by Ian Kershaw
17. For sketches of the man and his career, see: Sam L. Lewis, ‘Albert Kesselring – Der Soldat als Manager’, in Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.), Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches, Berlin, 1995, pp. 270–87; Elmar Krautkrämer, ‘Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring’, in Gerd. R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite, vol. 1: Von den Anfängen des Regimes bis Kriegsbeginn, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 121–9; and Shelford Bidwell, ‘Kesselring’, in Correlli Barnett (ed.), Hitler’s Generals, London, 1990, pp. 265–89.
18. BAB, R3/1661, fo. 20, ‘Niederschrift über die Ereignisse vom 15.3. bis 15.4.1945’, no date, signed by Walther Rohland (entry for 23.4.45); Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 446. Kesselring passed on Hitler’s ‘scorched earth’ order of 19 March next day to his subordinate commanders. – Krautkrämer, p. 128 n. 10.
19. Speer, pp. 463–4. General Westphal later pointed out that Kesselring, on taking over from Rundstedt as Commander in Chief West, replied sceptically to the attempt to provide him with a realistic briefing of the situation by stating that the Führer had given him a different account. – Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, p. 327.
20. The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, Greenhill Books edn., London, 1997, pp. 266, 269.
21. Joachim Ludewig, ‘Walter Model – Hitlers bester Feldmarschall?’ in Smelser and Syring, p. 368.
22. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht. Dokumente, ed. Gerhard Förster and Richard Lakowski, Berlin, 1975, p. 230 (18.3.45).
23. Quoted DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 332 (29.3.45); see also Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Krieg in der Trümmerlandschaft: “Pflichterfüllung” wofür?’ in Ulrich Borsdorf and Mathilde Jamin (eds.), Über Leben im Krieg: Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp. 171, 177.
24. Carlo D’Este, ‘Model’, in Barnett, p. 329; Kesselring, pp. 250–55, attributed much of the blame for the plight of Army Group B to Model’s operational decisions.
25. BAB, R3/1626, fos. 15–17, ‘Kapitulationsverhandlungen mit Generalfeldmarschall Model und Gauleiter Hoffmann’, notes compiled in internment in ‘Dustbin’, June 1945, by Rohland. And R3/1661, fo. 21, ‘Niederschrift über die Ereignisse vom 15.3. bis 15.4.1945’, no date, signed by Walther Rohland (entries for 31.3, 2.4, 8.4, 13.4.45); Walter Rohland, Bewegte Zeiten, Stuttgart, 1978, pp. 105–7. Model also refused to entertain the plea in a personal letter to him from US Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway on 17 April, declaring that his oath to the Führer meant he must fight to the end. – Hastings, p. 482; Messerschmidt, p. 177.
26. Ludewig, pp. 382–4; Rohland, p. 107; Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 263–8; John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, p. 2. The order to make families the guarantors of soldiers fighting to the last was signed by Keitel on Hitler’s behalf on 5 March. – 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, p. 207. Strikingly, the initiative for this came from within the Wehrmacht. – Ulrike Hett and Johannes Tuchel, ‘Die Reaktionen des NS-Staates auf den Umsturzversuch vom 20. Juli 1944’, in Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Bonn, 1994, p. 387.
27. Cited DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 327 (7.4.45).
28. DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 331–2.
29. IWM, EDS, F.3, AL2697, ‘Doenitz orders Resistance to the last. 3 Orders – 7, 11, and 19 April 1945’.
30. KTB/SLK, part A, vol. 68, pp. 331–2A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45.
31. BA/MA, N265/112, NL Heinrici, fos. 1–17 (written during captivity, 1945–7 and incorporating memoirs of Colonel Eismann). Though entitled ‘Der Vortrag bei Hitler am 4.IV.1945’, the meeting appears in fact (see fo. 20) to have taken place not on the 4th but on 6 April. Heinrici had already composed a briefer, though in essentials similar, account of the meeting on 12 May 1945 (BA/MA, N265/108, fos. 3–9, where he dates it to ‘about ten days before the beginning of the battle for Berlin’).
