In a similar realm of ultimately futile speculation is the question of what the outcome might have been to a successful assassination of Hitler and takeover of the state by the conspirators behind the July plot of 1944. Had they succeeded, Stauffenberg and the successful plotters would unquestionably have sought peace with the west, though almost certainly not in the east. Most likely, the west would have refused consideration of anything other than ‘unconditional surrender’ on all fronts, since to do otherwise would have split the coalition with the Soviet Union, which rested fundamentally on the complete destruction of German militarism as well as Nazism. With Hitler dead, the leaders of the successful coup would have been faced with the choice of either accepting the terms of complete capitulation or fighting on. Probably, they would have felt compelled to agree to total surrender. The war might, therefore, have been over in July 1944, with the saving of the immense bloodshed that occurred in subsequent months. But would the military leadership, especially in the east, have agreed? And would Nazi diehards, most notably in the SS, have gone along with it? Shored up by a new ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend focused on the image of the dead, heroic Fuhrer, portrayed as killed by his own officers when leading Germany’s fight for existence, powerful internal forces might have resisted and even toppled the new government. Civil war might have ensued.
In the nature of things, the endless fascination of such ‘what-if?’ speculation can provide no answers. This book has attempted, therefore, to assess not what might have been, but what did in fact happen, and to evaluate on that basis the reasons for Germany fighting on to the end. On the basis of the evidence presented in earlier chapters, it is time to draw the threads of an answer together.
First of all, it was plainly not the case, as has sometimes been claimed, that the population backed Hitler and the Nazi regime to the end. ‘The people have no confidence any longer in the leadership,’ ran an internal report, one of the many cited above, in March 1945. ‘The Fuhrer is drawn more strongly by the day into the question of confidence and into the criticism.’5 The bonds with Hitler, at the top and bottom of society, had, it is true, at least in the short term been strengthened in July 1944 by the failure of Stauffenberg’s bomb plot. As we saw, there was a surge in Hitler’s lagging popularity among the civilian population and among frontline soldiers, to go from their letters home. And most of the generals, even those who were far from regime enthusiasts, were utterly dismayed by the attempt on Hitler’s life, as their private diary entries and remarks not meant for public consumption demonstrate. But apart from this brief resurgence, Hitler’s popularity had been on the wane since winter 1941 and by 1944–5 was in free fall. Significant reserves of his popularity did remain among a dwindling minority of the population—though, to be sure, a minority that still held power. By early 1945, however, support for Hitler was very low.
And by now the Nazi Party was widely hated. As Goebbels admitted, the Party was largely ‘played out’ well before the end, the target of bitter resentment as its functionaries disappeared into the ether, abandoning the population. Despite the intensified efforts of propaganda, the reports reaching Goebbels spoke with a clear voice. Propaganda could do little or nothing to counter what people were seeing with their own eyes. Its gung-ho messages were increasingly scorned by a population yearning for an end to the war and inexorably turning against the regime which had brought such misery upon Germany. There is little to be said for the view that the ‘people’s community’ retained its cohesion and integrative force behind the war effort. The much-vaunted ‘people’s community’ had in fact long since dissolved as it become a question of ‘save yourself, if you can’.
Yet there were important partial affinities that went beyond support for the regime but still objectively underpinned it. Crucially, the regime’s existence was intertwined with defence of country and homeland—a cause upheld by most Germans, even when they despised Hitler and the Nazis. The overwhelming proportion of the population, as numerous internal reports acknowledged, yearned for the end of the war. But there was an obvious ambivalence. Few wanted foreign occupation, least of all by the feared Russians. But as long as they fought to their utmost to avoid being overrun by the enemy, Germans were, whatever their motives and desires, helping the regime to continue functioning. And however demoralized, for the vast majority of Germans there was in any case simply no alternative to carrying on.
