I.

During the Second World War, as before it, Nazi propaganda could seem all-pervasive and inescapable, corralling a supine nation into unthinking adulation of Hitler, unconditional enthusiasm for Nazi ideology, and unquestioning support for the military conquest and racial supremacy that were the primary aims of the German war effort. This at least was the impression that Goebbels liked to give. Yet it was a false one.94 To begin with, propaganda was far from all-pervasive. Even Goebbels realized that it had to have its limits. Entertainment and relaxation also had a role to play. 'It's important for the war to keep our people in a good mood,' he noted in his diary on 26 February 1942. 'We failed to do that during the [First] World War, and we had to pay for it with a terrible catastrophe. This example must under no circumstances be repeated.' To begin with, propaganda was far from all-pervasive. Even Goebbels realized that it had to have its limits. Entertainment and relaxation also had a role to play. 'It's important for the war to keep our people in a good mood,' he noted in his diary on 26 February 1942. 'We failed to do that during the [First] World War, and we had to pay for it with a terrible catastrophe. This example must under no circumstances be repeated.'95 In taking this view, Goebbels was among other things learning from experience, as popular distaste for the over-politicized media and a constant diet of speeches and exhortations had already led to widespread indifference to Nazi propaganda before the war. In taking this view, Goebbels was among other things learning from experience, as popular distaste for the over-politicized media and a constant diet of speeches and exhortations had already led to widespread indifference to Nazi propaganda before the war.96 By 1939, therefore, the Nazi Propaganda Minister knew very well that his initial ambition to achieve a total spiritual and emotional mobilization of the German people could not be fulfilled. The purpose of Nazi propaganda during the war was thus more modest: it was to keep people fighting and make sure they conformed, even if only outwardly, to the demands the regime made on them. By 1939, therefore, the Nazi Propaganda Minister knew very well that his initial ambition to achieve a total spiritual and emotional mobilization of the German people could not be fulfilled. The purpose of Nazi propaganda during the war was thus more modest: it was to keep people fighting and make sure they conformed, even if only outwardly, to the demands the regime made on them.97 As Propaganda Minister, Goebbels had huge power over the arts, culture and the media, but he did not have it all his own way. He had a major rival in Otto Dietrich, whom Hitler had appointed head of the Reich Press Office of the Nazi Party in 1931. In 1938 Hitler also made him President of the Reich Press Chamber. Unlike Goebbels, Dietrich worked in Hitler's office and was therefore in a position to receive the Leader's direct orders virtually on a daily basis. It was one of Dietrich's tasks to give Hitler a digest of the international news media every morning. From 1938 onwards Dietrich and his staff also gave daily noontime press conferences at which they issued directives to the editors of the German papers. In order to try to circumvent Dietrich's growing influence, Goebbels timed his own daily Minister's Conference for 11 a.m. This only made matters worse. In 1940 Dietrich began to outflank Goebbels by issuing 'Daily Slogans of the Reich Press Chief' from Hitler's headquarters. Relations between the two men deteriorated still further. On one occasion, as they sat round Hitler's lunch table, Dietrich said: 'My Leader, this morning, while I was taking a bath, I thought of a good idea.' Quick as a flash, Goebbels interrupted him: 'Mr Dietrich, you should take more baths.'98 A particularly serious clash occurred in October 1941, when Hitler sent Dietrich to Berlin to announce to an international press conference that the Soviet Union had been defeated. Although this reflected a widespread perception in the higher echelons of the Nazi leadership at the time, Goebbels was furious: such over-optimistic declarations were in his view hostages to fortune.99 He was right, as it turned out. By 23 August 1942 the tension between Goebbels and Dietrich was so acute that Hitler himself felt it necessary to order all press directives, including Goebbels's, to be channelled through Dietrich's office, ruling that Dietrich's noontide press conferences were the only ones that legitimately represented the Leader's opinions. Not long afterwards, Dietrich succeeded in getting one of his men appointed Deputy Reich Press Chief with an office in the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels complained to Bormann, whose power was now considerable. This dangerous move prompted a threat to resign from Dietrich, turned down brusquely by Hitler. It was only towards the end of the war that Goebbels finally gained the upper hand, winning the power of veto over Dietrich's daily press directives in June 1944 and finally persuading Hitler to sack the press chief on 30 March 1945, much too late to make any difference. He was right, as it turned out. By 23 August 1942 the tension between Goebbels and Dietrich was so acute that Hitler himself felt it necessary to order all press directives, including Goebbels's, to be channelled through Dietrich's office, ruling that Dietrich's noontide press conferences were the only ones that legitimately represented the Leader's opinions. Not long afterwards, Dietrich succeeded in getting one of his men appointed Deputy Reich Press Chief with an office in the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels complained to Bormann, whose power was now considerable. This dangerous move prompted a threat to resign from Dietrich, turned down brusquely by Hitler. It was only towards the end of the war that Goebbels finally gained the upper hand, winning the power of veto over Dietrich's daily press directives in June 1944 and finally persuading Hitler to sack the press chief on 30 March 1945, much too late to make any difference.100 By this time, the Propaganda Minister had also successfully sidelined other rivals as well. These ranged from the press division of Ribbentrop's Foreign Office to the 'propaganda companies' formed by the armed forces. The management of propaganda had always been riven by rivalries, but in the last two years of the war, Goebbels finally did achieve almost total control over it. By this time, the Propaganda Minister had also successfully sidelined other rivals as well. These ranged from the press division of Ribbentrop's Foreign Office to the 'propaganda companies' formed by the armed forces. The management of propaganda had always been riven by rivalries, but in the last two years of the war, Goebbels finally did achieve almost total control over it.101 While these quarrels were going on in the background, the Propaganda Ministry pumped out enormous amounts of material in every medium of communication as part of its effort to boost morale. An official Propaganda Ministry report noted that in the year beginning September 1939 it had produced nine slide shows that had been seen by 4.3 million people in evening entertainments organized by regional Party offices. Themes covered included 'Germany's Racial Policies' and 'World Pirate England'. In the first sixteen months of the war, the Party organized some 200,000 political meetings, mainly for morale-boosting purposes. Picture posters for pasting on walls were printed in huge numbers (a million for 'Down with Germany's Enemies', for example); text-posters appeared in editions of up to half a million. The Ministry issued 32.5 million copies of the Nazi Party 'Word of the Week', and produced no fewer than 65 million leaflets on a wide variety of subjects. Not to be forgotten either, 700,000 photographs of Hitler had been distributed by the end of 1940. Journalists, Otto Dietrich told representatives of the press on 3 September 1939, were no longer just reporters but also 'soldiers of the German people'.102 By 1944 the Nazi Party controlled almost the entirety of the German press. Here was a medium that was far more propaganda than entertainment. The need to ration paper supplies led the Reich Press Chamber to close down 500 newspapers in May 1941 and a further 950 two years later (including the formerly respectable By 1944 the Nazi Party controlled almost the entirety of the German press. Here was a medium that was far more propaganda than entertainment. The need to ration paper supplies led the Reich Press Chamber to close down 500 newspapers in May 1941 and a further 950 two years later (including the formerly respectable Frankfurt Newspaper Frankfurt Newspaper). Yet people were avid for news during the war, and the circulation of the major papers increased substantially as their number fell. The total circulation of daily papers rose from 20.5 to 26.5 million between 1939 and 1944. The flagship daily of the Party, the Racial Observer Racial Observer, was selling 1,192,500 copies by 1941; and it was joined by significant new weeklies, above all The Reich The Reich, founded by Goebbels in 1940 and printing 1.5 million copies of each edition three years later. The growing size and importance of the SS were reflected in the fact that its own weekly, The Black Corps The Black Corps, founded in 1935, was the second-biggest-selling weekly by this time with a circulation of 750,000 copies. Yet people did not just read the press for information or to hear the latest news of the Party or the SS. They also read it for entertainment and relaxation, and so sales of illustrated magazines and weeklies rose from 11.9 to 20.8 million between 1939 and 1944.103 The regime placed considerable emphasis on literature as a spur to patriotic commitment, reviving and marketing appropriate classics like Schiller's William Tell William Tell with a new enthusiasm. 45,000 front-line libraries supplied reading matter to the troops in their idle moments, if they had any. Germans donated no fewer than 43 million books to stock them. 25,000 public libraries at home catered for the reading needs of civilians. What, then, did people read during the war? William L. Shirer reported in October 1939 that the best-selling novels in Germany at this time were Margaret Mitchell's with a new enthusiasm. 45,000 front-line libraries supplied reading matter to the troops in their idle moments, if they had any. Germans donated no fewer than 43 million books to stock them. 25,000 public libraries at home catered for the reading needs of civilians. What, then, did people read during the war? William L. Shirer reported in October 1939 that the best-selling novels in Germany at this time were Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind and A. J. Cronin's and A. J. Cronin's The Citadel The Citadel. The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin's Fifty Years of Germany Fifty Years of Germany was attracting readers who sought reassurance that Germany was not wholly despised in the non-fascist world. was attracting readers who sought reassurance that Germany was not wholly despised in the non-fascist world.104 This situation obviously could not last. The war offered the Reich Chamber of Literature considerably increased opportunities to exercise control over writers and publishers. Censorship was tightened up in 1940, and the need to ration paper supplies provided an excuse for requiring publishers to give advance notice of new books and their authors for approval after this time. All books and periodicals from enemy states were banned, except for purely scientific ones, and those by authors who had died before 1904 (provided they were not Jewish). Living German authors still interested in publishing in the Third Reich faced an uncertain future unless they produced books with titles like This situation obviously could not last. The war offered the Reich Chamber of Literature considerably increased opportunities to exercise control over writers and publishers. Censorship was tightened up in 1940, and the need to ration paper supplies provided an excuse for requiring publishers to give advance notice of new books and their authors for approval after this time. All books and periodicals from enemy states were banned, except for purely scientific ones, and those by authors who had died before 1904 (provided they were not Jewish). Living German authors still interested in publishing in the Third Reich faced an uncertain future unless they produced books with titles like We Fly Against England We Fly Against England, the top item in the borrowing statistics of Hamburg libraries in 1940- 41. William L. Shirer reported that anti-Soviet books were still selling well in 1939-40, despite the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and detective stories were also very popular. Historical war-books were much sought after, including The Total War The Total War, a celebrated tract on the First World War by the now safely dead Erich Ludendorff, and propaganda accounts of England and Poland were also selling well. The biggest seller of all was still Hitler's My Struggle My Struggle, which had provided its author with the royalties from no fewer than 6 million copies by 1940.105 Escapist literature of various kinds became more important than ever after the war began. Goebbels encouraged the publication of erotic literature and soft pornography, especially for the troops, while humorous fiction and collections of jokes also sold well. The Wild West novels of Karl May - widely known to be Hitler's own favourite author - enjoyed a revival, prompting in some military readers the reflection that they had taught them a lot about how to fight Soviet partisans behind the Eastern Front. In this situation, literary writers increasingly took refuge in 'inner emigration', either lapsing into silence or producing historical romances. Werner Bergengruen, whose work before 1939 had been taken by the reading public as a veiled criticism of the Nazi regime, sold 60,000 copies of his 1940 novel Heaven as It Is on Earth Heaven as It Is on Earth before it was banned the following year. Deprived of the opportunity to reach his public in the conventional way, he wrote poems anonymously and had them distributed privately and, in effect, illegally. before it was banned the following year. Deprived of the opportunity to reach his public in the conventional way, he wrote poems anonymously and had them distributed privately and, in effect, illegally. The Realm of Demons The Realm of Demons, by Frank Thiess, was also banned after its first edition had sold out in 1941. His next novel, The Neapolitan Legend The Neapolitan Legend, published the following year, met with more toleration because of its less obvious applicability to the present. The problem with these works of 'inner emigration' was that their message for the present could only be discovered by the most assiduous reading between the lines, often indeed reading into them things that the reader wanted to see rather than the author wanted to be understood. After the war was over, Thiess was to claim in an angry exchange with the exiled Thomas Mann that only writers who had stayed in Germany to oppose the regime could lay claim to be the spiritual founders of postwar democracy. But their works, like that of other tolerated writers, had as much effect in distracting readers from the realities of wartime life in the Third Reich as they did in expressing a widely held desire to acquire an inner distance from it.106 II.

Of all the mass media used by the Propaganda Ministry, it was, perhaps surprisingly, the theatre to which it devoted the most money, steering towards it more than 26 per cent of the subsidies it issued to the arts, in comparison, for example, to under 12 per cent for the cinema. In the early part of the war, there were no fewer than 240 theatres in Germany run by the state or regional, local or municipal authorities, with a total of 222,000 seats, together with another 120 or so privately funded theatres of one kind or another. In 1940 some 40 million tickets were sold; roughly a quarter of the tickets were block bookings for groups of soldiers or munitions workers. Demand was high, buoyed up by the closure of many other sources of amusement and relaxation.107 Although private and individual tourism continued to a degree during the war, the Labour Front's 'Strength Through Joy' programme was drastically curtailed, its foreign and domestic tourism operations cut back, its ships and transport facilities converted for use by troops and its funding of entertainment directed towards catering for members of the armed forces. Although private and individual tourism continued to a degree during the war, the Labour Front's 'Strength Through Joy' programme was drastically curtailed, its foreign and domestic tourism operations cut back, its ships and transport facilities converted for use by troops and its funding of entertainment directed towards catering for members of the armed forces.108 Theatre became an important substitute. Theatre became an important substitute.

