‘aryan’ shelters during air raids.—Klemperer, p. 644 (20.1.45).
119. This paragraph is based on Taylor, pp. 397–402, 508. An eighteen-year-old soldier, shocked to the core by what he saw in Dresden, noted in his diary that there was talk of over 200,000 dead.—Klaus Granzow, Tagebuch eines Hitlerjungen 1943–1945, Bremen, 1965, p. 159 (18.2.45).The propaganda claims of up to a quarter of a million victims are judiciously assessed and dismissed by Rolf-Dieter Muller, ‘Der Feuersturm und die unbekannten Toten von Dresden’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 59 (2008), pp. 169–75. An evaluation of all available evidence, and of the wildly differing figures given for the numbers of dead (with some claims of half a million dead), by a specially nominated Historians’ Commission which reported in 2010, arrived at the figure of 25,000—the estimate already made in the official investigations of 1945–6.—www.dresden.de/de/02/035/01/2010/03/pm_060.php, ‘Pressemitteilungen. 17.03.2010. Dresdner Historikerkommission veroffentlicht ihren Abschlussbericht’.
120. Taylor, p. 463.
121. Friedrich, pp. 331–3, 533–6.
122. Friedrich, pp. 312–16.
123. Taylor, pp. 413–14; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 798.
124. Taylor, ch. 15.
125. Taylor, pp. 412–24, 506. Goebbels’ aide, Wilfred von Oven, estimated in his diary entry for 15 February a total of 200,000–300,000 victims, and went on to write of a historically unprecedented killing of ‘300,000 women, children and defenceless civilians within a few hours’.—Von Oven, Finale Furioso, pp. 580–82 (15.2.45).
126. Das Reich, 4.3.45, p. 3, with the headline: ‘The Death of Dresden. A Beacon of Resistance’. The bombing, the article claimed, was an attempt to compel capitulation through mass murder so that the ‘death sentence’ could be carried out on what was left. ‘Against this threat’, it concluded, ‘there is no other way out than through fighting resistance.’ See also Bergander, pp. 184–5; and Taylor, p. 425.
127. Klemperer, p. 676.
128. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, letters of DRK-Schwester Ursel C., 16.2.45, 20.2.45; O’Gefr. Rudolf L., 16.2.45, 18.2.45; O’Gefr. Ottmar M., 26.2.45. Only a single letter in Jorg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst—Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, p. 152, mentions the bombing of Dresden, but then only to indicate worry about the population and relatives in the area. One letter that came into the hands of the British army, dated 20 February, though sent from Unna in Westphalia and with no direct reference to the attack on Dresden, did speak of bitterness and sense of impotence at the ‘terror-flights’ heading for Germany, but determination to fight on and conviction of victory.— LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 288 Pt. II, p. 8 (18.3.45). The Berlin population seems to have been understandably concerned about the raids on the capital but, to go from reports covering February 1945, no comments about Dresden were registered by the Wehrmacht agents gathering information on popular opinion in the city, though some general feeling was expressed (e.g. p. 252) that the war was almost over and it was pointless to continue. —Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 248–93. The Government Presidents of Bavarian provinces gave no indication, in their reports for March 1945, of reactions of the population, preoccupied with its own concerns, to the Dresden bombing.
129. BAB, R55/622, fo. 181, Briefubersicht Nr. 10, 9.3.45.
130. See von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 579 (12.2.45), for Goebbels’ fury at Ley’s public claim that holding the Red Army at the Oder had been ‘The German Miracle’, at a time when tens of thousands were fleeing in panic and trying desperately to reach the western banks of the Oder.
131. Cited in Taylor, p. 428; Erich Kastner, Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch, Berlin, 1961, pp. 55–6 (8.3.45); Jacob Kronika, Der Untergang Berlins, Flensburg, 1946, p. 70 (22.3.45). Goebbels, often frustrated by Ley’s outspoken statements, noted in his diary the outrage at the latter’s comments about Dresden.—TBJG, II/15, p. 457 (9.3.45). Ley’s article, ‘Without Baggage’ (‘Ohne Gepack’) had appeared on 3 March in Der Angriff, 53, p. 2. In a broadcast from the encircled Breslau two days later, Gauleiter Hanke picked up the theme, declaring that what had once been seen as essential cultural property (unerla?liche Kulturguter) could be now viewed on closer inspection as ‘the thoroughly dispensable matter of civilization’ (durchaus entbehrliches Zivilisationsgut).—Kastner, p. 47 (5.3.45).
