Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  15. DZW, vi.510–12; Guderian, 400–401; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 416.

  16. Guderian, 400.

  17. Goebbels underlined Himmler’s difficulties, since his ‘army group exists in practice only on paper’. He thought Hitler’s optimism about holding the line in the east misplaced (TBJG, II/15, 231 (26 January 1945)).

  18. Guderian, 415.

  19. For the above, see Guderian, 403–4, 414–15, 422.

  20. ‘The Führer is very dissatisfied with him,’ Goebbels noted on 12 March 1945 (TBJG, II/15, 480). See also Below, 406.

  21. For a description of conditions within Breslau in February 1945, see Siegfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw, Soldat. Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936–1949, New York, 1992, 299–312.

  22. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 416.

  23. Guderian, 402, 405, 417.

  24. Orlow, ii.478. Goebbels, contemptuous of Greiser’s flight, after having misinformed Hitler about the imminence of the fall of Posen, recommended ruthless punishment (TBJG, II/15, 232 (26 January 1945). See also TBJG, II/15, 205, 210 (24 January 1945), 214, 219, 223 (25 January 1945), 241 (27 January 1945).) Hitler took no action. It transpired from what he told Goebbels, and from a conversation Goebbels had with Bormann, that Greiser had been instructed by Hitler to leave Posen – as it turned out quite prematurely. (Greiser claimed after the war that Hitler had ordered him to go to Frankfurt an der Oder as Reich Governor and that he left his post in the Warthegau on 20 January (NA, Washington, NND 871063: arrest report on Greiser, 17 May 1945; Special Interrogation Report, 1 June 1945)). The town remained for a further eight days in German hands, but the refugee columns fleeing from the Red Army received no support from the Party (TBJG, II/15, 190, 193 (23 January 1945), 261–2 (29 January 1945)). Greiser was to be put on trial after the war in Warsaw, sentenced to death, and publicly hanged in Poznan on 14 July 1946.

  25. See BA, R55/622, Fols.181–2, a survey, dated 9 March 1945, of letters sent to Reich Propaganda Offices, which stated: ‘The “Greiser case” is doing the rounds and is supplemented by reports from refugees about the failure of the NSDAP in the evacuation of entire Gaue.’ (‘Der “Fall Greiser” macht überall die Runde und wird durch die Berichte der Flücbtlinge über das Versagen der NSDAP bei der Evakuierung ganzer Gaue ergänzt.’) One passage cited from an anonymous letter held to the old fable: ‘If the Führer knew how he is deceived everywhere, he would have swept through long ago.’ (‘Wenn der Führer wüβte, wie er überall hintergangen wird, hätte er längst dazwischengefegt.’)

  26. Guderian, 412; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 417–18. See Speer’s description of the heated arguments between Hitler and Guderian over evacuating the troops from Courland (Speer, 428).

  27. Parker, Struggle for Survival, 218; Weinberg III, 801; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 420.

  28. The following passages are based on Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 420–25; Weinberg III, 811–13; Parker, Struggle for Survival, 219–20; DZW, vi. 537–58.

  29. Weinberg III, 811.

  30. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 423–4. Hitler told Kesselring that he was confident of holding the eastern front on which all depended. The urgent demand was to hold the western front until reinforcements from the east, new fighters and other new weapons could be employed in great numbers, and until Dönitz could make the new U-boats tell. ‘So it was,’ he concluded, ‘once again a battle for time!’ (Albert Kesselring, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, (1953), Greenhill Books edn, London, 1997, 237–9 (quotation, 239)). On Rundstedt’s dismissal, see Blumentritt, 277– 9; Messenger, 228–9.

  31. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 422–3; John Toland, The Last 100 Days, London, 1966, 256; LB Darmstadt, 339 n.451.

  32. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 424.