32. BA/MA, N265/112, NL Heinrici, fos. 23–4. Speer, p. 471, dates the meeting to the 15th, not 14 April (as Heinrici has it), and mentions the discussion only of sparing the destruction of Berlin’s installations, not the issue of killing Hitler (which he alludes to, however, elsewhere in his memoirs). In later drafts of parts of his memoirs dating from 1966 or thereabouts, Heinrici again mentions the discussion with Speer about killing Hitler and his rejection of political murder because of his Christian convictions. He adds two points which were not mentioned in his earlier version. An assassination attempt would have been pointless, because of Hitler’s security, greatly tightened since July 1944. And, should such an attempt have nevertheless succeeded, the result would have been revolution 100 kilometres behind the front lines against the Russians. The ensuing chaos would have removed from the leadership all possibility of successful negotiations over an armistice. Whether such notions were in his mind in April 1945 or not is unclear. He drew the conclusion, in the later memoirs, that he had no alternative but to carry out his commission to hold the Oder line to the best of his ability. – BA/MA, N265/26, fos. 22–3 (c. 1966). On Speer’s claims to have considered assassinating Hitler, see Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos, Berne and Munich, 1982, pp. 147–51.
33. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, Kalenderblätter 1945, fo. 87, entries for 5.4.45, 13.4.45.
34. A telex from the Army Personnel Office on 13 April assigned small numbers of officers to the ‘Führer-Reserve’ of several Army Groups but pointed out that they now had to manage their own manpower resources and could not reckon with further allocations in the foreseeable future. – IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/163, FS to OB Nordwest, etc., 13.4.45. Seven new divisions were somehow thrown together in early April and given light armaments. But they were made up of seventeen-year-olds. They were meant for the defence of Thuringia, but would not be ready for service for a fortnight. – TBJG, II/15, p. 685 (8.4.45). By that time, Thuringia was lost.
35. e.g. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/42, Gaustabsamt Gau Schwaben to named Kreisleitungen, 11.4.45.
36. BAB, NS6/756, fos. 2–6, Verstärkung der kämpfenden Truppe, 28.2.45.
37. BAB, NS6/135, fo. 160, Vorlage (for Bormann), re Panzernahbekämpfungstrupp der Hitler-Jugend, 3.3.45.
38. Information from Dr Hermann Graml, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, on his own experience in the Reich Labour Service in the last days of April 1945. Heavy pressure was put on boys to join. It could be resisted if sufficient determination were shown, for example by emphasizing strong allegiance to the Catholic Church, or, as in Dr Graml’s case, by producing call-up papers for the Wehrmacht. A contemporary in Württemberg claimed much later to recall that her then seventeen-year-old brother received a letter in February 1945 telling him that he had volunteered for the Waffen-SS, which had not been the case. He hurriedly volunteered for the Reich Labour Service to avoid it. – Zeitzeugen berichten… Schwäbisch Gmünd – Erinnerungen an die Zeit von 1930 bis 1945, ed. Stadtarchiv Schwäbisch Gmünd, Schwäbisch Gmünd, 1989, p. 312.
39. See the testimony assembled in Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London, 2005, pp. 268–9, 294–7, 303, 307.
40. Günter C. Behrmann, ‘ “Jugend, die meinen Namen trägt”: Die letzten Kriegseinsätze der Hitlerjugend’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 175.
41. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/43, Strassen- und Flußbauamt, Neu-Ulm, 13.4.45; Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/28, fos. 328841–2, 328845, Heeresgruppe G to Gauleitung Schwaben, 13.4.45, Bormann to all Gauleiter, 13.4.45, passing on Keitel’s directive of 10.4.45; fos. 328807–8, Bormann’s order to ten named Gauleiter in central and southern Germany, 13.4.45; Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fo. 328843, Aktnotiz für den Gauleiter: Versorgungslage der Wehrmacht und ziviler Behörden, 16.4.45; fo. 328835, note for Gauleiter Wahl from the Kreisleiter of Neu-Ulm, who
, since the enemy was approaching, saw the need to call on the Volkssturm and the people’s levy to undertake entrenchment work and increase the number of barriers, 20.4.45.
42. BAB, R3/1622, fo. 102, Speer directive, transmitting Hitler’s order, 24.4.45; printed in ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, p. 497.
