the air attacks. The Reichsbahn had been badly hit. Five major railway stations were out of action. There had been huge drops in coal and steel production (with four-fifths of steel mills damaged or destroyed), and gas supplies had been reduced by 40 per cent.—KTB/SKL, vol. 63/II, p. 188 (17.11.44).
34. BAB, R3/1528, fos. 1–48, Speer’s report on the Ruhrgebiet, 11.11.44.
35. BAB, R3/1542, fos. 1–21, Speer’s report on his trip to Rhine and Ruhr, 23.11.44.
36. Deutschlands Rustung, p. 444 (28.11.44).
37. TBJG, II/14, pp. 368–9 (7.12.44).
38. BAB, R3/1543, fos. 3–15.
39. Speer, p. 425.
40. BAB, R3/1544, fos. 56–73 (quoted words, fo. 71).
41. DRZW, 5/2 (Muller), p. 771, sees this as, in effect, Speer’s ‘survival programme’ for the last phase of the war.
42. Speer, p. 423. After his trip to the Ruhr in November, Speer engineered Vogler’s appointment by Hitler as Plenipotentiary for Armaments and War Production in the Ruhr in order to take decisions on the spot in his name in order to sustain Ruhr production.—Deutschlands Rustung, p. 445 (28.11.44).
43. BAB, R3/1623, fos. 3, 4, 8–10, 22 (26.7.44, 2.8.44), on retreat from the east; fos. 24–7, 46, 50–52, 66–8, 77 (10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 22.9.44), on immobilization of industry in western areas.
44. BAB, R3/1623, fo. 123, Keitel to Speer (6.12.44).
45. BAB, R3/1623, fos. 125–6, Speer to head of Armaments Commission XIIb Kelchner, 6.12.44; Keitel Fernschreiben, 10.12.44. Even now, Speer felt it necessary (fo. 127, 12.12.44) to intervene again, this time with Grand-Admiral Donitz, to prevent the destruction of wharves and their installations which had been scheduled for destruction by an order of Coastal Command East (Marinekommando Ost) on 17 November.
46. A point made by Muller in DRZW, 5/2, p. 771.
47. BAB, NS19/1862, fos. 1–5, Bormann to Himmler, 23.10.44.
48. BAB, NS19/4017, fos. 43–56, meeting at Klein-Berkel, 3.11.44.
49. TBJG, II/14, pp. 157–8 (5.11.44).
50. See Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (eds.), Verwaltung contra Menschenfuhrung im Staat Hitlers, Gottingen, 1986, pp. 7–32; Peter Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter: Fuhrung der Partei und Kontrolle des Staatsapparates durch den Stab He? und die Partei-Kanzlei Bormann, Munich, 1992, pp. 256–64; and Armin Nolzen, ‘Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933–1945’, German History, 23 (2005), pp. 494–518.
51. Kurt Patzold and Manfred Wei?becker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, p. 375; Dieter Rebentisch, Fuhrerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, pp. 528–9.
52. All contained, many from November–December 1944, in BAB, R43II/692b: Deutscher Volkssturm, Bd. 2, fos. 1–28. An impression of the mass of heterogeneous business dealt with by the Party Chancellery in this period can be gleaned from the collection Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, vol. 1, ed. Helmut Heiber, Munich, 1983, Regesten Bd. 1–2, and vol. 2, ed. Peter Longerich, Munich, 1989, Regesten Bd. 4.
53. TBJG, II/14, p. 432 (17.12.44).
54. The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, p. 148 (11.12.44).
55. See TBJG, II/14, p. 400 (12.12.44) for the paper shortage.
56. BAB, R43II/583a, fo. 64–64v, Reichspostminister to Highest Reich Authorities, etc. (7.11.44).
57. TBJG, II/14, pp. 146–7 (3.11.44), 191 (10.11.44), 224 (17.11.44), 232 (18.11.44), 268 (24.11.44), 308–9 (1.12.44), 444 (19.12.44); BAB, R3/1529, fos. 3–12, Speer’s memorandum to Hitler (6.12.44).
