The End by Ian Kershaw
Despite such sentiments, he had not conceded defeat. He still saw in late February, so his aide Wilfred von Oven recorded, a slim chance of avoiding complete disaster if Germany were to gain some time, then – a delusion he shared with other leading Nazis – negotiate to let in the western Allies to join in a fight against Bolshevism. But he readily admitted that Hitler did not share this view and still insisted that 1945 would bring the decisive change for the better in Germany’s fortunes.150 He was sceptical about Hitler’s extraordinary adherence to undiluted optimism.151 But a visit to the Führer bunker was nevertheless invariably an antidote to any fleeting moments of depression. The atmosphere there, increasingly given to flights from reality, usually dissipated his doubts and pandered to his willingness to believe in some near miraculous change in war fortunes.152 After one visit, in mid-February, he came away enthused by discussions with the architect Hermann Giesler, who had just shown a fascinated Hitler his model of Linz as it was to be after the war. Giesler told Goebbels, as he had indicated to Hitler, that he thought most German towns could be rebuilt within three to five years. Goebbels found himself, as in 1933 at the end of the struggle for power, longing to take part in the work of reconstruction.153 He still pressed, as he had long done, for a radicalization of the home front, the dismissal of Göring and Ribbentrop (both of whom he regarded as utter failures and an obstacle to any new initiatives), and a search even at this late stage for a political solution to end the war. But he remained, as always, a faithful acolyte of Hitler, unwilling and unable to take an independent step. He saw Hitler as a stoical disciple of Frederick the Great, fulfilling his duty to the end, ‘a model and an example to us all’.154 For Goebbels, too, reality and illusion were by this time closely interwoven.
More realistic than other Nazi leaders in his appraisal of the situation was Albert Speer. On 30 January, as it happened the twelfth anniversary of the ‘takeover of power’, he submitted a lengthy memorandum to Hitler outlining the armaments situation for February and March. He pointed out the dire consequences from the loss of Upper Silesia, hitherto Germany’s last intact coal-producing area. He provided figures demonstrating the dramatic fall over the previous year of weapons and munitions production. At the current levels of coal and raw steel capacity, it was, he wrote, impossible to sustain the German economy for long. Collapse could only be delayed for a few months. After the loss of Upper Silesia, the armaments industry was no longer remotely in a position to cover the demand for weaponry to replace losses at the front. Speer concluded his memorandum in underlined bold type: ‘The material superiority of the enemy can accordingly no longer be countered by the bravery of our soldiers.’155
Goebbels drew the logical conclusion from the memorandum – which he recognized as showing ‘things as they really are’ – that Speer was indicating the need to try to find a political way out of the war. But he saw no prospect of that.156 He was right to be pessimistic. Hitler forbade Speer to give his memorandum to anyone else – somewhat belatedly, since Goebbels and others had already seen it – and, referring specifically to its conclusions, told him coldly that he alone was entitled to draw conclusions from the armaments situation.157 That was an end to the matter, as Speer acknowledged.
Hitler’s authority was still intact.158 In sustaining his unchallengeable leadership position, he could thank, now as before, in no small part his provincial chieftains, the Gauleiter. Although he had to insist in early February that the Gauleiter blindly follow orders from Berlin and stop the tendency ‘to govern in their own way’ – actually a tendency that grew, rather than diminished, in the last weeks of the war – he was soon afterwards lavishing praise on them for their utter dependency in controlling matters of civil defence.159 Most of them, like Gauleiter Albert Forster of Danzig-West Prussia, had probably given up hope of a positive outcome to the war for Germany.160 But whatever their private feelings and the secret hopes some of them cherished of escaping the tightening vice, they remained a group of outright loyalists.