The Security Service of the SS noted early in 1942 that 'during the war, very many theatres can report visitors in numbers that have scarcely been experienced before. In the big cities it is hardly possible any more to obtain theatre tickets through regular box-office sales.'109 Goebbels declared at the beginning of the war that the repertoire must now avoid 'exaggeration and stylelessness that go against the seriousness of the times and the national feeling of the people'. Goebbels declared at the beginning of the war that the repertoire must now avoid 'exaggeration and stylelessness that go against the seriousness of the times and the national feeling of the people'.110 However, he was aware that most theatre-goers, especially new ones, were in search above all of entertainment. Theatre directors were told that pessimistic or depressing plays were not to be put on. There was also a ban on performances of plays by authors belonging to enemy states (though occasional exceptions were made for Shakespeare). Chekhov was allowed before 22 June 1941, but not thereafter. Theatre directors did their best to get round such regulations. They mounted new productions of German classics, including tragedies, and thereby created, so many of them later claimed, a theatrical oasis in the Nazi cultural desert. None of this could disguise the fact that the ban on many foreign authors impoverished the repertoire. Responding to public demand for comedies and light entertainment further depressed the standard of what the German stage offered in these years. And of course, as in other areas of culture in wartime Germany, what was found in the theatre was above all escape from reality. However, he was aware that most theatre-goers, especially new ones, were in search above all of entertainment. Theatre directors were told that pessimistic or depressing plays were not to be put on. There was also a ban on performances of plays by authors belonging to enemy states (though occasional exceptions were made for Shakespeare). Chekhov was allowed before 22 June 1941, but not thereafter. Theatre directors did their best to get round such regulations. They mounted new productions of German classics, including tragedies, and thereby created, so many of them later claimed, a theatrical oasis in the Nazi cultural desert. None of this could disguise the fact that the ban on many foreign authors impoverished the repertoire. Responding to public demand for comedies and light entertainment further depressed the standard of what the German stage offered in these years. And of course, as in other areas of culture in wartime Germany, what was found in the theatre was above all escape from reality.111 From 1943 onwards escape in this form became progressively more difficult, as one theatre after another was destroyed by bombing, not infrequently leading to the actors and stagehands being drafted into the armed forces or munitions work. In August 1944, when, in his new capacity as Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort, Goebbels ordered the closure of all theatres, music halls and cabarets, he was doing little more than making a virtue of necessity. From 1943 onwards escape in this form became progressively more difficult, as one theatre after another was destroyed by bombing, not infrequently leading to the actors and stagehands being drafted into the armed forces or munitions work. In August 1944, when, in his new capacity as Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort, Goebbels ordered the closure of all theatres, music halls and cabarets, he was doing little more than making a virtue of necessity.112 As with the theatre, cinema increased dramatically in popularity in the early part of the war.113 In 1942 over a billion tickets were sold, more than five times more than in 1933. Every German went to the movies on average some thirteen to fourteen times a year. Young people's attendance was particularly high - in 1943 a sample survey reported that over 70 per cent of ten-to-seventeen-year-olds went to the cinema at least once a month, and 22 per cent at least once a week. Cinema-goers were catered for not only by more than 7,000 picture-houses but also large numbers of mobile cinemas that toured country areas and also found their way to the battle-front to entertain the troops. Every year from 1939 to 1944, German studios produced some sixty to seventy new films, shown in every country in Europe where German troops were stationed. In 1942 over a billion tickets were sold, more than five times more than in 1933. Every German went to the movies on average some thirteen to fourteen times a year. Young people's attendance was particularly high - in 1943 a sample survey reported that over 70 per cent of ten-to-seventeen-year-olds went to the cinema at least once a month, and 22 per cent at least once a week. Cinema-goers were catered for not only by more than 7,000 picture-houses but also large numbers of mobile cinemas that toured country areas and also found their way to the battle-front to entertain the troops. Every year from 1939 to 1944, German studios produced some sixty to seventy new films, shown in every country in Europe where German troops were stationed.114 The studios were state-owned, centrally organized from 1942, and equipped to use the most modern techniques. In the cinema, each programme had by order of the Propaganda Ministry to contain an educational 'cultural film', dealing with natural history, showing German 'cultural work' in Poland, or, from 1943, giving instructions on air-raid protection. The studios were state-owned, centrally organized from 1942, and equipped to use the most modern techniques. In the cinema, each programme had by order of the Propaganda Ministry to contain an educational 'cultural film', dealing with natural history, showing German 'cultural work' in Poland, or, from 1943, giving instructions on air-raid protection.115 Audiences were said to have found these rather boring. What they really wanted to see was the latest newsreel. From 7 September 1940 all existing newsreels were merged into one, entitled from November 1940 onwards the 'German Weekly Review' (Deutsche Wochenschau), which formed a compulsory part of every movie programme. The producers were able to show a forty-minute newsreel within two weeks of the film being taken by cameramen and journalists 'embedded' in regiments serving at the front. This gave newsreels an immediacy and an authenticity that made them very popular. Up to 3,000 copies were made of each issue, and each issue was seen by some 20 million people in Germany alone. The newsreels satisfied public demand for first-hand information about the progress of the war, and many people went to the cinema mainly to see them rather than the feature film. Skilful use of music, a focus on images rather than words and careful editing gave them a powerful and to some degree aesthetic appeal. Of course, soldiers always appeared in a heroic light, fighting off demonic enemies hell-bent on Germany's destruction, the descriptions of the strategic situation were generally vague and always optimistic, and blood and guts, dead bodies and anything likely to produce horror or revulsion were banished from the screen. Hitler's personal request to the Propaganda Ministry on 10 July 1942 for shots of Russian atrocities to be included in the newsreel ('He specifically asks that such atrocities should include genitals being cut off and the placing of hand-grenades in the trousers of prisoners') 116 116 does not seem to have been followed, perhaps fortunately for cinema audiences. Nevertheless, the viewers were drawn into the action almost as virtual participants, often breaking out into spontaneous applause and shouts of 'Hail!' during the reports of victories in the first two years of the war. does not seem to have been followed, perhaps fortunately for cinema audiences. Nevertheless, the viewers were drawn into the action almost as virtual participants, often breaking out into spontaneous applause and shouts of 'Hail!' during the reports of victories in the first two years of the war.117 Goebbels buttressed the informative and propaganda impact of the newsreel with a series of major feature films aimed at popularizing key elements of Nazi ideology. In 1941 he commissioned four anti-Bolshevik films, including GPU GPU, premiered on 14 August the following year. Its title was already out of date: the Russian political police by this time was known by the initials NKVD. Predictably, the emphasis in the film was on the machinations of the supposed Jewish conspiracy behind the murderous activities of the Soviet police. Goebbels attempted to win over audiences by having a love-story put at the centre of the drama, but the film was not a success: its portrayal of the Russians as sadistic torturers was simply too cliche'-ridden and too crude, and after it was released Goebbels put a stop to further anti-Soviet feature films. Just as mixed were the fortunes met by the films he commissioned that were directed against the British, whom he wanted shown as controlled by Jews and ruled by plutocrats. In 1940 The Rothschilds' Shares in Waterloo The Rothschilds' Shares in Waterloo pilloried the imaginary financial manipulations of a Jewish bank during the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 (which it showed, of course, as being won by the Prussians, under General Blu*cher). The film was a failure with the public, since it was not clear whether it was intended to be anti-British or antisemitic, and it was withdrawn in 1940 and re-edited. Other films, like pilloried the imaginary financial manipulations of a Jewish bank during the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 (which it showed, of course, as being won by the Prussians, under General Blu*cher). The film was a failure with the public, since it was not clear whether it was intended to be anti-British or antisemitic, and it was withdrawn in 1940 and re-edited. Other films, like My Life for Ireland My Life for Ireland, Carl Peters Carl Peters and and Uncle Kruger Uncle Kruger, all released in 1941, attacked the British colonial record. Uncle Kruger Uncle Kruger was particularly impressive. A film about the Boer War, it was well acted (it starred Emil Jannings) and had high production values. However, a good many of the figures in the film were crude caricatures - Queen Victoria was shown as addicted to medicinal whisky, Cecil Rhodes as decadent, waited on by slaves and obsessed with gold, the monocled Austen Chamberlain as hypocritical and effete, General Kitchener as ruthless and inhumane, and the young Winston Churchill, a concentration camp commandant, as a sadistic murderer who feeds his bulldog on beef steaks and shoots starving inmates if they complain about their lack of food. Uncle Kruger, the Boer leader, was depicted as an honest, simple national hero who leads successful resistance against overwhelming odds - a lesson Goebbels considered made it worth ordering the film to be re-released in 1944. was particularly impressive. A film about the Boer War, it was well acted (it starred Emil Jannings) and had high production values. However, a good many of the figures in the film were crude caricatures - Queen Victoria was shown as addicted to medicinal whisky, Cecil Rhodes as decadent, waited on by slaves and obsessed with gold, the monocled Austen Chamberlain as hypocritical and effete, General Kitchener as ruthless and inhumane, and the young Winston Churchill, a concentration camp commandant, as a sadistic murderer who feeds his bulldog on beef steaks and shoots starving inmates if they complain about their lack of food. Uncle Kruger, the Boer leader, was depicted as an honest, simple national hero who leads successful resistance against overwhelming odds - a lesson Goebbels considered made it worth ordering the film to be re-released in 1944.118 Critics of the original showing were indeed in a minority, and those who felt that some scenes were 'not historically genuine' were outnumbered by those who saw it as 'a kind of historical document'. The more knowledgeable amongst the audience wondered, however, whether it was wise to portray the 'Boer people' in such a heroic light. 'The character of this hybrid people is ambiguous and cannot be presented as an ideal image of the Germanic race if only in view of the colonial tasks that will face Great Germany after the final victory.' Critics of the original showing were indeed in a minority, and those who felt that some scenes were 'not historically genuine' were outnumbered by those who saw it as 'a kind of historical document'. The more knowledgeable amongst the audience wondered, however, whether it was wise to portray the 'Boer people' in such a heroic light. 'The character of this hybrid people is ambiguous and cannot be presented as an ideal image of the Germanic race if only in view of the colonial tasks that will face Great Germany after the final victory.'119 Almost as soon as the war began, Goebbels ordered the preparation of two major antisemitic films: Jew Su*ss Jew Su*ss and and The Eternal Jew The Eternal Jew, both designed to win the support of the German public for the Nazi leadership's stepping up of anti-Jewish measures as soon as the war began, particularly in Poland. Jew Su*ss Jew Su*ss, directed by Veit Harlan and released on 24 September 1940, was a historical film based on a novel of the same name by the (now exiled) Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger. While Feuchtwanger had wanted to highlight the role of the Jew as scapegoat, Harlan turned the character of Su*ss, an eighteenth-century moneylender hanged for his alleged crimes, into a villain who not only extorted money from honest Germans but also abducted and raped a beautiful young German girl. Harlan contrasted the civilized-looking, socially integrated character of Su*ss not only with fair-haired Germans but also with all the other Jewish characters in the film, who were depicted as ugly and dirty. Su*ss's hanging at the end of the film conveyed the clearest possible message as to the fate the Jews merited in the present. The much-praised performances of the principal actors were so powerful that one of them actually got Goebbels to announce in public that he was not Jewish because many cinema-goers were convinced that he was. Himmler was so enthusiastic about the film that he ordered all SS men to watch it, and it was also specially shown to non-Jewish audiences in Eastern Europe in the vicinity of concentration and extermination camps, and in Germany in towns where a new deportation was scheduled.120 The Eternal Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler under Goebbels's personal supervision, was a feature-length documentary that also purported to show how Jews really were. Pictures of Jews on the streets of Polish towns were intercut with film sequences of 'rats, which,' the synopsis said, 'are the parasites and bacillus-carriers among animals, just as the Jews occupy the same position among mankind'. Film of kosher butchering, taken in Poland shortly after the invasion of 1939, was edited to suggest the brutality of the Jews, while mock-up sets of Jewish homes showed dirt, neglect and infestation with vermin. Just like rats, Jews had migrated across the world, and everywhere, the film claimed, citing a whole series of invented statistics, the Jews committed crimes, spread revolution and subversion, and undermined cultural values and standards. So radical was the film's antisemitism that the Propaganda Ministry had doubts about showing it to the public, and certainly it was most successful among Party activists; the general public was less impressed. Many were reported to have walked out half-way through the screening, and others were recorded as thinking it 'boring'. Most people preferred the subtler and dramatically more interesting images portrayed in a drama such as Jew Su*ss Jew Su*ss, which was so powerful in its effect on audiences that people spontaneously sprang to their feet during performances, especially in the rape scene, and shouted curses at the screen. In Berlin, there were shouts from the audience of 'Get the last Jews out of Germany!'121 What the success of Jew Su*ss Jew Su*ss and the comparative failure of and the comparative failure of The Eternal Jew The Eternal Jew showed was that Germans did not want mere propaganda. With the coming of war, people needed distraction from their daily cares more than ever. William L. Shirer recorded in October 1939 that 'in the movie world the big hit at the moment is Clark Gable in showed was that Germans did not want mere propaganda. With the coming of war, people needed distraction from their daily cares more than ever. William L. Shirer recorded in October 1939 that 'in the movie world the big hit at the moment is Clark Gable in Adventure in China Adventure in China, as it's called here. It's packing them in for the fourth week at the Marble House. A German film,' he added, 'is lucky if it holds out a week.'122 Shirer was exaggerating: not all German films were failures. Goebbels was well aware of the popularity of films like Shirer was exaggerating: not all German films were failures. Goebbels was well aware of the popularity of films like Request Concert Request Concert and and The Great Love The Great Love, each of which attracted more than 20 million cinema-goers. Both had an implicit ideological content, depicting couples separated by war and conquering their own personal desires in the service of the wider community, and coming together once more at the end. At the same time as showing episodes of military action, they bracketed out the more violent and destructive aspects of war, presenting to the audience a sanitized version of conflict that it was meant to find reassuring.123 The huge success of these films persuaded Goebbels to order that four out of five films made should be 'good entertainment films, secure in their quality'. And indeed, no fewer than forty-one out of the seventy-four movies made in Germany in 1943 were comedies. The huge success of these films persuaded Goebbels to order that four out of five films made should be 'good entertainment films, secure in their quality'. And indeed, no fewer than forty-one out of the seventy-four movies made in Germany in 1943 were comedies. 124 124 By this time, people were flocking to see lavishly costumed operettas, revues, detective films and melodramas. At the very same time as Goebbels was delivering his 'total war' speech to the Party faithful in the Sports Palace, ordinary Germans were settling down in Berlin's cinemas to watch By this time, people were flocking to see lavishly costumed operettas, revues, detective films and melodramas. At the very same time as Goebbels was delivering his 'total war' speech to the Party faithful in the Sports Palace, ordinary Germans were settling down in Berlin's cinemas to watch Two Happy People Two Happy People, Be Fond of Me Be Fond of Me and and The Big Number The Big Number. The next year, escapism reached new heights with The White Dream The White Dream, a review on ice featuring a song that advised people: 'Buy a colourful balloon / Take it firmly in your hand / See it flying off with you / to a foreign fairyland.'125 By 1943, neither the proliferation of entertainment movies nor the hectoring tones of the voice-over in the weekly newsreel could disguise the fact that the war was going badly. As the Security Service of the SS reported on 4 March 1943, it was clear that 'people are no longer going to the cinema just for the sake of the newsreel and don't want any more to take on all the unpleasant secondary burdens that a visit to the movies often brings with it, such as queuing for tickets'.126 The more the propaganda began to lose touch with reality, the more the newsreels' repetitious insistence on the inevitability of final victory met with scepticism among audiences. In mid-1943 Goebbels tried to offset this disenchantment by commissioning a colour film from Veit Harlan on the siege of the German town of Kolberg, on the Baltic, by Napoleon's armies in 1806. After the shattering military defeats of Jena and Austerlitz, the garrison had decided to surrender the town, but the mayor had rallied the citizens to a last-ditch defence. Many Nazi propaganda themes of the second half of the war came together here: the Party's distrust of the army, the populist appeal to ordinary Germans to rally round the flag, the belief in sacrifice, the stoicism of the people in the face of death and destruction. 'Death is entwined with victory,' as the mayor says at one point. 'The greatest achievements are always borne in pain.' 'From the ashes and rubble,' another character says, anticipating defeat and implicitly exhorting audiences to go down fighting, 'a new people will rise like a phoenix, a new Reich.' The more the propaganda began to lose touch with reality, the more the newsreels' repetitious insistence on the inevitability of final victory met with scepticism among audiences. In mid-1943 Goebbels tried to offset this disenchantment by commissioning a colour film from Veit Harlan on the siege of the German town of Kolberg, on the Baltic, by Napoleon's armies in 1806. After the shattering military defeats of Jena and Austerlitz, the garrison had decided to surrender the town, but the mayor had rallied the citizens to a last-ditch defence. Many Nazi propaganda themes of the second half of the war came together here: the Party's distrust of the army, the populist appeal to ordinary Germans to rally round the flag, the belief in sacrifice, the stoicism of the people in the face of death and destruction. 'Death is entwined with victory,' as the mayor says at one point. 'The greatest achievements are always borne in pain.' 'From the ashes and rubble,' another character says, anticipating defeat and implicitly exhorting audiences to go down fighting, 'a new people will rise like a phoenix, a new Reich.'

