to Germany and causing such misery.117 An outward sign was that the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting was disappearing.118 ‘Providence has determined the destruction of the German people, and Hitler is the executor of this will,’ was said by one SD station at the beginning of November to be a common view.119 Except in such negative ways, as a cause of the horror and obstruction to ending it, Hitler, once almost deified by millions, had come by now to play little overt part in people’s consciousness.
A dwindling proportion of Germans were, it is true, still unbending in their support for the regime, retaining a fanatical determination to fight to the last. Most, however, increasingly saw themselves as victims of Hitler and his regime, often now overlooking how they had in better times idolized their leader and cheered his successes, and how their own treatment of others was rebounding in misery for themselves. The war had come home to Germany, a battered, broken country, its industrial and transport framework collapsing, besieged by economically and militarily superior forces to the east and west. Whatever hopes had been invested in ‘wonder weapons’ had largely evaporated. Only further devastation lay in store. Most people simply wanted the war to end – and hoped that Anglo-American occupation would keep the Bolsheviks from their throats.120
Such feelings, if not universal, were widely held – though to no avail. They were not shared by those in power – by the regime’s leadership, the High Command of the Wehrmacht, military commanders, and those directing the Party, whether at the centre or in the provinces. Moreover, though the system had taken a terrible pounding through military defeats and relentless bombing, it still continued – more or less – to function. Astonishing resilience and even more remarkable improvisation enabled state, Party and military bureaucracies to operate, if not normally, then still with some effectiveness. Above all, the mechanisms of control and repression were in place. No organizational capacity to challenge them existed.
And at the very pinnacle of the regime, there was, as always, not the slightest inclination to contemplate either negotiation or surrender. Hitler made this plain, yet again, in his proclamation of 12 November.121 He left no one in any doubt: as long as he lived, the war would go on. He had, in fact, been planning for weeks what, given the resources available, would almost certainly be a final, desperate attempt to turn the tide. Remaining on the defensive could prolong the conflict, he reckoned, but would never wrest the initiative from the enemy. A decisive strike was imperative. If such a venture were to be attempted, the imperilled eastern front appeared to be the obvious choice. After all, the prospect of a Bolshevik breakthrough and ultimate victory was too ghastly for anyone to contemplate. The Army Chief of Staff, Guderian, responsible for the eastern front, put the case strongly. But against Guderian’s advice, Hitler was adamant that an offensive would have the greatest chance of success, not somewhere along the extensive eastern front, but at a specific vulnerable point of the Allied lines in the west, with the intention of driving on to Antwerp.122 Inflicting an incisive defeat on the western Allies would not simply be crucial for the war in the west; it would also revive morale and then allow forces to be transferred to the east to bolster the chances of repelling the expected winter offensive of the Red Army. If it failed, however, not only would the western Allies be able to continue their march on the borders of the Reich against a greatly weakened Wehrmacht, but the eastern front would be left enfeebled and exposed.
It was, as all in the know could see, a highly risky strategy. A betting man would not have put much of a wager on its chances of success. But, from Hitler’s perspective, it was almost all that was left. ‘If it doesn’t succeed, I see no other possibility of bringing the war to a favourable conclusion,’ he told Speer.123 On 16 December, the new offensive was unleashed on the Americans with unexpected ferocity. Germany’s last serious military hope of affecting the outcome of the war now lay in the balance.
4
Hopes Raised – and Dashed
Victory was never as close as it is now. The decision will soon be reached. We will throw them into the ocean, the arrogant, big-mouthed apes from the New World. They will not get into our Germany. W
e will protect our wives and children from all enemy domination.
I shall march once more through Belgium and France, but I don’t have the smallest desire to do so… If [only] this idiotic war would end. Why should I fight? It only goes for the existence of the Nazis. The superiority of our enemy is so great that it is senseless to fight against it.