  33. DZW, vi.583–5; Oxford Companion, 311 –12.

  34. DZW, vi.586; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 280, 414. Postwar Allied estimates reckoned that a third of the German population suffered directly from the bombing, around 14 million people losing property, up to 20 million being deprived of electricity, gas, or water at some time, 5 million being forced to evacuate. A quarter of homes had been damaged. Some 305,000 people had been killed. (United States Strategic Bombing Survey, vol.4, New York/London, 1976, 7–10.)

  35. Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiβe, repr. Munich, 1984, Bd.1, 28.

  36. Hans Graf von Lehndorff, Ostpreuβisches Tagebuch. Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945–1947, Munich (1967), 15th edn, 1985, 18, 22.

  37. Lehndorff, 18.

  38. Lehndorff, 24–5.

  39. Johannes Steinhoff, Peter Pechel and Dennis Showalter, Voices from the Third Reich: an Oral History, (1989), New York, 1994, 420.

  40. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen 1942–1945, Munich (1976), 2nd edn, 1982, 228. See also the description of a woman’s flight from Breslau in January 1945, accompanied by her two small children and elderly parents, in Margarete Dörr, ‘Wer die Zeit nicht miterlebt hat…’. Frauenerfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg und in den Jahren danach, 3 vols., Frankfurt/New York, 1998, ii.455–60.

  41. Andreas-Friedrich, 126.

  42. See the initial scepticism about the stories in Kardorff, 229. For anxiety in Dresden, see Klemperer, ii.645–6.

  43. GStA, Munich, MA 106696, report of the Regierungspräsident of Niederbayern and Oberpfalz, 10 March 1945: ‘Die aus den Ostgauen hier eintreffenden Flüchtlinge bringen zum groβen Teil recht erschütternde Nachrichten von dem Elend der flüchtenden Bevölkerung, die zum Teil panikartig ins Innere des Reiches vor den Bolschewisten geflüchtet ist.’ Goebbels wrote in his diary of ‘indescribable misery’ among the refugee treks from the east, adding two days later that reports on Bolshevik atrocities could only be released for publication abroad since they would give rise to panic among the refugees if published within Germany (TBJG, II/15, 190 (23 January 1945), 216 (25 January 1945)).

  44. See, among many examples, Die Vertreibung, Bd.2, 159–64, 224–34; Käthe von Normann, Tagebuch aus Pommern 1945/46, Munich (1962), 5th edn, 1984, 12ff. Dörr, ii.406–24.

  45. Barbara Johr, ‘Die Ereignisse in Zahlen’, in Helke Sander and Barbara Johr (eds.), Befreier und Befreite. Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder, Munich, 1992, 46–72, here 47–8, 58–9. I am grateful to Detlef Siebert for referring me to this essay.

  46. Cit. Steinert, 547.

  47. Steinert, 547–50.

  48. Steinert, 550–51; text of Thierack’s decree of 15 February 1945 and Hitler’s order of 9 March 1945 in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945. Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, 161–4.

  49. See the example in Rees, The Nazis, 231–4.

  50. Kardorff, 231.

  51. Cit. Steinert, 559.

  52. GStA, Munich, MA 106695, report of the Regierungspräsident of Schwaben, 7 February 1945: ‘Mit Schrecken verfolgt die Bevölkerung die Ereignisse im Osten des Reiches, wo die Sturmflut der Sowjets die Grenzen der Heimat umbrandet…’

  53. Dörr, ‘Wer die Zeit nicht miterlebt hat…’. Frauenerfahrungen, i.156.

  54. GStA, Munich, MA 106696, report of the Regierungspräsident of Oberfranken and Mittelfranken, 8 February 1945.

  55. Based on a report compiled ten years after the events by the Geschäftsführer des Interministerialen Luftkriegsauschusses der Reichsregierung in Berlin 1943–5, Theodor Ellgering, cit. in Müller and Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945,158–61. See also the description of the bombing in Klemperer, ii.661–72.

