Jodl, 23.5.45.
2. This was the tenor of his discussions with Jodl late on the evening of 31 July 1944.—BA/MA, 4/881, fos. 1–46; printed in Lagebesprechungen im Fuhrerhauptquartier: Protokollfragmente aus Hitlers militarischen Konferenzen 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber, Berlin, Darmstadt and Vienna, 1963, pp. 242–71 (Eng. edn., Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, London, 2002, pp. 444–63). See Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 386, for Hitler’s thinking about a new offensive in the west; and DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 576–7, for the implications for a negotiated end.
3. DZW, 6, p. 105.
4. DZW, 6, p. 112.
5. Joseph Balkoski, ‘Patton’s Third Army: The Lorraine Campaign, 19 September–1 December 1944’, in Albert A. Nofi (ed.), The War against Hitler: Military Strategy in the West, Conshohocken, Pa., 1995, pp. 178–91. BA/MA, N647/12, NL Balck, Kriegstagebuch, Bd. 11, fo. 90, diary entry for 21.9.44, shows Balck’s impressions on receiving the command of a ‘fresh and confident’ Hitler, and of the troops he was taking over as ‘mere shadows’. TBJG, II/13, p. 528 (20.9.44) gives Goebbels’ assessment of Balck as a ‘first-class general from the eastern front’.
6. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, p. 98. Lieutenant-General Siegfried Westphal, appointed at the beginning of September 1944 as Chief of Staff to Rundstedt in Oberkommando West, and struck on taking up the post by the poor morale of the retreating troops and the bloated numbers of the rear-lines staff, reckoned that a more determined advance by Eisenhower’s forces would have made it impossible to have built up a new front on the western borders of the Reich, and would have allowed an assault on the Reich itself that would have ended the war in the west.—Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, pp. 273, 279, 289.
7. The course of military events is based upon: DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 550–80, 606–14; DZW, 6, pp. 105–19; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 688–702; Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, pb. edn., Munich, 1975, pp. 295–306; R. A. C. Parker, Struggle for Survival: The History of the Second World War, Oxford, 1990, pp. 200–208; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. 1–83; John Man, The Penguin Atlas of D-Day and the Normandy Campaign, London, 1994, chs. 6–7; The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, Oxford, 1995, pp. 809–12; Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009, chs. 19, 21–2, 24, 27.
8. The Luftwaffe, and its Commander-in-Chief, Hermann Goring, were widely blamed by the Nazi leadership, as well as much of the population, for Germany’s plight. A letter to Himmler from Gauleiter Joachim Albrecht Eggeling of Halle-Merseburg on 1 September pointed out the image of total impotence in air defences left by the repeated attacks on the hydrogenation plants in his Gau, and the popular view that the collapse of the front in France was solely attributable to the failure of the Luftwaffe.—BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 71–2, 1.9.44. Hitler himself attributed the crisis of the Luftwaffe to Goring’s ‘own absolute failure’.—TBJG, II/12, p. 520 (22.6.44). Speer and Himmler corresponded in September 1944 about the ‘lack of leadership in the Luftwaffe and air industry’. Himmler criticized poor planning, production mistakes, long delays in availability of new aircraft and weapons, and the attempt to deploy the prototype jet-fighter, the Me262, as a bomber (an absurd decision, however one that Hitler himself had insisted upon, against Speer’s advice).—BAB, NS19/3652, fos. 1–8, 26–8, Himmler to Speer, 5.9.44, and Speer’s reply, 8.10.44.
9. Even without access to secret reports, the regular monitoring of the German press and that of correspondents from neutral countries, such as Sweden, based in Germany, gave the British a clear enough indication of the demoralized condition of the retreating Wehrmacht and the chaotic disorganization of the evacuation of western regions.—NAL, FO898/187, fos. 489–90, 522–3, 540–42, 559–61, 577 (reports from 11.9– 22.10.44).
10. BAB, R55/601, fos. 73–4, Tatigkeitsbericht, weekly report of propaganda offices, 14.8.44.
11. MadR, 17, pp. 6705–8, ‘Reports on Developments in Public Opinion’, 17.8.44. This was the last report of its kind. Martin Bormann stopped the regular digest of SD reports on account of their defeatist tone.
