months.11 Soldiers travelling through Berlin reported that the mood in the west was ‘catastrophic’, as everyone was just waiting for the end of the war, which could not be long delayed. In the Reich capital itself, pessimism had caught hold among the population. There was widespread criticism of failed promises of new weapons, though fear of the consequences of falling into the hands of the Soviets was said to underpin a readiness to fight on.12 Fatalism and dulled indifference were commonplace. ‘We’ll take it as it comes. We can’t alter things,’ people felt. ‘Everything that looks like propaganda or is spoken as such is flatly rejected,’ it was reported.13 Similar disbelief in propaganda claims was registered in southern Germany, where the mood was ‘very depressed’ and there was little hope in a favourable end to the war for Germany, especially since the promised new weapons had never materialized.14 People in Vienna thought they had been led up the garden path about the new weapons. There was a general feeling that the situation was hopeless. Alongside widespread apathy, individuals were fearful. Many were said to be contemplating suicide. ‘I’ve already taken all steps to do away with my family,’ was one comment. ‘I’ve enough poison.’15 The war was ‘the same swindle’ as in 1914–18, the rural population in the Alpine district of Berchtesgaden were saying. ‘If people had imagined in 1933 what was to come, they would never have voted for Hitler,’ was the view in an area where once huge crowds of ‘pilgrims’ had gathered to try to catch a glimpse of the Fuhrer at his nearby residence on the Obersalzberg.16
The resignation, apathy, dislocation and sheer fatigue at the attritional suffering—quite apart from the suffocating repression of the regime—meant, however, that the collapsing morale could not be converted into a revolutionary fervour. Reports by observers from neutral countries smuggled out to the western Allies provided graphic descriptions of the depressed mood in Berlin as preparations were made for the defence of the city, the chaotic situation on the railways, panic buying of food in central Germany and the appalling living conditions throughout the country. But such reports were adamant that there was no possibility of an internal revolution.17
Even so, the Nazi authorities were taking no chances. For them, the alarm bells were now ringing loudly, despite repeated routine protestations about the ‘solid inner bearing’ of the people. A worrying indicator was the crumpling of the Party’s authority and collapse in its standing. This had largely disintegrated in the west the previous autumn. Now it was the same in the east—and increasingly everywhere. Refugees flooding in from the east were from late January onwards pouring out their bile on the failings of Party officials in the botched evacuations—prominent among them as a target the East Prussian Gauleiter, Erich Koch.18 Relations between the army and the Party were tense. Given the current mood on the eastern front, Himmler was told (in response to a suggestion that Party leaders should be sent to serve effectively as political commissars with the troops) that individuals in Party uniform would be killed.19 The Party uniform, it was claimed, acted like a red rag to soldiers.20 It was little different among the civilian population. Party functionaries, well aware of their unpopularity, had to be reminded by the Munich Gauleiter, Paul Giesler, of their obligation to wear their uniform on duty—and ordinary Party members their badge at all times—under penalty of exclusion from the Party.21 The intense hatred and contempt for the representatives of a Party by now widely seen as responsible for Germany’s ruination was meanwhile as good as ubiquitous. Cases of what were understandably seen as gross dereliction of duty by Party leaders scandalized the population and pushed their public standing still further into the mire.22
Hans Frank, Hitler’s viceroy in the General Government of Poland, was hugely corrupt even by Nazi standards. In his domain almost 2 million Jews had been gassed to death in the camps at Belz?ec, Sobibor and Treblinka and a reign of terror imposed on the subjugated Polish population. Frank fled on 17 January from the Wawel Castle in Krakow, where he had lived since 1939 in untold luxury and despotic splendour. He and his large entourage headed first to a castle at Seichau in Silesia. When they moved again on 23 January, they left behind rooms littered with the remnants of large stores of food and wine, much of it squandered in a lavish farewell party, to the fury of a local population that had been forced to acclimatize to the privations of war. Lorry-loads of valuables and looted art treasures were sent on to Frank’s eventual residence amid the Bavarian lakes.23
