by Ian Kershaw
99. DZW, 6, pp. 257–9; Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 4th edn., Munich, 1985, p. 635.
100. BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 66–7, Der Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Spree an den Gauen Berlin, Mark Brandenburg und im Wehrkreis III to Reichsführer-SS Persönlicher Stab and others, conveying Himmler’s decree of 20.8.44. Himmler later reinforced the full backing he had given to his HSSPFs as solely responsible for combating internal unrest, when commanders of Defence Districts sought to exert their own authority in this realm. – BAB, NS19/3912, fos. 17–26, correspondence relating to the competence dispute, 14.9.44 to 5.10.44.
101. DZW, 6, p. 233.
102. TBJG, II/13, pp. 389–90, 398, 408 (2, 3, 4.9.44).
103. BAB, NS19/751, fo. 3, Party Chancellery Rundschreiben 224/44, Erfassung von zurückführenden und versprengten einzelnen Wehrmachtsangehörigen, 4.9.44; NS6/792, fo. 16–16v, Himmler to the western Gauleiter, 4.9.44. A repeated order to pick up individuals or units returning over the Reich border following the events in the west was issued on 22 September (NS19/751, fos. 10–12, Party Chancellery circular 258/44). Increased fears of enemy agents, saboteurs and spies led to the police being given the sole right to check papers of members of the Wehrmacht as well as the Waffen-SS and, where necessary, to make arrests. – BAB, R43II/692, fos. 1–2, directive by Keitel and Himmler, 20.9.44.
104. Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, p. 732.
105. DZW, 6, p. 108.
106. BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 96, Einsatz von Alarmeinheiten im Kampf um Ortschaften, Guderian’s directive, 27.8.44.
107. TBJG, II/13, p. 438 (8.9.44); David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, pp. 39–40.
108. TBJG, II/13, p. 464 (12.9.44).
109. Yelton, pp. 7–18; Klaus Mammach, Der Volkssturm: Bestandteil des totalen Kriegseinsatzes der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45, Berlin, 1981, pp. 31–3; Hans Kissel, Der Deutsche Volkssturm 1944/45, Frankfurt am Main, 1962, pp. 15–23; Franz W. Seidler, ‘Deutscher Volkssturm’: Das letzte Aufgebot 1944/45, Munich and Berlin, 1989; BAB, R43II/692a, fos. 2–7, 14–20.9.44; DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), pp. 183–5; DZW, 6, pp. 237–8. Goebbels still spoke of the new organization by this name in his diary entry for 21 September 1944. – TBJG, II/13, pp. 534–5.
110. Mammach, p. 33. Two days earlier, Himmler had received a list of suggestions sent to him by SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Richard Hildebrandt, Chief of the Race and Settlement Head Office, to mobilize and organize the civilian population for ‘the people’s war’, a ‘German partisan war’, to be carried out as a ‘freedom struggle’ in the homeland. – BAB, NS19/2864, unfoliated, Hildebrandt to Himmler, 19.9.44.
111. BAB, R43II/692a, fos. 8–21; Mammach, pp. 32–3, 55–6 and 168–73 for facsimiles of Hitler’s decree and Bormann’s order for implementation.
112. Yelton, chs. 2–3. Longerich’s claim (Himmler, p. 733) that Himmler and Berger were successful against Bormann seems doubtful. Bormann’s personal success in his demarcation disputes with Himmler is underlined by Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär: Martin Bormann. Der Mann, der Hitler beherrschte, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, pp. 298–9. For the recruitment and organization of the Volkssturm, undertaken by the Party local leaders (Ortsgruppenleiter), see Carl-Wilhelm Reibel, Das Fundament der Diktatur: Die NSDAP-Ortsgruppen 1932–1945, Paderborn, 2002, pp. 377–81.
113. Kissel, p. 89; Mammach, p. 58; Yelton, pp. xv, 19–35.
114. TBJG, II/13, p. 535 (21.9.44).
115. Mammach, pp. 57–8. No figure for its actual size (which anyway fluctuated) at any one point appears to exist. Because of manpower shortage, exemptions, deferrals and bureaucratic inefficiency the target was never remotely reached in practice. Even so, the numbers drafted were large. The first levy of the Volkssturm amounted to 1.2 million men, formed into 1,850 battalions. – Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 149.
116. TBJG, II/13, p. 103 (13.7.44); Noble, pp. 100–101.
117. DZW, 6, pp. 235, 237; BAB, NS6/792, fos. 6–8 (29.8.44), 9–12 (30.8.44); DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), pp. 180–82.