Summoned to what turned out to be their last meeting with Hitler, in the Reich Chancellery on 24 February 1945, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the Party Programme, the Gauleiter – minus Koch and Hanke, unable to leave East Prussia and Breslau respectively – initially shared criticisms and complaints with each other, not least about Bormann. But they were ‘all still full of belief in victory’, at least on the surface. In truth, they were anxious about betraying any defeatist sentiment. Karl Wahl, Gauleiter of Swabia, had the feeling, so he wrote later, that ‘they all lived on the moon’.161 When Hitler finally arrived, they were shocked at his appearance – that of an old, ill, physical wreck of a man, whose left arm shook the whole time. Tears came into Wahl’s eyes at the sight of such a decrepit individual; for him, it was ‘the end of the world’.162
Hitler had begun the meeting by shaking hands with each individual Gauleiter for what seemed an age, looking them in the eye as he did so. But his speech, an hour and a half long, was a disappointment. He spoke at great length, as he had done so often, about the past – the First World War, his entry into politics, the growth of the Party, the triumph of 1933, the reshaping of Germany thereafter – but hardly touched upon what they had come to hear: how Germany stood in the war. What he had to say about the impact of new U-boats and jet-planes was less than convincing. The much-vaunted ‘miracle weapons’ were not even mentioned. It seemed a far cry from the old Hitler. But after the formal proceedings, he relaxed visibly in their company over a simple meal until, their own conversations petering out, they all found themselves listening, as ever, to a monologue. Hitler spoke now with a verve earlier lacking about the certainty that ‘the alliance of madness’ ranged against Germany would break up into two irreconcilable fronts, and of the dangers for the west in a pyrrhic victory that would raise Bolshevism to a dominant position in Europe. ‘Our depressed mood evaporates,’ recalled one Gauleiter, Rudolf Jordan, Party boss of Magdeburg-Anhalt. ‘The disappointment of the last hours has vanished. We experience the old Hitler.’ They were left in no doubt: he would fight on to the bitter end.163
That much was clear, as it always had been. There could be no talk of defeat, no talk of surrender. It was good to have burnt one’s bridges.164 On the evening of 12 February the communiqué from the Yalta Conference, where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill had met for a week in crucial deliberation to determine the post-war shape of Europe, was read in Berlin. The communiqué stipulated that Germany would be divided and demilitarized, the Nazi Party abolished, and war criminals put on trial. There could now be no lingering doubt for Nazi leaders that Germany’s fate was sealed; there would be no negotiated end to the war; ‘unconditional surrender’ meant just that.165 For Hitler, it simply confirmed what he already knew. ‘I’ve always said: “there can be no question of a capitulation!” ’ was his response to Yalta. ‘History does not repeat itself!’166
7
Crumbling Foundations
Is there nobody there who will restrain the madman and call a halt? Are they still generals? No, they are shitbags, cowardly poltroons. They are cowards! Not the ordinary soldier.
Diary entry of an officer in the west, 7 April 19451
I
By March 1945, Allies were closing in east and west for the kill as the Reich’s military weakness was fully exposed.2 The eastern front was reinforced at the expense of the west, but the troops were invariably already battle-weary and, increasingly, ill-trained young recruits. The huge losses could simply no longer be made good. The fighting strength of divisions had fallen drastically. The greatly weakened, though still tenaciously fighting, German forces faced an impossible task in trying to halt the Red Army, once it had regrouped and consolidated its supply lines after the big advance of January. In the west, the Ardennes offensive had inflicted a temporary shock rather than a major reversal on the western Allies. They soon regathered and prepared for the assault on the western frontiers of the Reich, against a Wehrmacht whose impoverishe
After the disasters of January, the Army High Command did all it could to reinforce the front in Pomerania and along the Oder. Army Group Vistula, commanded by Himmler and comprising twenty-five infantry and eight panzer divisions, defended an extensive sector running from Elbing in the east to the Oder, little more than 80 kilometres north-east of Berlin. The whole of its southern flank, however, faced the Red Army, impatient to press northwards towards the Baltic coast. Once a weak German counter-offensive in mid-February had fairly easily been parried, the loss of Pomerania – allowing the Soviets to secure their northern flank for the coming assault on Berlin – swiftly became unstoppable. On 4 March, the Red Army reached the Baltic coast between Köslin and Kolberg. The coastal town of Kolberg was a vital strategic stronghold. The spectacular colour film Kolberg (referred to in an earlier chapter), which Goebbels had commissioned, depicted the town’s heroic defence against Napoleon’s forces.3 This time there was, however, to be no heroic defence. Kolberg was besieged on 7 March and declared by Hitler a ‘fortress’ to be held at all costs. The town commandant held out only until the civilians – including around 60,000 refugees, many of them wounded – could be shipped away by the navy,4 then left himself over the sea on 18 March, along with the town’s remaining defence force.5
