The End

overcome strong resistance, was able to force the defenders back across the Rhine and Mosel by 10 March—the day after Field-Marshal von Rundstedt had been relieved of his command for the last time and replaced as Commander-in-Chief West by the tough Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring, adjudged to have acquitted himself well in the rearguard action in northern Italy. Three days later the Americans were crossing the Mosel and preparing to attack the Saarland, still producing about a tenth of German iron and steel. Kesselring refused to evacuate such a vital industrial area. Intense fighting followed, but there could be only one outcome. The German forces eventually retreated into the eastern Saarland, then the Palatinate, and finally across the Rhine, suffering severe losses (also inflicting them on the enemy). By 25 March the Saar was lost to Germany. By that time the Americans had also occupied Kaiserslautern, Worms and Mainz. Meanwhile, Koblenz had fallen on 17 March.

Six days later the entire stretch of the Rhine from Koblenz to Ludwigshafen was in American hands, and a second bridgehead over the river had been established at Oppenheim, south of Mainz, where troops had crossed in assault boats in a daring manoeuvre on the night of 22/3 March. That day, the British commander, Field-Marshal Montgomery, led his forces over the Lower Rhine at Wesel and by the end of March had consolidated an extensive bridgehead on the eastern bank of the river. The basis for the assault on the Reich’s biggest industrial region, the Ruhr, was thereby laid. Farther south, now the Americans were over the Rhine, fierce German resistance was unable to halt their progress deep into the western parts of the Reich. Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Frankfurt am Main were in American hands by 29 March, Heidelberg two days later. From here on, the advance into central Germany and, to the south into Bavaria, would rapidly unfold.

In the defence of Rhine positions, the Germans had suffered appalling losses, with more than 60,000 men killed or wounded and 293,000 taken prisoner. The loss of tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry as the troops had been hastily forced back over the Rhine and Mosel was huge. German fighting-power, weak enough at the onset of the Allied offensive, was now drastically diminished. Even the paper strength of the divisions, itself much reduced during the fighting of February and March, belied the reality that only a minority—many of them raw recruits—were by now capable of frontline service. Defences otherwise were dependent upon the poorly equipped Volkssturm and hastily assembled units transferred from the Luftwaffe and navy.

If Allied superiority on all fronts in manpower and armaments was ultimately simply overpowering, the characteristic refusal by Hitler and the High Command of the Wehrmacht to countenance tactical retreats until it was too late exacerbated the losses. Coupled with this was the rejection of all entreaties by Guderian and others to withdraw German forces still located outside the Reich’s borders. These included, most prominently, 200,000 battle-hardened troops stranded in Courland, together with forces occupying the Low Countries, Scandinavia and still fighting in northern Italy. The main reason for the catastrophe nevertheless lay in the consistent refusal by the Reich’s leadership to surrender and determination to fight on when any realistic hope had long been extinguished.⁷

By the end of March, then, Germany’s enemies were across the Oder in the east and across the Rhine in the west. That even now there was a readiness to fight on when little if anything could be gained, though continued destruction and heavy loss of life were thereby guaranteed, is little less than astonishing. The readiness should not, however, be mistaken for widespread popular commitment to the German war effort. In the east, it is true, fear of the Soviets was a strong deterrent to defeatism and willingness to surrender. For most people, however, whether in the army or among the civilian population, there was simply no alternative but to struggle on under the terroristic grip of the regime in the dwindling parts of the Reich that were still not occupied.

II

All the indications point to a slump in morale within the Wehrmacht, especially in the west, as the defences gave way and the enemy pressed into the Reich. It was matched by the state of civilian morale. The regime reacted to try to combat the signs of disintegration, as always, through ramping up still further its propaganda efforts and through ferocious repression to serve as a deterrent.