  56. Friedmann Behr, Mein Jahr 1945, East Berlin, 1988, 15: ‘Wir sahen die ersten Toten des Krieges und erschraken so sehr, daβ uns aller Mut verlieβ.’

  57. Cit. Maschmann, 169: ‘Ja, aber das ist nicht wichtig. Deutschland muβ siegen.’

  58. See Klemperer, ii.676, for comments following the raid on Dresden.

  59. BA, R55/622, Fol.181, ‘Briefübersicht Nr.10’, 9 March 1945: ‘Das Vertrauen in die Führung schwin
det immer mehr, weil der angekündigte Gegenschlag zur Befreiung unserer besetzten Ostprovinzen ausblieb und sich die manigfachen Versprechungen auf eine bevorstehende Wende als unerfüllbar erwiesen baben.…Besonders hart ist die Kritik an der oberen Führerschicht der Partei und der militärischen Führung.’

  60. BA, R55/601. Fol.295–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, 21 March 1945: ‘Diejenigen, die noch nach wie vor unbeirrbar und unerschütterlich auf die Worte des Führers vertrauten, daβ noch in diesem Jahre die geschichtliche Wende zu unserem Gunsten eintrete, hätten gegenüber den Zweiflern und Miesmachern einen sehr schweren Stand. Bei allem unerschütterlichen Vertrauen in den Führer scheue man sich jedoch nicht zu äuβern, daβ der Führer bestimmt nicht durch die militärischen Stellen über die wirkliche Lage unterrichtet sein könne, sonst wäre es nicht zu der jetzigen schweren Krise gekommen.’ Goebbels referred even in late January to the ‘deeply depressing’ reports from the regional Propaganda Offices, the loss of hope of any new weapons turning the tide, and severe criticism of the leadership for being unprepared to combat the Soviet offensive (TBJG, II/15, 230 (26 January 1945)).

  61. StA, Munich, report of the Landrat of Berchtesgaden, 4 April 1945: ‘Als der Führer der Wehrmachtseinheit am Schluβ seiner zu der Feier gehaltenen Rede ein “Sieg-Heil” auf den Führer ausbrachte, wurde es weder von der angetretenen Wehrmacht, dem Volkssturm noch von der als Zuschauer erschienenen Zivilbevölkerung erwidert. Dieses Schweigen der Masse wirkte geradezu drückend und spiegelt wohl am besten die tatsächliche Einstellung des Volkes.’ The comment was passed on by the Regierungspräsident of Oberbayern in his report of 7 April 1945: GStA, Munich, MA 106695.

  62. See Klemperer, ii.646, 658, 661, 675, 677; and also Monika Richarz (ed.), Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland. Bd.3. Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte 1918–1945, Stuttgart, 1982, 471.

  63. Klemperer, ii.658 (13 February 1945).

  64. Klemperer, ii.661 (13 February 1945).

  65. Martin Broszat, ‘Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager 1933–1945’, in Buchheim et al. (eds.), Anatomie des SS-Staates, ii.159–60; Daniel Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, in Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, and Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Entwicklung und Struktur, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1998, ii.1063–92, here 1066; and, especially, for the concentration camps in the last year of Nazi rule, Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte, Hamburg, 1999, 222ff. Around half a million of the prisoners were men, some 200,000 women; they were guarded by about 40,000 SS men.

  66. See a first-hand account of the horror in Richarz, 443–53 (account of Paul Heller). See also Blatman, especially 1085–7; Goldhagen, 330; Orth, 278ff., 285–6; Schmuel Krakowski, ‘The Death Marches in the Period of the Evacuation of the Camps’, and Yehuda Bauer, ‘The Death-Marches, January-May 1945’, both in Michael Marrus (ed.), The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, Westport, 1989, vol.9, 476–90 (here, especially, 480–83), and 491–511; and ‘Death Marches’, in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, ed. Israel Gutmann, New York, 1990, 348–54.