Many of the speeches in the film were written not by Harlan but by Goebbels himself. He allocated it a budget of 8.5 million Reichsmarks, twice the normal production costs for a feature film. In a graphic illustration of the priority he attached to propaganda, Goebbels requisitioned 4,000 sailors and 187,000 soldiers from the army to play the battle scenes, at a time when they were badly needed at the front. The incident it portrayed was sufficiently obscure for most people not to know that Kolberg had in fact been taken by Napoleon: the screenplay had the French Emperor withdrawing in dismay, confounded by the unyielding resistance of the citizens. But it was all too late. The film was not ready until 30 January 1945, when it was shown in Berlin on the anniversary of Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor twelve years previously. By this time many cinemas had been destroyed - 237 of them by August 1943 already. In Hanover, only twelve out of thirty-one cinemas were still working. The breakdown of railway communications meant that the possibility of getting copies of Kolberg Kolberg out to the rest of the country had more or less disappeared. Hardly anybody saw it. The town of Kolberg itself was taken by the Red Army less than two months after the premiere. 'I will ensure,' wrote Goebbels in his diary, 'that the evacuation of Kolberg is not mentioned in the Combined Armed Forces Supreme Command's report.' out to the rest of the country had more or less disappeared. Hardly anybody saw it. The town of Kolberg itself was taken by the Red Army less than two months after the premiere. 'I will ensure,' wrote Goebbels in his diary, 'that the evacuation of Kolberg is not mentioned in the Combined Armed Forces Supreme Command's report.'127 III.

It was Joseph Goebbels's ambition to bring the Nazi message into the home of everyone in Germany, and for this purpose no institution was better suited than the radio.128 In August 1939 the Reich Propaganda Ministry took over all radio stations in Germany, and from July 1942 the Reich Radio Society (the main broadcaster) was directly run by the Ministry. Broadcasts were used, as in other belligerent countries, to give practical advice to listeners on how to eke out their food rations, how to economize in their lifestyle, and generally how to cope with wartime conditions. Front-line reports conveyed a positive picture of the heroism of the troops, while in the later stages of the war, broadcasts began to urge listeners to carry on fighting regardless of bad news from the front. Radio suffered from the call-up of staff to the armed forces, however, and whole programmes and even frequencies were turned over to propaganda directed in foreign languages to audiences abroad. As before, Goebbels insisted that propaganda was far from being the only or even the principal function of German radio. In 1944, for instance, out of 190 hours of broadcasts a week, 71 were devoted to popular music, 55 to general entertainment, and 24 to classical music, leaving 32 hours a week for political broadcasts, 5 hours for a mixture of words and music, and 3 hours a week for 'culture'. Some listeners took the view that popular music should not be broadcast in such difficult times, and, in the countryside in particular, the 'modern offerings' of crooners and dance-music were widely frowned on. But the broadcasters insisted (with some justification) that such programmes were popular with the troops and with Germans performing Labour Service, so they were retained. The Security Service of the SS reported that programmes with a mixture of humour and popular music were especially successful. The broadcasters took care to cater for regional tastes, and Bavarian listeners were said to welcome the broadcast of local songs such as 'the steam-noodle song of the Tegernsee musicians'. In August 1939 the Reich Propaganda Ministry took over all radio stations in Germany, and from July 1942 the Reich Radio Society (the main broadcaster) was directly run by the Ministry. Broadcasts were used, as in other belligerent countries, to give practical advice to listeners on how to eke out their food rations, how to economize in their lifestyle, and generally how to cope with wartime conditions. Front-line reports conveyed a positive picture of the heroism of the troops, while in the later stages of the war, broadcasts began to urge listeners to carry on fighting regardless of bad news from the front. Radio suffered from the call-up of staff to the armed forces, however, and whole programmes and even frequencies were turned over to propaganda directed in foreign languages to audiences abroad. As before, Goebbels insisted that propaganda was far from being the only or even the principal function of German radio. In 1944, for instance, out of 190 hours of broadcasts a week, 71 were devoted to popular music, 55 to general entertainment, and 24 to classical music, leaving 32 hours a week for political broadcasts, 5 hours for a mixture of words and music, and 3 hours a week for 'culture'. Some listeners took the view that popular music should not be broadcast in such difficult times, and, in the countryside in particular, the 'modern offerings' of crooners and dance-music were widely frowned on. But the broadcasters insisted (with some justification) that such programmes were popular with the troops and with Germans performing Labour Service, so they were retained. The Security Service of the SS reported that programmes with a mixture of humour and popular music were especially successful. The broadcasters took care to cater for regional tastes, and Bavarian listeners were said to welcome the broadcast of local songs such as 'the steam-noodle song of the Tegernsee musicians'.129 Some songs, however, transcended regional boundaries and were a hit with troops and civilians alike. Sentimental numbers like Zarah Leander's 'I know one day a miracle will come' comforted people in hard times and implicitly promised a better future. As we have seen, the troops at Stalingrad huddled around their radios to listen to the popular chanteuse chanteuse Lale Andersen singing 'It'll all soon be over / It'll end one day'. Like other, similar numbers, this was directed at strengthening the emotional bonds between couples and families separated by the war. Andersen's 1939 hit song 'Lili Marleen' cast a nostalgic glow over its listeners as it described a soldier saying goodbye to his girl-friend underneath a street-lamp outside his barracks. Would they ever meet again? Would she find someone else? Would he survive the war? And if he did not, who would then be standing with Lili underneath the lamppost? The song encapsulated the personal anxieties as well as the lingering hopes of men far away from their loved ones. Further piquancy was added by the fact that, while the words were those of a man, they were sung by an attractive woman. Yet Goebbels disliked its pessimistic and nostalgic tone. At the end of September 1942 he had Andersen arrested for undermining the troops' morale. Her correspondence with friends in Switzerland, including exiled German Jews, was intercepted, and her refusal to accede to Goebbels's request to pay a visit for publicity purposes to the Warsaw ghetto was held against her. Goebbels had her banned from making any further public appearances. Eventually, from the middle of 1943 onwards, she was allowed to sing again in public, provided she did not put 'Lili Marleen' on the programme. At her first concert after the ban was lifted, the audience yelled for her to sing the song, and when it became clear that she was not going to, they sang it themselves. In August 1944 it was finally banned altogether. Long before this, British and American troops had started listening to the song as it was broadcast from the powerful German forces' radio transmitter in Belgrade. The Allied military authorities had it translated into English. 'My Lili of the Lamplight' was sung by Marlene Dietrich, Vera Lynn and (in French) Edith Piaf, and towards the end of the war the British forces radio broadcast the German version across the enemy lines to the German troops to try to depress them, thus perhaps inadvertently confirming Goebbels's belief that it was damaging to morale. Lale Andersen singing 'It'll all soon be over / It'll end one day'. Like other, similar numbers, this was directed at strengthening the emotional bonds between couples and families separated by the war. Andersen's 1939 hit song 'Lili Marleen' cast a nostalgic glow over its listeners as it described a soldier saying goodbye to his girl-friend underneath a street-lamp outside his barracks. Would they ever meet again? Would she find someone else? Would he survive the war? And if he did not, who would then be standing with Lili underneath the lamppost? The song encapsulated the personal anxieties as well as the lingering hopes of men far away from their loved ones. Further piquancy was added by the fact that, while the words were those of a man, they were sung by an attractive woman. Yet Goebbels disliked its pessimistic and nostalgic tone. At the end of September 1942 he had Andersen arrested for undermining the troops' morale. Her correspondence with friends in Switzerland, including exiled German Jews, was intercepted, and her refusal to accede to Goebbels's request to pay a visit for publicity purposes to the Warsaw ghetto was held against her. Goebbels had her banned from making any further public appearances. Eventually, from the middle of 1943 onwards, she was allowed to sing again in public, provided she did not put 'Lili Marleen' on the programme. At her first concert after the ban was lifted, the audience yelled for her to sing the song, and when it became clear that she was not going to, they sang it themselves. In August 1944 it was finally banned altogether. Long before this, British and American troops had started listening to the song as it was broadcast from the powerful German forces' radio transmitter in Belgrade. The Allied military authorities had it translated into English. 'My Lili of the Lamplight' was sung by Marlene Dietrich, Vera Lynn and (in French) Edith Piaf, and towards the end of the war the British forces radio broadcast the German version across the enemy lines to the German troops to try to depress them, thus perhaps inadvertently confirming Goebbels's belief that it was damaging to morale.130 By this time, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Germans to hear not only 'Lili Marleen' but anything at all on the radio. The cheap 'People's Receivers' often broke down, and batteries and spare parts were hard to get. A thriving black market in them soon developed. Bombing raids interrupted electricity supplies in the towns, sometimes for days on end. And as the war began to go badly for Germany, listeners grew increasingly distrustful of German radio's reports on it.131 As early as January 1942 the Security Service of the SS bemoaned the fact that people were indifferent to political broadcasts. Yet people were also worried about the lack of detailed reports of the progress of the war on the Eastern Front and in Africa. They felt they did not know what was going on. 'An open statement on these questions, which move and oppress everyone, would get rid of the present feeling of uncertainty.' As early as January 1942 the Security Service of the SS bemoaned the fact that people were indifferent to political broadcasts. Yet people were also worried about the lack of detailed reports of the progress of the war on the Eastern Front and in Africa. They felt they did not know what was going on. 'An open statement on these questions, which move and oppress everyone, would get rid of the present feeling of uncertainty.'132 In the search for reliable information, German listeners turned to foreign radio stations, above all the BBC. The popular People's Receivers, sold cheaply before the war, could only receive short-wave broadcasts, and this made it difficult to listen to foreign stations. However, they accounted for under 40 per cent of radios in Germany in 1943. Most people with a radio could receive the German-language service of the BBC without too much difficulty, and even the People's Receivers could sometimes succeed in tuning in. By August 1944 the BBC reckoned that up to 15 million Germans were listening in to it on a daily basis. In the search for reliable information, German listeners turned to foreign radio stations, above all the BBC. The popular People's Receivers, sold cheaply before the war, could only receive short-wave broadcasts, and this made it difficult to listen to foreign stations. However, they accounted for under 40 per cent of radios in Germany in 1943. Most people with a radio could receive the German-language service of the BBC without too much difficulty, and even the People's Receivers could sometimes succeed in tuning in. By August 1944 the BBC reckoned that up to 15 million Germans were listening in to it on a daily basis.133 Germans listened to the BBC and other foreign stations at considerable risk to themselves. The moment the war broke out, tuning in to foreign stations was made a criminal offence punishable by death. It was all too easy, in apartment blocks poorly insulated for sound, for listeners to face denunciation to the authorities by fanatical or ill-intentioned neighbours who overhead the sonorous tones of BBC newsreaders coming through the walls. Some 4,000 people were arrested and prosecuted for 'radio crime' in the first year of the law's operation, and the first execution of an offender came in 1941.134 A typical case was that of a Krefeld worker who was sentenced to a year in prison in December 1943 for listening to the BBC and passing on what he heard to his workmates. Like most people punished for this offence, he had formerly been active in left-wing politics. Ordinary offenders were seldom punished very harshly, and prosecutions and sentences from 1941 onwards were relatively uncommon. In 1943, for instance, only eleven death sentences were passed in the whole of the Greater German Reich for 'radio crime', or 0.2 per cent of the total. A typical case was that of a Krefeld worker who was sentenced to a year in prison in December 1943 for listening to the BBC and passing on what he heard to his workmates. Like most people punished for this offence, he had formerly been active in left-wing politics. Ordinary offenders were seldom punished very harshly, and prosecutions and sentences from 1941 onwards were relatively uncommon. In 1943, for instance, only eleven death sentences were passed in the whole of the Greater German Reich for 'radio crime', or 0.2 per cent of the total.135 Nevertheless, people went to extraordinary lengths to avoid being heard listening to the BBC, locking themselves in the toilet or covering themselves, and the radio, with a blanket, or sending other family members out of the room. Not long after the war began William L. Shirer noted, with a pinch of exaggeration: 'Many long prison sentences being meted out to Germans who listen to foreign radio stations, and yet many continue to listen to them,' including a family with whom he had recently spent an afternoon. 'They were a little apprehensive when they turned on the six p.m. BBC news,' he recorded. The porter was 'the official Nazi spy for the apartment house', and there were others too. 'They played the radio so low that I could hardly catch the news,' Shirer wrote, 'and one of the daughters kept watch by the front door.' Nevertheless, people went to extraordinary lengths to avoid being heard listening to the BBC, locking themselves in the toilet or covering themselves, and the radio, with a blanket, or sending other family members out of the room. Not long after the war began William L. Shirer noted, with a pinch of exaggeration: 'Many long prison sentences being meted out to Germans who listen to foreign radio stations, and yet many continue to listen to them,' including a family with whom he had recently spent an afternoon. 'They were a little apprehensive when they turned on the six p.m. BBC news,' he recorded. The porter was 'the official Nazi spy for the apartment house', and there were others too. 'They played the radio so low that I could hardly catch the news,' Shirer wrote, 'and one of the daughters kept watch by the front door.'136 No such precautions were needed in Britain or other countries when it came to listening to the propaganda broadcasts emanating from Germany. Goebbels ensured that increased resources were assigned to English-language broadcasts, and employed British and American pro-Germans, often with fascist beliefs, to make them: the most notorious of these was William Joyce, whose plummy accent earned him the nickname of 'Lord Haw-Haw' from his British listeners. These propaganda broadcasters found an audience not least because their style was more intimate and relaxed than that of the stiffly formal BBC; but overall their effect on morale was minimal, and as time went on, people began to tire of Joyce's continual sarcasm and contempt. The most surprising of these broadcasts, perhaps, were put on by Goebbels in defiance of all the Nazis' cherished beliefs about the racial degeneracy of jazz music, when a German swing band, led by the crooner Karl ('Charlie') Schwedler, went on to the air with popular British and American songs, adapting the words into parodies of the original for propaganda purposes. A favourite theme was the unreliability of the BBC ('talking the wishful talk', as a parody of the 'Lambeth Walk' put it).137 Jazz and swing were not just used by the regime for its own purposes, they became expressions of opposition to it as well. In Hamburg, the well-off 'Swing Youth' of the prewar years were not deterred from holding dances and parties by the mere outbreak of a war. Early in 1940 the Gestapo discovered 500 of them swinging away in a dance-hall in an Altona hotel to the sound of English music, even with English lyrics. The next time this happened, the police were prepared. On 2 March 1940 forty Gestapo agents raided another dance, in the Curio-Haus in the city's university quarter, locked the doors and fingerprinted 408 participants, all but seventeen of them under the age of twenty-one. Further public dances had to be cancelled, but the gilded youth of Hamburg continued their partying in private. Until December 1941 they gathered in the Waterloo cinema near the Dammtor railway station to watch American films, with the young Axel Springer, a future newspaper publisher, acting as projectionist. As the police became more intrusive, the Swing Youth retreated to the plush suburban villas of their parents, where they celebrated in the cellars in what the Gestapo described disapprovingly as an 'erotic ambience'. In June 1942 a summer party in one such villa included a cabaret with impersonations of Hitler and Goebbels. The Hitler Youth, who feared the Swing Youth as rivals to their own popularity, such as it was, sent spies to the party, and the cabarettist was arrested.

