12. Guderian, 396–8.
13. DZW, vi.529–36.
14. Guderian, 398.
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 Fuhrer 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 uberall die Runde und wird durch die Berichte der Flucbtlinge uber das Versagen der NSDAP bei der Evakuierung ganzer Gaue erganzt.’) One passage cited from an anonymous letter held to the old fable: ‘If the Fuhrer knew how he is deceived everywhere, he would have swept through long ago.’ (‘Wenn der Fuhrer wu?te, wie er uberall hintergangen wird, hatte er langst 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 Donitz 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 Bevolkerung aus den Gebieten ostlich der Oder- Nei?e, repr. Munich, 1984, Bd.1, 28.
36. Hans Graf von Lehndorff, Ostpreu?isches 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 Dorr, ‘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 Regierungsprasident of Niederbayern and Oberpfalz, 10 March 1945: ‘Die aus den Ostgauen hier eintreffenden Fluchtlinge bringen zum gro?en Teil recht erschutternde Nachrichten von dem Elend der fluchtenden Bevolkerung, die zum Teil panikartig ins Innere des Reiches vor den Bolschewisten gefluchtet 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; Kathe von Normann, Tagebuch aus Pommern 1945/46, Munich (1962), 5th edn, 1984, 12ff. Dorr, 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 Muller and Gerd R. Ueberschar, Kriegsende 1945. Die Zerstorung 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 Regierungsprasident of Schwaben, 7 February 1945: ‘Mit Schrecken verfolgt die Bevolkerung die Ereignisse im Osten des Reiches, wo die Sturmflut der Sowjets die Grenzen der Heimat umbrandet…’
