Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

percentage in agriculture). And although, partly through Goebbels’s measures, it proved possible to send around a million men to the front between August and December 1944, German losses in the first three of those months numbered 1,189,000 dead and wounded.¹³⁰ Whatever the trumpeting by Goebbels of his achievements as Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort, the reality was that he was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

And among the most bizarre aspects of the ‘total war’ drive in the second half of 1944 was the fact that at precisely the time he was combing out the last reserves of manpower, Goebbels — according to film director Veit Harlan — was allowing him, at Hitler’s express command, to commandeer 187,000 soldiers, withdrawn from active service, as extras for the epic colour film of national heroism, Kolberg, depicting the defence of the small Baltic town against Napoleon as a model for the achievements of total war. According to Harlan, Hitler as well as Goebbels was ‘convinced that such a film was more useful than a military victory’.¹³¹ Even in the terminal crisis of the regime, propaganda had to come first.

The evocation of heroic defence of the fatherland by the masses against the invading Napoleonic army — the myth enunciated in Kolberg — was put to direct use in the most vivid expression of the last-ditch drive to ‘total war’: the launching by Heinrich Himmler of the Volkssturm, or people’s militia, on 18 October 1944, the 131st anniversary of the legendary defeat of Napoleon in the ‘Battle of the Peoples’ near Leipzig, when a coalition of forces under Blucher’s leadership liberated German territory from the troops of the French Emperor once and for all.¹³² The Volkssturm was the military embodiment of the Party’s belief in ‘triumph of the will’.¹³³ It was the Party’s attempt to militarize the homeland, symbolizing unity through the people’s participation in national defence, overcoming the deficiencies in weapons and resources through sheer willpower.

Suggestions of creating ‘border protection’ units in the east were put forward as early as mid-July by the Propaganda Ministry following the Red Army’s advance into Lithuania.¹³⁴ But in the weeks following the attempt on Hitler’s life, the initiative in this area was seized primarily by Martin Bormann. In readiness more to combat possible internal unrest than external invasion, Bormann sought in August the assistance of Himmler, as Commander of the Reserve Army, in arming Party functionaries. The Party had also taken over responsibility from the Luftwaffe for anti-aircraft and flak service. The threats from the borders produced new duties, again run by the Party, in digging fortifications, involving women as well as men in the hard manual labour.¹³⁵

Though Goebbels continued to harbour the belief that he would incorporate in his ‘total war’ commission the organization of the ‘Volkswehr’ (People’s Defence), as it was initially to be called, leaving the military aspects to the SA, Bormann and Himmler had come to an agreement to divide responsibility between them. Drafts for a decree by Hitler were put forward in early September. He eventually signed the decree on 26 September, though it was dated to the previous day.¹³⁶ It spoke of the ‘final aim’ of the enemy alliance as ‘the eradication of the German person (Ausrottung des deutschen Menschen)’. This enemy must now be repulsed until a peace securing Germany’s future could be guaranteed. To attain this end, Hitler’s decree went on, in typical parlance, ‘we set the total deployment of all Germans against the known total annihilatory will of our Jewish-international enemies’. In all Party Gaue, the ‘German Volkssturm’ was to be established, comprising all men capable of bearing weapons between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Training, military organization, and provision of weaponry fell to Himmler as Commander of the Reserve Army. Political and organizational matters were the province of Bormann, acting on Hitler’s behalf.¹³⁷ Party functionaries were given the task of forming companies and battalions.¹³⁸ A total number of 6 million Volkssturm men was envisaged.¹³⁹ Each Volkssturm man had to swear an oath that he would be ‘unconditionally loyal and obedient to the Fuhrer of the Great German Reich Adolf Hitler’, and would ‘rather die than abandon the freedom and thereby the social future of my people’.¹⁴⁰

The men called up had to provide their own clothing, as well as eating and drinking utensils, cooking equipment, a rucksack, and blanket.¹⁴¹ And since munitions for the front were in short supply, the weaponry for the men of the Volkssturm was predictably miserable.¹⁴² It was little wonder that the Volkssturm was largely unpopular, and widely seen as pointless on the grounds that the war was already lost. According to one reported comment, the Volkssturm had been called up because ‘there is nothing more to oppose the assault of our enemies with than people and blood’. Another pointed out that the poster bearing the Fuhrer’s decree setting up the Volkssturm looked like notice of an execution — and indeed did announce an execution, ‘the execution of the entire German people’.¹⁴³