The arrogance and insouciance of the Swingers, their provocative dress, such as Hannelore Evers's grey suit, man's waistcoat and open jacket with shoulder-pads ('an absolute knock-out,' as one veteran of the Swing Youth recalled later), or Kurt-Rudolf Hoffmann's habit of wearing the American flag on his lapel, combined with their open admiration of British style, were eventually reported to Himmler and Heydrich, who on 26 January 1942 ordered them to be arrested, beaten and put to work. Their parents were to be interrogated and sent to a concentration camp if it was found that they had encouraged the 'Anglophiliac tendencies' of their offspring. Within a few weeks, up to seventy Swingers had been arrested and sent to camps including Ravensbru*ck and Sachsenhausen. There they were classified as political prisoners, though many denied they had acted out of political conviction. 'We were long on hair and short on brains,' one later confessed, and as for their habit of booing at the newsreel when they went to the cinema, one of them said they did it because 'we were going to tell these dumb bastards that we were different, that's all'. Yet the disregard for the regime's racism that led a number of the Swing boys to carry on sexual relationships with Jewish girls, the hatred of the war some of them showed in their letters (intercepted by the Gestapo) and their open contempt for the Nazi leaders and the Hitler Youth, gave the Gestapo some reason to regard them as political. Many of the younger Swing boys were conscripted into the army after serving their time in a camp for juveniles, but at least three of them, according to their own later accounts, managed to avoid ever shooting at the enemy, and two of them crossed the lines and gave themselves up.138 IV.

As the popularity of musical films and radio broadcasts suggests, musical life was initially relatively unaffected by the war.139 Escapist operas were popular on the stage as well as on the cinema screen: the most notable written during these years was Richard Strauss's Escapist operas were popular on the stage as well as on the cinema screen: the most notable written during these years was Richard Strauss's Capriccio Capriccio (1942). Hitler himself had recently acquired a passion for the music of Anton Bruckner, whose manuscripts he planned to collect in the magnificent library at the vast Austrian monastery of St Florian, where Bruckner had played the organ and where his body was buried. The monastery was located near Hitler's favourite town, Linz. Hitler had the monks summarily expelled ready for the building's conversion to its new function. He paid for the restoration of the organ out of his personal funds and also subsidized the publication of the Haas edition of Bruckner's collected works. He bought a number of additional items for the library, and had a Bruckner study centre set up at the monastery, also supporting it from his own coffers; it was intended in the long run to be the nucleus of a major music conservatory. Hitler prompted the foundation of a Bruckner Symphony Orchestra, which began playing concerts in the autumn of 1943. His design for a bell-tower in Linz that would play a theme from Bruckner's Fourth Symphony, the (1942). Hitler himself had recently acquired a passion for the music of Anton Bruckner, whose manuscripts he planned to collect in the magnificent library at the vast Austrian monastery of St Florian, where Bruckner had played the organ and where his body was buried. The monastery was located near Hitler's favourite town, Linz. Hitler had the monks summarily expelled ready for the building's conversion to its new function. He paid for the restoration of the organ out of his personal funds and also subsidized the publication of the Haas edition of Bruckner's collected works. He bought a number of additional items for the library, and had a Bruckner study centre set up at the monastery, also supporting it from his own coffers; it was intended in the long run to be the nucleus of a major music conservatory. Hitler prompted the foundation of a Bruckner Symphony Orchestra, which began playing concerts in the autumn of 1943. His design for a bell-tower in Linz that would play a theme from Bruckner's Fourth Symphony, the Romantic Romantic, was, however, never realized.140 Despite all this, there was ultimately, in Hitler's view, still no substitute for Wagner. In 1940, on his way back from his brief visit to Paris, he called in at Bayreuth to attend a performance of Twilight of the Gods Twilight of the Gods.

It was to be his last. Immersed in the conduct of the war, and increasingly reluctant to appear in public, he went to no more live musical performances after this. Yet he never lost his belief in the power of music. In the same year he established a 'War Festival' at Bayreuth, to which he invited - or forced the attendance of - specially chosen guests, 142,000 of them in all during the five years of the Festival. 'The war,' he reminisced in January 1942, 'gave me the opportunity to fulfil a desire dear to Wagner's heart: that men chosen amongst the people - workers and soldiers - should be able to attend his Festival free of charge.'141 By 1943, By 1943, Twilight of the Gods Twilight of the Gods no longer seemed appropriate, in view of the rapidly deteriorating military situation, and, after consulting with Winifred Wagner, Hitler had it replaced by no longer seemed appropriate, in view of the rapidly deteriorating military situation, and, after consulting with Winifred Wagner, Hitler had it replaced by The Mastersingers of Nuremberg The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at the remaining two Festivals. In his own quarters, he had stopped listening to Wagner altogether after Stalingrad, and sought escape in at the remaining two Festivals. In his own quarters, he had stopped listening to Wagner altogether after Stalingrad, and sought escape in The Merry Widow The Merry Widow, his favourite operetta, by Franz Leha'r, conveniently disregarding the fact that the librettist was Jewish, as indeed was Le'har's own wife.142 Bayreuth and its festivals always occupied something of an anomalous place in the Third Reich, not least because they were in practice run by the Wagner family in direct consultation with Hitler, whereas other aspects of German musical life all fell under the aegis of the Reich Chamber of Music and therefore Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry. In 1940 the Ministry claimed that there were 181 permanent orchestras at work in the Reich, employing a total of 8,918 musicians.143 They had to adapt themselves to wartime conditions, playing in munitions factories and appearing at charity events for the troops. Political considerations continued to trump the regime's general hostility to musical modernism; the fact that Hungary was an ally of Germany, for instance, allowed the Munich Philharmonic under its conductor Osvald Kabasta to play Be'la Barto'k's They had to adapt themselves to wartime conditions, playing in munitions factories and appearing at charity events for the troops. Political considerations continued to trump the regime's general hostility to musical modernism; the fact that Hungary was an ally of Germany, for instance, allowed the Munich Philharmonic under its conductor Osvald Kabasta to play Be'la Barto'k's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste in concert in 1942, although the composer himself had never wanted his music to be performed in Nazi Germany (he had by this time gone into exile in the USA). But political considerations also entailed - or offered an opportunity to orchestras to set out on - tours of occupied countries, spreading German culture and proselytizing for German music. The repertoire was heavily German, with the music of Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner taking pride of place amongst living composers. Conductors such as Eugen Jochum, Hans Knappertsbusch and younger men like Herbert von Karajan and Karl Bo*hm ensured that standards were maintained until the destruction of concert halls and opera houses and the drafting of players and administrators into the armed forces began to take their toll from 1943 onwards. Bo*hm did his career no harm by giving the Nazi salute from the podium at the start of his concerts, while Karajan, a member of the Nazi Party since 1933, benefited from the fact that he was considered politically more reliable than the senior figure he began to rival for concert-goers' affections during the war, Wilhelm Furtwa*ngler. in concert in 1942, although the composer himself had never wanted his music to be performed in Nazi Germany (he had by this time gone into exile in the USA). But political considerations also entailed - or offered an opportunity to orchestras to set out on - tours of occupied countries, spreading German culture and proselytizing for German music. The repertoire was heavily German, with the music of Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner taking pride of place amongst living composers. Conductors such as Eugen Jochum, Hans Knappertsbusch and younger men like Herbert von Karajan and Karl Bo*hm ensured that standards were maintained until the destruction of concert halls and opera houses and the drafting of players and administrators into the armed forces began to take their toll from 1943 onwards. Bo*hm did his career no harm by giving the Nazi salute from the podium at the start of his concerts, while Karajan, a member of the Nazi Party since 1933, benefited from the fact that he was considered politically more reliable than the senior figure he began to rival for concert-goers' affections during the war, Wilhelm Furtwa*ngler.144 Hitler remained, however, a fan of Furtwa*ngler ('the only conductor whose gestures do not appear ridiculous,' he said in 1942, 'is Furtwa*ngler'). 145 145 Such approval further cemented Furtwa*ngler's commitment to the Third Reich: indeed, on 13 January 1944 Goebbels wrote in his diary: 'To my pleasure I find that with Furtwa*ngler the worse things go for us, the more he supports our regime.' Such approval further cemented Furtwa*ngler's commitment to the Third Reich: indeed, on 13 January 1944 Goebbels wrote in his diary: 'To my pleasure I find that with Furtwa*ngler the worse things go for us, the more he supports our regime.'146 During the war, Furtwa*ngler became a kind of court conductor to the Nazi elite. He took an orchestra to Norway a week before the German invasion in 1940, an event described by the German Embassy in Oslo, which knew that German forces were about to launch an attack on the country, as 'very suited to awaken and animate sympathy for German art and for Germany'. In 1942 he conducted a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for Hitler's birthday. All of this he did voluntarily. His conservative nationalism kept him in the Reich until January 1945, when he encountered Albert Speer in a concert interval. 'You look so very tired, maestro,' said Speer with a knowing look: perhaps, he suggested, it would be a good idea to stay in Switzerland after a forthcoming concert and not come back. Furtwa*ngler took the hint and did not return. During the war, Furtwa*ngler became a kind of court conductor to the Nazi elite. He took an orchestra to Norway a week before the German invasion in 1940, an event described by the German Embassy in Oslo, which knew that German forces were about to launch an attack on the country, as 'very suited to awaken and animate sympathy for German art and for Germany'. In 1942 he conducted a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for Hitler's birthday. All of this he did voluntarily. His conservative nationalism kept him in the Reich until January 1945, when he encountered Albert Speer in a concert interval. 'You look so very tired, maestro,' said Speer with a knowing look: perhaps, he suggested, it would be a good idea to stay in Switzerland after a forthcoming concert and not come back. Furtwa*ngler took the hint and did not return.147 Many people who went to his concerts, or more generally listened to music on the radio, were, as Furtwa*ngler pointed out after the war, thereby enabled to take refuge for a while in a world of higher spiritual values than those purveyed by the Nazis. Yet music's significance could vary enormously according to who was playing it or listening to it. 'When I hear Beethoven,' wrote one journalist in a radio magazine in 1942, for example, 'I become brave.'148 A woman who attended the War Festival in Bayreuth in 1943 reported that the performance had given her 'fresh courage and strength for the work to come'. A woman who attended the War Festival in Bayreuth in 1943 reported that the performance had given her 'fresh courage and strength for the work to come'.149 Local townspeople in Bayreuth, by contrast, found the opulence of the Festival abhorrent. Seeing a group of War Festival guests drinking cognac, a group of soldiers agreed: 'There you see it again: we're always the stupid ones.' Local townspeople in Bayreuth, by contrast, found the opulence of the Festival abhorrent. Seeing a group of War Festival guests drinking cognac, a group of soldiers agreed: 'There you see it again: we're always the stupid ones.'150 The spectacle was particularly annoying for people who had been bombed out of their homes. 'These shits,' said one of them, observing the guests at the theatre restaurant, 'gobble and glug themselves up to the brim here, while those of us who've lost everything don't get a single drop of wine to drink.' The spectacle was particularly annoying for people who had been bombed out of their homes. 'These shits,' said one of them, observing the guests at the theatre restaurant, 'gobble and glug themselves up to the brim here, while those of us who've lost everything don't get a single drop of wine to drink.'151 Even outside Bayreuth, people were reported to be complaining about the resources devoted to the Festival at a time when everybody was being exhorted to live frugally: the hard-pressed rail service was forced to transport 30,000 people to Bayreuth, many of them given leave from their jobs in munitions factories for the best part of a week. Even outside Bayreuth, people were reported to be complaining about the resources devoted to the Festival at a time when everybody was being exhorted to live frugally: the hard-pressed rail service was forced to transport 30,000 people to Bayreuth, many of them given leave from their jobs in munitions factories for the best part of a week.152 For those who attended, however, the Festival seemed a gift from Hitler of almost incredible generosity. Their expressions of gratitude were recorded at suitable length in the Security Service report. Yet for most of them, it was only a brief, if welcome, break. Music in the abstract has very little to do with life; and in listening to it, opera- and concert-goers were taking the very route of escapism that Goebbels had laid down for them. As one of the munitions workers who attended the Bayreuth Festival in 1943 confessed: 'After the curtain went down, we were unable to find the way back to reality for ourselves at all quickly.' For those who attended, however, the Festival seemed a gift from Hitler of almost incredible generosity. Their expressions of gratitude were recorded at suitable length in the Security Service report. Yet for most of them, it was only a brief, if welcome, break. Music in the abstract has very little to do with life; and in listening to it, opera- and concert-goers were taking the very route of escapism that Goebbels had laid down for them. As one of the munitions workers who attended the Bayreuth Festival in 1943 confessed: 'After the curtain went down, we were unable to find the way back to reality for ourselves at all quickly.'153 Many others must have felt the same. Many others must have felt the same.

The Third Reich's record of producing new music of its own was far from convincing. Richard Strauss was undoubtedly the best-known German composer during the Third Reich, but the Nazis took particular exception to the fact that his son had married a woman whom they classified as Jewish. In 1938, when Austria, where he and his family were domiciled, was incorporated into the Reich, stormtroopers specifically targeted his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice in the pogrom of 9- 10 November 1938, harassing her mercilessly and raiding her house. Strauss's protests and his good relations with Baldur von Schirach, the Regional Leader of Vienna, a personal friend of the Strauss family through his upbringing as the son of a theatre director in Weimar, bore some fruit, but the composer was unable to prevent Alice's grandmother from being deported to Theresienstadt. Strauss drove up in his limousine to the camp gates, where he grandly announced: 'I am the composer Richard Strauss.' Sceptical guards turned him away. The grandmother died, along with twenty-five other Jewish relatives of Strauss's daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, at Goebbels's prompting, the Gestapo raided Alice's home and took her off to interrogation with her husband, whom they put under pressure to divorce her. He stood firm. Repeated letters from the composer to Himmler and others failed to achieve clarity about the inheritance that he wished to pass on to his half-Jewish grandsons. Strauss was still the most frequently performed living opera composer in Germany in 1942, but he lived under straitened circumstances, he was no longer - unlike some other prominent musicians - privileged by the regime, and he had to contend with the constant threat to the life of his daughter-in-law and his grandsons.154 The true nature of the composer's relationship with the regime was brutally revealed at a meeting of leading composers with Goebbels on 28 February 1941, at which Strauss attempted to persuade the Propaganda Minister to rescind a recent decision to reduce copyright payments to serious composers in favour of rewarding the writers of more frequently performed light music like that of Hitler's favourite Franz Leha'r, whose work Strauss dismissed out of hand, with something like their full income. Goebbels had an incriminating sentence from Strauss's letter to his librettist Stefan Zweig of 17 June 1933, criticizing the regime, read out loud, then shouted at Strauss: 'Be quiet, and take note that you have no idea of who you are and who I am! Leha'r has the masses, you don't! Stop babbling about the significance of serious music! This will not revalue your stock! Tomorrow's culture is different from that of yesterday! You, Herr Strauss, are of yesterday!'155 In 1943, Strauss got into further trouble because he refused to accommodate evacuees in his home. When he refused again the following year, Goebbels tried to have his operas banned. He was overruled by Hitler. But the composer's eightieth birthday in June was studiously ignored by the regime and the Party. He had become something of an unperson. In 1943, Strauss got into further trouble because he refused to accommodate evacuees in his home. When he refused again the following year, Goebbels tried to have his operas banned. He was overruled by Hitler. But the composer's eightieth birthday in June was studiously ignored by the regime and the Party. He had become something of an unperson.

