In the east, despite initial losses, the Red Army soon contained the German counter-offensive at Lauban and at Lake Balaton. Within ten days, the Russians were on the advance again. On 25 March 1945, Hitler ordered the withdrawal from the bulge around Sarajevo. Five days later, the German front in Hungary had completely collapsed, though Hitler refused to authorize any retreat.209 On the central sector, the Red Army thrust deeper and deeper into Germany. Hitler continued to insist that the Baltic coastline–especially Danzig, Pillau and Gdynia–be held, ordering the Kriegsmarine to resupply the Baltic ports by sea. Most of Pomerania and the rest of Silesia were overrun. Danzig fell on 30 March 1945, and with it vital shipyards. Königsberg, though surrounded, still held out. Millions of refugees were now on the move, desperately trying to escape the Red Army.
Despite his blood-curdling warnings of the fate that awaited them at the hands of the hordes in the east, Hitler still gave the war effort priority over evacuation. ‘Our strongly reduced transport capacity,’ he decreed in mid March 1945, ‘must under all circumstances be used efficiently.’ ‘Given the current crisis, the order of priority for the transports,’ Hitler continued, ‘must solely be determined by their immediate importance for the conduct of the war.’ Hitler therefore laid down that during withdrawals, priority should be given first to the operational forces of the Wehrmacht, then to the transport of coal, then to foodstuffs. ‘Even refugee transports can only be authorized after all these needs have been completely satisfied,’ he warned, ‘if genuinely empty space is available.’210 Hitler also announced that he expected the military, civil and party authorities to act accordingly, which was also a signal that he did not want them to be the first to take flight.211 He was well aware of the misery of the refugees, many of whom fled on wagon trains; his decree of 23 March 1945 noted the ‘lack of fodder’ in the Reich caused by the number of ‘trek-horses from the eastern territories’.212 Towards the end of the month, Hitler relented a little, and gave permission for the priority evacuation of the wounded and refugees from Danzig and Gotenhafen, rather than of the equipment from Pillau.213
The net result of the Allied advances and the Anglo-American bombing in March 1945 was the final collapse of the German war economy. With Upper Silesia lost, even Speer threw in the towel. On 15 March 1945, he sent Hitler a memorandum in which he warned that ‘the final collapse of the German economy was to be expected with certainty within 4–8 weeks’, after which ‘the war could no longer be continued militarily’.214 A few days later, at his last Führerkonferenz, Speer warned Hitler of the effect of Allied attacks on production, especially of steel, which had dropped to two-thirds of previous output.215 The fall of Danzig knocked out one of three U-boat assembly sites. The Ruhr was about to fall into Allied hands, and it was already effectively cut off from the rest of Germany by the destruction of railways and canals; Hitler was told in late March 1945 that no coal had been received from there for eight days.216 The Führer was now in the strange situation of having plenty of men, but too few weapons; this was another reason why he baulked at arming the Ukrainians and Indians.217 He also had more workers than factories to employ them.
Speer’s memorandum seems to have induced something close to panic in Hitler. Three days later, he ordered the evacuation of the civilian population of all western territories threatened by the Anglo-American advance, by foot if necessary.218 This would have involved the flight of millions of people, far more than from East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania. Here the boot was on the other foot than in the east, where Hitler did his best to discourage people from taking to the road. Most people either welcomed the Anglo-American advance, or simply looked forward to an end to the bombing and shelling. Goebbels, for once, disagreed with Hitler. ‘The Führer has now decided,’ he recorded in mid March 1945, ‘that one should continue to evacuate in the west, despite the extraordinary difficulties that are associated with it.’ This was just not practical, Goebbels continued, ‘because the population simply refuses to leave their villages and towns’.219 One would have to use force, and that might backfire. Most people stayed put. After a few days, Speer persuaded Hitler not to proceed with the idea.
A day after ordering the evacuation in the west, Hitler issued his notorious ‘Nero Order’ (19 March 1945). It demanded that all ‘transport, communications, industrial and supply installations’ in danger of being overrun by the enemy should be destroyed.220 One should no longer assume that they could be recaptured intact, because any installations would be wrecked by the Allies before they withdrew. This task was to be carried out by the military authorities. Hitler’s decree on industry struck a new and much bleaker tone, because it was effectively an admission that the war was lost. The practical effect was minimal. Speer protested energetically against the measure, which was then qualified by two further decrees. On 30 March 1945, Hitler laid down that ‘on no account must the measures taken weaken [our] own fighting capacity’. He also conceded that ‘production should be maintained [until the last possible moment]’, even at the risk of losing intact plants to ‘rapid movements of the enemy’. Factories and other installations were to be destroyed only when they were ‘immediately’ threatened by the enemy. Wherever possible they were to be ‘immobilized’ with a view to their later recapture rather than completely destroyed.221 Clearly, Hitler had overcome his initial panic.