  67. Goldhagen, 365, 587 n.23; Isabell Sprenger, ‘Das KZ Groβ-Rosen in der letzten Kriegsphase’, in Herbert et al., Die Konzentrationslager, ii.1113–27, here 1120–21.

  68. Czech, Kalendarium 898–900, 933, 940–41, 948–9, 952–3, 957–8; Pressac, Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz, 93.

  69. Cit. Czech, 967.

  70. Andrej Strzelecki, ‘Der Todesmarch der Häftlinge aus dem KL Auschwitz’, in Herbert et al., Konzentrationslager, ii. 1093–1112, here 1097–8; Orth, 276–9.

  71. Cit. in Blatman, 1078–9.

  72. Czech, 982.

  73. See, for this camp, Sprenger, especially 1118 ff.; and also Orth, 279–81.

  74. Based on Czech, 966–95; Herbert et al., Konzentrationslager, ii.1063–1138 (contributions by Blatman, Strzelecki, Sprenger, and Kolb); Eberhard Kolb, ‘Bergen-Belsen’, in Martin Broszat (ed.), Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Stuttgart, 1970, 130–53, here 147ff.; and Eberhard Kolb, Vom ‘Aufenthaltslager’ zum Konzentrationslager 1943 bis 1945, Göttingen, 1985, 39ff. See also Hilberg, Destruction, 631–3; Goldhagen, ch.13; Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust. The Jewish Tragedy, London, 1987, chs.40–41; Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust, London, 1982, 215ff.

  75. Hilberg, 632.

  76. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 123; Pierre Galante and Eugen Silianoff, Last Witnesses in the Bunker, London, 1989,137 (testimony of Traudl Junge); Below, 400; Domarus, 2189.

  77. Hitler blamed the eastern offensive for the failure of his own offensive in the west (TBJG, II/15, 197 (23 January 1945), 217 (25 January 1945)).

  78. Guderian, 392–3.

  79. Boldt, 36, for description of Reich Chancellery; IfZ, ZS 2235, Traudl Junge, Fol.2 (Interview with David Irving, 29 June 1968), comments that the blinds were down on the train, and the route for the cars from the station to the Reich Chancellery passed through streets which had been relatively little destroyed. Awareness that Hitler was back in the capital might have given citizens further cause for anxiety about the likelihood of intensified air-raids, as soon as the Allies knew of his presence there.

  80. Boldt, 36–7.

  81. Guderian, 409.

  82. Guderian, 401–2.

  83. Guderian, 404–5.

  84. Speer, 431.

  85. Hansjakob Stehle, ‘Deutsche Friedensfühler bei den Westmächten im Februar/März 1945’, VfZ, 30 (1982), 538–55; Reimer Hansen, ‘Ribbentrops Friedensfühler im Frühjahr 1945’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 18 (1967), 716–30; Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Die Chance des Sonderfriedens. Deutsch-sowjetische Geheimgespräche 1941–1945, Berlin, 1986, 267–75; Werner von Schmieden, ‘Notiz betreffend den deutschen Friedensfühler in der Schweiz Anfang 1945’, IfZ, ZS 604 (30 June 1947); Weinberg III, 783–4.

  86. Schmidt, 587. According to Goebbels, in mid-January, Ribbentrop wanted to put out feelers to the British, but Hitler prohibited him from doing so (TBJG, II/15, 199 (23 January 1945)). Hitler did not give Ribbentrop ‘official authorization’ for his soundings (IMG, x.218; Hansen, ‘Ribbentrops Friedensfühler’, 718–19).

  87. Schmidt, 587. According to Schmidt, Ribbentrop’s own interest diminished immediately when he learnt that his removal from office was also a precondition.