The second most popular German composer in the concert-halls, Hans Pfitzner, fared little better. Curmudegonly and self-pitying, he complained in March 1942 that the regime was behaving as if he did not exist, 'and it's not a good sign for this Germany that important positions are filled by men of decidedly inferior character and intelligence and nobody looks to me for them even once.'156 He found sympathy not in Germany but in occupied Poland, where Regional Leader Greiser awarded him the Wartheland Prize, worth 20,000 Reichsmarks, and General Governor Frank invited Pfitzner to conduct a special concert of his own and other music in Cracow in May 1942. Invited again the following year, he was so pleased that he wrote a special six-minute 'Cracow Greeting' for the occasion. Pfitzner survived the war, dying in an old people's home in Salzburg in 1949, at the age of eighty. He found sympathy not in Germany but in occupied Poland, where Regional Leader Greiser awarded him the Wartheland Prize, worth 20,000 Reichsmarks, and General Governor Frank invited Pfitzner to conduct a special concert of his own and other music in Cracow in May 1942. Invited again the following year, he was so pleased that he wrote a special six-minute 'Cracow Greeting' for the occasion. Pfitzner survived the war, dying in an old people's home in Salzburg in 1949, at the age of eighty.157 More successful by far was Werner Egk, who had won Hitler's approval during the 1930s for work that echoed Nazi ideological themes, even if it was written in a distinctly modern style. His opera More successful by far was Werner Egk, who had won Hitler's approval during the 1930s for work that echoed Nazi ideological themes, even if it was written in a distinctly modern style. His opera Peer Gynt Peer Gynt was played in numerous German opera houses in 1939-40, in Prague in 1941 and at the Paris Opera in 1943. By this time Egk was heading the composers' division of the Reich Music Chamber and earning 40,000 Reichsmarks a year. A new stage work, was played in numerous German opera houses in 1939-40, in Prague in 1941 and at the Paris Opera in 1943. By this time Egk was heading the composers' division of the Reich Music Chamber and earning 40,000 Reichsmarks a year. A new stage work, Columbus Columbus, could clearly be understood as drawing a parallel between the European conquest of America and the creation of the German empire in the east. In February 1943 he wrote in the Racial Observer Racial Observer that he was confident that Germany would win the war, achieving after it was over a 'marriage between idealistic politics and realistic art'. that he was confident that Germany would win the war, achieving after it was over a 'marriage between idealistic politics and realistic art'.158 By contrast the stock of Carl Orff, whose By contrast the stock of Carl Orff, whose Carmina Burana Carmina Burana had been a sensational success on its first performance in 1937, went down during the war. His opera had been a sensational success on its first performance in 1937, went down during the war. His opera The Wise Woman The Wise Woman, first performed in February 1943, was received with much less enthusiasm. Was it for such culture, asked a critic after the work opened in Graz in March 1944, that German soldiers were sacrificing themselves at the front? At the second performance the local Nazis turned up and greeted the piece with a chorus of whistling. But Orff's later claims that the opera was a bold act of resistance to Nazi tyranny lacked all plausibility: the libretto's denunciation of tyranny and injustice was put in the mouth not of heroic figures but of a chorus of villains and good-for-nothings, and was clearly intended to be understood ironically.159 In the end, little music of any value was composed in Germany during the war years. The most powerful compositions came from an entirely different source: the Jewish composers imprisoned in Theresienstadt. Besides Viktor Ullmann and Kurt Gerron, many other inmates wrote and performed music in a variety of genres during the brief years of the camp's existence. Some of the most moving of these compositions were by Ilse Weber, who wrote both music and lyrics and sang them, accompanying herself on a guitar, as she did her night rounds in the children's ward of the camp hospital, carrying out her duties as a nurse. Born in 1903, Weber had worked as a writer and radio producer in Prague before her deportation in 1942. Her husband and younger son were in the camp with her; they had succeeded in getting their older son to safety in Sweden. The popular songs of Zarah Leander and Lale Andersen spoke of the time when friends, relatives, partners and lovers would see one another again: Weber's songs harboured no such illusions: Farewell, my friend, we have come to the end Of the journey we took together.

They've found me a place on the Poland express, And now I must leave you for ever.

You were loyal and true, you helped me get through, You stood by my side in all weather.

Just feeling you near would quiet every fear, We bore all our burdens together.

Farewell, it's the end; I'll miss you, my friend, And the hours we spent together.

I gave you my heart; stay strong when we part, For this time our farewell's for ever.160 The warm simplicity of her settings was never more moving than in her lullaby 'Viegala', which she reportedly sang to children from the camp, including her son Tommy, as she accompanied them voluntarily into the gas chamber at Auschwitz on 6 October 1944: 'Viegala, viegala, vill: now is the world so still! No sound disturbs the lovely peace: my little child, now go to sleep.'161 V.

Theresienstadt and other camps and ghettos did not, it was thought, present suitable subjects for the German painters and sculptors who were at work during the wartime years. Heroic war was what Goebbels and the Reich Chamber of Culture wanted artists to depict.162 The fourth Great German Art Exhibition, opened by the Propaganda Minister in 1940, devoted a number of rooms to war art, and battle scenes now took pride of place amongst the 1,397 works by 751 artists displayed in the show. War, as one commentator noted, 'is a great challenger. German visual arts have met the challenge.' The fourth Great German Art Exhibition, opened by the Propaganda Minister in 1940, devoted a number of rooms to war art, and battle scenes now took pride of place amongst the 1,397 works by 751 artists displayed in the show. War, as one commentator noted, 'is a great challenger. German visual arts have met the challenge.'163 Opening the 1942 exhibition, Hitler reminded his listeners that 'German artists too have been called upon to serve the homeland and the front.' Opening the 1942 exhibition, Hitler reminded his listeners that 'German artists too have been called upon to serve the homeland and the front.'164 Those who visited the exhibitions mounted during the war years, or saw newsreel reports on them in the cinema, could admire pictures such as Those who visited the exhibitions mounted during the war years, or saw newsreel reports on them in the cinema, could admire pictures such as The Flame-Throwers The Flame-Throwers by Rudolf Liepus, by Rudolf Liepus, Sniper Aiming a Rifle Sniper Aiming a Rifle by Gisbert Palmie', or by Gisbert Palmie', or Lookout on a U-boat Lookout on a U-boat by Rudolf Hausknecht. Forty-five official war artists were appointed by a committee under Luitpold Adam, who had already served as a war artist in 1914- 18; by 1944 there were eighty artists on his staff. The artists were attached to units of the armed forces, they were paid a salary, and their paintings and drawings became the property of the government. Special touring exhibitions of their work were sent round Germany to demonstrate the undiminished creativity of German culture in time of war. The artists themselves, indeed, were regarded as soldiers: 'Only a soldier-like character,' as one commentator remarked in 1942, 'filled with intense feelings, is able to transmit the experience of war in artistic form.' by Rudolf Hausknecht. Forty-five official war artists were appointed by a committee under Luitpold Adam, who had already served as a war artist in 1914- 18; by 1944 there were eighty artists on his staff. The artists were attached to units of the armed forces, they were paid a salary, and their paintings and drawings became the property of the government. Special touring exhibitions of their work were sent round Germany to demonstrate the undiminished creativity of German culture in time of war. The artists themselves, indeed, were regarded as soldiers: 'Only a soldier-like character,' as one commentator remarked in 1942, 'filled with intense feelings, is able to transmit the experience of war in artistic form.'165 War artists employed a variety of techniques, and some of them painted landscape scenes that were a world away from the realities of war. Franz Junghans's Sunset on the Duna River Sunset on the Duna River (1942), for example, was almost abstract in its use of colours merging into one another over the flat and featureless landscape. Olaf Jordan's (1942), for example, was almost abstract in its use of colours merging into one another over the flat and featureless landscape. Olaf Jordan's Two Russian Prisoners of the Germans Two Russian Prisoners of the Germans portrayed its subjects with some sympathy and compassion, while Wolfgang Willrich's sketch of a Bavarian villager serving on the Eastern Front showed more of the peasant than the soldier in his rough, humorous features. But the great majority of the war artists' paintings depicted optimistic scenes of heroic soldiers gazing defiantly at the enemy, manning their machine-gun posts, or leading the troops onwards with gestures that implicitly included the spectator, and thus the whole German people, in their invitation to join the assault. The paintings of one of the most popular war artists, Elk Eber, whose work was endlessly reproduced in propaganda magazines, 'had', as an obituary in the portrayed its subjects with some sympathy and compassion, while Wolfgang Willrich's sketch of a Bavarian villager serving on the Eastern Front showed more of the peasant than the soldier in his rough, humorous features. But the great majority of the war artists' paintings depicted optimistic scenes of heroic soldiers gazing defiantly at the enemy, manning their machine-gun posts, or leading the troops onwards with gestures that implicitly included the spectator, and thus the whole German people, in their invitation to join the assault. The paintings of one of the most popular war artists, Elk Eber, whose work was endlessly reproduced in propaganda magazines, 'had', as an obituary in the Racial Observer Racial Observer noted in 1941, 'basically only one theme: the soldierly, heroic masculinity of our time'. noted in 1941, 'basically only one theme: the soldierly, heroic masculinity of our time'.166 Eber's Eber's The Dispatch Courier The Dispatch Courier was a particular favourite, often shown on postcards: it showed a steel-helmeted soldier, his rifle slung horizontally across his back, rushing heroically out of a foxhole, determination mingled with enjoyment of his role stamped on his features. Whatever they depicted, however, the war artists made sure to avoid displaying the horrors of battle. There were no wounded, no dead bodies, no soldiers with missing limbs, there was no blood, no suffering, indeed almost no real violence at all in their works. The contrast to the gut-wrenching pictures painted by anti-war German artists in 1914-18 was noted with approval. The new work was eminently suitable for use in schools, it was agreed. 'Show the pupils the pictures of soldiers painted by Erler or Spiegel,' remarked one commentator, 'compare them with the vulgar and horrid works by Dix or Grosz. Every pupil will recognise immediately what decadent art is . . . The strength of the real artist is in his blood, which leads him to heroism.' was a particular favourite, often shown on postcards: it showed a steel-helmeted soldier, his rifle slung horizontally across his back, rushing heroically out of a foxhole, determination mingled with enjoyment of his role stamped on his features. Whatever they depicted, however, the war artists made sure to avoid displaying the horrors of battle. There were no wounded, no dead bodies, no soldiers with missing limbs, there was no blood, no suffering, indeed almost no real violence at all in their works. The contrast to the gut-wrenching pictures painted by anti-war German artists in 1914-18 was noted with approval. The new work was eminently suitable for use in schools, it was agreed. 'Show the pupils the pictures of soldiers painted by Erler or Spiegel,' remarked one commentator, 'compare them with the vulgar and horrid works by Dix or Grosz. Every pupil will recognise immediately what decadent art is . . . The strength of the real artist is in his blood, which leads him to heroism.'167 The leading German artist of the war years, however, was not a painter but a sculptor. Arno Breker had already created a number of monumental, aggressive and militaristic figures before the war.168 His European reputation was considerable. In 1941 Hitler persuaded a group of French artists, including Andre' Derain, Kees van Dongen and Maurice Vlaminck, to visit him in his studio. One of their number, the director of the 'cole des Beaux-Arts, wrote on his return in glowing terms of the way in which 'a great country honours its artists and their work, its intellectual culture and the dignity of human existence'. His European reputation was considerable. In 1941 Hitler persuaded a group of French artists, including Andre' Derain, Kees van Dongen and Maurice Vlaminck, to visit him in his studio. One of their number, the director of the 'cole des Beaux-Arts, wrote on his return in glowing terms of the way in which 'a great country honours its artists and their work, its intellectual culture and the dignity of human existence'.169 Breker seemed the ideal subject for a major retrospective, which was held in April 1942 not in Berlin but in occupied Paris. Jean Cocteau wrote a fulsome introduction to the catalogue, praising him as a worthy successor to Michelangelo. Breker seemed the ideal subject for a major retrospective, which was held in April 1942 not in Berlin but in occupied Paris. Jean Cocteau wrote a fulsome introduction to the catalogue, praising him as a worthy successor to Michelangelo.170 Knowing his high standing with Hitler, prominent Nazis vied with each other for his friendship, and he was on good terms not only with Hermann Go*ring and Joseph Goebbels but also with Heinrich Himmler, who discussed with him commissions to adorn various premises of the SS with his work. In April 1941 Breker was appointed Vice-President of the Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts. He played a key role in Speer's plans for the reconstruction of Berlin, and Speer set him up with what was virtually a factory to produce his sculptures, bas-reliefs and other three-dimensional objects, subsidizing it with vast sums of money. Hitler told his companions at dinner one night that Breker deserved an income of a million Reichsmarks a year, and Martin Bormann gave him a tax-free honorarium of 250,000 Reichsmarks in April 1942. Hitler and Speer paid for the refurbishment of his castle near the river Oder, where Breker advertised his privileged status by displaying his collection of paintings by L'ger, Picasso and other artists officially regarded as 'degenerate' on the walls. The German ambassador in Paris put the confiscated house of the Jewish cosmetics manufacturer Helena Rubinstein at his disposal, and Breker spent a good deal of his substantial income on buying up works by Rodin and other artists as well as quantities of fine wines, books and perfume. Knowing his high standing with Hitler, prominent Nazis vied with each other for his friendship, and he was on good terms not only with Hermann Go*ring and Joseph Goebbels but also with Heinrich Himmler, who discussed with him commissions to adorn