The ‘Nero Order’ can be interpreted as evidence of Hitler’s disenchantment with the German people. According to Speer’s account, he believed that, having lost the war, they did not need any economy to sustain them. This view assumes that Hitler moved from an exalted view of the German people to a feeling that they had ‘failed’ him. In fact, the Führer had always had a very ambivalent attitude towards the German Volk. His whole programme, after all, was designed to address its alleged weaknesses. Moreover, we only have Speer’s word for it.222 Neither the Nero Order itself, nor any of Hitler’s own correspondence, nor anything he said subsequently suggests that Hitler had given up on the German people. No doubt he became frustrated and even petulant, and he may well have let off steam with Speer, but the intent of his policy was not condemnatory and destructive, but exhortatory and regenerative. The more heroically the German people fell, the Führer believed, the more quickly and completely they would rise again.
Hitler was now preparing for the end. Sometime in the course of March, the air attacks on the Reich capital became so intense that the military briefings were moved underground permanently.223 On 7 March, despite his request that she remain at Berchtesgaden, Eva Braun joined him in Berlin. The rapid approach of the Allies meant that a siege of the city was imminent. Hitler would now have to decide whether to stay in Berlin or move to some sort of–largely mythical–‘Alpine Redoubt’ in the south.224 He was still making up his mind. A major consideration in his mind was the threat of Allied air attack. Berchtesgaden was horribly exposed. When he was asked in late March whether it would be permissible to reduce the smokescreen around the Obersalzberg at least in his absence in order to conserve stocks, Hitler reminded his interlocutor that ‘that is one of the last bolt-holes we have’. One serious air attack, he predicted, and ‘the entire installation will be gone’. For this reason, Hitler seems already to have been tending towards staying in Berlin. A surreal conversation in late March 1945, during which he discussed the question of knocking down the street lights on each side of the ‘east–west axis’ to enable the creation of a runway to fly in supplies, also suggests that Hitler was disinclined to leave the city.225
April 1945 proved to be the last month of Hitler’s life. On its first day, the British and Americans surrounded Model’s Army Group B in the ‘Ruhr Pocket’.226 Many of his men lacked basic firearms, such was the lack of equipment, or at least of transport to bring it to the front, despite the fact that they were fighting in what had been the industrial heart of the Reich. Hitler rejected a request for aerial resupply out of hand. In northern Germany, the British reached the Elbe. Hitler, who was anxious to prevent
the northern half of the Reich being cut off, stressed that the river ‘should be seen not as a defensive line but as lifeline for the north German space’ which had to be kept open.227 Just over a week later, the British attacked on the eastern side of the Italian peninsula, and five days after that the Americans began their own offensive on the western side. Five days later again, the Allies secured a breakthrough on the entire Italian front. On 14 April 1945, the Anglo-Americans split the Ruhr Pocket in two. The eastern half surrendered on 16 April 1945, followed by the western half a day later. An entire army group of nineteen divisions–350,000 men–went into Anglo-American captivity. It was by far the largest single German surrender of the war. Their commander, Field Marshal Model, committed suicide a few days later. The Allied forces now fanned out in all directions. On 19/20 April, the Americans captured Leipzig. Eisenhower held back, however, from a direct attack on Berlin.
In the air, the assault on German infrastructure and cities continued, at a slightly slower pace than the previous month. These were now blows upon bruises. Most of the targets had already been attacked many times before. The attacks were not, however, random or sadistic, but followed a clear military or political rationale.228 On 9/10 April, the RAF sank the Admiral Scheer in Kiel harbour. The following afternoon, Dönitz reported to Hitler that no fewer than twenty-four U-boats had been destroyed in shipyards and harbours since the start of the month, and another twelve damaged.229 Six days later, the RAF sent the Lützow to the bottom at Swinemünde. On 10 April the RAF, which had already launched thirteen raids on Plauen in Saxony, completed the destruction of that unfortunate city. The USAAF hit Dresden again on 17 April. On 18 April 1945, the RAF launched a massive air-raid on the tiny island of Heligoland in the North Sea, mainly in order to destroy the U-boat installations there. That same night, the British launched their last attack on Berlin. Hitler followed these raids closely and wordlessly in his bunker. There was very little he could do about them. In desperation, the Luftwaffe mounted ‘Operation Werewolf’ over the Steinhuder Meer, which involved the sacrificial deployment of ‘ramming fighters’ to crash directly into the Allied bombers. That same day, the Japanese kamikaze pilots launched themselves against the American fleet off Okinawa.
Meanwhile, the Russians progressively eliminated the German pockets of resistance along the Baltic, which were being resupplied by the Kriegsmarine, and moved ever closer to Berlin. Hitler upbraided the Wehrmacht for being unwilling, by contrast with the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, to fight with their backs against the sea.230 On 9 April 1945, Königsberg surrendered. Hitler ordered its commander, General Lasch, to be condemned to death in absentia and gave orders for the arrest of his family. At Hitler’s insistence, in keeping with his submarine strategy, the Wehrmacht still clung to Kurland and indeed remained there until the end of the war. These highly trained divisions, some of them armoured, were missing on the central front, where the next Soviet blow was to be expected. By 9 April, the Red Army was advancing into central Vienna and the city surrendered four days later. Hitler followed all these developments closely, frequently intervening in decisions, but there was now an increasing air of unreality as he engaged in pointless command reshuffles, reorganized non-existent units, and brooded for hours over Giesler and Speer’s architectural models.