  88. The Ribbentrop Memoirs, 170, 173. Speer pointed to Hitler’s vague hints at peace-feelers in early 1945. He had the impression, however, that Hitler ‘was far more concerned to create an atmosphere of the utmost irreconcilability, leaving no way open’ (Speer, 433). The secret dealings which Karl Wolff, head of the police in northern Italy and formerly the chief of Himmler’s personal staff, opened up in Zürich in February 1945 with Allen W. Dulles, head of the United States’ Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe, were aimed primarily at saving Wolff’s skin (ultimately, in this, proving successful) but, beyond that, at offering to deliver surrender of German forces in Italy – which did eventually capitulate prematurely, on 2 May 1945 – as part of a ploy to split the western Allies from the Soviet Union. The feelers were almost certainly put out with Himmler’s knowledge, looking to an ‘arrangement’ which would bypass Hitler’s implacable hostility to a negotiated end to the war by dispensing with the Führer in an attempt to rescue what was possible of the SS’s power by linking forces with the West in the fight against Bolshevism. (See Padfield, Himmler, 572–7.)

  89. TBJG, II/15, 251–2 (28 January 1945).

  90. TBJG, II/15, 232 (26 January 1945).

  91. TBJG, II/15, 255 (28 January 1945).

  92. LB Stuttgart, 860–61 (27 January 1945). See TBJG, II/15, 259 (29 January 1945) for Goebbels’s summary of the tenor of reports from British newspapers, asking whether British war aims had been upturned by the mounting Soviet threat.

  93. TBJG, II/15, 253 (28 January 1945).

  94. TBJG, II/15, 254–5 (28 January 1945); also TBJG, II/15, 220 (25 January 1945).


  95. TBJG, II/15, 264–5 (29 January 1945). As so often, Goebbels had a few days earlier compared Hitler with Frederick the Great during the Seven Years War (TBJG, II/15, 221 (25 January 1945)).

  96. TBJG, II/15, 273 (30 January 1945).

  97. TBJG, II/15, 275 (30 January 1945).

  98. TBJG, II/15, 256 (28 January 1945).

  99. Text of speech in Domarus, 2195–8; quotations, 2195, 2197. According to Traudl Junge, Hitler railed in private about the appalling stories of Soviet barbarity coming from the eastern regions, repeatedly declaring: ‘It cannot and must not be that these cultureless beasts inundate Europe. I’m the last bulwark against this danger.’ (‘Es kann und darf nicht sein, dass diese kulturlosen Bestien Europa überscbwemmen. Icb bin das letzte Bollwerk gegen diese Gefahr.’) (IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 125; Galante, 139 (with a loose translation).) Bormann wrote of the ‘Russian atrocities’ in a letter to his wife of 30 January, telling her that ‘the Bolsheviks are ravaging everything’, and ‘regard ordinary rape as just a joke, and mass shootings – particularly in the rural districts – as an everyday occurrence’ (Bormann Letters, 164).

  100. Joachim Günther, Das letzte Jahr. Mein Tagebuch 1944/45, Hamburg, 1948, 453–4.

  101. TBJG, II/15, 285 (31 January 1945); 301–2 (2 February 1945), where Goebbels admitted that ‘in intellectual circles’ there was disappointment over the absence of any assessment of the likely development in the east.

  102. StA Neuburg an der Donau, vorl. Slg. Schum. Anh.3, SD-Auβenstelle Friedberg, 3 February 1945: ‘Die Propaganda hat es nicht fertiggebracht, den Glauben an eine positive Wendung zu stärken. Selbst die Führerrede zum 30. Januar vermochte nicht die lauten Zweifel zu beseitigen.’

  103. Speer, 431–2. Guderian was mistaken in believing that Hitler had locked it away in his safe unread (Guderian, 407).

  104. Speer, 434.

  105. According to Bormann (Bormann Letters, 168), the New Reich Chancellery was not usable for the time being. However, Goebbels had discussions with Hitler in the large study there on 12 February and described the New Reich Chancellery as ‘still completely undestroyed’ (TBJG, II/15, 371 (13 February 1945)).