43. BAB, R3/1618, fo. 22, re Führer-Vorführung, 12.4.45.
44. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Uffz. Werner F., 1.4.45. Most soldiers’ letters, and those they received, were unpolitical in content and dealt in the main with inconsequential family or private matters. A report from one censors’ office for March stated on the basis of intercepted and controlled mail that 91.8 per cent of letters checked over the month were ‘colourless’, 4.7 per cent positively disposed towards the regime and 3.5 per cent negative (the last figure certainly underplaying true sentiments, given the dangers of expressing criticism). A separate control, under slightly different criteria, for the last eight days of March gave results of 77.08 per cent ‘colourless’, 8.82 per cent ‘positive’, 6.64 per cent ‘negative’ and 7.46 per cent ‘neutral’. The report included 113 varied extracts from the letters. – BA/MA, RH20/19/245, fos. 31–43, Feldpostprüfstelle bei AOK.19, Monatsbericht für März 1945, 3.4.45. For the organization of post to and from the front, see Richard Lakowski and Hans-Joachim Büll, Lebenszeichen 1945: Feldpost aus den letzten Kriegstagen, Leipzig, 2002, pp. 18–29.
45. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 10.4.45.
46. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 12.4.45.
47. Fritz, pp. 90–91.
48. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 319, pt. II, pp. 8–9 (18.4.45). The fate of the officer is not known.
49. TBJG, II/15, pp. 658 (1.4.45), 684, 687 (8.4.45), 692 (9.4.45); DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), pp. 830–83; Christian Hartmann and Johannes Hürter, Die letzten 100 Tage des Zweiten Weltkriegs, Munich, 2005, entry for Day 33, 7 April 1945. Hartmann and Hürter give the figure of 23 bombers destroyed. This seems close to the actual American figure of 17 bombers and 5 fighters destroyed in the air-battle, though most of these losses were apparently not directly caused by ramming. Some months earlier, a young man, a journalism student whose brother had fallen on the eastern front, and evidently a keen Nazi, expressed his disappointment to the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, at being rejected for suicidal service as a one-man torpedo because there had been too many applicants. Love of Germany, he said, was his motive. – BAB, NS19/2936, handwritten letter, no date (end of 1944 or beginning of 1945).
50. Fritz, pp. 72, 78–9, 88–9, 92.
51. Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 254.
52. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, fos. 154–61, entries for 13–20.4.45. Goebbels referred earlier in the month to the demoralization of the troops in Gau Weser-Ems, similar, he said, to reports that had until then come in from western parts of the Reich, as soldiers went about in loose groups, some throwing away their weapons, and engaging in looting. – TBJG, II/15, p. 673 (4.4.45).
53. TBJG, II/15, pp. 654–5, 659–60 (1.4.45). According to the diary notes of Goebbels’ aide, Rudolf Semmler, reports were emerging in early April from every town or village where American or British troops were approaching ‘that large numbers of the population are showing white flags and sheets’. – Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels – the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, p. 190 (5.4.45). See the diary entries reproduced in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Irina Renz, ‘Vormittags die ersten Amerikaner’: Stimmen und Bilder vom Kriegsende 1945, Stuttgart, 2005, pp. 119, 125, 133, for examples of joy or relief at the arrival of American troops.
54. IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2682, Bormann to Kaltenbrunner, 4.4.45.
55. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/28, fo. 328839, Schulz to Gauleitung Schwaben, 8.4.45, with handwritten note by Wahl at foot.
56. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/43, fos. 00991, 00999, Kreisleiter to all Bürgermeister, Ortsgruppenleiter and Ortsamsleiter der NSV, 18.4.45, and (undated) order of Kreisleiter.
57. TBJG, II/15, pp. 612–13 (28.3.45), a comment also related to Hitler’s orders for the destruction of industry.
58. TBJG, II/15, p. 684 (8.4.45). The difficulties of feeding refugees sent to the Allgäu in the Alpine region of southern Bavaria led to demands for the influx to be halted. – StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fos. 328886–7, report of Landesbauernführer Pg. Deininger on ‘Ernährungslage’, 14.4.45.
59. IfZ, Fa-91/5, fo. 1120d, Lagemitteilung Gauleiter Eigruber, 9.4.45; BAB, NS6/277, fo. 101–101v, Dienstleiter Hund, Parteikanzlei München, to GL Wächtler, Bayreuth, 10.4.45; fo. 31, Hund to Pg. Zander, Dienststelle Berlin, 10.4.45; fos. 8–9, Lagebericht of Gauleitung Salzburg, 10.4.45, Fernschreiben, Hund to Bormann, 14.4.45; fo. 11, Aktenvermerk, 17.4.45. Gauleiter Hugo Jury in Gau Niederdonau also sought advice from Bormann (fo. 92) about where to send 30,000 refugees from Silesia, currently in the District Iglau in the Protectorate who had to be brought into the Reich. He said he would do his utmost to accommodate those who came from his Gau, but was evidently unwilling to receive those from outside. Gauleiter Eigruber later recalled the chaotic conditions as tens of thousands of Hungarian refugees, and 15,000 Jews from the Lower Danube and Styria who were dispatched to Mauthausen concentration camp, were sent to his domain, which had no food for them. – IWM, FO645/156, interrogation of August Eigruber, 3.11.45.
