The End

‘self-help’ and passing on to the District Leaders responsibility for repairs to the railway in their own areas. The meeting, Goebbels concluded, had come to nothing.⁴⁹

If the Gauleiter were left to cope as best they could, Himmler’s address had nevertheless ruled out any alternative to retaining a positive and constructive approach to the worst difficulties. As high representatives of the regime, they were expected not to bow to problems—a sign of weakness and lack of resolve—but to show initiative in finding improvised solutions. Not least, Himmler appealed to their loyalty to Hitler, whose ‘charismatic authority’ rested ultimately on the personal bonds built into the Nazi system. And as arch-loyalists for many years, who owed their power entirely to Hitler, and who had nothing to lose, the Gauleiter were far from ready to contemplate deserting him. Their bonds to Hitler might have weakened. But they had not broken. The public face of the regime was still not flinching.

The notion of the power of will to overcome difficulties, central to the operation of ‘charismatic authority’ throughout the system, ran in its essence completely counter to impersonal bureaucratic administration—the basis of all modern states. The Party had always distinguished between the positive, desirable qualities of ‘leadership of people’ (Menschenfuhrung) and the negative, arid attributes of mere ‘administration’. Leaders, at whatever level, ‘made things happen’. Bureaucrats simply administered rules and regulations which invariably, unless overridden by ‘will’, blocked initiative and sapped dynamism. Yet the Party, despite its unbureaucratic ethos, in seeking to implement the wishes and long-term goals of the Fuhrer had, of course, in reality always been intensely bureaucratic as an organization. The tension in trying bureaucratically to work towards unbureaucratic ends had been there from the start, had increased greatly after the takeover of power and had intensified dramatically in conditions of total war.⁵⁰

In late 1944, when less and less could be achieved, the Party bureaucracy went into overdrive.⁵¹ Time and energy were expended by a bloated Party officialdom on the most trivial matters. The Party Chancellery squandered countless hours, for instance, drawing up regulations on the minutiae of Volkssturm service—stipulating duties, regulating training periods, laying down rules about clothing and equipment, dealing with exemptions and, among the most notable absurdities, designating letterheads and service seals and providing detailed descriptions of the insignia to be used by different ranks.⁵² Goebbels described the bureaucracy involved as ‘laughable’.⁵³ But it was unrelenting. When Bormann moved to Hitler’s new field headquarters at Ziegenberg, near Bad Nauheim in Hessen, prior to the start of the Ardennes offensive, he found ‘teleprinters were unsuitably installed, no teleprinter cables connected, neither typewriter desks nor shelves set up in the tiny room where my typists have to work’.⁵⁴ Even so, the bureaucratic output from his Party Chancellery continued unabated.

The regime’s unfolding of bureaucratic, controlling energy at all levels was little short of astonishing. Orders poured out. Every official, however minor, groaned under the suffocating load of paperwork on the desk (despite efforts to save paper).⁵⁵ The Reich Post Minister wrote to all the offices of state, at both Reich and regional levels, complaining bitterly that the postal system was greatly overburdened through the increase in bureaucracy. ‘A swelling mass of communications like an avalanche’ was how he described it, at precisely a time when the damage to the rail network and postal installations, together with loss of personnel to the Wehrmacht, had gravely affected the efficiency of the service.⁵⁶ His urgent entreaties to reduce the level of post fell on deaf ears.

More and more was controlled, orchestrated, regulated, ordained, militarized, directed and organized, yet less and less resulted from all the effort—except, crucially, the stifling of all remaining limited levels of personal free space in the system. If ‘total society’ has a meaning in the sense that little or nothing not subjected to regime control existed any longer, and that opinion deviating from the official stance could be openly expressed only at great personal risk, then Germany towards the end of 1944 was approaching such a state.

