The End

diary.⁹⁵

Reinhardt was having to contend with Guderian as well as Hitler. On 15 January Guderian initially refused to allow him to shorten the north-eastern corner of the front. Reinhardt, desperate for reserves, appealed to Hitler, who this time supported him as Guderian backed down. On 17 January Hitler, supported by Guderian, rejected Reinhardt’s fervent plea to pull back the 4th Army to save much needed reserves to help support the struggling 2nd Army further to the west. Reinhardt’s hour-long telephone call to Hitler to put the case was difficult. Hitler said at the outset that, because of his hearing problems as a result of the attack on his life the previous July, General Wilhelm Burgdorf, his Wehrmacht adjutant, would conduct the discussion. Reinhardt and his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Otto Heidkamper, also a firm regime loyalist, suspected that their case was not fully or clearly represented by Burgdorf. In any case, it was to no avail. Hitler was convinced, he said, that withdrawals did not save forces, because the enemy simply advanced to more favourable positions. This type of retreat, he claimed, had led to catastrophe at every point of the eastern front. He then rejected Reinhardt’s request to allow the 4th Army to retreat to the Masurian Lakes and was dismissive about the value of the fortifications in Lotzen. The most that Reinhardt achieved was to retain two divisions that Guderian had wanted to transfer to the OKH.⁹⁶

Reinhardt’s nerves were jangling as he struggled to cope with the crisis. They were not improved when on 19 January he witnessed terrible scenes of devastation after fleeing civilians had been hit by a bombing raid that left a trail of corpses, wrecked vehicles and horses torn in pieces by the roadside.⁹⁷ He asked himself in a letter to his wife how it was possible to carry on under such a heavy and painful burden. He gave his own answer: ‘the machine of duty, the will and the unquestioned “must” application of the last ounce of strength work automatically within us. Only seldom do you think about the big “what now”.’⁹⁸

Another entreaty from Reinhardt on the evening of 20 January to withdraw the increasingly imperilled 4th Army to safer lines in the Masurian Lakes was bluntly rebuffed by Hitler—a decision found incomprehensible by the leadership of Army Group Centre since the situation was becoming critical and encirclement almost certain. Guderian promised to try to persuade Hitler to change his mind, but held out little hope. Reinhardt spent another sleepless night. ‘Still no permission to retreat,’ he noted in his diary on 21 January. ‘I’m now in the most severe anguish over whether I should disobey.’ That morning he again begged Guderian and the head of the OKH command staff, General Walther Wenck, to get him an immediate decision, ‘otherwise trust in the leadership will collapse altogether’. ‘Unbelievably tense hours’ went by. Reinhardt smoked one cigarette after another until he had none left. Guderian rang mid-morning to say that Hitler had again rejected a withdrawal of the 4th Army.

Reinhardt decided once more to speak directly with Hitler in an attempt to ‘save what can be saved’. He had another long struggle to try to surmount Hitler’s stubborn rejection of retreat to the Masurian Lakes district as the only hope of holding the front. He found the conversation distressing, he wrote to his wife, ‘because I fought so much with my entire feelings and sense of duty and conflicts of conscience between wanting and having to obey and feeling of responsibility for my task’. The turning point in the discussion came when Reinhardt vehemently claimed that, if the withdrawal did not happen, East Prussia and the Army Group would collapse. He had, Reinhardt continued, been bombarded with requests for support from his subordinate commanders and had to say that the question of confidence from below was now a serious factor. He knew of no solution other than the one he had proposed. If this were again to be rejected, he feared he would lose control. After almost two hours Hitler conceded. He gave permission for the retreat to the lakes. ‘Thank God!’ Reinhardt noted. ‘I was near despair. Is suicide desertion? Now probably yes! Thank God,’ he repeated, ‘that the crisis of confidence has been overcome. I wouldn’t have been able to face my commanders. They doubted me, justifiably. Now God must help us see that it is not all too late.’⁹⁹

It was too late. No sooner had Hitler finally agreed to allow the 4th Army to pull back to the fortified zone centred on Lotzen than further Soviet advances endangered the area. Already that same evening, 21 January, Reinhardt acknowledged that the Lotzen position was no longer safe, and a move westwards to the ‘Heilsberg triangle’ was imperative. As he travelled to Konigsberg next day in a heavy snowstorm, Reinhardt was dismayed at the sight of the refugees in the appalling weather. It upset him, he told his wife, that ‘they were driven off and roughly handled by us if they were blocking our roads with their vehicles and holding up vital troop movements’. The threat to the 4th Army was, meanwhile, becoming graver. Impassable roads meant Reinhardt could not reach the 4th Army’s commander, General Ho?bach, on 23 January to assess the overall situation. By that evening, as further depressing news of Soviet advances came in, Reinhardt, blaming the belated permission to retreat, recorded in his diary: ‘We are, then, encircled.’