However, it was the flight by Gauleiter Arthur Greiser from his headquarters in Posen in mid-January that gained particular notoriety. Greiser, who was to be executed in 1946 by the Poles upon whom he had inflicted years of torment and suffering in the ‘Warthegau’, had been one of the most ruthless of the Nazi provincial rulers. He was proud of having the ear of Hitler and Himmler, and had played a significant part in establishing the Chelmno death camp in his region, where more than 150,000 Jews were gassed between the end of 1941 and 1944. With the Red Army rapidly advancing and by 17 January almost at the borders of his Gau, Greiser still kept up appearances about the strength of German defences. Inwardly, he was close to panic. Unwilling to see his Gau as the first to be evacuated, he refused to give the necessary orders. A partial and belated order for the easternmost parts of the Gau was eventually given on the night of 17/18 January, after Greiser had witnessed thousands of troops running away. But most of the population were unaware of their peril. He still professed to his staff that Posen would be defended. In reality, he knew that there was no possibility of stemming the Soviet onslaught. On 20 January, Greiser called Fuhrer Headquarters and gained Hitler’s approval, passed on to him by Bormann, to evacuate the Party offices in Posen and move his entourage to more secure surrounds in Frankfurt an der Oder. Greiser told his staff that he was being recalled to Berlin by order of the Fuhrer to undertake a special task for Himmler. That evening, accompanied by an aide, he fled from Posen. Whatever lorries could be found were sequestrated for the transfer of the property and files of the Gau offices; the initial objections of the military authorities were overcome on the grounds that the evacuation was an order of the Fuhrer. Greiser’s flight left the Gau in chaos and a frantic stampede of the population trying to escape by whatever means they could. Most were overtaken by Soviet troops. Around 50,000 died fleeing from the Warthegau.24
The Hitler order was a complication when criticism of Greiser arose within the Party itself. It transpired, however, that Greiser had engineered the permission to leave at a time when evacuation was being refused to ordinary citizens—Posen had been designated a fortress town, to be held at whatever cost—and had misled Hitler into believing that the fall of the city was imminent. (In fact, the Red Army was then still about 130 kilometres away, and Posen did not finally capitulate until late February.) Goebbels, long an admirer of Greiser but aware of the damage he had now caused the Party, regarded the Gauleiter’s action as shameful, cowardly and deceitful. He thought Greiser should be put before the People’s Court (where a death sentence would have been the certain outcome), but could not persuade Hitler—presumably embarrassed by his own authorization—to impose the severe punishment he felt was merited.25 As it was, the ‘Greiser case’, propaganda agencies reported, was still ‘doing the rounds’ weeks later, amplifying the accounts from refugees about ‘the failure of the NSDAP in the evacuation of entire Gaue’.26 Bormann was forced to issue a circular to the Party, attempting to counter the negative rumours about the behaviour of the political leaders in the Warthegau. He defended Greiser, stating that he was prepared to serve with the military command in Posen but left the city on the express orders of the Fuhrer. He threatened harsh punishment for any functionaries leaving the population in the lurch.27
Greiser was, in fact, far from the last of the Party ‘bigwigs’ to leave his charges stranded after demanding of them that they should hold out to the last. But he was, for Goebbels, ‘the first serious disappointment’, an indicator that ‘everything was breaking up’ and the end was not far off.28
III
The signs that the determination to hold on was starting to wobble even within the Party itself now prompted moves to shore up the faltering morale by strenuous and repeated exhortation—backed at every point by merciless punishment for those seen to fail in their duty.
On 23 January, Wilhelm Stuckart, as acting Reich Plenipotentiary for Administration (deputizing for Himmler in the latter’s capacity as Reich Minister of the Interior), demanded that administrative officials of state authorities in the eastern Gaue (including Mark Brandenburg and Berlin) carry out their duties to the last possible minute in areas threatened by the enemy before then attaching themselves to the fighting troops. Rigorous measures were to be taken against those seen to fail. When Stuckart circulated his missive to the highest state authorities on 1 February, he included a copy of Himmler’s order, issued two days earlier, stipulating that anyone leaving his position in any military or civilian office without being ordered to do so should be punished by death. An added list of
