The End

collapse.¹⁸ As the Red Army’s advance then slowed and the German front gained some semblance of stability, the initial panic had subsided. But the population remained subdued, depressed and acutely worried. A general nervousness prevailed. Any negative news had a pronounced impact on people. ‘The unfavourable and dangerous military situation in the east has such a depressing effect on the mood of the great proportion of the population’, the SD reported in early August, ‘that the same anxious fears about the further development of the war can be heard in all strata.’¹⁹ Influenced by letters home from the front, and from the stories of evacuees from formerly occupied parts of Poland, people were sceptical about the capacity of the German forces to halt the Soviet advance completely and were not convinced that the danger for East Prussia had subsided.²⁰ The fears were that the Soviets would eventually succeed. And everyone, it was said, was aware of the threat of Bolshevism. What that meant in concrete terms was left unstated.²¹ But the implications of dire consequences should the Soviets break through were plain enough. By early October, following the defection of Germany’s eastern allies, the destruction of the 6th Army in Romania and the penning in of Army Group North in the Courland, the mood in the German east sank to ‘zero point’.²²

Fear was also a prime motivating factor for many frontline soldiers. Aware, at least in general terms if not always specifically, of at least some of what German troops had done in the occupied Soviet Union, fear of falling into the hands of the Red Army was intense, and highly understandable. Whatever the feelings towards the British and American enemies in the west, nothing there equated to this. Alongside it went the fear of being one of the growing, countless victims of the eastern war. While fear of dying and hopes of survival were common to all soldiers, of whatever army, on whatever front, the reported casualties and intensity of the battles in the east sent a special shiver of anxiety down the backs of those learning that they had been called up to serve on the eastern front. Not surprisingly, though official reports were loath to admit it, there was growing anxiety about the call- up.²³ And anyone summoned to serve fervently hoped it would be in the west, not in the east.

As in the west, the attitudes of soldiers actually fighting at the front varied. Army reports in August and September indicated the predictable negative impact of the retreats and recognition of the great superiority of the enemy in men and heavy weapons. Young replacements and older men produced through the ‘combing out’ of the total-war recruitment actions were said to be particularly affected by the nerve-wracking intense fighting with such heavy losses. They feared another major Soviet offensive, and their powers to resist were said to be shaken. Anxiety and war-weariness were seen as the cause. ‘Serious, but nevertheless confident’ was, however, the somewhat unlikely gloss put on the mood in general. ‘Unconditional trust in the Fuhrer’ was, of course, ritualistically asserted. But from Army Group North, cut off in the Baltic, it was reported that the known ‘Bolshevist conditions’ and the fear of never seeing the homeland again if the war were lost served to strengthen fighting morale. And those soldiers whose fighting spirit fell below expectations were subjected to increasingly ferocious discipline. Worries about the threat to East Prussia and their families were recorded from soldiers with homes in the eastern regions.

A more positive mood among the troops of the 4th Army in East Prussia at the beginning of October was said to have arisen from the stabilization of the front and better conditions for soldiers in the area. A summary of the attitude of soldiers on the Italian front the previous month almost certainly applied, too, to the troops in the east. Frontline soldiers, the report indicated, had little time for reflection. Individual events came and went in a blur. Only the general impression remained. The physical and psychological pressures of battle demanded of the soldier that he do his duty to the limits of the possible. Whatever the input of the NSFOs, their impact was short-lived. Very soon, daily worries and cares took over again. Ideals and grand causes were not at stake, the report implied. The soldier ‘fights because he is ordered to do so, and for his naked life’.²⁴

As this lapidary comment implies, for soldiers, but also for the civilian population, compulsion and duty were main reasons why people kept going. And what alternative was there? In addition came fear, and the strong feeling that the homeland—meaning, in concrete terms, families and property—had to be defended. Such sentiments could easily be exploited by the regime. But behind the propaganda, the rhetoric, the exhortations and the hectoring, belief in National Socialism, in the Party and even in the Fuhrer was dwindling fast, impossible though it is to be precise about the levels of remaining support.

