CHAPTER 4. HOPES RAISED—AND DASHED
1. Quoted DZW, 6, p. 125; KTB/OKW, vol. 4/I, p. 436, Jodl to Chief of the General Staff at OB West, 1.11.44. See also Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhangnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 303–6, for Jodl’s doubts about—though justification of—the Ardennes offensive. When he learnt from Speer that Hitler was about to play his last card, the leading industrialist Albert Vogler presumed, naturally enough, that it would be on the eastern front. ‘No one could be so mad as to expose the east in order to hold up the enemy in the west,’ he reasoned.—Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 423.
2. Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, London, 2002, pp. 539–40 (12.12.44).
3. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), pp. 475–8; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 619–20.
4. Hermann Jung, Die Ardennenoffensive 1944/45, Gottingen, 1971, p. 218 (Kreipe diary, 16.9.44); DZW, 6, pp. 124–5.
5. John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, pp. 394–7; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 248–59.
6. Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. 202–25.
7. DRZW, 7 (Vogel), p. 615.
8. DZW, 6, pp. 212–13; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 615–16; Hastings, pp. 218–20; 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.
9. Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Tubingen, 1974, pp. 517–18 (3.12.44); TBJG, II/14, pp. 339–41 (3.12.44); BAB, R55/608, fo. 34, Verbal Propaganda Slogan, No. 11 (18.12.44). The suddenness of the fall of Strasbourg and the chaotic attempts to evacuate the population were emphasized in an eyewitness account, later sent on to Himmler.—BAB, NS19/606, fos. 2–4v, report on the events in Strasbourg on 22–3 November 1944 (19.12.44). A propaganda report from Baden underlined the ‘enormous shock effect’ throughout the region that resulted from the fall of the city. Streams of refugees engulfed the right bank of the Rhine. The depressed mood of the people reached a low point. Trust was ‘extremely shaken’.—BAB, R55/21504, unfoliated, Gaupropagandaleiter, Reichspropagandaamt Baden, Bericht uber die Propagandafuhrung im Gau Baden, 15.1.45.
10. Hastings, p. 225.
11. Hitler and his Generals, p. 541 (12.12.44) and p. 1038 n. 1556.
12. See Franz Kurowski, ‘Dietrich and Manteuffel’, in Correlli Barnett (ed.), Hitler’s Generals, London, 1990, pp. 411–37 for pen-pictures.
13. DZW, 6, pp. 126–8; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), pp. 621–2; Warlimont, p. 485; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 380.
14. Warlimont, pp. 481–5; Guderian, p. 380; Scheurig, p. 305; BA/MA, RH21/5/66: Manteuffel: ‘Die 5. Panzerarmee in der Ardennenoffensive’ (deposition for US Historical Division, 1946), fo. 50; BA/MA, N6/4, Oberst G. Reichhelm (Model’s Chief of Staff), ‘Zusammendfassender Bericht uber die Kampfhandlungen der deutschen Herresgruppe B von Mitte Oktober 1944 bis Mitte April 1945’ (deposition for US Historical Division, 1946–7), fos. 14–15; Guenther Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt: The Soldier and the Man, London, 1952, pp. 264–9; DRZW, 7 (Vogel), p. 620; DZW, 6, p. 125; Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, pp. 294–300: Walter Gorlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 222–5; David Downing, The Devil’s Virtuosos: German Generals at War 1940–5, London, 1977, pp. 231–3.
15. Quoted Warlimont, pp. 489–90. Jung, pp. 201–2, argues that the only alternative course of action open to them—to resign—would have given the command to less able generals and increased German losses.
16. See Warlimont, pp. 481–2.
17. NAL, WO219/1651, fos. 144–5, SHAEF: interrogation of Jodl, 23.5.45.
18. Quoted DZW, 6, pp. 129–30.
19. For an assessment of the catastrophic collapse, largely in the second half of 1944, see John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegfuhrung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, pp. 40–65.
20. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 368/54, deposition of Speer (13.7.45). On the economic impact of bombing in 1944, see Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, London, 1995, pp. 130–31; and Dietrich Eichholtz, ‘Deutschland am Ende des Krieges: Eine kriegswirtschaftliche Bilanz’, Bulletin der Berliner Gesellschaft fur Faschismus- und Weltkriegsforschung, 6 (1996), pp. 22–3, 27–30.
21. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/26, deposition of Speer (13.8.45); Box 368/67, deposition by Saur (2– 8.10.45). For the armaments situation leading up to the Ardennes offensive, see Jung, ch. 2.
22. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, depositions of Saur and Kehrl (13.8.45).
23. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/28, deposition of Bosch (11.6.45).
24. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, deposition of Kehrl (26.7.45).
25. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, deposition of Rochling (10.8.45).
26. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/35, suppl. I, deposition of Rohland (22.10.45).
27. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/34, and Box 368/93, depositions of Schulze-Fielitz (10.8.45 and undated, summer 1945).
28. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 368/84, part II, deposition of Fiebig (25.5.46).
29. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 367/26, deposition of Speer (13.8.45).
30. IWM, FD 3063/49, Box 368/67, depositions of Saur (2–8.10.45, 7.6.45). Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Dusseldorf, 1973, p. 407, also pointed to the fact that despite all the mounting difficulties, armaments production was higher in 1944 than in each of the years 1940 to 1943, when Germany was in full command of its economic basis. Even in January 1945, the index of armaments production was higher than that of any war year apart from 1944.—Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, pp. 687–8, table A6.
31. IWM, Box 367/27, deposition by Saur (11–13.6.45).
32. See, for these decisions in November and December, Deutschlands Rustung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Hitlers Konferenzen mit Albert Speer 1942–1945, ed. Willi A. Boelcke, Frankfurt am Main, 1969, pp. 444–58; and for Speer’s strenuous efforts to sustain production at this time, Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ‘When Did Albert Speer Give up?’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), p. 394.
33. Heavy raids had repeatedly hit the big industrial cities and attacked the transport network. Over 50 per cent of American bombs at this time were aimed at destroying transport installations. The British, who dropped more bombs in the last three months of 1944 than in the entire year 1943, concentrated more on the cities, with big attacks on Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen, but also inflicted severe damage on transport, dropping 102,796 tons, mainly on railway marshalling yards, between November and January 1945. See DZW, 6, pp. 163, 166–7; Tooze, p. 650; Jorg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945, pb. edn., Berlin, 2004, p. 150. Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944–1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway, Chapel Hill, NC, 1988, chs. 6–7, provides a detailed account of the crippling impact of the bombing on transport in autumn 1944. Speer informed the naval leadership in mid-November of the seriousness of
