Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

by women, and a fearful population not daring to think of the future, described the scene on 26 January: ‘It’s night as we leave the house. On the old road to Pillau the wagon-wheels grind endlessly as they pass by. Alongside, people of every age and position pull their sledges or push fully-laden prams. No one looks back.’³⁶ One woman remarked: ‘The Fuhrer won’t let us fall into Russian hands. He’ll gas us instead.’³⁷ No one took any notice of such an extraordinary remark. Others discussed how much cyanide was needed to commit suicide; it was as if they were talking about what to have for the next meal.³⁸

A boy fleeing from the collapsing front in Poland travelled, together with his mother and sister, for two days and two nights in an overcrowded train heading for Breslau. From the window of the train, he observed the bodies of German soldiers along the wayside, hanged with notices round their neck denouncing them as cowards and deserters, and roads full of slaughtered cattle which their owners had been unable to drive off.³⁹ A couple who managed to jump on the last train to leave from Breslau told of ‘refugees who almost trampled each other to death, of bodies thrown out of unheated goods trains during the journey, of those trekking coming to a standstill on the streets, of mothers gone mad who did not want to believe that the babies they carried in their arms were already dead.’⁴⁰ Within days, Berlin was among the cities swarming with refugees from the east, bitter and angry. ‘Those who have lost everything, also lose their fear,’ as one account put it. The police, for the time being, did not intervene.⁴¹

Horror stories filtering out and exploited by propaganda about the treatment of the German population unable to leave before Soviet troops arrived intensified the panic.⁴² ‘The refugees arriving here from, the eastern Gaue are bringing for the most part quite shattering news of the misery of the fleeing population which, partly in panic, has sought refuge within the Reich from the Bolsheviks,’ was noted in a regional report from Lower Bavaria.⁴³ All too often the horror stories were true as soldiers of the Red Army, frequently drunk and out of control, wreaked vengeance for what had been done to their own people on the families who fell into their hands in orgies of plundering, rape, beatings, killings, and other forms of terrifying maltreatment.⁴⁴ One careful estimate suggests that as many as 1.4 million women were raped in the eastern territories — some 18 per cent of the female population of those regions. In East Prussia, the percentage may well have been much higher.⁴⁵

Fear of capture by the Red Army was by no means confined to the civilian population. Reports reaching Himmler left no illusions of collapsing morale among German troops in the battle zones of the east. This was especially pronounced among the units hastily put together from ‘stragglers (Versprengte)’ — soldiers who had broken away from their original units as these had been broken up by enemy action or had scattered in disarray. Here, there was no semblance of corporate spirit or readiness to fight. Fear of atrocities and summary shooting on capture by the Red Army dominated; panic prevailed.⁴⁶ Robbery and plundering by German soldiers were also reported. Desertions were sharply on the increase. Retreats could be seen to be turning into routs. The last train to leave the West Prussian town of Bromberg carrying refugees westwards had many of its places snatched by armed soldiers at the expense of women and children who were left behind. Nazi Party functionaries were often also at the forefront of the rush to leave for safer havens.⁴⁷

To combat the unmistakably growing signs of demoralization and disintegration, improvised courts to mete out summary punishment were established not just within the Wehrmacht but also for the civilian population.⁴⁸ The slightest utterance that smacked of defeatism could result in immediate and draconian retribution.⁴⁹ The terror which had earlier been ‘exported’ to the subjugated peoples under the Nazi jackboot was now being directed by the regime, in its death throes, at the German people themselves. It was the surest sign that, apart from ever-dwindling numbers of fanatics and the desperadoes with nothing to lose, the regime had forfeited any basis of mass support.