Whatever people thought, however, the omnipresence of the Party and its affiliates was sufficient to keep them in line, all the more so given the urgency of the defence measures that were implemented with all speed and pressure in the eastern regions in the wake of the Red Army’s rapid advance. A first priority was to build a network of defence fortifications and entrenchments along the eastern borders of the Reich and strengthen those already in existence. The principle of deeming specified towns or cities ‘fortresses’ to be held to the last—a tactic unsuccessful in Russia as the Red Army swept around them—was now introduced in eastern Germany as the Wehrmacht retreated. More than twenty such ‘fortresses’, including the most important and strategically valuable towns, were established in Germany and the occupied parts of Poland, with eventual disastrous consequences for the inhabitants of most of them. In addition, the organization of a huge programme of fortification work thoughout eastern Germany at breakneck speed now fell to the Party under the direction of the Gauleiter, as Reich Defence Commissars (RVKs). Over the course of the summer, before the work started to recede in the autumn, ceasing at the end of November,²⁵ around half a million Germans (many of them youths, older men, and women) and foreign workers were conscripted to do long, back-breaking daily work in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and Brandenburg in building what became generally known as ‘Eastern Wall’ (the Ostwall), to complement that in the west. An estimated 200,000 were deployed in East Prussia alone. In German occupied parts of Poland (Danzig-West Prussia, the Warthegau and what was left of the General Government, the central region of Nazi-occupied Poland) the work was undertaken by Polish forced labourers.²⁶

Frontier defences in the east had been erected before the First World War. New fortifications were then constructed during the Weimar Republic, when Poland was seen as a major military threat. The pre-war years of the Third Reich had seen these extended and new defences built. Despite rapid acceleration of construction work, and one stretch of almost 80 kilometres along the Oder–Warthe rivers that was more heavily fortified than the Westwall, the defensive line was far from complete by the time war broke out. For five years thereafter, with German occupation pushed so far to the east, a heavily fortified line within the Reich frontiers seemed unnecessary. At any rate, it remained largely neglected until the collapse of Army Group Centre in summer 1944, at which point no worthwhile defences stood between the Red Army and East Prussia.²⁷ The attempt was now made to remedy this deficiency within a matter of weeks through conscripted labour and rapidly improvised organization.

On 28 July 1944, transmitting Hitler’s decree of the previous day for the construction of fortifications in the east, Guderian, the newly appointed Chief of the Army General Staff, declared that ‘the whole of eastern Germany must immediately become a single deep-echeloned fortress’. The State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, Wilhelm Stuckart, amplified the order, laying out details for implementation of the construction work to the eastern Gauleiter and Hans Frank, boss of the General Government. The fortification workers would need spades, pickaxes, blankets, eating utensils and marching rations. Their overseers were to have pistols and other weapons —a hint of the possible need for harsh action to stamp their authority on a recalcitrant workforce. The Reich Transport Ministry and railway authorities would organize transport. Building materials and equipment would come from OT offices. Horses and carts were to be used as far as possible for carrying the building materials. Rations would be allocated through provincial food offices or, in the case of the General Government, through deep inroads into the provisions of the region.²⁸

At the beginning of September, Hitler made it clear that command over the fortification work was exclusively in the hands of the Party, to be deployed by the RKVs under Bormann’s direction.²⁹ In reality, the Gauleiter, as RKVs, had a good deal of independence in the way they ran affairs in their provinces. Erich Koch, the brutal Gauleiter of East Prussia, one of Hitler’s favourite provincial chieftains, led the way in dragooning the population of his province into compulsory labour service. Already on 13 July he had decreed that the entire male population of specified districts between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five were to be conscripted with immediate effect for fortification work. Anyone defying the order would be subject to punishment by military court. Shops and businesses not absolutely necessary for the war effort were closed and their owners and workers sent to dig. Trains leaving the East Prussian border were controlled, and men taken off them and brought back for construction work.³⁰ Koch’s example was followed by the other eastern Gauleiter. A report from Konigsberg in East Prussia, noted by British intelligence authorities, indicates the effect of the conscription on daily life in the province.

Great simplifications have been introduced in the everyday life of the population. In restaurants guests must