The Party went to great lengths in March 1945 to intensify propaganda efforts to sustain and improve the fighting spirit within the Wehrmacht and among the civilian population. At the start of the month, Bormann sought support from the Gauleiter for a new propaganda drive that aimed to avoid any empty slogans but to reinforce a fanatical will to resist. A ‘Special Action of the Party Chancellery’ was set up to organize intensive propaganda activity through deputations of Party functionaries (in Wehrmacht uniform) and army officers.⁸ Propaganda, it was accepted, had to be improved.⁹ Based on recommendations from Goebbels, it had also to be far more realistic than hitherto—an oblique recognition of some of the failings of hopelessly optimistic prognoses. Soldiers had to be given answers to the central questions preoccupying them: whether there was still a point in fighting; and whether the war could be won. A number of themes had to be highlighted: that Germany still had enough supplies of armaments and food and sufficient reserves of manpower and materiel (none of which was true, belying the emphasis on realism); the development of new ‘miracle’ weapons (on which there was by now all too justified widespread disbelief);¹⁰ the effectiveness of the ‘Panzerfaust’ (the German type of bazooka, widely associated with the Volkssturm’s despairing defensive efforts); and the fact that the Americans had to deploy their forces over a huge area (which, of course, had not stopped them making massive inroads through German defences).¹¹

None of this was much of a recipe to restore the rapidly waning confidence and slumping morale. Party speakers serving with the Wehrmacht were selected to address the troops—all the more necessary since transport difficulties were preventing written material from reaching them. In the Gau of Hessen-Nassau, arrangements were made to bus Party speakers chosen by the Reich propaganda leadership to frontline troop units. The leaflets such speakers were to distribute included reminders to ‘think of the mass murder of Dresden’ to encourage them in the belief that the British and Americans, as their destruction of the homeland through terror-bombing showed, were no better than the Bolsheviks. The only lesson was to stand and fight to the last.¹²

Another approach was to try to deflect attention from complaints and grievances by turning the spotlight on the enemy. This included disparaging the Americans as inferior to the Germans in every respect other than the sheer might of their weaponry, and the claim that Britain was at the limits of its tolerable losses. More remarkably, criticism of German mishandling of occupied territories was to be met with assertions that German measures had, in fact, been superior to those of the Allies, that ‘we could in any case have a really good conscience in the question of treatment of most of the peoples hostile to us’. Understanding for the tasks of the Party and its achievements in the war effort could be improved through comparing these with the running of the First World War.¹³

The ‘speaker action’ included advice on how to deal with commonplace criticisms. Defeatist talk, for instance, had to be met with insistence that only determination and the will to resist could master the crisis. Blame attached to the Party for the war was to be countered by emphasizing that war had been declared on Germany, not the other way round, and that the enemy aimed to destroy not just the leadership but the very existence of Germany; that it would be far worse than after 1918. A rejoinder to the widespread view that the ‘air terror’ was the most unbearable burden of all and accompanying expressions about unfulfilled promises was that hardships had temporarily to be endured to allow time to produce better weapons. Pessimistic remarks that Germany had been unable to do this with its industry intact and could therefore hardly hope to do so with so much of it destroyed were to be turned round by saying that the loss of territories meant a smaller industrial output sufficed. Finally, dejection at enemy inroads in east and west had to be faced down by instilling confidence that counter-measures had been taken and would become stronger, that the fight was continuing at the front and at home, and that it was necessary to hold out to allow time for military and political decisions to ripen. The tenor of all speeches had to be an insistence that Germany would not lose the war, but would still win it. The people had to be given the conviction that there was a united fighting community which would on no account give in, but would be determined to endure the war with all means in order to gain victory.¹⁴

Little of this could sound convincing to any but the wilfully blind and obtuse. People in Berlin likened propaganda to a band playing on a sinking ship.¹⁵ Most soldiers as well as civilians could see the hopelessness of the situation and form their own judgements on the feeble attempts of propaganda to contradict the glaringly obvious. The diary entries of a junior officer on the western front, who kept a careful eye on