The End

RPvOF/MF

Regierungsprasident von Oberfranken und Mittelfranken (Government President of Upper Franconia and Central Franconia)

RVK

Reichsverteidigungskommissar(e) (Reich Defence Commissar(s))

SD

Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)

SHAEF

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

StAA

Staatsarchiv Augsburg

StAM

Staatsarchiv Munchen

TBJG

Die Tagebucher von Joseph Goebbels

VB

Volkischer Beobachter

Vf Z

Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte

YVS

Yad Vashem Studies

For the full book titles, see List of Works Cited, pp. 511–32; for details of archives, see List of Archival Sources Cited, pp. 509–10. Contributions in DRZW are cited by author only in the Notes; titles are given in List of Works Cited.

PREFACE

1. See, for example, Ralf Meindl, Ostpreu?ens Gauleiter: Erich Koch—eine politische Biographie, Osnabruck, 2007.

2. A good, critical study of Donitz, long overdue, appeared only after this work had been completed: Dieter Hartwig, Gro?admiral Karl Donitz: Legende und Wirklichkeit, Paderborn, 2010.

3. Exemplary, in different ways, are Herfried Munkler, Machtzerfall: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches dargestellt am Beispiel der hessischen Kreisstadt Friedberg, Berlin, 1985, and Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich, Lexington, Ky., 2004.

4. None better than Antony Beevor’s brilliant narrative depiction of the Red Army’s assault on the Reich capital, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007.

5. Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg, vol. 6: Die Zerschlagung des Hitlerfaschismus und die Befreiung des deutschen Volkes (Juni 1944 bis zum 8. Mai 1945), written by an Authors’ Collective under direction of Wolfgang Schumann and Olaf Groehler, with assistance from Wolfgang Bleyer, Berlin, 1985.

6. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, edited by various authors for the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt, vols. 7–10, Munich, 2004–8.

7. Two recent works among many might be singled out: Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007; and John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegfuhrung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009.

8. This applies to the excellent works by Dieter Rebentisch, Fuhrerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, and Eleanor Hancock, National Socialist Leadership and Total War 1941–45, New York, 1991. Martin Broszat’s classic Der Staat Hitlers, Munich, 1969, dealt in the main with the beginning, rather than the end, of the Third Reich.

9. The extensive study by Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 2: 1933–1945, Newton Abbot, 1973, for example, devotes little more than 20 of its 538 pages to the period after the Stauffenberg assassination attempt and no more than 8 pages or so to the months January–May 1945, while Kurt Patzold and Manfred Wei?becker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920– 1945, Cologne, 1981, written by two GDR historians, devotes less than a dozen out of 429 pages to the period under consideration in this book.

10. Marlis Steinert’s splendid Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Dusseldorf and Vienna, 1970, has not yet been bettered as a social history of Germany during the war. It is, however, largely restricted to usage of—highly informative—internal reports on morale, and deals in the main with civilian society, but not with the military. A new and highly promising study of German society during the war is being prepared by Nicholas Stargardt, Magdalen College, Oxford.

11. The outstanding study of American strategy and the military advance into Germany is that of Klaus- Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995. A graphic description of Allied, as well as German, military experiences at the fronts as Germany was crushed is provided by Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004.

12. On this issue, see the excellent study of how German experiences in the final war months helped the beginnings of recovery after capitulation by Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009.

INTRODUCTION: GOING DOWN IN FLAMES

1. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen: Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Totungsverbrechen 1945–1966, vol. 1, ed. Adelheid L. Ruter-Ehlermann and C. F. Ruter, Amsterdam, 1968, Nos. 010, 029, pp. 115–29, 645–59; Elke Frohlich, ‘Ein junger Martyrer’, in Martin Broszat and Elke Frohlich (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. 6, Munich and Vienna, 1983, pp. 228–57; Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich, Lexington, Ky., 2004, pp. 153–8; Hans Woller, Gesellschaft und Politik in der amerikanischen Besatzungszone: Die Region Ansbach und Furth, Munich, 1986, pp. 48–55. Dr Meyer, the town’s former military commandant, was sentenced in December 1946 by the Ansbach district court to ten years in a penitentiary.

2. See the valuable collection of essays on the terror of the last phase in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jorg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Gottingen, 2006.