118. IfZ, ZS 597, fo. 27, Gauleiter Josef Grohé (1950).
119. TBJG, II/13, p. 465 (12.9.44).
120. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8, unfoliated, copy of Hitler’s Verfügung 12/44 (1.9.44); BAB, R43II/1548, fo. 36, Lammers an die Obersten Reichsbehörden, transmitting Hitler’s order (6.9.44); ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 446–50; DZW, 6, p. 237.
121. Quoted (in English) in NAL, FO898/187, fo. 598, PWE report for 4–10.9.44.
122. DZW, 6, p. 236. By the end of 1944 the number of conscripts for fortification work on all fronts was over 1.5 million. – DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), p. 182.
123. BAB, NS19/3912, fos. 11–12, Bormann to Gauleiter, Rundschreiben 302/44g.Rs., Stellungsbau, 6.10.44.
124. BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 35–8, Party Chancellery Rundschreiben 263/44 g.Rs., Zweiter Erlaß des Führers über die Befehlsgewalt in einem Operationsgebiet innerhalb des Reiches vom 19.9.1944, etc., 23.9.44, transmitting Hitler’s decree of 19.9.44, and providing guidelines for implementation; BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 27, Rundschreiben 312/44g.Rs., Zweiter Erlaß des Führers über die Befehlsgewalt, etc., 11.10.44, amending one clause of the decree to underline Himmler’s overall authority; ‘Führer-Erlasse’, pp. 455–7; Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939–1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Walther Hubatsch, pb. edn., Munich, 1965, pp. 337–41.
125. The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, p. 88 (27.8.44).
126. The Bormann Letters, p. 139 (25.10.44).
127. Pätzold and Weißbecker, p. 375.
CHAPTER 3. FORETASTE OF HORROR
1. DZW, 6, pp. 78–9; Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, pp. 152–3. Those killed on the eastern front numbered 589,425 in the months June to August 1944. In the last six months of 1944, the figure was 740,821 dead. The number of deaths on the eastern front in 1944 as a whole, 1,233,000, amounted to 45 per cent of the mortalities in that theatre since the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. – Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Munich, 1999, pp. 277–9.
2. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), p. 594, who gives the losses for Army Group Centre at around 390,000 men, compared with some 330,000 at Verdun and 60,000 dead and 110,000 captured at Stalingrad. On the four fronts of ‘Bagration’, the Soviets deployed around 2.5 million men, 45,000 artillery pieces, 6,000 tanks and more than 8,000 planes over a front of around 1,100 kilometres with a depth of advance of 550–600 kilometres over a period of 69 days (22 June to 29 August). – DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 526–35, 593, for the size of the Soviet offensive and relative weakness of German forces.
3. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), p. 556. Soviet losses were more than 440,000. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, provides a good summary of the developments on the eastern front in this period.
4. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), p. 612; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, p. 218.
5. DZW, 6, pp. 52–60; DRZW, 8 (Schönherr), pp. 678–718.
6. Hitler himself had given the order, passed on by Himmler, for the total destruction of Warsaw. – BA/MA, RH19/II/213, v.d. Bach-Zelewski to 9th Army command, 11.10.44.
7. DZW, 6, p. 410. For a vivid narrative of the horrific events, see Norman Davies, Rising ’44: ‘The Battle for Warsaw’, London, 2004.
8. This figure in DZW, 6, p. 70, deviates from that provided by Weinberg, p. 714 (380,000 men lost) and DRZW, 8 (Schönherr), p. 819 (286,000 men killed or captured in the Romanian theatre). The basis for the discrepancy in figures is
not clear.
9. DZW, 6, pp. 62–70; DRZW, 8 (Schönherr), pp. 746–819.
10. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 626–7, 668–72; DZW, 6, p. 72; Weinberg, pp. 707–720–21; and the fine, thorough study by Howard D. Grier, Hitler, Dönitz, and the Baltic Sea: The Third Reich’s Last Hope, 1944–1945, Annapolis, Md., 2007.