132. See David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, London, 1996, p. 503.
133. BAB, NS19/1022, fo. 5, Brandt to Berlepsch, 3.1.45. The Lebensleuchter appears to have taken the form of a large candle in an elaborate Nordic-styled holder. According to a file notice, Himmler agreed a few days later to have all children of teachers at ‘NAPOLAs’ (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten)—Party schools (by this time under SS control)—presented with the ‘light of life’. SS- Obergruppenfuhrer Hei?meyer, head of the NAPOLAs, was to give a list of the children to Himmler’s adjutant, SS- Standartenfuhrer Dr Rudolf Brandt. The number of candleholders available was, however, Brandt warned, currently very small and they were intended only for a third or fourth war child, so that he did not know whether Himmler’s promise could be fulfilled. Hei?meyer said he would acquire the requisite details under a pretext and leave it to Brandt to decide to what extent the distribution of the candleholders could be carried out. The file notice on this absurd issue appears to have been consulted on the first day of February, March and April 1945, presumably with little or no action to follow.—BAB, NS19/424, fo. 2, Vermerk, 9.1.45.
134. BAB, NS19/1318, fo. 3, Brandt to Berger, 10.1.45.
135. BAB, NS19/2903, fo. 3, Brandt to Justizwachtmeister Ernst Krapoth, Oberhausen, 1.3.45.
136. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 435.
137. H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, pb. edn., London, 1962, pp. 119–20, 134, 140.
138. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/368 (2), unfoliated, Krosigk: Memorandum zur heutigen Finanz- und Wahrungslage, 10.1.45; IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I.14/368 (1), unfoliated, distributed to Bormann, Goebbels, Goring, Economics Minister Walther Funk, and Price Commissar Hans Fischbock (8.2.45). In post-war interrogations, Krosigk reaffirmed the sharp deterioration in Reich finances after July 1944 on account of the worsening military situation. People were not saving; money had to be printed. There was a huge and growing tax deficit by early 1945.—Ardsley Microfilms, Irving Collection, D1/Goring/1, Krosigk interrogation, 4.6.45; according to Funk (interrogation 4.6.45), holdings in gold had dropped from 900 million Marks in 1940 to 400 million by 1944.
139. IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/368 (1), Krosigk to Speer, 26.2.45 (also in M.I. 14/285 (no. 26), Personal Papers of Albert Speer); Krosigk to Bormann, 26.2.45, 27.2.45; Krosigk to Funk, 28.2.45; Krosigk to Dr Gerhard Klopfer, head of the legal section of the Party Chancellery and a key right-hand man of Bormann, 27.2.45. See also Speer’s letter to Krosigk on the financial situation, BAB, R3/1624, fo. 5, 14.2.45, and Speer, p. 435. Krosigk had sought a meeting with Speer on 13 February.—IWM, EDS, F.3, M.I. 14/369, unfoliated, Krosigk to Speer, 13.2.45.
140. TBJG, II/15, p. 613 (28.3.45).
141. The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, p. 170 (4.2.45).
142. The Bormann Letters, p. 173 (5.2.45).
143. The Bormann Letters, p. 177 (7.2.45).
144. The Bormann Letters, p. 186 (19.2.45). When she fled to the Tyrol in late April, accompanied by her nine children, Gerda Bormann took both her own and her husband’s letters with her. She died of cancer in March 1946, but her papers, including the letters, were saved by sympathizers. See The Bormann Letters, pp. viii, xxii–xxiii.
145. TBJG, II/15, pp. 328–9 (7.2.45), 334–5 (8.2.45), 357, 359 (11.2.45). Goebbels admitted that he needed a new directive from Hitler if he were to overcome obstacles to meet the target of 768,000 men needed by the following August and force the armaments industry to give up a monthly quota of 80,000 men, which they were resisting. His frustrations were recorded by von Oven, Finale Furioso, pp. 575–7 (8.2.45).
146. Von Oven, Finale Furioso, p. 587 (25.2.45).
147. TBJG, II/15, p. 364 (12.2.45).
148. Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels—the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, pp. 183–4
