21. BAB, R55/601, fos. 73–4, 102–6, Tatigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda reports, 14.8.44, 4.9.44.
22. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Ein unuberwindlicher Wall gegen den Bolschewismus: Die Vorbereitung der “Reichsverteidigung” im Osten im zweiten Halbjahr 1944’, in Schlusseljahr 1944, ed. Bayerische Landeszentrale fur Politische Bildungsarbeit, Munich, 2007, p. 236.
23. Kunz, p. 249.
24. Quoted Kunz, pp. 250–51.
25. Noble, p. 152.
26. Noble, pp. 95, 100, 107–8, 280 n. 28.
27. Noble, pp. 95–9.
28. BAB, NS6/792, fos. 17–22, Guderian to Wehrkreis commands, etc., 28.7.44; Stuckart to eastern Gauleiter, 28.7.44.
29. BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 36, Lammers to Oberste Reichsbehorden, 6.9.44, transmitting Fuhrer order of 1.9.44; also in BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8.
30. DZW, 6, pp. 234–5; Ralf Meindl, Ostpreu?ens Gauleiter: Erich Koch—eine politische Biographie, Osnabruck, 2007, pp. 417–22.
31. NAL, FO898/187, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fo. 685 (report for 7–13.8.44, in English); Noble, p. 106.
32. Guderian, p. 360; Noble, pp. 102–3, 127.
33. MadR, 17, pp. 6720–6, report to the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, 28.10.44.
34. Noble, pp. 108–13; DZW, 6, p. 236; also Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Dusseldorf and Vienna, 1970, pp. 504–5.
35. Noble, p. 114.
36. TBJG, II/13, p. 224 (4.8.44); Noble, p. 107.
37. Noble, p. 108.
38. Noble, pp. 126–7.
39. Noble, pp. 107, 127.
40. BAB, NS19/4016, fos. 99–126, draft of speech, 18.10.44 (quotations, fo. 123); VB, 19.10.44.
41. BAB, R55/601, fo. 180, Tatigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 23.10.44.
42. BAB, R55/601, fol. 208, Tatigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; Christian Tilitzki, Alltag in Ostpreu?en 1940–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte der Konigsberger Justiz 1940– 1945, Leer, 1991, pp. 283–4, 286, reports for 17.10.44, 19.10.44; Edgar Gunther Lass, Die Flucht: Ostpreu?en 1944/45, Bad Nauheim, 1964, pp. 23–31. And see David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, pp. 89–96; Noble, p. 151; Steinert, pp. 506–8.
43. Yelton, p. 90.
44. Yelton, p. 91; Noble, p. 151.
45. Yelton, pp. 97–102.
46. Klaus Mammach, Der Volkssturm: Bestandteil des totalen Kriegseinsatzes der deutschen Bevolkerung 1944/45, Berlin, 1981; Yelton, p. 75.
47. Yelton, p. 120.
48. BA/MA, RH21/3/730, post–war account written in 1955 by the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Panzer Army, Major-General Mueller-Hillebrand, p. 1.
49. Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevolkerung aus den Gebieten ostlich der Oder- Nei?e, ed. Theodor Schieder et al., pb. edn., vol. 1, Munich, 1984, pp. 1–4; and see Noble, pp. 130–32.
50. Guderian, p. 376.
51. DRZW, 8 (Frieser), pp. 612–19; Noble, pp. 132–5.
52. See Noble, pp. 136–8.
53. Noble, p. 130.
54. BA/MA, N245/3, NL Reinhardt, diary entries for 11, 17, 22.10.44 and 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14.11.44 refer to his continuing hefty disputes with Koch—though not directly on the evacuation issue—as does his letter to his wife of 23.10.44, in N245/2, fo. 40. See also N245/15 for his protest to Himmler at Koch’s misrepresentation of conditions within his Army Group (letters of 26.10.44 and 27.11.44). Part of the conflict related to Koch’s allocation of armaments meant for the army to the Volkssturm (BA/MA, RH19/II/213, fo. 303, Reinhardt to Guderian, 31.10.44).
55. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 4–7.
56. Bernhard Fisch, Nemmersdorf, Oktober 1944: Was in Ostpreu?en tatsachlich geschah, Berlin, 1997, ch. 5. See also Guido Knopp, Die gro?e Flucht: Das Schicksal der Vertriebenen, Munich, 2001, pp. 37–49.
57. Quoted DRZW, 10/1 (Zeidler), p. 700, and pp. 682ff. for an excellent account of Soviet propaganda aimed at troops about to fight in Germany, including the role of the arch-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg. See also Guido Pollmann, ‘Rote Armee in Nemmersdorf am 22.10.1944’, in Franz W. Seidler and Alfred M. de Zayas (eds.), Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Hamburg, 2002, p. 215.
58. Quoted Manfred Nebelin, ‘Nazi Germany: Eastern Front’, in David Wingeate Pike (ed.), The Closing of the Second World War: Twilight of a Totalitarianism, New York, 2001, p. 98.
59. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 7–8. Further gruesome reports are presented in Lass, pp. 44–50. The International Commission was a creation of the Propaganda Ministry. It met on 31 October 1944 in Berlin with representatives from Spain, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Italy and Serbia, before an audience of 600 or so, largely drawn from Berlin Party members, and attended by 100 members of German and foreign press and radio. Predictably it concluded that the Soviet Union had been guilty of serious breaches of international law.—BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 7–8, report of Major Hinrichs, Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost, 1.11.44.
60. Bernhard Fisch, ‘Nemmersdorf 1944—ein bisher unbekanntes zeitnahes Zeugnis’, Zeitschrift fur Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 56 (2007), pp. 105–14. See also Fisch, Nemmersdorf, chs. 6–7.
61. ‘Personliches Kriegstagebuch des Generals der Flieger [Werner] Kreipe als Chef des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe fur die Zeit vom 22.7.–2.11.1944’, entry for 23.10.44, in Hermann Jung, Die Ardennenoffensive 1944/45, Gottingen, 1971, p. 227.
62. Gunter K. Koschorrek, Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front, London, 2002, p. 293 (22.10.44).
63. BA/MA, RH20/4/593, unfoliated, report of Hauptmann Fricke, to Armeeoberkommando 4, 26.10.44, enumerated 45 corpses, 26 found in Nemmersdorf and 19 in nearby Tutteln (together with several more uncounted charcoaled corpses in a burnt-out byre there). Most of the dead in Nemmersdorf were not inhabitants of the village but had been on treks overtaken by the Red Army. Two further reports (BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 2, 5) indicated one woman probably raped then murdered by being beaten with an axe or spade in Schweizerau on 22 October and 11 civilians, including 4 women who had been raped, found in the dairy at Bahnfelde, near Schulzenwalde. A list of victims later compiled recorded 90 in a number of places in East Prussia (the largest number, 26, in Nemmersdorf), with numerous cases of rape and including the murder of 5 childen whose tongues, it was claimed, had been nailed to tables.—BA/MA, RH2/2685, fo. 168. Karl-Heinz Frieser in DRZW, 8, p. 620 n. 77, gives a probable figure of 46 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself, not counting adjacent localities, though he provides no basis for the figure, which is probably a marginal miscounting of those in Nemmersdorf and Tutteln together. As he points out (n. 76), Fisch’s findings were reliant almost entirely upon answers to the questions he had posed to survivors still alive in the 1990s. In his attempt to reveal the propaganda as largely mendacious, he appeared to verge on occasion towards an over-sympathetic image of the Red Army soldiers. Pollmann, p. 214, indicates 26 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself and a further 28 in the immediate vicinity.
64. BA/MA, N245/2, fo. 40. NL Reinhardt, letter to his wife, 26.10.44.
