The End

Etappengeist—the ‘spirit of the rear lines’—the weak and decadent lifestyle of officers still able to enjoy the good things in life while others were dying for their country. This was the alleged cause of the collapse in France.²⁶ Behind the front were the lines of communication, the bases for provisioning, administration, transport, field hospitals and for the planning staffs of the fighting army. This all constituted the Etappe, an essential element in the structure of any military machine, but, as in the First World War, one much derided by the ordinary front soldiers at the dirty end of the fighting, all too ready to spread to their loved ones back home scurrilous rumours of officers enjoying creature comforts and high living away from the bitter warfare.

‘That our rear-line jackasses flood back in such wild panic’, Goebbels commented, ‘can only be put down to their lack of proper discipline and that they have been more taken up during their long period of occupation in France with champagne and French women than military exercises.’ He blamed lack of leadership by the generals for the ‘debacle’.²⁷ The Gau office in Baden reported to the Party Chancellery in early September that the attitude of the retreating units ‘breathed the worst sort of rear-lines air, disorderly uniforms, a lot of drunken good-time girls and soldiers hanging together in the worst and most dubious groups, lorries loaded with the most various goods, fittings from apartments, beds, etc. These images reminded war veterans of the conditions of 1918.’²⁸ In the immediate wake of the collapse of the German army in the Allied breakthrough at Falaise, Himmler had issued orders to the Higher SS and Police Leaders—his main agents in security issues—in western areas, through cooperation with military commanders to abolish once and for all ‘the repulsive German rear lines in France’, and send those involved to the front or put them to work.²⁹ A few days later, Martin Bormann passed on to Himmler a letter he had received from Karl Holz, the acting Gauleiter of Franconia, containing reports of ‘ill-discipline, subversion and lack of responsibility’ in the rear lines in France. Holz suggested sending in ‘general inspectors’, comprised of ‘energetic and brutal National Socialists’, to clear up the malaise, though Himmler found it impossible to oblige unless he were given details.³⁰

A description of the military failings that had led to the Allied breakthrough at Avranches—‘the most serious event of the summer’—found its scapegoat in the alleged cowardly behaviour in the rear lines, while praising German efforts that had prevented a worse catastrophe.³¹ A report by the Geheime Feldpolizei (secret military police) reached a similar conclusion. The failure of officers during the retreat in the west had shaped the mood, reflecting the alleged distrust of officers since 20 July. Instances were adduced from soldiers’ accounts of poor behaviour of officers—similar, according to one, to that of 9 November 1918—and indicating signs of disintegration in the army.³² Among the strongest denunciations was one from the office of General Reinecke, head of the National Socialist Leadership Staff of the Army, based upon a visit to the western front in late September and early October to assess the work of the NSFOs. These, it was said, were working well. Conditions earlier in the rear lines in France had been ‘scandalous’. For four years, those behind the rear lines had lived in a ‘land of milk and honey’. The retreat in 1918 at the time of the revolution had been like the proud march of a guard regiment compared with this ‘fleeing troop rabble’.³³

For all their obvious bias in the need to find scapegoats for the disastrous collapse in the west, such reports give a plain indication of low morale and signs of disintegration in the retreating German army. Added to the chaos produced by the evacuations in the border region, the panic among the population and the contempt for the Party that the flight of its functionaries had sharpened, the potential for a growing, full-scale collapse similar to 1918 could not altogether be ruled out. The slowing down of the Allied advance and the accompanying strengthening of German defences did much to ensure that this did not happen. So did the political measures undertaken to stiffen the resolve to fight on and prevent any undermining of either the fighting or the home front. But these in turn rested on attitudes that were sunk in resignation, not burning with rebellion, and were persuaded at least in part by the cause for which they were told Germany was fighting, and ready, therefore, to comply, however unenthusiastically, with the ever tighter regulation of their lives and the demands of the war effort.

