The End

So negative were the reports reaching Bormann that he felt it necessary to write a lengthy complaint to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Security Police, at the tone of the ‘typical SD report’, which generalized broadly from a small number of individual cases to paint a bleak picture. Bormann accepted that some segments of the population—but not the population—had welcomed the Americans, though he attributed this to an inability to counter the propaganda effect of enemy radio and to the readiness of people to believe that the war would soon be over, and with that a release from the constant bombing raids. For his part, he was convinced that, as after 1918, there would soon be ‘a very strong sobering process’.⁵⁴

According to General Schulz, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group G, in a telex on 8 April to Karl Wahl, Gauleiter of Swabia, ‘the fighting of the last days has clearly shown that the population in the zone close to the front uses all means to deter soldiers from any fighting and resistance in order to protect their property from destruction’. As a counter-measure, he urged the evacuation of the population near the combat zone. Wahl took the view that this did not yet apply to the population of his Gau.⁵⁵ A few days later, he nevertheless complied with an order to evacuate a zone either side of the Danube as a preventive measure in case it was drawn into the fighting area. Women and children were ordered to leave within two hours on foot or bicycle since no transport was available, and to use side roads to keep the main routes clear for the troops.⁵⁶ In many parts of the west, evacuation, as Goebbels acknowledged, was impracticable. ‘We’re issuing orders in Berlin that practically don’t even arrive, let alone can be carried out,’ he wrote, seeing in this ‘the danger of an extraordinary diminution of authority’.⁵⁷ Removing a largely unwilling population was impossible. No transport was available. And there were no areas to send them to. Evacuation orders of the Fuhrer could simply not be implemented and were quietly forgotten.⁵⁸

In the south, following the collapse in Hungary and Austria, chaos arose from tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from the Soviets. Gauleiter August Eigruber of Gau Oberdonau complained bitterly to the Party Chancellery that Gau Bayreuth and Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria would not accept fifteen trainloads of refugees, numbering around 100,000 people, from Vienna, the Lower Danube and Hungary, nor, despite orders, send urgently needed cereals to Gau Upper Danube, which had no corn supplies left. The refugees had been left in railway sidings for several days. Munich eventually agreed to take its share. Gau Tirol was also forced into accepting some, though the Gauleiter, Franz Hofer, said that while he would do what he could for Germans, he could do nothing for Hungarians, Croats and Slovenes. No one wanted to take the Hungarians. Gauleiter Fritz Wachtler in Bayreuth stubbornly continued to refuse to cooperate. The Party Chancellery sought in vain to get him to respond to its demands, eventually sending a special courier to obtain a reply. Wachtler had also failed to provide the daily situation reports to which, it was said, the Fuhrer attached great importance.⁵⁹ His unwillingness or inability—Bayreuth was suffering severe air raids at the time—to comply with orders from Berlin was a further indication of the gathering dissolution of the regime.

The collapsing communications network also contributed to the undermining of central control. By early April it was almost impossible to sustain contact between Berlin and the Gaue in southern Germany and Austria. A motorbike courier service was proposed to relay urgent messages. The ‘communications calamity’ had never been so great.⁶⁰ Where communications still functioned, they brought an unceasing flood of new decrees and directives from Bormann, ‘thoroughly useless stuff’ according to Goebbels, and largely ignored by Gauleiter who did not even have time to read them. The Propaganda Minister contemptuously dismissed Bormann’s efforts, saying he had turned the Party Chancellery into ‘a paper Chancellery’.⁶¹

A glimpse of the profound lack of realism at lower levels of the Party, existing to the end, can be found in the directive of the Kreisleiter of Freiberg in Saxony, as late as 28 April. ‘Now that a certain stabilization of the situation has taken place,’ he wrote (two days before Hitler’s suicide), ‘it is necessary again to turn intensively to Party work.’ A whole array of duties followed.⁶²

In Vienna, the Party was in a desolate state weeks before the city fell to the Red Army. There were reports of a rebellious mood among the working class (which indeed manifested itself in attempts by underground Communist groups to assist the Soviets when they entered the city), and high levels of antagonism towards the Party. Functionaries were insulted, even spat at, and did not dare walk round after air raids unless armed. There was strong criticism of the Gauleiter (and one-time Hitler Youth leader), Baldur von Schirach, and of Hitler. Women were said to have been especially prominent in the agitation, even inciting troops to mutiny.⁶³

