numbered among Hitler’s most trusted generals, and was described by the Dictator towards the end of April 1945 as having been his ‘best field-marshal’.21 Like Kesselring, Model had disingenuously insisted, while serving Hitler to the best of his ability, that he was ‘unpolitical’. Like almost all of his fellow generals, in fact, he shared at the least partial identities with Nazism—including detestation of Bolshevism, and belief in both the superiority of German culture and Germany’s rightful supremacy in Europe. As the war had turned irredeemably against Germany, his own fanatical will to stave off defeat and prevent the victory of the Reich’s enemies was reflected in his unwaveringly confident proclamations to his soldiers and orders for ruthless punishment of ‘inferior elements in the civilian population’ who displayed a defeatist or hostile attitude.22 He echoed demands of the regime to ‘hold out’ at all costs, and even the vocabulary of Nazi propaganda. At the end of March, his proclamation to his sub-commanders had described the duty of officers as setting an example to their men, if need be through their own deaths, and convincing them of the need to continue the struggle ‘even more than before… down to self-sacrifice’. He demanded immediate action against those sections of the civilian population who had been ‘infected by Jewish and democratic poison of materialist ideas’ and put the protection of their own belongings above ‘unconditional support for the fighting troops’.23
Model remained conscious of his loyalty and obedience to Hitler even as German hopes crumbled. This was still the case after his strategic recommendations on the Ardennes offensive had been ignored, and even after a confrontation with Kesselring about a possible breakout from the Ruhr had led to his vehement denunciation of Keitel and Jodl at Wehrmacht High Command.24 Increasingly in conflict with this, as the end approached, was his sense of soldierly duty. Unlike Kesselring, he was amenable to Speer’s entreaties not to destroy vital economic infrastructure. But he refused all attempts to persuade him to surrender his encircled army. (Feelers towards a possible capitulation had initially been made by Walther Rohland, Speer’s tank expert, with Colonel-General Josef Harpe, now commanding the 5th Panzer Army in the west. Harpe, who had been dismissed from his command during the retreat in the east in January, refused to act since going against the will of Model and the five western Gauleiter would have meant certain condemnation to death.)25 Hitler’s order, following the fall of Konigsberg, to have families arrested in the event of capitulation or refusal to accept orders, apparently weighed heavily with Model.
By 17 April the fighting in the Ruhr was over. When all hope had gone for his troops, Model dissolved his Army Group rather than formally capitulate to the enemy. Some 317,000 German soldiers and 30 generals entered captivity. Model had long seen suicide as the only honourable way out for a field-marshal, and had hinted for some weeks at his own death in defeat. He shot himself in the woods near Duisburg on 21 April.26
Field-Marshal Schorner—Hitler’s favourite commander and the last one to whom he gave the field-marshal’s baton, on 5 April—was, as we have had cause to note in earlier chapters, notorious for his brutality even among his peer group of tough generals, all of them strict displinarians. Anything other than driving his troops on to continue the fight against what he saw as an ‘Asiatic’ enemy was here inconceivable. While Schorner did not have an equivalent anywhere else in the army, he had no monopoly of ruthlessness towards his own troops. The successor to SS Colonel-General Hausser as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group G in southern Germany, General Schulz, issued orders for ‘the most severe measures’ to be taken to prevent the possibility of soldiers taking to flight at the appearance of enemy tanks. Every soldier leaving his position in battle without a command had to be made aware of what awaited him. Acknowledging the shortage of weaponry, he demanded that soldiers compensate with small arms and the Panzerfaust.27
Fighting on had become an end in itself. As Kesselring’s reflection, quoted above, indicated, it was not thought worthwhile to contemplate how actions might affect the outcome of the war. Most generals were perfectly capable of rational assessment of the situation. They chose instead to overlook their own dire assessments of the lack of weaponry, shortage of men and minimal prospects against overwhelming force to stress the need to do everything ‘not to disappoint the onward-driving will of the Fuhrer’.28
This fitted par excellence the stance of those in Hitler’s own direct military entourage. Here, independence of judgement had never existed. Though General Jodl had on earlier occasions not refrained from speaking frankly to Hitler, he remained an ultra-loyalist, still in thrall to the ‘genius’ of the Fuhrer. Field-Marshal Keitel had never throughout his career shown a flicker of willingness to stand up to Hitler, and was not going to start now. And with Guderian’s dismissal as Chief of the General Staff at the end of March, the last semblance of feisty determination to counter what he saw as calamitous operational decisions was gone. His replacement, General Hans Krebs, was a capable staff officer, but had scarcely been selected for his readiness to challenge higher authority. Personally far more emollient than Guderian, he was quickly assimilated into the bunker community and amounted to little more than a cipher. The division of responsibilities between the High Commands of the Wehrmacht and of the Army had long been a structural weakness in the running of the war. Now, with the war almost over, the division ceased to be significant. But the new unity, in kowtowing to Hitler at every turn, was even more disastrous than the former split had been. And, certainly, nothing to deflect Hitler from his decisions was to be expected of the commanders-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and navy, Goring and Donitz. Goring had long been out of favour. But when he attended military briefings his lasting humiliation made him, if anything, even more determined to show his mettle and back Hitler. Donitz, for his part, proved himself in these last weeks to be among the most fanatical of Hitler’s military leaders in insisting on the fight to the last.