III

The most crucial step was to shore up the crumbling western front. Model had to do the best he could to regroup a broken army in the immediate aftermath of Falaise. The size of the field army in the west had dropped from 892,000 men at the beginning of July to 543,000 on 1 September. The command structures had, however, been left intact. They now served as the basis for the organization of new units. Supply lines were shortened, fortifications strengthened (particularly along the Westwall) and minefields laid. Most importantly, desperately needed reinforcements were rushed to the west. The new divisions created were, to be sure, improvised units, lacking the best equipment and weaponry.³⁴ They were strengthened, however, in September when hundreds of tanks and other armoured vehicles were sent west from the hard-pressed eastern front. New levels of uncompromising enforcement were also introduced on the western front, including rigorous measures to round up ‘stragglers’ and assign them to new units. At the same time, some two hundred NSFOs were dispatched into the western defence districts to prop up faltering morale. The NSFOs, military police and Party agencies provided backing for the army in imposing a network of controls along the front to stiffen the shaky discipline.

On 10 September Field-Marshal Keitel, head of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, advocated ‘extreme ruthlessness’ to stamp out any signs of subversion of morale. Less than a fortnight later, citing Hitler’s express instructions, he issued directives to counter the ‘signs of dissolution in the troops’ through ‘extreme severity’, including the use of summary courts with immediate executions in view of the troops to serve as a deterrent.³⁵ More than a hundred soldiers were shot by SS units while fleeing from the front during the following weeks. On 14 September, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, newly reinstated as Commander-in-Chief West, ordered the Westwall to be held ‘down to the last bullet and complete destruction’. Two days later, Hitler amplified the command. The war in the west, he declared, had reached German soil. The war effort had to be ‘fanaticized’ and prosecuted with maximum severity. ‘Every bunker, every block of houses in a German town, every German village, must become a fortification in which the enemy bleeds to death or the occupiers are entombed in man-to-man fighting,’ he ordered.³⁶

The combination of emergency means—through organization, supplies, recruitment and enforcement— succeeded for the time being in bolstering a desperate situation. Towards the end of September, the outlook was, if not rosy, at least much better than it had been a month earlier.

Just how effective the orders by Hitler and Rundstedt for a ‘do or die’ spirit of last-ditch resistance were in practice is not easy to judge. Feelings of helplessness in face of the might of the enemy, resignation, pessimism, defeatism, and blind fear as battle approached, were not easily dispelled, however urgent the appeals to fight to the last, however remorseless the control mechanisms to ‘encourage’ total commitment, however ferocious the threats for attitudes less than fanatical, however severe the punishment for perceived failure of duty. War-weariness was widespread, as it was among the civilian population. Most soldiers on the western front were preoccupied with survival rather than fighting to the last bullet. Colonel Gerhard Wilck, the commander at Aachen, forcefully reminded by Rundstedt ‘to hold this ancient German town to the last man and if necessary to be buried in its ruins’, repeatedly professed his intention of fighting to the final grenade. His actions did not follow his words. Instead, he made preparations to surrender.³⁷ Soon after the city’s capitulation on 21 October, Wilck found himself in British captivity. Speaking to his fellow officers, unaware that his conversation was bugged by his captors, he criticized the last-ditch mentality of the Wehrmacht High Command. Among his troops, the feeling was that the sacrifice of the 3,000 men forced to surrender at Aachen ‘merely to defend a heap of rubble for two or three days longer’ was ‘a useless waste’.³⁸

Attitudes were, nevertheless, not uniform. The forces on the western front in mid-September included armoured and infantry divisions of the Waffen-SS, known for their fanatical fighting and imbued with Nazi values.³⁹ Towards the end of 1944, the Waffen-SS overall comprised 910,000 men, and had some of the best-equipped panzer divisions.⁴⁰ But fervent Nazis were by no means confined to the Waffen-SS. They were also found in the branches of the much larger conventional armed forces. Some SS men even served there, and not in the Waffen-SS.⁴¹

Alongside critical letters back home from the front (which ran the danger of being picked up by the censors, with drastic consequences) were letters with a strongly pro-Nazi tone.⁴² Around a third of the