Other Pomeranian strongholds were lost soon afterwards. By 20 March, after days of bitter fighting, Stettin’s harbour and wharves had been wrecked and could no longer be used by the German navy, though German troops held onto a bridgehead and the city itself, now largely deserted, fell to the Soviets only towards the end of April. Gotenhafen (Gdynia) held out until 28 March and the key city of Danzig till 30 March, enabling the navy to ferry many desperate refugees and wounded civilians and soldiers to safety. By this time, German forces in Pomerania had been broken, then crushed. What remained of them, around 100,000 men, retreated to the long thin Hela peninsula, facing Gdynia in the Bay of Danzig, and the Vistula delta, where they remained down to the capitulation. Overall, between the beginning of February and middle of April Army Group Vistula suffered losses of around 143,000 officers and men killed, wounded or missing.
In East Prussia, the battered forces of Army Group North still comprised thirty-two divisions in early February, twenty-three of them, belonging to the 4th Army, in the heavily fortified Heilsberg pocket, about 180 kilometres long and 50 deep. A second grouping was besieged in Königsberg, a third, the 3rd Panzer Army, contained on the Samland peninsula. For a brief time in mid-February, intense fighting opened up a corridor from the encircled Königsberg to Pillau, the last remaining port in German hands in the province. This enabled some civilians in Königsberg to escape and provisions to be brought in for the garrison. Once the corridor was closed off again, the fate of the remaining inhabitants of Königsberg was sealed, though capitulation did not follow until 9 April. Meanwhile, the position of the troops in the Heilsberg pocket had worsened sharply. The replacement of Renduli´c by Colonel-General Walter Weiß as Commander-in-Chief Army Group North on 12 March could bring no improvement. By 19 March, the German pocket was reduced to an area of no more than about 30 kilometres long and 10 deep, exposed on all sides to intense Soviet firepower. By the time the last remnants of the 4th Army were transported across the Frisches Haff from Balga, then to safety from Pillau on 29 March, only 58,000 men and around another 70,000 wounded could be rescued out of an original complement of half a million. The eight divisions left on Samland continued to fight on for some weeks until Pillau was eventually taken on 25 April, when the broken and demoralized remainder retreated to the Frische Nehrung. There they stayed – though with further losses through repeated heavy Soviet bombardment – until the end of the war.
On the Oder, the German 9th Army, under General Theodor Busse, sought, with weakened forces, to hold the defences of the heavily fortified town of Küstrin and the designated fortress of Frankfurt an der Oder. Reinforcements were rushed to the area, but could not compensate for the blood-letting in the fierce fighting – the Panzer Division Kurmark alone lost between 200 and 350 men a day – and the Soviets were able gradually to extend their bridgehead. By early March, Küstrin could be supplied only through a narrow corridor, 3 kilometres wide, which was closed off on 22 March. Much of Küstrin fell on 13 March after bitter street-fighting over previous days, but what remained of the fifteen battalions defending the town under the leadership of SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Reinefarth – the former police chief in the Wartheland who had also been prominent in the savage brutality used to put down the rising in Warsaw – retreated within the old fortress walls. When an attempted counter-offensive to relieve the siege failed, amid high German casualties, Guderian was made the scapegoat. He became the last Chief of the General Staff to be dismissed by Hitler, on 28 March, when he was replaced by General Hans Krebs. A second attempt to reach Küstrin that same day had to be abandoned after a few hours. Reinefarth ignored Hitler’s order to fight to the last and the garrison of almost a thousand officers and men managed to break out of the encirclement on 30 March, just before Küstrin fell. For this disobedience he was court-martialled and was fortunate to escape with his life.