Even the threat of summary execution was insufficient to halt the evident signs of demoralization and war- weariness — especially noticeable in the western parts of the Reich. Appeals to heroism, sacrifice, holding out to the last man, fell largely on deaf ears. Most people, soldiers as well as civilians, wanted nothing more than to survive, and to see an end to the bombing, fighting, and suffering. They would have agreed with the scornful comment of a Berlin journalist: ‘Hold out. Most stupid of all slogans. So, they’ll hold out until they’re all dead. There’s no other salvation.’⁵⁰ In contrast to the situation on the eastern front, many — boosted by rumours of good treatment in districts captured by the Americans — were by now prepared to take their chances under the western Allies rather than to continue the struggle. ‘The population is evidently waiting for the entry of the Americans,’ ran a Wehrmacht report from the area around Mayen, a small town between Rhine and Mosel, ‘and has sabotaged directly or indirectly all measures taken by German soldiers to defend places. As I observed myself, white flags were prepared, everything indicating Party membership was burned, and the fighting soldiers were urged to put on civilian clothing…’ Similar reports came in from other districts in the Rhineland.⁵¹

In the south of the country it was little different. People in the Augsburg region were said to be following ‘with horror the events in the east of the Reich, where the storm-flood of the Soviets surges over (umbrandet) the borders of the homeland.’⁵² War-weariness, deeply downcast mood, great anxiety, and loss of any hope for a favourable outcome to the war were registered generally. The constant fear of air-raids plagued the nerves. ‘Today was terrible with the planes (Fliegern)’, one woman from the Black Forest noted in her diary in February. ‘It’s never been as bad. Almost the whole day they were flying backwards and forwards. We were terribly afraid. It can’t go on like this for much longer.’⁵³ The despondency was maximized where devastating raids — such as the attack on Nuremberg on 2 January that destroyed 29,500 homes, killed 1,794 persons, and wiped out the medieval ‘Old town’ — caused massive damage and loss of life.⁵⁴ In Dresden, bodies of the tens of thousands killed in the raid on 13 — 14 February — men, women, and children — were piled high and loaded on to any available lorry or cart. Tractors dug mass graves, but the dead could not be buried fast enough and the stench of rotting corpses forced the authorities to turn to mass cremations on the old market square — an unforgettable experience for those forced to witness it.⁵⁵

One boy, deployed with others in the Deutsches Jungvolk — the preparatory organization for the Hitler Youth — to help in emergency clearance work after a raid on his small home-town in Thuringia, observed soldiers carrying out charcoaled corpses from a neighbouring burnt-out house. They were the first dead that he and his friends had seen in the war ‘and we were so shocked that we lost all our courage’.⁵⁶ Even so, the Hitler Youth probably contained, outside the dwindling ranks of Party fanatics, most of the remaining idealists — reared on myths of heroism, ready to follow the call to the last, tirelessly serving as helpers on flak units, tending refugees, looking after the wounded, clearing up after air-raids, and trying ultimately to fend off Soviet tanks with bazookas. One boy, injured in an air-raid, managed to stand to attention when an officer came by, asking him if he was in pain: ‘Yes, but that’s not important,’ he replied. ‘Germany must be victorious.’⁵⁷

Such voices were by now largely confined to the naive and the blindly credulous. Fear of instant and ferocious reprisals made most people cautious in the extreme in their comments, other than to close friends and relatives. It was too early for inquests on the causes of the war, let alone for moral reflections. But, aware that the suffering and sacrifice demanded of them in the war had been immense, but in vain, they looked to assign blame. However camouflaged the language, it was obvious that this was directed at the Party leadership — and at Hitler himself.⁵⁸

‘Trust in the leadership shrinks ever more,’ ran a summary, compiled in early March, of letters monitored by officials of the Propaganda Ministry, ‘because the proclaimed counter-blow to liberate our occupied eastern provinces did not take place and because the manifold promises of an imminent shift in fortunes have proven incapable of fulfilment… Criticism of the upper leadership ranks of the Party and of the military leadership is especially bitter.’⁵⁹ Shortly afterwards, a report from the Propaganda Office in Halle-Merseburg — the sort of report usually keen to refrain from any hint of negativity — summed up the mood in that area in language which, however coded, could not disguise the extent of anti-Hitler feeling: ‘Those who still unwaveringly and unshakeably trusted the words of the Fuhrer that the historic shift in our favour would still take place in this year were said to have a very hard time in face of the doubters and miseries. Whatever the unshakeable faith in the Fuhrer, people are not refraining from remarking that, for certain, the Fuhrer could not be informed by the military authorities about the true situation, otherwise it would not have come to the present serious crisis.’⁶⁰