11. BA/MA, RH19/III/727: for Schörner’s tough orders on taking over command of Army Group North and his demand for fanaticism, mentioning also the fear of being cut off (25.7.44, 28.7.44); his threats regarding discipline and appeal to ruthless fanaticism in the total war ‘for our threatened national existence’ (12.8.44); his demands for ruthless punishment by military courts in accordance with Hitler’s orders (1.10.44); his appeal to fanatical determination after the ‘heroic’ fightback in Riga (5.10.44); further demands for ruthless action and improvised methods, with threats for those found lacking (7.10.44); his exhortation to his generals to educate their men to fight harder than ever, and order for defensive measures to be adopted in line with Hitler’s command to hold the area (18.10.44, 21.10.44); his claim that they were not conducting the war ‘uncompromisingly, radically and asiatically enough’ (2.11.44); his extreme intolerance of perceived absence of fighting spirit (10.11.44). When Schörner was on trial in West Germany after his return in 1955 from Soviet captivity, he received supportive letters from former comrades who praised his leadership of Army Group North and attributed its survival to his leadership. See BA/MA, N60/73, NL Schörner. However, the court found that the level of his brutality could not be justified, even in the conditions of war on the eastern front in 1944.
12. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, pp. 376–7.
13. DZW, 6, pp. 70–76; DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 623–57 (troop numbers, pp. 657–8); Grier, ch. 3.
14. TBJG, II/13, pp. 524–5 (20.9.44), 536–42 (21.9.44).
15. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 602–3 and map, p. 573.
16. Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, pp. 20–22.
17. Noble, chs. 1–3, p. 46 for the evacuee figure.
18. See Noble, pp. 85 and 276 n. 81. British intelligence authorities gleaned much about the panic in eastern Germany from reading between the lines of German newspapers and other publications. See NAL, FO898/186, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fos. 18, 35–8 (reports for 24–31.7.44 and 31.7–6.8.44).
19. MadR, 17, pp. 6698–9 (10.8.44).
20. MadR, 17, pp. 6702 (10.8.44), 6708 (17.8.44).
21. BAB, R55/601, fos. 73–4, 102–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda reports, 14.8.44, 4.9.44.
22. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Ein unüberwindlicher Wall gegen den Bolschewismus: Die Vorbereitung der “Reichsverteidigung” im Osten im zweiten Halbjahr 1944’, in Schlüsseljahr 1944, ed. Bayerische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildungsarbeit, Munich, 2007, p. 236.
23. Kunz, p. 249.
24. Quoted Kunz, pp. 250–51.
25. Noble, p. 152.
26. Noble, pp. 95, 100, 107–8, 280 n. 28.
27. Noble, pp. 95–9.
28. BAB, NS6/792, fos. 17–22, Guderian to Wehrkreis commands, etc., 28.7.44; Stuckart to eastern Gauleiter, 28.7.44.
29. BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 36, Lammers to Oberste Reichsbehörden, 6.9.44, transmitting Führer order of 1.9.44; also in BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8.
30. DZW, 6, pp. 234–5; Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007, pp. 417–22.
31. NAL, FO898/187, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fo. 685 (report for 7–13.8.44, in English); Noble, p. 106.
32. Guderian, p. 360; Noble, pp. 102–3, 127.
33. MadR, 17, pp. 6720–6, report to the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, 28.10.44.
34. Noble, pp. 108–13; DZW, 6, p. 236; also Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, pp. 504–5.
35. Noble, p. 114.
36. TBJG, II/13, p. 224 (4.8.44); Noble, p. 107.
37. Noble, p. 108.
38. Noble, pp. 126–7.
39. Noble, pp. 107, 127.
40. BAB, NS19/4016, fos. 99–126, draft of speech, 18.10.44 (quotations, fo. 123); VB, 19.10.44.
41. BAB, R55/601, fo. 180, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 23.10.44.
42. BAB, R55/601, fol. 208, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; Christian Tilitzki, Alltag in Ostpreußen 1940–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte der Königsberger Justiz 1940–1945, Leer, 1991, pp. 283–4, 286, reports for 17.10.44, 19.10.44; Edgar Günther Lass, Die Flucht: Ostpreußen 1944/45, Bad Nauheim, 1964, pp. 23–31. And see David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, pp. 89–96; Noble, p. 151; Steinert, pp. 506–8.
43. Yelton, p. 90.
44. Yelton, p. 91; Noble, p. 151.
45. Yelton, pp. 97–102.
46. Klaus Mammach, Der Volkssturm: Bestandteil des totalen Kriegseinsatzes der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45, Berlin, 1981; Yelton, p. 75.
47. Yelton, p. 120.
48. BA/MA, RH21/3/730, post–war account written in 1955 by the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Panzer Army, Major-General Mueller-Hillebrand, p. 1.
49. Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiße, ed. Theodor Schieder et al., pb. edn., vol. 1, Munich, 1984, pp. 1–4; and see Noble, pp. 130–32.
50. Guderian, p. 376.
51. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 612–19; Noble, pp. 132–5.
52. See Noble, pp. 136–8.
53. Noble, p. 130.
54. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, diary entries for 11, 17, 22.10.44 and 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14.11.44 refer to his continuing hefty disputes with Koch – though not directly on the evacuation issue – as does his letter to his wife of 23.10.44, in N245/2, fo. 40. See also N245/15 for his protest to Himmler at Koch’s misrepresentation of conditions within his Army Group (letters of 26.10.44 and 27.11.44). Part of the conflict related to Koch’s allocation of armaments meant for the army to the Volkssturm (BA/MA, RH19/II/213, fo. 303, Reinhardt to Guderian, 31.10.44).
55. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 4–7.
56. Bernhard Fisch, Nemmersdorf, Oktober 1944: Was in Ostpreußen tatsächlich geschah, Berlin, 1997, ch. 5. See also Guido Knopp, Die große Flucht: Das Schicksal der Vertriebenen, Munich, 2001, pp. 37–49.
57. Quoted DRZW, 10/1 (Zeidler), p. 700, and pp. 682ff. for an excellent account of Soviet propaganda aimed at troops about to fight in Germany, including the role of the arch-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg. See also Guido Pöllmann, ‘Rote Armee in Nemmersdorf am 22.10.1944’, in Franz W. Seidler and Alfred M. de Zayas (eds.), Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Hamburg, 2002, p. 215.
58. Quoted Manfred Nebelin, ‘Nazi Germany: Eastern Front’, in David Wingeate Pike (ed.), The Closing of the Second World War: Twilight of a Totalitarianism, New York, 2001, p. 98.
59. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 7–8. Further gruesome reports are presented in Lass, pp. 44–50. The International Commission was a creation of the Propaganda Ministry. It met on 31 October 1944 in Berlin with representatives from Spain, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Italy and Serbia, before an audience of 600 or so, largely drawn from Berlin Party members, and attended by 100 members of German and foreign press and radio. Predictably it concluded that the Soviet Union had been guilty of serious breaches of international law. – BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 7–8, report of Major Hinrichs, Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost, 1.11.44.
60. Bernhard Fisch, ‘Nemmersdorf 1944 – ein bisher unbekanntes zeitnahes Zeugnis’, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 56 (2007), pp. 105–14. See also Fisch, Nemmersdorf, chs. 6–7.
61. ‘Persönliches Kriegstagebuch des Generals der Flieger [Werner] Kreipe als Chef des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe für die Zeit vom 22.7.–2.11.1944’, en
try for 23.10.44, in Hermann Jung, Die Ardennenoffensive 1944/45, Göttingen, 1971, p. 227.
62. Günter K. Koschorrek, Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front, London, 2002, p. 293 (22.10.44).
63. BA/MA, RH20/4/593, unfoliated, report of Hauptmann Fricke, to Armeeoberkommando 4, 26.10.44, enumerated 45 corpses, 26 found in Nemmersdorf and 19 in nearby Tutteln (together with several more uncounted charcoaled corpses in a burnt-out byre there). Most of the dead in Nemmersdorf were not inhabitants of the village but had been on treks overtaken by the Red Army. Two further reports (BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 2, 5) indicated one woman probably raped then murdered by being beaten with an axe or spade in Schweizerau on 22 October and 11 civilians, including 4 women who had been raped, found in the dairy at Bahnfelde, near Schulzenwalde. A list of victims later compiled recorded 90 in a number of places in East Prussia (the largest number, 26, in Nemmersdorf), with numerous cases of rape and including the murder of 5 childen whose tongues, it was claimed, had been nailed to tables. – BA/MA, RH2/2685, fo. 168. Karl-Heinz Frieser in DRZW, 8, p. 620 n. 77, gives a probable figure of 46 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself, not counting adjacent localities, though he provides no basis for the figure, which is probably a marginal miscounting of those in Nemmersdorf and Tutteln together. As he points out (n. 76), Fisch’s findings were reliant almost entirely upon answers to the questions he had posed to survivors still alive in the 1990s. In his attempt to reveal the propaganda as largely mendacious, he appeared to verge on occasion towards an over-sympathetic image of the Red Army soldiers. Pöllmann, p. 214, indicates 26 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself and a further 28 in the immediate vicinity.