On 7 April, Donitz, echoing Hitler’s own sentiments, declared: ‘We soldiers of the navy know how we have to act. Our military duty, which we unerringly fulfil, whatever happens around us, leaves us standing as a rock of resistance, bold, hard and loyal. Anyone not acting in this way is a scumbag and must be hanged with a notice round his neck saying “Here hangs a traitor who from the most base cowardice has helped German women and children to die instead of protecting them like a man”.’ On 19 April he commended the example of a prisoner of war in Australia who had ‘quietly bumped off’ Communists in the camp and said he would be promoted to a leadership position on his return. ‘There are more such men in the navy’, he added, who show their ‘mastery of difficult positions’ and prove their ‘inner value’. Just over a week earlier, Donitz expounded his own views on the presence of the enemy deep inside German territory. Capitulation, he stated, meant the destruction of Germany through Bolshevism. He defended National Socialism, and Hitler’s policies, as necessary to prevent the Russians overrunning Germany. Grumbling, moaning and complaining was fruitless, and born of weakness, he declared. ‘Cowardice and weakness make people stupid and blind.’ The leadership was aware of all possibilities. The Fuhrer alone, years ago, had clearly seen the threat of Bolshevism. ‘At the latest in a year, perhaps within this year, the whole of Europe will recognise Adolf Hitler as the only statesman of standing.’ Europe’s blindness would one day be removed and result in political possibilities for Germany. Donitz urged a commitment to duty, honour, obedience, hardness and loyalty. He demanded of his commanders ruthless action against any officers failing in their soldierly duty. A crew would always go down with their ship in honour rather than surrender it. The same principle applied to the fight on land. Every naval base would be defended to the last, in accordance with the Fuhrer’s orders. It was victory or death. The navy would fight to the end. This would earn it respect in coming times. It had to represent the will to existence of the people. There was no situation that could not be improved by heroism. Every alternative led to ‘chaos and inextinguishable disgrace’.29
Donitz’s unconditional obedience to Hitler’s will and conviction in the need to continue the fight was equally plainly expressed in a meeting with a number of Gauleiter and other leading Party figures in northern Germany on 25 April. Interestingly, the question was raised at the meeting—by whom is not stated—whether it might be better to end the fighting ‘in the interest of maintaining the substance of the German people’. Donitz replied that the assessment of this question was ‘exclusively a matter of the state leadership embodied by the Fuhrer and nobody had the right to deviate from the line laid down by him. The action of the Fuhrer was exclusively determined by concern for the German people’—though, as we know, Hitler had actually stated on more than one occasion that they did not deserve to survive. ‘Since the capitulation must in any case mean the destruction of the substance of the German people, it is from this standpoint too correct to fight on,’ Donitz added. He stated his determination ‘to put into action what was ordered by the Fuhrer’.30
Among the very few frontline generals to show any independence of mind and try to assert himself against Hitler in the last weeks was Colonel-General Gotthard Heinrici, presented with the unenviable task of defending against massively superior forces the coming attack on Berlin from the Oder. Other than Model, there was no general better equipped to conduct a defensive struggle. But Heinrici was well aware that his forces were weak in armour and heavy artillery, and had large numbers of young, ill-trained soldiers. He was therefore appalled to learn at the beginning of April that Hitler was depriving him of several reserve divisions (including two panzer divisions) and relocating them to Army Group Centre, now forced back into defending what was left of the Protectorate of