12. BAB, R55/601, fos. 102–6, Tatigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report 4.9.44. Goebbels noted the ‘rather dark picture’ of morale that emanated from the propaganda reports in his diary entry for 15.9.44 (TBJG, II/13, pp. 484–5).
13. BAB, R55/603, fos. 411, 413, Stimmung durch Ereignisse im Westen, 5.9.44.
14. BAB, R19/751, fo. 4, Gebhardt to Himmler, 5.9.44; copy in IfZ, Fa-93.
15. This follows the excellent, detailed account in Christoph Rass, Rene Rohrkamp and Peter M. Quadflieg, General Graf von Schwerin und das Kriegsende in Aachen: Ereignis, Mythos, Analyse, Aachen, 2007, pp. 29–64. This solid research supplants the earlier versions of the dramatic events that emphasize Schwerin’s role in defying the evacuation orders in Bernhard Poll (ed.), Das Schicksal Aachens im Herbst 1944: Authentische Berichte, Aachen, 1955, pp. 213–56; Bernhard Poll (ed.), Das Schicksal Aachens im Herbst 1944: Authentische Berichte II, Aachen, 1962, pp. 65–77, 80–97; Walter Gorlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 211–12; DZW, 6, p. 113.
16. TBJG, II/13, pp. 462–3 (12.9.44).
17. TBJG, II/13, pp. 491–2 (16.9.44).
18. TBJG, II/13, p. 498 (17.9.44). See also Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 137 (18.9.44); and Olaf Groehler, ‘Die Schlacht um Aachen (September/Oktober 1944)’, Militargeschichte (1979), p. 326.
19. TBJG, II/13, pp. 500–501 (17.9.44).
20. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 12–14, summary report, dated 14.9.44, of Speer’s visit to the west, 10–14.9.44.
21. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 17–31, report of 16.9.44 for Hitler on his visit to the western area, 10–14.9.44.
22. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 7–9, draft report by Dorsch on his ministerial trip to the western front, 13.9.44.
23. IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2837A, unfoliated, Kaltenbrunner to Himmler, 16.9.44, sending reports from 12– 16.9.44. Few Party functionaries evidently had any intention of following Bormann’s instructions that, in areas falling to the enemy, they were to report voluntarily to the Wehrmacht and serve with the fighting troops.—BAB, NS6/167, fo. 100–100v, Bormann to the Gauleiter, 16.9.44. A letter home from an officer stationed in the west spoke of the ‘purest panic’ after Gauleiter Josef Burckel had ordered Germans to leave Lorraine on 1 September. No trains were available, and officials were at the forefront of the flight.—BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Lt. Otto F., Berghaupten, 13.9.44.
24. BAB, NS19/3809, fo. 16, wire to Standartenfuhrer D’Alquen for immediate presentation to Himmler, signed Damrau, SS-Standarte ‘Kurt Eggers’, September, ?13.9.44. Gauleiter Simon, the head of the civilian administration in Luxemburg, moved his office to Koblenz, where he complained at the end of October that he had not received copies of edicts and ordinances, asking for these to be sent to him, including those for the period since the end of August.—BAB, R43II/583a, fo. 151, Der Chef der Zivilverwaltung in Luxemburg an den Reichminister der Finanzen, 31.10.44.
25. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, fos. 39–46, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, entries for 1–18.9.44.
26. For the revival of criticism of the Etappe—which had not featured in the early, successful, years of the war—in the wake of the collapse in France, see Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘ “Frontochsen” und “Etappenbullen”: Zur Ideologisierung militarischer Organisationsstrukturen im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Rolf-Dieter Muller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realitat, Munich, 1999, pp. 380–84.
27. TBJG, II/13, pp. 394–5 (3.9.44).
28. DZW, 6, p. 106.
29. BAB, NS19/3911, fo. 5, Himmler to HSSPF in west, 23.8.44.
30. BAB, NS19/1864, fos. 7–13, Bormann to Himmler, 29.8.44, Holz to Bormann, 28.8.44, Himmler to Bormann, 1.9.44.