various premises of the SS with his work. In April 1941 Breker was appointed Vice-President of the Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts. He played a key role in Speer's plans for the reconstruction of Berlin, and Speer set him up with what was virtually a factory to produce his sculptures, bas-reliefs and other three-dimensional objects, subsidizing it with vast sums of money. Hitler told his companions at dinner one night that Breker deserved an income of a million Reichsmarks a year, and Martin Bormann gave him a tax-free honorarium of 250,000 Reichsmarks in April 1942. Hitler and Speer paid for the refurbishment of his castle near the river Oder, where Breker advertised his privileged status by displaying his collection of paintings by L'ger, Picasso and other artists officially regarded as 'degenerate' on the walls. The German ambassador in Paris put the confiscated house of the Jewish cosmetics manufacturer Helena Rubinstein at his disposal, and Breker spent a good deal of his substantial income on buying up works by Rodin and other artists as well as quantities of fine wines, books and perfume.171 Breker was far from being alone in his avid pursuit of paintings, sculptures and other cultural objects in the occupied countries. Indeed, he was heavily outclassed in this respect by Hitler and G*ring. Both were wealthy men by the time the war broke out.172 Hermann G*ring owned ten houses, castles and hunting lodges, all provided and maintained at the taxpayer's expense. In all these locations, and particularly in his vast and ever-expanding principal hunting lodge at Carinhall, named after his first wife, G*ring wanted to display artworks, tapestries, paintings, sculptures and much else besides, to emphasize his status as the Reich's second man. G*ring spent large sums of money on acquiring cultural objects of all kinds, using whatever means he could. Hermann G*ring owned ten houses, castles and hunting lodges, all provided and maintained at the taxpayer's expense. In all these locations, and particularly in his vast and ever-expanding principal hunting lodge at Carinhall, named after his first wife, G*ring wanted to display artworks, tapestries, paintings, sculptures and much else besides, to emphasize his status as the Reich's second man. G*ring spent large sums of money on acquiring cultural objects of all kinds, using whatever means he could.173 By contrast, Hitler himself made a point of avoiding ostentatious displays of personal wealth, preferring instead to accumulate an art collection for public use. Hitler had long planned to turn his home town of Linz, in Austria, into the cultural capital of the new Reich, even drawing sketches for the new public buildings and museums he hoped to construct there. Linz would become the German Florence, with a comprehensive collection above all of Germanic art housed in a range of purpose-built galleries and museums. Berlin, too, had to have art museums suitable for its new status as the coming capital of the world. On 26 June 1939 Hitler engaged the services of an art historian, Hans Posse, a museum director in Dresden, to amass the collection he needed for this purpose. Posse was provided with almost limitless funds, and by the middle of the war he was acquiring art objects from all over German-occupied Europe, amassing an almost incredible total of more than 8,000 by 1945. Armed with full powers from Hitler, he was able to outbid or outmanoeuvre other agents, such as Kajetan Mu*hlmann, who were working for G*ring, or for other major German museums, or indeed for themselves. By December 1944, Posse and the man who succeeded him shortly after Posse's death from cancer in December 1942, Hermann Voss, director of the Wiesbaden Museum, had spent a total of 70 million Reichsmarks on buying for the Linz collection. Not surprisingly, dealers used by Hitler and Posse, such as Karl Haberstock, made considerable profits out of their business. By contrast, Hitler himself made a point of avoiding ostentatious displays of personal wealth, preferring instead to accumulate an art collection for public use. Hitler had long planned to turn his home town of Linz, in Austria, into the cultural capital of the new Reich, even drawing sketches for the new public buildings and museums he hoped to construct there. Linz would become the German Florence, with a comprehensive collection above all of Germanic art housed in a range of purpose-built galleries and museums. Berlin, too, had to have art museums suitable for its new status as the coming capital of the world. On 26 June 1939 Hitler engaged the services of an art historian, Hans Posse, a museum director in Dresden, to amass the collection he needed for this purpose. Posse was provided with almost limitless funds, and by the middle of the war he was acquiring art objects from all over German-occupied Europe, amassing an almost incredible total of more than 8,000 by 1945. Armed with full powers from Hitler, he was able to outbid or outmanoeuvre other agents, such as Kajetan Mu*hlmann, who were working for G*ring, or for other major German museums, or indeed for themselves. By December 1944, Posse and the man who succeeded him shortly after Posse's death from cancer in December 1942, Hermann Voss, director of the Wiesbaden Museum, had spent a total of 70 million Reichsmarks on buying for the Linz collection. Not surprisingly, dealers used by Hitler and Posse, such as Karl Haberstock, made considerable profits out of their business.174 This spending spree did not take place in normal art market conditions. Many countries for example had rules and regulations controlling the export of art treasures, but during the war Hitler was easily able to ignore them or brush them aside. Moreover, the high prices offered in many cases for the old German Masters he wanted for the Linz Museum were not quite what they seemed, at least not from 1940 onwards, since the Germans fixed exchange rates with the French franc and other currencies in occupied countries at rates that were extraordinarily favourable to the German Reichsmark. But in many cases it was not necessary to spend any money at all. Artworks had already been confiscated from German-Jewish collectors in large quantities, especially after the pogrom of 9-10 November 1938, allegedly for 'safe-keeping'; they were registered and subsequently appropriated by the German state. A precedent had been set in March 1938 with the invasion of Austria. Here as in other occupied countries, Jewish emigrants had to leave their assets behind if they emigrated, to be taken over by the Reich. After the conquest of France in 1940 the property of citizens who had fled the country also fell to the German Reich; the same applied eventually to all Jews deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps in the east from every occupied country in Europe, offering widespread opportunities for plunder.175 Looting extended far beyond the expropriation of the Jews when the Nazis invaded countries inhabited by people they regarded as subhuman, uncultured Slavs. Already during the invasion of Poland, German troops ransacked country houses and palaces for cultural objects of all kinds. Soon, however, the despoliation of Poland's cultural heritage was put on an organized basis. Kajetan M*hlmann, who had previously carried out similar duties in Vienna, was put in charge of the process. By the end of November 1940 the registration was complete, and Posse arrived to select prime specimens for the Leader. He was followed in due course by art museum directors from Germany, anxious for their share in the spoils. Quarrels broke out, as Hermann G*ring tried to obtain pictures for himself while Hans Frank objected to the removal of prize loot from his headquarters. Perhaps this was not such a bad idea, however, since Frank had no idea of how to display or preserve Old Masters, and was once reprimanded by M*hlmann for hanging a painting by Leonardo da Vinci above a radiator. Private collections were ransacked as well as state museums, and the vast collection amassed by the Czartoryski family, including a Rembrandt and a Raphael, was systematically despoiled.176 Meanwhile Hans Frank was busy decorating his headquarters with looted artworks, and shipping trophies back to his home in Bavaria. When American troops arrived there in 1945, they found a Rembrandt, a Leonardo, a fourteenth-century Madonna from Cracow, and looted vestments and chalices from Polish churches. Meanwhile Hans Frank was busy decorating his headquarters with looted artworks, and shipping trophies back to his home in Bavaria. When American troops arrived there in 1945, they found a Rembrandt, a Leonardo, a fourteenth-century Madonna from Cracow, and looted vestments and chalices from Polish churches.177 This process of looting and expropriation was repeated on an even larger scale when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. As in Poland, ethnic cleansing was accompanied by cultural cleansing. Special units were attached to the incoming SS forces, armed with lists of 'Germanic' art for confiscation and shipping back to the Reich. Among the most famous of these items was the celebrated amber room given to Peter the Great by King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia and subsequently augmented by further gifts from his successor. The Soviets had taken away all the furniture and movable items but left the amber panelling in place, and the room, installed in the Catherine Palace in the town of Pushkin, was dismantled and returned to K*nigsberg in East Prussia, where it was put on display until being packed away for protection against air raids. The Soviets of course had removed many cultural treasures out of reach of the invading armies, there were no great private collections left in the Soviet Union, since all had been confiscated by the Communist state, and the Germans never managed to conquer Moscow or St Petersburg; but much still remained to be looted; 279 paintings were carried off from Kharkov alone, for example, and Himmler requisitioned considerable quantities of artworks to decorate and furnish the SS's headquarters at Wewelsburg. Individuals could often pick up treasures at bargain rates: one SS officer sent Himmler a collection of antique jewellery he had bought from the widow of a Soviet archaeologist, starving in war-torn Kiev, for 8 kilograms of millet.178 The greatest art treasures, however, were to be found in the conquered countries of Western Europe. On 5 July 1940 Hitler commissioned a subsection of Alfred Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office of the Nazi Party, the Task Staff of Reich Leader Rosenberg, to collect artworks from Jewish owners and confiscate anti-German material along with any documents that might be valuable for Reich. Based initially in Paris, and backed by the authority of Hitler himself, Rosenberg's unit quickly took the lead in the rush to acquire cultural objects for the Linz Museum and other collections. On 1 March 1941 it relocated to Berlin, from where it sent out emissaries to supervise the spoliation of museums and libraries in the east in the wake of Operation Barbarossa. By the time Rosenberg's staff arrived in Holland in September 1940, however, Kajetan M*hlmann was already there, as was Hermann G*ring's art curator, Walter Andreas Hofer. Hitler authorized Hans Posse to go to Holland on 13 June 1940, and Hermann G*ring travelled to Amsterdam in person. A frenzy of competitive buying ensued, and large quantities of actual or alleged German artworks made their way from Dutch collectors, dealers and museums to repositories in the Reich. M*hlmann's team tracked down collections taken to Holland by German-Jewish owners fleeing persecution in the 1930s, and confiscated them. A 1669 self-portrait by Rembrandt was among a number of works sent back to Germany on the grounds that they had been illegally exported: no compensation was given to Jewish owners of such works. In addition, the artworks of Jews who had fled the country to take refuge in England were confiscated, and crates of artworks about to be shipped abroad were opened and the contents removed and confiscated.179 Even richer pickings were to be had in France. On 30 June 1940 Hitler ordered that art objects owned by the French state were to be put under German guard. Ambassador Abetz prepared to seize artworks in large quantities, telling the military that Hitler or Ribbentrop would decide what was to be taken to Germany. The latter category included works looted by Napoleon from the Rhineland, already listed in a 300-page document drawn up by German art historians touring French museums and libraries in the 1930s posing as academic researchers. But the army command had employed its own art historian, the Francophile Count Franz Wolff-Metternich, who persuaded the military authorities to withhold co-operation on the grounds that the 1907 Hague Convention forbade looting. Enlisting the support of army Commander-in-Chief Brauchitsch, he frustrated all Abetz's attempts to sequester artworks in the ownership of the French state. With Jewish dealers and collectors, whose possessions Hitler had also ordered to be confiscated, matters stood very differently. The property of fifteen major Jewish dealers was seized, along with that of Jewish owners such as the Rothschilds, which was stored in the Jeu de Paumes, a small gallery used by the Louvre for temporary exhibitions. Rosenberg's Task Staff arrived to administer the collection, and soon Hermann G*ring too descended upon the museum, spending two days there selecting twenty-seven works by Rembrandt, van Dyck and others for his private collection. He prudently agreed, however, that Hitler was to have first choice of items from the Jeu de Paumes. Rosenberg and the German museums could have most of the rest. Everything had to be paid for and the profits made over to a fund for French war orphans. While Hans Posse, inspecting the list of works piled up at the museum, had fifty-three artworks taken off to Germany for eventual inclusion in the Linz Museum, G*ring chose over 600 paintings, pieces of furniture and other items, which he had valued at very low prices if they were to go on display at Carinhall, or high prices if he intended to sell them. G*ring peremptorily brushed aside Wolff-Metternich's objections, and the army formally absolved itself of any further responsibility for the artworks.180 By the end of the war, Hitler's own collection included 75 Lenbachs, 58 Stucks, 58 Kaulbachs, 52 Menzels and 44 Spitzwegs. Besides nineteenth-century German and Austrian painters, he also had 15 Rembrandts, 23 Breughels, 2 Vermeers, 15 Canalettos and paintings by Titian, Leonardo, Botticelli, Holbein, Cranach, Rubens and many others. Their rarity alone had prevented Hitler from purchasing works by Bosch, Grunewald and D*rer. He frequently referred to the works he had obtained, but he hardly ever saw them; they were all put into storage.181 So obsessed was he with the idea of the Linz Museum that he was to issue instructions for its foundation in his will. 'I never bought the paintings that are in the collections that I built up over the years for my own benefit,' he declared, 'but only for the establishment of a gallery in my home town of Linz.' In the end, however, Hitler's fantasy of a world centre for Germanic art was in reality little more than a wish-fulfilment of his own rehabilitation as an artist, after the failures and humiliations of his years in Vienna before the First World War. So obsessed was he with the idea of the Linz Museum that he was to issue instructions for its foundation in his will. 'I never bought the paintings that are in the collections that I built up over the years for my own benefit,' he declared, 'but only for the establishment of a gallery in my home town of Linz.' In the end, however, Hitler's fantasy of a world centre for Germanic art was in reality little more than a wish-fulfilment of his own rehabilitation as an artist, after the failures and humiliations of his years in Vienna before the First World War.182DEADLY SCIENCE.