Contrasting views of German soldiers during
the Ardennes offensive, December 1944
I
All the hopes of the German leadership now rested on the great offensive in the west. If successful, it could, they thought, prove a decisive turning point in the war. If it failed, the war would be effectively lost. But remaining on the defensive would simply mean eventually being crushed between the advancing western and eastern powers, who would be able to exploit their superior resources and seemingly limitless reserves of manpower. General Jodl, responsible for strategic planning, summarized the thinking at the beginning of November. ‘The risk of the great aim, seeming to stand technically in disproportion to our available forces, is unalterable. But in our current situation we can’t shrink from staking everything on one card.’1
The card to be played was a swift and decisive military strike aimed at inflicting such a mighty blow on the western Allies that they would lose the appetite for continuing the fight. This would lead to the breakup of what was perceived as an unnatural coalition of forces facing Germany. Hitler’s own characteristic thinking was plainly outlined in his address to his division commanders four days before the beginning of the offensive. ‘Wars are finally decided’, he asserted, ‘by the recognition on one side or the other that the war can’t be won any more. Thus, the most important task is to bring the enemy to this realization.’ Even when forced back on the defensive, ‘ruthless strikes’ had the effect of showing the enemy that he had not won, and that the war would continue, ‘that no matter what he might do, he can never count on a capitulation – never, ever’. Under the impact of severe setbacks and recognition that success was unattainable, the enemy’s ‘nerve will break in the end’. And Germany’s enemy was a coalition of ‘the greatest extremes that can be imagined in this world: ultra-capitalist states on one side and ultra-Marxist states on the other; on one side a dying world empire, Britain, and on the other side a colony seeking an inheritance, the USA’. It was ripe for collapse if a blow of sufficient power could be landed. ‘If a few heavy strikes were to succeed here, this artificially maintained united front could collapse at any moment with a huge clap of thunder.’2
The first deliberations for an offensive in the west had taken place at precisely the time of German crisis on that front – during the collapse in Normandy in mid-August. By mid-September the decision for the offensive, given the code-name ‘Watch on the Rhine’ (later changed to ‘Autumn Mist’), was taken. Utmost secrecy was of the essence. Only a few in the High Command of the Wehrmacht and among the regime’s leaders were in the know. Even Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, restored as Commander-in-Chief West on 5 September, was told only in late October of the aims of the operation.3 Jodl’s plans for the attack went through a number of variations before Hitler’s order to go ahead was given on 10 November. Then the intended launch of the offensive in late November had to be postponed several times because of equipment shortages and unseasonal good weather – the attack was depending on poor weather to ground enemy aircraft – before the final date was set at 16 December. The military goal was to strike, as in 1940, through the wooded Ardennes in the gap between the American and British forces, advancing rapidly to take Antwerp and, in tandem with German divisions attacking towards the south from Holland, cutting the enemy lines of communication with the rear, encircling and destroying the British 21st Army Group and the 9th and 1st US Armies in a ‘new Dunkirk’. It would, according to Hitler’s directive for the operation, bring ‘the decisive turn in the western campaign and therefore perhaps of the entire war’.4
The situation, on the eastern as well as the western front, had deteriorated drastically since the idea for the offensive had initially been conceived. On the eastern front, the Soviet incursion into East Prussia had, it is true, been repelled but the most acutely threatened area had meanwhile become Hungary, a crucial source of oil and other raw materials. German troops were engaged there in bitter attritional fighting throughout the autumn in fending off the Red Army’s attempt to take Budapest, ordered by Stalin at the end of October.5 In the west, meanwhile, American troops stood on German soil in the Aachen area. After taking the city in late October, their advance during the following weeks in the densely wooded hills beyond the Westwall, the Hürtgenwald, between Aachen and Eupen and Düren to the east had encountered ferocious defence and proved extremely costly to the Americans.6 By the time the Ardennes offensive began, the American advance had reached only the river Roer, near Jülich and Düren.7 Further to the south, the Americans had greater success, though again at a cost and only after tough resistance by the Wehrmacht. In Lorraine, General Patton’s 3rd US Army eventually forced the surrender of the heavily fortified town of Metz on 22 November, though, battle-weary and combating driving rain, sleet and mud as well as the enemy, it was unable to continue the advance to Saarbrücken. In Alsace, the 6th US Army Group of General Jacob Devers, encountering weaker German defences, drove through the Vosges Mountains to take Strasbourg on 23 November and reach the Rhine near Kehl.8 Even so, the German leadership – attributing, typically, the fall of Strasbourg to treachery within Alsace – was encouraged by the stiffened resistance during the autumn that had held the western Allies at bay.9
In the eyes of Hitler and his chief military advisers, Keitel and Jodl, the enemy inroads since the summer strengthened rather than weakened the case for the planned western offensive. The pressure, military and economic, on Germany was relentlessly intensifying. The tightening vice, they felt, could be loosened only through a bold strike. German losses of men and equipment had mounted sharply over the autumn, predominantly on the eastern front but also in the west. But so had those of the enemy. The American casualties in fierce autumn fighting for relatively minor territorial gains totalled almost a quarter of a million men, dead, wounded or captured.10 Hitler impressed upon his commanders that the time to strike against an enemy that had suffered high losses and was ‘worn out’ was ripe.11 Beyond that, the eastern front – the heavy fighting in Hungary notwithstanding – was for the time being seen to be relatively stabilized, though no one was in doubt that a big new offensive would soon be launched. This was seen as all the more reason to press home the advantage of a German offensive in the west without delay.