In mid April 1945, Hitler was still hoping against hope that he could split the Allied coalition, either by delivering a devastating blow with the new weaponry, through exploiting the internal contradictions of the Grand Alliance or through some other miracle.231 He was determined to maintain his military capability, refusing, for example, to guarantee no first use of his substantial remaining stocks of chemical weapons.232 On 12 April, his spirits soared when he heard of the sudden death of President Roosevelt.233 Hitler’s euphoria reflected the extent to which he had long regarded the American president as the linchpin of a global coalition against him. It proved infectious, at least for a few moments. That evening, Bormann rang his Gauleiter to tell them that Roosevelt’s death was ‘the best news we have had for years’ and that they should announce to ‘all men that the most dangerous man of this war is dead’.234 Three days later, Wolff came to report on the progress of negotiations with the Allies in northern Italy, though it is doubtful that he told Hitler the truth about how far they had developed.235
The physical and mental pressure on Hitler was now immense. Dönitz speaks of his ‘great spiritual strain’ and ‘extraordinary inner suffering’. Hitler was also increasingly prone to choleric eruptions against all and sundry, principally the Wehrmacht leadership. ‘Though generally controlled and stoic,’ Dönitz testified, ‘he could very easily become agitated to the extent of erupting in powerful rages.’ Despite this, most accounts agree that Hitler remained lucid until shortly before the end, and perhaps to the very end. Kesselring, the commander in the west, who last saw him on 12 April 1945, spoke of his continuing ‘intellectual vigour’, which stood ‘in conspicuous contradiction to his bodily feeling’.236 Dönitz, whose final meeting with Hitler was nine days later, states that ‘there can be no question of any kind of reduction in his intellectual powers’. Hitler, he insisted, remained in full control of his senses and retained his astonishing technical knowledge.237
Far from closing his eyes to the military realities, Hitler was now preparing for the inevitable moment when the Reich would be split in half, either by the British advance on the Elbe, or a meeting between the American and Soviet forces east of Leipzig.238 On 15 April, he issued an instruction for a revised command structure for the eventuality of ‘interruption of the land connection in central Germany’. Hitler left open which part of the Reich he would choose, stating only that he would retain supreme command there. If he found himself in the southern half of the Reich, then command in the north should pass to Admiral Dönitz. In the event of Hitler ending up in the northern half, the command of the southern part of the Reich would pass to Kesselring. ‘For the rest,’ he added, there would be ‘no change’ in the current ‘unified conduct of operations by myself’, at least so long as the communications situation permitted.239
On 16 April, the Red Army launched a massive attack on the Seelow Heights above the Oder.240 That same day, Hitler issued his last Tagesbefehl, addressing the ‘soldiers of the eastern front’. It was a blood-curdling warning that the ‘Jewish Bolshevik mortal enemy’ planned ‘to smash Germany and to exterminate our people’. If they did their duty, he promised, then ‘this last assault of Asia’ would be repulsed, just as the ‘breach’ made by the ‘enemies in the west’ would be dealt with.241 ‘In this moment, in which fate has removed the greatest war criminal of all times [Roosevelt] from the face of the earth,’ he concluded, ‘the turning point of this war will be decided.’ He also sent reinforcements, mainly Volkssturm and Hitler Youth anti-tank teams.242 To the north, Rokossovsky’s Second White Russian Front advanced into Mecklenburg, covering Zhukov’s drive on Berlin. To the south, Koniev’s Ukrainian Front pushed back Schörner’s Army Group Centre and swung north towards the capital. Within a few days, the Wehrmacht was forced to fall back to Berlin. Hitler was now relying on Gruppe Steiner, north of Berlin, Busse’s 9th Army to the south-east and Walther Wenck’s 12th Army to the south-west of the capital to come to his rescue.
In the midst of the confusion, Hitler celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. On 20 April 1945, virtually the entire Nazi political and military leadership assembled to congratulate their Führer one last time. The mood, unsurprisingly, was subdued, not helped by the final Allied air raid on the city.243 Many of those present urged Hitler to leave the city for Berchtesgaden before it was too late. Hitler seems to have seriously considered doing so, because on the same day he issued Dönitz with instructions to prepare for the ‘immediate’ defence of the ‘north’, which suggest that he himself was intending to head south.244 That afternoon, Hitler was filmed in the Chancellery garden decorating a delegation of Hitler Youth who had distinguished themselves against the Russians; it is the last known footage of
the Führer. His hand was visibly shaking. The next day, Hitler was woken up by Russian gunfire; the first Soviet long-range artillery shells landed in the city. Zhukov was moving much more quickly than expected. Thanks to the huge forces still deployed in Kurland, Scandinavia and elsewhere, Hitler only had about 100,000 men to defend the capital, many fewer than in the Baltic, most of them of doubtful value. On 22 April 1945, Hitler was again woken by the sound of Russian artillery,245 now closer. That same day, a relief offensive by Steiner, in which the Führer had vested all his hopes, never materialized. Hitler reacted with an eruption in front of a small number of generals which has gone down in legend. Contemporaries speak of him having some kind of ‘breakdown’.
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