Goebbels could still try to claim, not least for Hitler’s benefit, that the ‘Werwolf’ activity marked a return to the revolutionary ethos of the Party’s ‘time of struggle’ before the ‘seizure of power’ in 1933.⁶⁴ He continued to press for radical action. And he acted ruthlessly without hesitation. When 200 men and women stormed bakers’ shops in a district of Berlin to get bread he saw it as a symptom of ‘inner weakness and budding defeatism’, deciding instantly to stamp it out ‘with brutal methods’. Two of those singled out as ringleaders, a man and a woman, were summarily sentenced to death by the People’s Court that afternoon and beheaded the next night. Posters, radio broadcasts and a meeting held by the Kreisleiter about the incident aimed at discouraging any repetition.⁶⁵

As Goebbels knew, such ruthlessness could not hide the evident fact that the Party was disintegrating. The constant propaganda slogans to ‘hold out to the last’, and to go down fighting in defence of towns and villages stood in stark contrast to the behaviour of many Party functionaries who disappeared into thin air at the approach of the enemy. The Party Chancellery repeatedly reminded functionaries to set the best example to the population. The Fuhrer expected political leaders to master the situation in their Gaue with lightning speed and maximum severity, Bormann told them in mid-April. They had to educate their District Leaders in the same way. ‘Leaders by nature have burnt their bridges and show extreme commitment,’ he added. ‘The honour of each one is worth only as much as his steadfastness, his commitment and his deeds.’⁶⁶ The appeals fell mainly on deaf ears. ‘The poor examples presented by the Party have had an extraordinarily repellent impact on the population,’ Goebbels remarked at the beginning of April. Its reputation had been badly tarnished.⁶⁷ A few days later, he admitted that the behaviour of Gau- and Kreisleiter in the west had led to a huge drop in confidence in the Party. ‘The population believed it could expect that our Gauleiter would fight in their Gaue and, if necessary, die there. This has not been the case in any instance. As a result, the Party is fairly played out in the west.’⁶⁸

Some Gauleiter (and beneath them many Kreisleiter and lower functionaries of the Party) had simply left the people in their areas in the lurch and fled.⁶⁹ Much to the disgust of Goebbels, Josef Grohe, Gauleiter of Cologne-Aachen, had failed to defend his Gau in March as the Americans entered and left in advance of the civilian population with his staff in a motor boat. He retained a skeletal staff for a short time at Bensberg, then dissolved his Gau administration entirely on 8 April and moved to Field-Marshal Model’s headquarters before discarding his uniform a week later and setting out under an assumed name in a vain attempt to locate his family in central Germany.⁷⁰ Albert Hoffmann, Gauleiter of Westphalia-South, had tried in previous weeks through ‘extreme severity’ to combat signs of collapsing morale and defeatism in his Gau. But, despite giving Speer the impression that he backed his attempts to prevent unnecessary destruction, he personally ordered a number of bridges to be blown up and made plans for his departure at the beginning of April. He moved to the headquarters of Model’s Army Group B and was seldom seen thereafter in his Gau offices. Without consulting either Hitler or Bormann, at a meeting with his Kreisleiter on 13 April he announced the dissolution of the Nazi Party in Gau Westphalia-South, fled that same evening and vanished before joining his family in the middle of May disguised as a farmhand.⁷¹ Gauleiter Koch, who for years had ruled East Prussia with a rod of iron and had been the target of much hatred for the belated and mismanaged evacuation of the population in January, was still in April producing slogans in the besieged provincial capital such as ‘Victory is Ours—Konigsberg will be the Grave of the Bolsheviks’.⁷² At the same time he was making preparations to take himself, his family and his possessions to safety. He made a final departure from East Prussia by air on 25 April, just before the harbour at Pillau was taken by the Red Army and the fate of around 100,000 refugees still stranded on the Samland was sealed. From the Hela peninsula he transferred to the ice-breaker Ostpreu?en, apparently with his Mercedes on board, and sailed to Denmark before travelling on to Flensburg, where he vainly demanded a U-boat to take him to South America.⁷³

If these were the most blatant cases of the flight of the Party’s ‘Golden Pheasants’, few Gauleiter were prepared to entertain the prospect of the ‘heroic’ death that the image of the leading Nazi ‘fighters’ demanded. Only two out of forty-three serving Gauleiter, Karl Gerland of Kurhessen and the notably brutal Karl Holz of Franconia died at their posts in the fighting.⁷⁴ Holz’s last report from Nuremberg, sent late in the evening on 17 April, painted a depressing picture of the situation in the city (though the most negative sections were crossed out,