Further south on the Oder, in Lower Silesia, the Red Army made relatively slow progress. Schörner’s Army Group Centre, comprising some twenty infantry and eight panzer divisions, battled ferociously, though in the end vainly. The Germans fought hard to keep open a corridor to Breslau, though once this was closed by 16 February some 40,000 troops (along with 80,000 civilians) were sealed off in the Silesian capital. Another 9,000 were encircled to the north in Glogau. Tough German resistance was unable to prevent the Soviets reaching the right bank of the Neiße near its confluence with the Oder by 24 February. In mid-March, a big drive by the Red Army in the Oppeln area overcame fierce fighting to surround and destroy five German divisions. Around 30,000 Germans were killed, another 15,000 captured. When Ratibor fell on 31 March, the last large industrial city in Silesia was lost to the Germans. What was left of Army Group Centre was forced back onto the western reaches of the Neiße and south-west into the Sudetenland.
On the southern flank of the eastern front, where nineteen infantry and nine panzer divisions were located, the intense fighting around Budapest which had lasted for weeks was finally reaching its dénouement. Ferocious street-fighting – ultimately in the sewers – came to an end on 13 February. Between them, the Germans and Hungarians had lost 50,000 men killed and 138,000 captured in the battle for Budapest. Soviet losses were even higher. Heavy fighting continued to the west of Budapest. Hitler insisted, against Guderian’s advice, on a counter-offensive centred on Lake Balaton. A successful outcome, so ran the strategic thinking, would free nine divisions to be sent to the Oder for an eventual counter-offensive there in May. It would also block the Soviet approaches to Vienna. Most crucially, it was vital to the continuation of Germany’s war effort to retain control of the remaining oil wells in the region. Sepp Dietrich’s 6th SS-Panzer Army, refreshed since the failure in the Ardennes, was sent down to spearhead the attack, which began on 6 March. The German forces battled their way forwards around 20–30 kilometres over a 50-kilometre stretch, but after ten days, amid heavy losses and exhaustion, the attempt ran out of steam. General Otto Wöhler, Commander-in-Chief Army Group South, gave out orders to fight to the last. But even the elite troops of the 6th SS-Panzer Army preferred retreat to pointless self-sacrifice. The orders were disobeyed as Dietrich’s men fought their way back westwards into Austria in some disarray, narrowly avoiding complete destruction, but abandoning much heavy equipment as they went. In blind fury, Hitler ordered that Sepp Dietrich’s units, including his own bodyguard, the ‘Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler’, should be stripped of their armbands in
By the end of March, the Red Army had made significant headway on all parts of the eastern front. Berlin was now under imminent threat. In the west, too, February and March saw German defences put up stiff opposition, but ultimately crumble as the western Allies were able to cross the Rhine, the last big natural barrier protecting the Reich, and advance deep into Germany itself.
By February 1945, Germany’s western front was defended by 462,000 soldiers in fifty-nine divisions (about a third as many as on the eastern front). These were hopelessly outnumbered by the forces of the western Allies, who by this time had more than 3.5 million men on the European continent. The German divisions were smaller than earlier in the war, on average just under 8,000 men, and the actual fighting strength of each of them only about half that number – many of them young recruits, already worn down by constant fighting. Tanks, artillery and aircraft, like manpower, had had to be sacrificed for the eastern front. It was made clear to the commanders of the western army groups – Army Group H in the north under Colonel-General Johannes Blaskowitz (who had replaced Colonel-General Kurt Student on 28 January), Army Group B in the centre of the front under Field-Marshal Walter Model, and Army Group G in the south led by Colonel-General of the Waffen-SS Paul Hausser – that, given the situation in the east, they could reckon with reinforcements of neither men nor matériel. The imbalance with the armaments of the western Allies was massive – and most pronounced in the air, where Allied supremacy was as good as total.