As living conditions worsened drastically under the pounding from Allied bombs, the pressure on the population intensified. The total-war effort, for instance, far from subsiding after the extreme exertions of the late summer, redoubled its attempt in the autumn to dredge up all possible remaining reserves of manpower for the Wehrmacht. Goebbels pointed out at the beginning of November that by this time 900,000 extra men had been provided for the Wehrmacht. But he admitted it was not enough. The losses in the previous three months had numbered 1.2 million. He wanted Hitler’s support for pressing a reluctant Speer to surrender more men from the armaments sector. Speer eventually agreed to give up 30,000 men, though only temporarily until they could be redeployed once the transport situation had improved. Goebbels could not accept the condition, so the matter was left to be resolved by Hitler. As so often, no decision was forthcoming.⁵⁷

More important for Goebbels, however, was for him to have authority from Hitler to ‘comb out’ the Wehrmacht for additional personnel to be sent to the front, as he had done earlier in the civilian sector. He finally managed to gain Hitler’s signature to a decree to this effect on 10 December. Goebbels felt revitalized, bursting with new energy, and determined to overcome all opposition within the army itself to raise new forces for Hitler. He expected—once more working through a small directing staff and the Gauleiter at the regional level—to attain very positive results in the New Year. He was convinced that only his total-war drive had made the coming western offensive at all possible. He now hoped, he said, to be able to give the Fuhrer the basis of an offensive army in the east, as the ‘combing out’ of the civilian sector had provided one for the west.⁵⁸

It was, of course, wishful thinking. But in these weeks Goebbels veered between an evident sense of realism about Germany’s plight, brought home to him most forcefully through the destruction of one German city after another through Allied bombing (which, unlike Hitler, he saw at first hand in visits to bombed-out localities), and continued hope that willpower, shored up by propaganda, would sustain the fight, whatever the odds, until the shaky enemy coalition cracked. ‘The political crisis in the enemy camp grows daily’ was only one of repeated assertions that the internal divisions, and the losses they were suffering, would split the coalition before long.⁵⁹ Numerous diary entries hint at scepticism about Germany’s position. And when he viewed the impressive new, highly modern U-boats being built in Bremen at the end of November, he sighed despairingly that it was all too late.⁶⁰ Yet he had far from given up hope. Following a long talk with Hitler—lasting deep into the night—a few days later, when the embattled Fuhrer exuded confidence, expounded excitedly on the forthcoming offensive and envisioned a grandiose rebuilding of German cities and revitalization of culture after the war, Goebbels was so excited that he could not sleep.⁶¹ He was still, as he always had been, in thrall to Hitler.

Propaganda, in his view, had the vital task of reinforcing the will to resist, ‘in strengthening the backbone of the nation again and restoring its diminished self-confidence’.⁶² Ceremonies held throughout Germany where the newly created Volkssturm swore their oaths of allegiance—around 100,000 men in ten separate ceremonies in Berlin alone on Sunday, 12 November—were part of this task. In seasonal mist and with the ruins of the Wilhelmplatz as a macabre backdrop, Goebbels addressed the arrayed Volkssturm men from the balcony of the Propaganda Ministry. ‘Some are already armed,’ he recorded in his diary—unwittingly acknowledging the impoverished levels of support for the new organization. In fact, rifles, bazookas and some machine guns had been handed out just before the ceremony. Few of the men knew how to use them, but in any case they had to give them up again once the ceremony was over. Silence fell across the square as, lacking uniforms, they doffed their caps and hats in an oath to the Fuhrer before marching past ‘in sacred earnestness’. Everything was filmed to make a big impression in the newsreels. The optical effect was excellent, remarked Goebbels’ aide Wilfred von Oven. But what the cameras did not show were young boys and soldiers on leave standing on the footpaths and doing their best not to laugh at the march-past. The Volkssturm was not worth ‘a shot of powder’ in von Oven’s view.⁶³

As a further attempt to maintain fighting spirit, Goebbels had in 1943 commissioned the colour film Kolberg—a grand spectacular aimed at turning the defence of the Pomeranian coastal town of that name during the Napoleonic Wars into a heroic epic to inspire the present-day defenders of the Reich.⁶⁴ By the end of 1944 the film—with an enormous cast of extras, apparently including 187,000 soldiers temporarily removed from active service at a time when new recruits for the front were being so desperately sought—was almost ready. Goebbels was hugely impressed, on seeing a rough-cut at the beginning of December, by what he called a ‘masterpiece’ that ‘answered all the questions now bothering the German people’. He had great expectations of the film, which he thought worth ‘a victorious battle’ in its likely impact on the mood of the public.⁶⁵ But he feared ‘scenes of destruction and despair’ would have the effect that in the current situation many Germans would decide against viewing it.⁶⁶ As the comment betrays, Goebbels was fully aware of the uphill task he faced in overcoming the deep pall of gloom in Germany as the