Heavy priority was accorded to the demands of the western offensive in allocation of men and armaments. Three armies of Army Group B were to take part. The 6th SS-Panzer Army, led by SS Colonel-General Sepp Dietrich, one of Hitler’s toughest and most trusted military veterans, and the 5th Panzer Army under its brilliant commander and specialist in tank warfare, General Hasso von Manteuffel, were to spearhead the attack in the north and centre of the front.12 The 7th Army, under General Erich Brandenberger, was assigned the task of protecting the southern flank. Some 200,000 men in five panzer and thirteen People’s Grenadier divisions were assigned to the first wave, supported by around 600 tanks and 1,600 heavy guns. However, many of the men were young and inexperienced. Some divisions came, already battle-weary, from the fighting on the Saar. Fuel shortages were a major concern, even with some supplies taken from the hard-pressed eastern front. And an even bigger worry was the weakness of the Luftwaffe. All available planes – including two-thirds of the entire fighter force – were assembled for the attack. Hopes had to be placed in bad weather limiting the massive supremacy in the air of the Allies. Even so, the Wehrmacht began with a substantial numerical advantage in ground-troops and heavy armaments in the 170-kilometre-wide attack zone.13 The element of surprise would be vital to make this momentary superiority tell. But even surprise would not be enough if the offensive could not be sustained.
T
here were grounds enough for scepticism about the chances of success. Both Rundstedt and Field-Marshal Model, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, thought the aim of Antwerp, around 200 kilometres away, far too ambitious, given the strength of available forces. They favoured a more limited aim of beating back and destroying the Allied forces along the Meuse, between Aachen and Liège. But Hitler wanted no ‘little solution’, no ‘ordinary’ victory. He would not be moved from the aim he had stipulated for the offensive. In the end, Rundstedt and Model declared themselves to be ‘fully in agreement’ with Hitler’s ambitious plan. Privately, both remained extremely dubious. Model thought it had ‘no chance’. Dietrich and Manteuffel also bowed, their own doubts still unassuaged, to the imperative.14 Like most military commanders, they saw it as their duty to raise objections to the operational plan but then, when these were rejected, to fulfil to the best of their ability the orders of the political leadership, however futile they deemed these to be. Hitler still had the capacity, however, to make the impossible seem possible. Manteuffel himself accepted that Hitler’s addresses to the divisional commanders on 11 and 12 December had made a positive impact. ‘The commanders’, he later wrote, ‘took away from this conference a picture of the enemy’s overall situation. They had been given an appreciation of the situation from the one source in a position to see the full military picture and it seemed to give an assurance of favourable conditions.’15
In the top echelons of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, there was no readiness to back the well-founded misgivings of those who would lead the offensive. Keitel and Jodl were daily in Hitler’s immediate proximity and remained heavily under his domineering influence. Both remained believers in his unique qualities as Führer, adepts of his form of charismatic authority.16 If they harboured doubts, they kept them to themselves. Jodl refrained from any criticism of Hitler’s decision even when interrogated by his Allied captors in May 1945.17