The fears, especially on the eastern front, were justified. Gauleiter Erich Koch reported severe losses among Volkssturm units in East Prussia already in October.¹⁴⁴ The losses were militarily pointless. They did not hold up the Red Army’s advance by a single day. In all, approaching 175,000 citizens who were mainly too old, too young, or too weak to fight lost their lives in the Volkssturm.¹⁴⁵ The futility of the losses was a clear sign that Germany was close to military bankruptcy.

As the autumn of 1944 headed towards what would prove the last winter of the war, the fabric of the regime was still holding together. But the indications were that the threads were visibly starting to fray. The closing of the ranks which had followed Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt had temporarily seen a revitalization of the elan of the Party. Hitler had, almost as a reflex, turned inwards to those he trusted. His distance, not just from the army leaders he detested, but also from the organs of state administration, started to extend immeasurably with his increased reliance on a diminishing number of his longstanding paladins. Bormann’s position, dependent upon the combination of his role as head of the Party organization and, especially, his proximity to Hitler as the Fuhrer’s secretary and mouthpiece, guarding the portals and restricting access, was particularly strengthened. He was one of the winners from the changed circumstances after 20 July.¹⁴⁶ Another was Goebbels who, like Bormann, had seized the opportunity to enhance his own position of power as the Party increased its hold over practically all walks of life within Germany. Mobilization and control had been the essence of Party activity since the beginning. Now, as the regime tottered, the Party returned to its elements.

Speer was one of the losers in the aftermath of the bomb plot. He could no longer depend upon his special favour with Hitler. Without a Party base, he began to feel the cold. So, too, as the Party reasserted itself, did Lammers, the only point of coordination between the work of the various Reich ministries and Hitler. Though his relations with Bormann had never been free of tension, they had functioned after a fashion — and had sometimes formed the basis of a pragmatic alliance against other forces in the regime.¹⁴⁷ In autumn 1944, the balance in their positions had started to tip as Bormann’s position strengthened. Contact between the two waned. More important still: Lammers lost his access to Hitler. The chief orchestrator of government business was no longer in a position to discuss that business with the head of state. In a letter to Bormann on 1 January 1945, Lammers, pointing to the early good cooperation, lamented the fact that his last audience with Hitler had been three months earlier, that he had had to give up at the end of October his quarters close to Hitler’s field headquarters, and that Reich Ministers would inevitably have to seek other channels of approach to the Fuhrer if he could not provide them. He had been, he bemoaned, often in the embarrassing situation that he had had to carry responsibility for decisions of the Fuhrer which had simply been transmitted to him, without any possibility of his affecting them and bringing about a different outcome. His lament ended with a pathetic request to Bormann to arrange a brief audience with the Fuhrer so that he could address the many issues which had accumulated in the meantime.¹⁴⁸ With the end of the regime in sight, Hitler had, it seemed obvious, little time for or interest in the normal business of government. Meanwhile, the work of the major offices of state could only fragment further.

Yet another development, from a most unlikely source, provides in retrospect — at the time it was still well concealed — the clearest indication that the regime was starting to teeter. Among the biggest beneficiaries of the failed coup of 20 July 1944 had been Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler.¹⁴⁹ Hitler had given ‘loyal Heinrich’, his trusted head of the labyrinthine security organization, overall responsibility for uncovering the background to the conspiracy and for rounding up the plotters. And beyond his other extensive powers, Himmler had now also gained direct entree into the military sphere as Commander of the Reserve Army, with a remit to undertake a full-scale reorganization. He was soon, as we have seen, also to have control over the people’s militia, the Volkssturm. Yet at this very time, Himmler, conceivably now the most powerful individual in Germany after Hitler, was playing a double game, combining every manifestation of utmost loyalty with secret overtures to the West in the forlorn hope of saving not just his skin but his position of power in the event of the British and Americans eventually seeing sense and turning, with the help of his SS, to fend off the threat of Communism. In October, Himmler used an SS intermediary to put to an Italian industrialist with good connections in England a