I.

In March 1940 William Guertler, Professor of Metallurgy at the Technical University of Berlin and a long-time Nazi, wrote a personal petition to Hitler. There were many such petitions, and they were routinely dealt with by Hitler's staff. There is no evidence that Hitler ever read what Guertler had to say. But it was regarded as sufficiently significant to be forwarded to Hans-Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, who had it copied and distributed to a number of ministers, including Hermann G*ring. What concerned Guertler, seven months into the war, was a decline in educational standards so precipitate that it was leading, in his opinion, to catastrophe. As soon as the war had begun, the Education Ministry had decreed, in the interests of the most efficient use of students' time, that the traditional two-semester university year should be replaced by a three-term year, without any diminution in the length of the term. The university year had thus been increased from seven and a half months to ten and a half. So, Guertler complained, we teachers received the order to ensure that the students would learn in one year as much as they used to learn in one and a half. We did our utmost. It was completely in vain. The students' capacity for learning had already long been overtaxed. Even before this, we had been unable to maintain the level of training, but now every examination told us of a catastrophic decline in the knowledge they had acquired. Young students had long since been forced to give up those pleasures even of the most industrious years of study that had once been so celebrated - and so well-deserved. They tormented themselves outrageously - it was beyond their strength.183 Neither Lammers nor any of the petition's other readers disagreed. Even Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust accepted the professor's alarming diagnosis.184 The decline in educational standards had begun long before the war and affected schools as well as universities. In 1937 the nine years of secondary education had been reduced to eight. The influence of the Hitler Youth had reduced the authority of many teachers, and the emphasis of Nazi education on sport and physical exercise had curtailed the time available for academic study. Even had they managed to acquire a reasonable knowledge in this situation, school students were liable to forget much of it in the two and a half years or so they were obliged to spend doing labour service and serving in the armed forces before they were allowed to matriculate at a university.185 The war saw a further increase in the ideological content of the curriculum; more than 150 hastily issued pamphlets, for example, replaced previous textbook accounts of English history and institutions with hostile propaganda branding Britain as a Jewish-run country that had committed countless atrocities in its murky past. Textbooks became increasingly difficult to obtain, and school buildings in many towns and cities were either requisitioned for use as military hospitals or, especially from 1942 onwards, destroyed in bombing raids. The war saw a further increase in the ideological content of the curriculum; more than 150 hastily issued pamphlets, for example, replaced previous textbook accounts of English history and institutions with hostile propaganda branding Britain as a Jewish-run country that had committed countless atrocities in its murky past. Textbooks became increasingly difficult to obtain, and school buildings in many towns and cities were either requisitioned for use as military hospitals or, especially from 1942 onwards, destroyed in bombing raids.186 Teachers went off to the front and were not replaced, so much so that by February 1943 the National Socialist Teachers' League was closed down for lack of activity and funds. Older pupils were forced to spend more and more time helping with air-raid work, collecting clothes, rags, bones, paper and metal for the war economy, or, in the summer, going to the countryside to help with the harvest for as long as four months at a stretch. From February 1943 classes in Berlin schools took place only in the mornings as all the children spent the afternoons either in military drill and education or going off to man anti-aircraft batteries if they were fifteen or older. The last school examinations were held in 1943, and in the last months of the war most schools ceased teaching altogether. Teachers went off to the front and were not replaced, so much so that by February 1943 the National Socialist Teachers' League was closed down for lack of activity and funds. Older pupils were forced to spend more and more time helping with air-raid work, collecting clothes, rags, bones, paper and metal for the war economy, or, in the summer, going to the countryside to help with the harvest for as long as four months at a stretch. From February 1943 classes in Berlin schools took place only in the mornings as all the children spent the afternoons either in military drill and education or going off to man anti-aircraft batteries if they were fifteen or older. The last school examinations were held in 1943, and in the last months of the war most schools ceased teaching altogether.187 Nazi elite schools were just as badly affected. The Order Castle at Vogelsang, for example, lost almost all its students and teachers to military service as soon as the war began, and its premises were used for billeting troops and then providing indoctrination courses for recuperating war-wounded.188 The National Political Educational Institutions, or Napolas, another form of elite school, suffered similarly. The fanatically Nazi students saw the war as an opportunity for showing their commitment, demonstrating their bravery, and winning medals. By March 1944 some 143 Napola students or graduates had been decorated for bravery; 1,226 had been killed. Student numbers thus fell sharply, and by the end of 1944, the Napolas were being used for training officer cadets and members of the Military SS. Nevertheless, some teaching continued, and on one occasion at the Oranienstein school, towards the end of the war, students incongruously found themselves taking yachting lessons as American bombers flew overhead, 'a totally crazy scene in a totally crazy world', as one student later recalled. The National Political Educational Institutions, or Napolas, another form of elite school, suffered similarly. The fanatically Nazi students saw the war as an opportunity for showing their commitment, demonstrating their bravery, and winning medals. By March 1944 some 143 Napola students or graduates had been decorated for bravery; 1,226 had been killed. Student numbers thus fell sharply, and by the end of 1944, the Napolas were being used for training officer cadets and members of the Military SS. Nevertheless, some teaching continued, and on one occasion at the Oranienstein school, towards the end of the war, students incongruously found themselves taking yachting lessons as American bombers flew overhead, 'a totally crazy scene in a totally crazy world', as one student later recalled.189 In this situation, it was not surprising that educational standards at universities suffered as well. But they had their own problems too. All German universities were closed down on 1 September 1939, and when they reopened ten days later, they registered a dramatic fall in student numbers, from 41,000 to 29,000, reflecting the enlistment of many male students in the armed forces. Numbers slowly began to recover thereafter - to 38,000 in 1942, and 52,000 in 1943; in higher education institutions of all kinds, there was an increase from 52,000 in 1940 to 65,000 in 1944. The students who made up these numbers now included war-wounded soldiers, men certified as unfit for service for one reason or another, soldiers on leave (many of whom had forfeited their places at university on enlisting), foreign students, medical students required by their army units to continue their studies, and, increasingly, women - 14 per cent of the student body in all institutions of higher education in 1939, 30 per cent in 1941, and 48 per cent in 1943. As before the war, medicine was in a position of absolute dominance in Germany's universities. 62 per cent of all students were enrolled in Medical Faculties in 1940; all of them had to serve six months at the front as ordinary soldiers to prepare for service as army medics when they qualified. Thus a perception amongst some (typically anti-intellectual) Nazi activists that those who went to university during the war were 'slackers' trying to avoid military service was incorrect; almost all male students, in fact, were members of the armed forces in one capacity or another.190 Educational standards at university did not just fall during the war as a consequence of the decline of educational standards in the schools. Students were obliged to spend increasing amounts of their time on work duties, helping with the harvest or working during the vacations in factories. The Ministry of Education did recognize in 1941 that the three-semester year, in combination with labour service during the vacations, was imposing an impossible strain on students, and restored the traditional two-semester year.191 But there were widespread complaints from professors that students were either too tired to work or too lazy and apathetic. The Nazi Party's open contempt for learning, hammered into them in their formative years, lowered their respect for their teachers. After the war, there would be a huge demand for lawyers and doctors, they thought, so why bother to work anyway? As the Security Service of the SS reported on 5 October 1942: But there were widespread complaints from professors that students were either too tired to work or too lazy and apathetic. The Nazi Party's open contempt for learning, hammered into them in their formative years, lowered their respect for their teachers. After the war, there would be a huge demand for lawyers and doctors, they thought, so why bother to work anyway? As the Security Service of the SS reported on 5 October 1942: It is unanimously reported from every university town in the Reich that the performance level of the students is continually falling that the performance level of the students is continually falling. Their written work, their participation in classes and seminars, as well as their examination results, have reached a real low point . . . Many students don't even possess the simplest, most elementary knowledge don't even possess the simplest, most elementary knowledge. Orthographic, grammatical and stylistic mistakes are encountered ever more frequently in written work.192 Knowledge of foreign languages, the report added, was so poor that students were unable to follow lectures that used Latin words to denote different parts of the human body. Professors were asked by students to avoid using foreign words, and began to lower standards, making examinations easier to pass, and reducing the demands on their own time by marking student work less rigorously.193 The student body, already disparaged by many active Nazis as politically apathetic before the war, did not find any new commitment to National Socialism when the war began. If it committed itself to the conflict, it was as much on behalf of Germany as it was in the cause of National Socialism. The National Socialist German Students' League went into decline, though it did score one success by persuading the remaining traditional fraternity members in its ranks to abandon the practice of duelling on the grounds that it was no longer necessary to demonstrate one's manly courage by standing unflinchingly still as an opponent gouged a scar in one's cheek with a sabre: one could now prove one's valour by fighting in a real battle.194 The war, however, increasingly came home to the universities themselves, especially to those located in the larger towns and cities. By July 1944, twenty-five out of sixty-one higher education institutions in the Greater German Reich had been damaged in bombing raids. The disruption to teaching was considerable, as it took time to find new classrooms and lecture theatres, and these too were then often damaged by bombing. Frequent false alarms caused further disruption. By the end of the war, in 1945, bombing had effectively put an end to higher learning almost everywhere in Germany: only Erlangen, G*ttingen, Halle, Heidelberg, Marburg and T*bingen were undamaged. Many other universities had been totally destroyed. Long before this, study had been made more difficult by the understandable decision of many university libraries to move their precious collections out to coalmines or similar sites for safe-keeping. Bookshops fell victim to the bombing raids as well, so that journals and textbooks became increasingly difficult to find. The war, however, increasingly came home to the universities themselves, especially to those located in the larger towns and cities. By July 1944, twenty-five out of sixty-one higher education institutions in the Greater German Reich had been damaged in bombing raids. The disruption to teaching was considerable, as it took time to find new classrooms and lecture theatres, and these too were then often damaged by bombing. Frequent false alarms caused further disruption. By the end of the war, in 1945, bombing had effectively put an end to higher learning almost everywhere in Germany: only Erlangen, G*ttingen, Halle, Heidelberg, Marburg and T*bingen were undamaged. Many other universities had been totally destroyed. Long before this, study had been made more difficult by the understandable decision of many university libraries to move their precious collections out to coalmines or similar sites for safe-keeping. Bookshops fell victim to the bombing raids as well, so that journals and textbooks became increasingly difficult to find.195 When Goebbels was appointed Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort in 1944, university education effectively came to an end. 16,000 students were drafted to the front, and 31,000 were conscripted for service in war industries. Goebbels had wanted to close all the universities down, but he had been prevented from doing this by Himmler on the grounds that some, at least, of their activities were of direct benefit to the war effort. Thus the only students allowed to continue their studies were either those about to take their final examinations or those enrolled in courses on subjects like physics, maths, ballistics and electronics. There were still 38,000 German students in university at the end of 1944, though this was many fewer than the number of students who had been there a year before. But they could no longer study to any effect, even had they wanted to. Disillusion with the regime was widespread. The use of the 'Hitler greeting' was said to have virtually ceased many months before this. Yet open opposition to Nazism was still rare. Dull apathy was far more common.196 II.

In these circumstances, continuing with research and publication was extremely difficult for university teachers. The longer teaching year in 1939 and 1940 indeed made it virtually impossible for many. Only if research could be shown to be of direct benefit to the war effort, or to projects associated with it, would it be given any kind of priority. Publication in the arts and humanities was reduced to little more than propaganda. For most professors, conservative nationalists as they were, the war presented a spiritual call to arms to fight for Germany, however much they may have disliked Nazism and its ideas. A case in point was the Freiburg historian Gerhard Ritter, whose writings, public and private, of the war years were torn between his moral revulsion for Nazism and his patriotic commitment to the German cause. Like many others in his situation, he was enthused by the victories of 1939 and 1940, but increasingly disillusioned by the military setbacks and disasters of the following years. His behaviour was strongly coloured by the death of his own son on the Eastern Front. In his public lectures and publications he did his best to bolster morale both at home and in the forces; he went on tours of France and other occupied countries and lectured to the armed forces as well as continuing to teach in his own university. Increasingly, however, he larded his lectures and articles with appeals for moderation and implicit criticisms of what he saw as Nazi extremism. Introducing a reissue of his biography of Martin Luther in 1943, for instance, he insisted on the importance of retaining a pure conscience and a strong legal order. Ritter was bitterly opposed to the attempts of the German Christians to Nazify German Protestantism, and began to write private memoranda about the need to re-establish a moral order after the war was over. In November 1944 he was finally arrested by the Gestapo, but he was not badly treated in prison; he survived the war and became a prominent member of the West German historical establishment in the 1950s. His complex and often contradictory position during the Third Reich typified that of many other academics in the humanities, and he was not the only one whose views evolved gradually from a positive though always conditional support of the regime towards a deepening opposition based on the Christian, conservative and patriotic values that he thought it was violating.197 Other historians and social scientists, however, and especially younger ones, were only too keen to participate in the war in the interests not so much of Germany as of Nazi ideology. Specialists in the history of East-Central Europe like the young Theodor Schieder and his colleague Werner Conze declared large parts of the region to be historically German and urged the clearing-out of the Jewish population in order to make room for German settlers. In a memorandum presented to Himmler, Schieder advocated the deportation of the Jews overseas, and the removal of part of the Polish population further east. Other, more senior historians including Hermann Aubin and Albert Brackmann offered their services in the identification of historically 'German' parts of the region, as a prelude to the expulsion of the rest of the population. Statisticians calculated the proportion of Jews in the region, demographers worked out the details of possible future population growth following Germanization, economists engaged in cost-benefit analyses of deportation and murder, geographers mapped out the territories to be resettled and redeveloped. All of this ultimately fed into the General Plan for the East, with its almost limitless ambition for racial reordering and extermination.198 These various enthusiastic contributions reflected the eagerness of a variety of scholars and institutions to exert an influence on, or at least play a part in, the reconstruction of Eastern Europe under Nazi rule. Beyond this, they rushed to take part in the grand schemes developed by the Nazi leadership for the reshaping of the whole economic, social and racial structure of Europe. 'Scholarship cannot simply wait until it is called upon,' wrote Aubin to Brackmann on 18 September 1939. 'It must make itself heard.' These various enthusiastic contributions reflected the eagerness of a variety of scholars and institutions to exert an influence on, or at least play a part in, the reconstruction of Eastern Europe under Nazi rule. Beyond this, they rushed to take part in the grand schemes developed by the Nazi leadership for the reshaping of the whole economic, social and racial structure of Europe. 'Scholarship cannot simply wait until it is called upon,' wrote Aubin to Brackmann on 18 September 1939. 'It must make itself heard.'199 Some of these scholars and scientists were still based in universities during the war, but even more than had been the case in the peacetime years, research activity, particularly in the natural and physical sciences, was concentrated in non-university institutes funded by major national bodies, notably the German Research Community and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. These survived, with their very substantial budgets, in the first part of the war not least because nobody in power paid very much attention to them. German military victories generated a widespread sense of complacency. The victories in the west in 1940 and the rapid advances across the Soviet Union the following year demonstrated not only the superiority of German arms but also the world-beating stature of German science and technology. Only when things began to go badly did Nazi leaders turn to scientists for help. Albert Speer in particular was keen on co-ordinating scientific research and focusing it on war-relevant projects. In the summer of 1943 a Reich Research Council was established to co-ordinate and focus scientific efforts across the wide variety of research institutes and funding bodies that were competing with one another in the effort to deliver new weapons and new technologies. But this still left a number of rival institutions, as the air force and the army insisted on running their own research centres and the decentralization and dissipation of military-related research defied all attempts of the Reich Research Council to develop a coherent research strategy that would avoid the same areas being covered by parallel groups of researchers.200 Scientific research during the war ranged across the whole spectrum of Nazi plans and ambitions. Scientists at a specially created institute in Athens carried out research into improving crop yields and food supplies for future use by German settlers in the east, while an SS botanical unit collected plant specimens behind the Eastern Front to see if any of them were of nutritional value.201 Such work involved a two-way bargain: scientists were not just being co-opted by the regime, but also willingly used the research opportunities it provided to build their own research careers and further their own scientific work. So intensive was the collaboration indeed that some even spoke ironically of 'war in the service of science'. Such work involved a two-way bargain: scientists were not just being co-opted by the regime, but also willingly used the research opportunities it provided to build their own research careers and further their own scientific work. So intensive was the collaboration indeed that some even spoke ironically of 'war in the service of science'.202 In 1942, the creation of a Reich Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy set the seal on the efforts of Matthias G*ring (a cousin of the Reich Marshal, whose name was of considerable help to him in his campaign) to gain recognition for a profession long associated by the Nazis with Jewish doctors such as Sigmund Freud. The Institute investigated war-relevant matters such as the reasons for neuroses and breakdowns among the troops; but it is also, as we have seen, researched homosexuality, which the army and the SS regarded as a genuine threat to the German soldier's fighting prowess. In 1942, the creation of a Reich Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy set the seal on the efforts of Matthias G*ring (a cousin of the Reich Marshal, whose name was of considerable help to him in his campaign) to gain recognition for a profession long associated by the Nazis with Jewish doctors such as Sigmund Freud. The Institute investigated war-relevant matters such as the reasons for neuroses and breakdowns among the troops; but it is also, as we have seen, researched homosexuality, which the army and the SS regarded as a genuine threat to the German soldier's fighting prowess.203 Racial-biological research was carried out not only by Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institutes but also by Himmler's Ancestral Heritage organization, the research arm of the SS.204 Himmler's men ranged far and wide both before and during the war in search of proof for his often wild racial and anthropological theories. The organization mounted expeditions to Scandinavia, Greece, Libya and Iraq looking for prehistoric remains, and two scholars worked their way through a variety of sites in the Middle East, sending back reports to German intelligence as they went. Most remarkably of all, Ancestral Heritage staffers Ernst Sch*fer and Bruno Beger led an SS expedition to remote Tibet, where they photographed some 2,000 of the inhabitants, measured 376 individuals and took plastic casts of seventeen Tibetan faces. Heinrich Harrer, already well known for his conquest of the Eiger mountain, achieved greater fame on another expedition sent by Himmler to the Himalayas. Arrested by the British on the outbreak of war, he escaped and spent seven years in Tibet, later writing a best-selling account of his experiences. Himmler's men ranged far and wide both before and during the war in search of proof for his often wild racial and anthropological theories. The organization mounted expeditions to Scandinavia, Greece, Libya and Iraq looking for prehistoric remains, and two scholars worked their way through a variety of sites in the Middle East, sending back reports to German intelligence as they went. Most remarkably of all, Ancestral Heritage staffers Ernst Sch*fer and Bruno Beger led an SS expedition to remote Tibet, where they photographed some 2,000 of the inhabitants, measured 376 individuals and took plastic casts of seventeen Tibetan faces. Heinrich Harrer, already well known for his conquest of the Eiger mountain, achieved greater fame on another expedition sent by Himmler to the Himalayas. Arrested by the British on the outbreak of war, he escaped and spent seven years in Tibet, later writing a best-selling account of his experiences.

Encountering problems in identifying who was Jewish and who was not in the ethnically and culturally mixed regions of the Crimea and the Caucasus when they were overrun by German forces, Himmler dispatched Sch*fer and Beger to the area to try to sort things out so that the Jews could be separated out and killed. Before long, Beger was engrossed in a large-scale study of supposedly Jewish racial characteristics. Unable to continue his work because of the advance of the Red Army in 1943, he relocated to Auschwitz, where he selected and measured Jewish prisoners and took casts of their faces, in full knowledge of their impending fate. Then he moved on to the concentration camp at Natzweiler. Here he was assisted by the ghoulish anatomist August Hirt, whose features had been severely disfigured by a wound to his upper and lower jaw during the First World War. At Natzweiler the two men started a collection of Jewish skulls, first taking x-rays of selected inmates, then, after having them gassed, macerating their flesh in a chemical solution before adding the skeletal remains to the Ancestral Heritage archive at Mittersill castle. These macabre activities were only brought to an end by the arrival of the advancing Allied armies.205 III.

