126. BHStA, Minn 72417, unfoliated, 28.11.44–5.1.45.
127. BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 20, Lammers to Highest Reich Authorities, 17.12.44.
128. TBJG, II/14, pp. 282 (27.11.44), 328–9 (2.12.44), 370–72 (7.12.44); David Irving, Goring: A Biography, London, 1989, pp. 447–8, 476.
129. Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, pb. edn., London, 1994, pp. 418–19.
130. Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, p. 291.
131. The Bormann Letters, pp. 152 (26.12.44), 158 (1.1.45)
132. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, London, 1956, pp. 238–9 (10.12.44); BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 115, Berger to Himmler, for rumours of Himmler’s disgrace (21.12.44). Himmler had been appointed in November to be Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine. As head of the Replacement Army, and Chief of Police, Himmler was seen to be in a good position to raise a makeshift army as a defence force to help the German 19th Army try to hold back the Allied drive into Alsace. The newly created Army Group Upper Rhine, stationed in an area between the Black Forest and the Swiss frontier, was heavily patched together from stragglers, Volksgrenadier and anti-aircraft units, border police, non-German battalions from the east, and Volkssturm men. Refusing to leave his Black Forest headquarters, Himmler created a vacuum which fostered intrigue at Fuhrer Headquarters, possibly involving Bormann and some disaffected influential SS leaders.—Heinz Hohne, The Order of the Death’s Head, London, 1972, pp. 509–11; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 546, 554–6. Berger requested Himmler to cut short his activity as Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine and return to Fuhrer Headquarters. His request, he said, ‘comes not only from the fabrication of rumours promoted by certain sides with all energy— Reichsfuhrer-SS is in disgrace, the Wehrmacht lobby—Keitel—has indeed triumphed—but because I sense that if Reichsfuhrer-SS is not at Headquarters our political work, as the basis of everything, suffers immeasurably’. Himmler replied (fo. 116), via his personal adjutant, SS-Standartenfuhrer Rudolf Brandt, on 29 December, stating that it would only be a short time before he could place the command of Army Group Upper Rhine in other hands, and that he might have the opportunity to speak briefly about the matter to Berger. Letter and telephone, he added, cryptically, were ‘not suitable for this topic’. Himmler’s short-lived command of Army Group Upper Rhine, as part of the weak and brief German offensive in Alsace in January, ended in failure. But whatever rumours there had been, they had evidently not undermined his standing with Hitler. According to Goebbels, Hitler was ‘extraordinarily satisfied’ with the work of the Reichsfuhrer.—Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 736–7.
133. TBJG, II/14, pp. 497–8 (31.12.44); von Oven, pp. 529–30 (26.12.44), 534–6 (28.12.44).
134. Speer, pp. 425–7.
135. NAL, WO204/6384, interview with SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Wolff, fo. 2, 15.6.45.
136. Guderian, pp. 382–4. It has been adjudged that ‘the fatal role of the Ardennes offensive was indirectly to weaken the eastern front’ through binding forces needed for defence against the Red Army.—Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945, London, 1998, p. 264. However, as Jung, p. 201, points out, even had the Ardennes offensive proved more successful, the transfer of exhausted Wehrmacht units to the east would not have sufficed to hold off the Soviet offensive. See also Henke, p. 342.
137. DZW, 6, p. 135; Warlimont, pp. 491–4; IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s notes on Hitler’s briefings, 22.12.44 (not published in the Nuremberg Trial documentation).
138. Jung, p. 229 (Kreipe diary, 2.11.44).
139. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 398.
CHAPTER 5. CALAMITY IN THE EAST
1. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 382.
2. Guderian, p. 382.
3. DZW, 6, pp. 498–9.
4. DZW, 6, pp. 503, 509; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 498, 502–4, 531; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, p. 449.
5. Erickson, pp. 447–9.
6. See Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), pp. 212–19.
7. Jurgen Forster, ‘The Final Hour of the Third Reich: The Capitulation of the Wehrmacht’, Bulletin of the International Committee for the History of the Second World War, Montreal (1995), pp. 76–7.
8. IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s ‘Notizen zum Kriegstagebuch’, ‘Lage am 22.1.45’ (23.1.45), not printed in the published trial documents. According to Goebbels, Hitler stated that the first priority was possession of oil, then coal, then a functioning armaments industry.—TBJG, II/15, p. 218 (25.1.45). Hungary produced some 22 per cent of the petrol and 11 per cent of the diesel demand of the Reich.—Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Strategie der Selbstvernichtung: Die Wehrmachtfuhrung im “Endkampf” um das “Dritte Reich”’, in Rolf-Dieter Muller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realitat, Munich, 1999, p. 226.
9. Guderian, pp. 382–7, 392–3.
10. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, London, 1982, pp. 531–2; DRZW, 9/1 (Forster), p. 605.
11. Schwendemann, ‘Strategie’, p. 231.
12. The coffins of Hindenburg and his wife were initially transported to Potsdam’s garrison church, then shortly afterwards moved secretly to a safer location in a salt mine near Bernterode (a small town in Thuringia). The Americans found the coffins there on 27 April, the names scrawled on them in red crayon, and in May took them west to Marburg, where the former Reich President and his wife were finally reburied, unobtrusively, at night, in August 1946.—Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis, Oxford, 2009, pp. 193–6.
13. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Das Kriegsende in Ostpreu?en und in Sudbaden im Vergleich’, in Bernd Martin (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg und seine Folgen: Ereignisse—Auswirkungen—Reflexionen, Freiburg, 2006, p. 96.
14. Where not otherwise indicated, the above description of the military course of events draws upon DZW, 6, pp. 498–517; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 491–542, 568ff.; Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevolkerung aus den Gebieten ostlich der Oder- Nei?e, ed. Theodor Schieder et al., pb. edn., Munich, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 16E– 23E; Erickson, ch. 7; Guderian, pp. 389ff.; Brian Taylor, Barbarossa to Berlin: A Chronology of the Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941 to 1945, vol. 2, Stroud, 2008, pp. 267–79; Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945, London, 1998, pp. 264–71; Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, chs. 9–10; and Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, pb. edn., London, 2007, chs. 3–4.
15. Ralf Meindl, Ostpreu?ens Gauleiter: Erich Koch—eine politische Biographie, Osnabruck, 2007, pp. 435–8; Kurt Dieckert and Horst Grossmann, Der Kampf um Ostpreu?en: Ein authentischer Dokumentarbericht, Munich, 1960, pp. 119–20.
16. Hastings, pp. 322–3.
17. Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 320 n. 168; Meindl, pp. 441–2.
18. Meindl, p. 445. According to Noble, p. 210, Koch initially moved to the comfort of a Pillau hotel, but this was bombed a few days later. See also Isabel Denny, The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City: The Battle for