58. TBJG, II/14, pp. 394 (11.12.44), 398 (12.12.44); von Oven, pp. 519 (5.12.44), 520–23 (11.12.44). Text of the decree in ‘Fuhrer-Erlasse’ 1939–1944, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 469–70.
59. TBJG, II/14, p. 305 (1.12.44).
60. Von Oven, p. 517 (29.11.44); TBJG, II/14, p. 276 (25.11.44).
61. TBJG, II/14, pp. 317–34 (2.12.44).
62. TBJG, II/14, pp. 159–60 (5.11.44).
63. TBJG, II/14, pp. 208–9 (13.11.44); von Oven, pp. 511–12 (12.11.44).
64. On the film, see David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933– 1945, Oxford, 1983, pp. 225–35.
65. TBJG, II/14, pp. 310–11 (1.12.44), 345 (3.12.44); Welch, p. 234.
66. TBJG, II/14, pp. 469–70 (23.12.44). More changes were necessary, but, as he had hoped, the premiere took place on 30 January 1945, the twelfth anniversary of Hitler’s takeover of power.
67. BAB, R55/601, fo. 204, Tatigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44) .
68. TBJG, II/14, p. 147 (3.11.44); also p. 310 (1.12.44). He acknowledged that the failure of the regime to protect its population in the air war was its greatest weakness in the eyes of the public (p. 165 (6.11.44)). Duren, east of Aachen, one of the most heavily bombed towns of the war, provides an example. Only 13 out of 9,322 buildings were left undamaged by the autumn air attacks and over 3,000 people lost their lives (Friedrich, p. 144). In late December Himmler reported that the population there was ‘completely hostile and unfriendly’ and that the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting was almost unknown, even among local Party functionaries (BAB, NS19/751, fo. 32, Himmler to Bormann, 26.12.44, also in IfZ, Fa-93).
69. TBJG, II/14, pp. 133 (1.11.44), 238 (19.11.44); Robert Grosche, Kolner Tagebuch 1944–46, Cologne, 1969, pp. 52–6 (30.10.–6.11.44); LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 178, pt. II, pp. 7–8 (27.11.44), ‘Total War Comes to Cologne’ (account of a prisoner of war who witnessed the raid).
70. Widerstand und Verfolgung in Koln, ed. Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln, Cologne, 1974, pp. 395–6; Detlef Peukert, Die Edelwei?piraten: Protestbewegungen jugendlicher Arbeiter im Dritten Reich, Cologne, 1980, pp. 103–15; TBJG, II/14, p. 426 (16.12.44).
71. TBJG, II/14, p. 269 (24.11.44).
72. TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44).
73. Margarete Dorr, ‘Wer die Zeit nicht miterlebt hat…’: Frauenerfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg und in den Jahren danach, vol. 3, Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1998, p. 437.
74. TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44).
75. TBJG, II/14, p. 269 (24.11.44).
76. IWM, Box 367/35, suppl. I, deposition of Rohland, pp. 3–4 (22.10.45).
77. Von Oven, p. 518 (3.12.44). The ‘Morgenthau Plan’, put forward by the Americans at the Quebec Conference in September 1944, had been agreed, apparently with little detailed consideration, by the British (who, surprisingly, seem to have shown scant interest in its proposals). Though President Roosevelt favoured a harsh peace, he was eventually persuaded to back away from the ‘Morgenthau Plan’ by the combined and determined opposition of his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and his Secretary for War, Henry Stimson.—Toby Thacker, The End of the Third Reich: Defeat, Denazification and Nuremberg, January 1944–November 1946, pb. edn., Stroud, 2008, pp. 58–60.
78. Von Oven, pp. 524–5 (14.12.44); TBJG, II/14, pp. 407–13 (13.12.44). Vivid descriptions of the dreadful conditions following the raids in Bochum (‘a dead city’) and other major conurbations in the Rhine and Ruhr were given in a secret German censorship report on letters to and from the front, which fell into Allied hands.—NAL, FO898/187, summary of German media reports, fos. 292–5 (27–31.12.44).
79. TBJG, II/14, pp. 408–9, 412 (13.12.44).
80. TBJG, II/14, p. 377 (8.12.44).
81. Robert Ley, the Party’s Organization Leader, sent Hitler a somewhat mixed report on the qualities of the