60. BAB, NS6/277, fo. 130, Funkspruch Walkenhorsts an Reichsleiter Bormann, 5.4.45 (also IfZ, Fa-91/5, fo. 1106). Also: fos. 110–12, Vermerk for Bormann from Pg. Zander, 5.4.45; fo. 113, Walkenhorst, telefonische Vorlage an den Reichsleiter, 5.4.45; fo. 15, Aktenvermerk referring to the inability of Gauleiter Siegfried Uiberreither of Styria to reach Berlin with an urgent message for General Jodl; fo. 4, Pg. Walkenhorst zur telefonischen Durchgabe nach Berlin (on varied communications difficulties and attempts to overcome them), 12.4.45.
61. TBJG, II/15, p. 677 (4.4.45).
62. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, pp. 346–8.
63. BAB, NS6/756, fos. 7–9, Vermerk für Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Parteifeindliche Einstellung der Wiener Arbeiterbevölkerung nach den Luftangriffen, 10.3.45. See also fos. 14–15 for a report dated the previous day by Gauleiter Ernst-Wilhelm Bohle, head of the Nazi Party’s Auslandsorganisation, on his impressions of Hungarian women and other foreigners behaving as if Vienna were a holiday resort, and fos. 12–13 for an account sent to Walkenhorst on 2 April of the poor situation in the city and lack of leadership of the Wehrmacht and of the Party. See also TBJG, II/15, pp. 687, 693 (8–9.4.45). A brief indication of the collapse in Vienna as seen by the regime is provided by Karl Stadler, Österreich 1938–1945 im Spiegel der NS-Akten, Vienna, 1966, pp. 401–4. See also, for the rapidly worsening conditions and mounting problems for the Nazi leadership in Vienna in the weeks before the city fell, Rauchensteiner, pp. 154–7, 163–6.
64. TBJG, II/15, pp. 666, 680 (2.4.45, 4.4.45).
65. TBJG, II/15, pp. 683, 687, 693 (8.4.45, 9.4.45).
66. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 103, RS 211/45, ‘Einsatzpflicht der Politischen Leiter’, 15.4.45. A month earlier, referring to previous similar directives, Bormann (fo. 80, Rundschreiben 140/45, ‘Persönlicher Einsatz der Hoheitsträger’, 17.3.45) had exhorted high-standing representatives of the Party to cooperate with troops in assisting the population in the fighting zone and to set an example of fighting morale.
67. TBJG, II/15, p. 659 (1.4.45).
68. TBJG, II/15, p. 672 (4.4.45).
69. For example, despite their exhortations, accompanied by threats, to hold out, most of the Kreisleiter in Württemberg fled as Allied troops approached. – Christine Arbogast, Herrschaftsinstanzen der württembergischen NSDAP: Funktion, Sozialprofil und Lebenswege einer regionalen Elite 1920–1960, Munich, 1998, p. 260. One Kreisleiter from the Black Forest, who turned up in Munich to offer his services to the Party Chancellery, was im
mediately ordered to return to serve with the Volkssturm and warned that his arrival in an official car could be seen as nothing other than flight. – BAB, NS6/277, fo. 24, Aktenvermerk, 20.4.45.
70. IfZ, ZS 597, fo. 113 (1950); TBJG, II/15, p. 672 (4.4.45); Karl Höffkes, Hitlers politische Generale: Die Gauleiter des Dritten Reiches. Ein biographisches Nachschlagewerk, Tübingen, 1986, pp. 112–13. The Security Police had disbanded their office on 7 March, and, destroying records, fled in civilian clothes with false identity cards. – NAL, KV3/188, interrogation of Ostubf. Karl Hans Paul Hennicke, head of SD-Abschnitt Köln-Aachen, 11.4.45.
71. Ralf Blank, ‘Albert Hoffmann als Reichsverteidigungskommissar im Gau Westfalen-Süd, 1943–1945: Eine biografische Skizze’, in Wolf Gruner and Armin Nolzen (eds.), ‘Bürokratien’: Initiative und Effizienz. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, vol. 17, Berlin, 2001, pp. 201–2.