His view by now was that a ‘breakthrough to the west’, which Ho?bach had urged as the only hope, had to be undertaken. He informed the OKH of the decision that evening—though he omitted to mention his conviction that his forces were too weak both to attempt this and at the same time to hold Konigsberg and the Samland. Nor— since it was plain that Hitler would reject the move out of hand—did he report the intention to give up the Lotzen area and retreat entirely to a new defensible position near Heilsberg. The OKH agreed, unaware of the full extent of the crisis, and promised to send forces eastwards from the Elbing area to meet up with the 4th Army pushing westwards. When he and Ho?bach met next morning, Reinhardt, no doubt put under pressure to act by Ho?bach, whose confidence in his Commander-in-Chief had been waning over recent days, gave the order to accelerate the breakout. Reinhardt worried that it was being attempted too late and continued to fret about whether he ought to have disobeyed Hitler’s earlier persistent refusal to allow a retreat. ‘I cannot survive this catastrophe,’ he lamented. ‘I’ll be blamed, even though my conscience is clear, except that I was perhaps, from a sense of duty, too obedient.’

Next day, 25 January, Reinhardt faced a further inner conflict. He had suffered a severe head injury that morning when he was badly cut by flying glass following a grenade explosion at a field headquarters he was visiting. Bloodied and haggard, he pleaded in vain with Guderian to withdraw the front further. Guderian, backing Hitler’s stance, insisted on holding the position on the lakes near Lotzen. Reinhardt, from his sickbed, struggled again the following afternoon to gain a favourable decision from the OKH as the threat to the 4th Army worsened. He was promised a decision by 5 p.m., which he had said was the last possible moment. At 5.30 p.m. Hitler’s order eventually came through, but permitted only a limited withdrawal to positions which, in fact, had already been overrun by the Red Army. Hitler continued to insist on holding the position around Lotzen. Reinhardt told Ho?bach, repeatedly pressing for a decision, that if he had received none by 7.15 p.m. he would order the withdrawal himself. Amid rising tension, both Guderian and Wenck at the OKH, remarkably, were unavailable to speak to Reinhardt on the telephone. Ho?bach rang at 7 p.m. to say he needed immediate permission to break out; he could wait no longer. Reinhardt gave the order. He had no choice, he noted; the advantage of the position on the lakes had in any case been lost. He had no forces strong enough to retain it. ‘My conscience is clear in favour of the attack… on which everything depends,’ he added. ‘I firmly believe that the success and sustaining of our attack is more important to the Fuhrer than the lake position.’ He was wrong. Hitler, feeling he had been deceived, exploded in blind fury at the news that the 4th Army had given up Lotzen, accusing Reinhardt and Ho?bach of treason. He later calmed down. But a scapegoat was needed. That night the loyalist, if conscience-stricken, Reinhardt, along with his Chief of Staff, Heidkamper, was dismissed.

VI

Striking throughout the drama was not only Hitler’s absurd obtuseness in refusing to concede sensible withdrawals, but also Reinhardt’s unhappiness at having to entertain the idea of disobedience even in such extremes. Significant, too, is that Reinhardt and the leadership of Army Group Centre felt they could rely upon no support from the OKH or from the military entourage around Hitler. The distrust of Burgdorf, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, was plain. But so too was the feeling that Guderian, as Chief of the General Staff, would side with Hitler. When, therefore, the complete withdrawal of the 4th Army to the Heilberg area was recognized as the only remaining option, even if it meant the loss of Konigsberg and the Samland, this had to be kept not only from Hitler, but also from the OKH. Gauleiter Koch, still trumpeting the need to hold onto ‘Fortress East Prussia’ down to the last man, had also to be kept in the dark, since he would immediately tell Hitler. The lines of military as well as political command that kept Hitler’s leadership position untouchable and ensured that his orders were carried out, however nonsensical, remained, then, intact throughout the crisis. Ho?bach embellished his own reputation by