The role played by terror in this can scarcely be overstated. Without it there may well have been a popular uprising. But the regime was a grave danger to its own citizens, increasingly so after the sharp intensification of terror in February 1945. Very justifiably, people felt greatly intimidated. In the death-throes of the regime the terror, earlier exported, rebounded back onto the population of Germany itself, and not just its persecuted minorities. Among ordinary soldiers, the numbers of deserters, intermingled with ‘stragglers’, soared. Military courts, as we noted, reacted with harsh exemplary punishment. The summary courts martial introduced in mid-February were no more than kangaroo courts meting out little other than death sentences, and in early March, when such courts were made itinerant, the ‘flying court martial’ could turn up in any frontline area, and within minutes have sentenced to death those denounced as shirkers, defeatists or subversives, carrying out the sentence instantly. Remarkably, military courts were still passing death sentences even after the capitulation. Among civilians, too, anyone stepping out of line, even in desperation, could to the very end meet brutal retribution. Largely owing to the intimidatory effect of such terror, the popular mood was resigned, war-weary and pessimistic, but not rebellious. Those who dared raise their voices, let alone take any action, against the regime were viciously struck down. Most, sensibly, took the view that they could do nothing—except wait for the end and hope that the Americans and British got there before the Russians.
Yet terror does not explain all. It works as an explanation mainly at the grass-roots level. Tens of thousands of soldiers deserted, and many faced summary execution as a consequence. But even here, and bearing in mind the wider intimidatory effect of the drastic punishment awaiting those refusing to fight, the vast majority did not desert—or even contemplate deserting. They fought on, often fatalistically, even reluctantly, but frequently even in the last desperate weeks with high commitment, even enthusiasm. That cannot be accounted for by terror.6 And at the higher level of the Wehrmacht, among those senior officers with power of decision and command, terror played little role. Apart from those involved in the bomb plot, generals were not terrorized. Some were dismissed. But they were not executed.
For the German people, and even more for the racial and political victims of Nazism, the intensified terror alongside the terrible suffering could not end until the regime itself was destroyed by military might. This was in no small part because many of those wielding power, in particular those in high places, but also functionaries and representatives of the Party and its affiliates at regional and local level, realized that they had burnt their boats and had no future. Party and SS leaders had been involved in the worst atrocities against Jews and others. Goebbels saw this as a positive factor in ensuring their continued fanaticism and backing for the regime (often underpinned by belief in some ferocious ‘Jewish revenge’). Hitler thought exactly the same way. As Nazi rule fragmented, the regime increasingly ran amok as police, SS, regional and local Party officials took matters in the provinces into their own hands. Hundreds of citizens fell victim to uncontrolled violence by Nazi fanatics in the last weeks of the regime, often in the attempt to prevent the senseless destruction of their towns or villages in continued fighting as the enemy approached. Prisoners and foreign workers were now more exposed than ever to the wild and unconstrained violence. And with the enemy on the doorstep, pointless forced marches of thousands of concentration camp prisoners, many of them Jews, left countless numbers dead, the rest terrorized and traumatized.
The ‘desperado-actions’ of many Party activists in the last weeks reflected the readiness of those who were well aware that they had no future to take enemies down with them, to exact revenge against long-standing opponents, to settle personal scores, and to ensure that those who had rejected the regime should not be around to triumph at its downfall. Though these fanatics were a small minority, they were a minority still wielding power over life and death. Their self-destructive urges paralleled those of Hitler and the regime leadership, helping through their own brutality to guarantee that Nazi power continued and that any manifestations of resistance from below were swiftly extinguished.
The Party and its affiliates increasingly occupied all the organizational space beyond the military sphere after July 1944 and gained hugely extended powers over citizens and over civil administration. Martin Bormann used his proximity to Hitler and his command of the Party’s central administration to reinvigorate the Party and push the state administration out of any importance in policy-making. The ‘time of struggle’ before the Party gained power in 1933 was repeatedly evoked as activists were urged to take radical steps to complete the ‘Nazi revolution’.
Below Bormann, a pivotal role was played by the Gauleiter. As Reich Defence Commissars, responsible for civil defence in their areas, they had enormous scope for interference in practically all spheres of daily life (and for imposing summary retribution for non-compliance). They and their subordinates at district and local level controlled, among other things, distribution of welfare, compulsory evacuation of citizens from threatened areas, access to air- raid shelters, clearance of bomb damage, and compulsory recruitment to forced labour on defence installations. And