Medical science also came into the service of waging war. Military and civil planners urgently needed medical answers to a wide range of questions. Some of these were of direct relevance to the war: how to combat typhus more effectively, how to stop wounds from becoming infected, how to improve the chances of survival for seamen drifting in lifeboats after their vessel had been sunk. Such problems faced all combatant nations during the war. In Germany, medical science felt able to use experimentation on concentration camp inmates in the search for answers to these problems. Nobody forced medical scientists to do this work; on the contrary, they took part in it willingly or even asked to do so. That this was so should not be surprising: for some years, doctors had been among the most committed supporters of the Nazi cause.206 From their point of view, the inmates of concentration camps were all either racially inferior subhumans or vicious criminals or traitors to the German cause or more than one of these at the same time. Whatever they were, they seemed to Nazi doctors - two-thirds of the medical profession in the Third Reich - to have no right to life or well-being, and were thus obvious subjects for medical experimentation that could, indeed in many cases quite clearly would, cause pain, suffering, illness and death. From their point of view, the inmates of concentration camps were all either racially inferior subhumans or vicious criminals or traitors to the German cause or more than one of these at the same time. Whatever they were, they seemed to Nazi doctors - two-thirds of the medical profession in the Third Reich - to have no right to life or well-being, and were thus obvious subjects for medical experimentation that could, indeed in many cases quite clearly would, cause pain, suffering, illness and death.

The first use of camp inmates for medical experimentation was at Dachau, where the leading figure was an ambitious young SS doctor, Sigmund Rascher. Born in 1909, Rascher had joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and by the outbreak of war was working for Himmler's Ancestral Heritage research organization. Rascher's partner Karoline Diehl, a former singer sixteen years older than himself, was an old personal friend of Himmler's, and the SS leader therefore reacted positively when the doctor presented him with a project for the early diagnosis of cancer. Rascher held out the prospect of creating an infectious form of cancer that could be used as a rat poison. In order to carry out the research, he obtained Himmler's permission to take regular blood tests from long-term inmates at the Dachau concentration camp. In 1941, Rascher, who in the meantime had been appointed as a medical officer in the air force reserve, further persuaded the SS leader to let him carry out experiments on prisoners in Dachau designed to test the human body's reactions to rapid decompression and lack of oxygen at high altitudes, with the aim of working out how to keep a pilot alive when he was forced to parachute out of a pressurized aircraft cabin at heights of 18 or 21 kilometres. Up to 300 experiments were carried out on ten or fifteen criminal prisoners in a mobile decompression chamber in Dachau from February to May 1942. The suffering inflicted on the prisoners was considerable, and at least three are known to have died during the experiments. When the senior colleague seconded by the air force was absent, Rascher carried out further, as he called them, 'terminal experiments', in which the subject's death was planned from the start: these consisted of seeing how long someone could stay alive when the air supply was gradually thinned out. Some of the subjects, described by Rascher as 'race-defiling, professionally criminal Jews', were made unconscious in a simulated parachute jump without oxygen at the equivalent of 14 kilometres above ground, and were then killed by drowning before they recovered. Rascher reported on these experiments directly to Himmler, who visited Dachau in order to observe them. The experiments were also filmed, and the results shown to a gathering of air force medical personnel in the Air Ministry on 11 September 1942. Between seventy and eighty prisoners were killed in the course of this project.207 So pleased was Himmler with Rascher's work that he set up an Institute for Applied Research in Defence Science in the summer of 1942, as part of the Ancestral Heritage division of the SS, with the express purpose of carrying out medical research in the concentration camps. Rascher's operation in Dachau became part of this organization. Already in June Himmler, prompted by the air force, had commissioned Rascher to carry out experiments on prisoners to determine how best to promote the survival of pilots who came down in the icy waters of the North Sea. As they floated in large tanks filled with water at various (but always low) temperatures, dressed in air force uniforms and life-jackets, prisoners' bodies were closely monitored while a variety of simulated rescue attempts was undertaken. By October 1942 between fifteen and eighteen out of the fifty or sixty inmates subjected to this treatment had died. The average time before death was seventy minutes. Removal and plunging into a warm bath did not cause a shock to the system, as Rascher had expected, but brought about an immediate improvement. He presented the results to a large conference of ninety-five medical scientists in Nuremberg on 26 and 27 October 1942; none of them raised any objections to the use of camp inmates as subjects, or to the fact that many of them had been killed by the experiments. 208 208 This marked perhaps the high point of Rascher's career. Its progress had depended almost exclusively on the favour shown him by Himmler. When the SS chief had initially objected to his marriage to Karoline Diehl on the grounds that she was too old to bear children, the couple had proved him wrong by announcing that she was pregnant. When Rascher informed Himmler that his fiance'e had given birth to two sons, the marriage was approved, and Himmler even sent the couple a bouquet of flowers with his fulsome congratulations. However, the SS leader was being deceived, and when Karoline Rascher announced that she had given birth to another infant early in 1944, even Himmler smelt a rat: surely at fifty-two a woman was too old to bear children? An investigation revealed that she had stolen the infant from its mother on Munich's main railway station, and that she had acquired her other children in much the same way. Himmler, furious at being made to look a fool, had her arrested, confined to Ravensbr*ck and then executed. Rascher himself was dismissed from all his posts and imprisoned in Buchenwald; at the end of the war he was transferred back to Dachau and shot there three days before the camp's liberation.209 Rascher's disgrace by no means ended medical experimentation of this kind, however. The German air force and navy were also concerned about the survival of airmen and sailors who had succeeded in getting into a dinghy or life-raft but had no water to drink. Air crew in particular faced this problem since water supplies in any quantity were too heavy to carry on board their planes. A number of experiments with converting seawater for drinking purposes proved fruitless because they involved subjects whose health could not be compromised because they were genuine volunteers, Professor Oskar Schr*der, a leading air force doctor, asked Himmler on 7 June 1944 for forty healthy subjects from concentration camps. The young men were selected from 1,000 Gypsies transferred from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and told that if they volunteered for special duties in Dachau they would be well fed and that the experiments would not be hazardous: the doctor in charge of the experiments, Wilhelm Beiglb*ck, told them he himself had drunk seawater without any ill effects. After being fed air-force rations for a week, the subjects were put on a diet of seawater that had been treated in a variety of different ways, or in some cases not treated at all. Soon they were all suffering from unbearable thirst. If they refused to take any more seawater it was force-fed to them. One man was driven mad with desperation and had to be put in a straitjacket, while another was tied to his bed. Others lay around apathetically, or screamed with pain. When the floor was cleaned, the men threw themselves on to it to lap up the traces of liquid left by the mop. While nobody actually died from these experiments, the pain and suffering they inflicted was as considerable as the results were meagre.210 Further experiments were conducted by medical scientists interested in the treatment of wounds received in battle. Following the death of Reinhard Heydrich from septicaemia, Himmler, acting on Hitler's instructions, ordered experiments to be carried out under the supervision of the Reich Physician SS, Ernst-Robert Grawitz, to see whether and under what conditions a variety of sulphonamides might be effective against an infection of this kind. These were antibacterial drugs, the forerunners of antibiotics, and they had already been developed by the Bayer pharmaceutical company with some success; the medical scientist Gerhard Domagk had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his role in developing a commercial variety known as Prontasil in 1939, though Hitler had forbidden him to accept the prize. In July 1942 Karl Gebhardt, Himmler's personal SS physician, began experimenting in the Ravensbr*ck camp on fifteen male inmates and forty-two young female prisoners from Poland, most of them students. Gebhardt's reputation, severely dented by the failure of his sulphonamides to save Heydrich's life, depended on the success of this work. He went at it with enthusiasm and commitment. First, he simulated war wounds by cutting open the subjects' calves, crushing the muscles, and sewing infectious material into the wounds, along, in some cases, with splinters of glass and wood or pieces of gauze impregnated with a variety of bacterial cultures. Gebhardt treated the patients with sulphonamides then reopened the wounds after four days to gauge their effect. They had had no effect at all. Similar experiments were carried out at the same time in Dachau, where ten people died of the gangrene brought about by the artificially induced infections. Grawitz was not satisfied that the Ravensbr*ck experiments had been thorough, however, since the wounds had only been light, so Gebhardt took another twenty-four women and injected gangrenous tissue into them; three died, but the rest survived, most probably because of the sulphonamide treatment. Gebhardt conducted further experiments in the camp, even smashing the women's bones with a hammer to simulate war wounds. The sulphonamide treatment was sufficiently effective for Himmler to rehabilitate Gebhardt and allow him to resume his career. At Dachau, SS doctors carried out similar work, inj ecting forty mostly Polish Catholic priests with pus and treating some but not others, not only recording the effects but also photographing them. Twelve died, and all of them suffered terribly. Many of the sulphonamide experiments left their subjects with serious health problems or physical disabilities for the rest of their lives.211 In May 1943 the results of the experiments were presented to a medical conference at which no attempt was made to conceal the fact that the subjects had not given their consent to the work carried out on them. In May 1943 the results of the experiments were presented to a medical conference at which no attempt was made to conceal the fact that the subjects had not given their consent to the work carried out on them.212 Not only wounds but also diseases were the subject of medical experimentation in the camps. Foremost among these was typhus, which research carried out shortly before the First World War had shown to be transmitted by the human body louse. Apart from killing the louse, there was no means of defence against the disease until Polish researchers developed a vaccine in the early 1930s; but its production was difficult, costly and time-consuming. The German army began making it, but was unable to produce the quantities needed. The danger that German soldiers would become lousy through contact with the military and civilian populations of the east led to an intensification of German research, including at the laboratories of I. G. Farben. A variety of vaccines was produced, but the dosage they required remained uncertain, and their effectiveness in doubt. Human experimentation seemed to German medical scientists the obvious method of answering these questions. After being approved on 29 December 1941 at a meeting of representatives of various interested parties, including the Army Sanitary Inspectorate, the Military SS, the Reich Health Leader and the Robert Koch Institute (the leading centre for bacteriological research), experiments were set in motion at the Buchenwald concentration camp. In the initial experiment, 145 inmates were first given a course of injections of the vaccine, or (if they belonged to a control group) not, and were then, a fortnight or so after the final dose, injected again, this time with the blood of a patient infected with the most virulent form of typhus. The experiment was repeated a further eight times with different vaccines. For 127 out of the 537 camp inmates subjected to these procedures the results were fatal.213 The Battle of Stalingrad, where German troops had died of malnutrition in their thousands, had suggested to Hitler that new ways had to be found of feeding the soldiers. Hitler's doctor Karl Brandt, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler and a variety of nutrition experts discussed what might be done. Eventually, a sort of artificial pt' called 'Eastern Nutrition' (*stliche Kostform), made of cellulose remnants, was developed and fed to 450 apparently healthy prisoners at Mauthausen in 1943. The prospect of being able to use it for the entire population of concentration camp inmates was particularly enticing. The prisoners found the paste revolting but had no choice. In a second experiment at Mauthausen, 150 prisoners were made to live on the paste for six months. 116 died, although given the conditions under which they were held, it was not possible to say how far their diet had contributed to their demise.214 Almost as serious at Stalingrad had been the high rate of infection from epidemic jaundice, or hepatitis, which affected up to 6 million soldiers on the Eastern Front between June 1941 and the end of 1942, according to one army estimate. Kurt Gutzeit, a medical professor at Breslau and adviser to the army who was an expert in the disease, wanted to show that it was infectious, and obtained permission from the SS to carry out experiments on camp inmates. In June 1943, with the backing of Karl Brandt and Heinrich Himmler, Gutzeit's assistant Arnold Dohmen went to Auschwitz, where he selected a group of young Jews on the arrival ramp. On 10 August he took eleven of them, dressed in civilian clothes and travelling by scheduled passenger trains, to Berlin and thence to Sachsenhausen. After taking time off to get married and go on his honeymoon, Dohmen arrived at the camp in October, but he began to have doubts about the ethics of the experiment, and it was not until a year later when, having been subjected to heavy pressure by his superiors, he injected the subjects with hepatitis and performed liver punctures on two of them to see whether they had caught the disease. None is known to have suffered any long-term physical effects, but then infectious hepatitis does not usually cause these. The distress from which they suffered, particularly from being separated from their parents, about whose fate they were kept in the dark, was considerable. Almost as serious at Stalingrad had been the high rate of infection from epidemic jaundice, or hepatitis, which affected up to 6 million soldiers on the Eastern Front between June 1941 and the end of 1942, according to one army estimate. Kurt Gutzeit, a medical professor at Breslau and adviser to the army who was an expert in the disease, wanted to show that it was infectious, and obtained permission from the SS to carry out experiments on camp inmates. In June 1943, with the backing of Karl Brandt and Heinrich Himmler, Gutzeit's assistant Arnold Dohmen went to Auschwitz, where he selected a group of young Jews on the arrival ramp. On 10 August he took eleven of them, dressed in civilian clothes and travelling by scheduled passenger trains, to Berlin and thence to Sachsenhausen. After taking time off to get married and go on his honeymoon, Dohmen arrived at the camp in October, but he began to have doubts about the ethics of the experiment, and it was not until a year later when, having been subjected to heavy pressure by his superiors, he injected the subjects with hepatitis and performed liver punctures on two of them to see whether they had caught the disease. None is known to have suffered any long-term physical effects, but then infectious hepatitis does not usually cause these. The distress from which they suffered, particularly from being separated from their parents, about whose fate they were kept in the dark, was considerable.215 Experiments were also carried out to try to find a way of treating phosphorous burns caused by incendiary bombs. With Himmler's approval, Ernst Grawitz got an SS doctor to smear phosphorous on the arms of five inmates of the Buchenwald camp in November 1943 then set it alight. The pain, according to survivors, was excruciating. The ointment then put on the wounds seems to have had little effect, and some of the subjects died.216 At Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler, mustard gas, which had caused such suffering in the First World War, and which, it was feared, might be used in Allied bombing raids, was injected into some inmates, while others were made to drink it in liquid form, or forced to inhale it. Some had wounds inflicted on them and infected with the gas. Three inmates had died in the experiments by early 1943, but the scientists, working for the SS Ancestral Heritage organization, reported some success with treatment. In subsequent experiments involving phosgene gas, four Russian prisoners were killed, and there were further prisoner deaths in December 1944 in mustard gas experiments conducted at the Neuengamme camp. Carried out under the auspices of Karl Brandt and the SS, in many cases with the knowledge of Hitler himself, these dangerous, often painful, and sometimes fatal experiments were inflicted on people who had no choice about undergoing them. None of this research ever brought any benefit to the German soldiers, sailors and airmen it was intended to help. At Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler, mustard gas, which had caused such suffering in the First World War, and which, it was feared, might be used in Allied bombing raids, was injected into some inmates, while others were made to drink it in liquid form, or forced to inhale it. Some had wounds inflicted on them and infected with the gas. Three inmates had died in the experiments by early 1943, but the scientists, working for the SS Ancestral Heritage organization, reported some success with treatment. In subsequent experiments involving phosgene gas, four Russian prisoners were killed, and there were further prisoner deaths in December 1944 in mustard gas experiments conducted at the Neuengamme camp. Carried out under the auspices of Karl Brandt and the SS, in many cases with the knowledge of Hitler himself, these dangerous, often painful, and sometimes fatal experiments were inflicted on people who had no choice about undergoing them. None of this research ever brought any benefit to the German soldiers, sailors and airmen it was intended to help.217 IV.

Camp inmates were also used for pure research without any obvious or immediate practical implications. The leading figure here was Dr Josef Mengele, camp doctor in Auschwitz. Mengele was a scientific assistant to the prominent racial hygienist Otmar Baron von Verschuer at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Mengele had published scientific articles arguing for racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw, cleft palate and a deformity of the ear known as fistulae auris fistulae auris. He was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS, and joined the Military SS in 1940, where he served as a medical officer on the Eastern Front. Here he won the Iron Cross, First Class, and was wounded in action. In May 1943 he was transferred to the Economy and Administration Head Office of the SS and at the end of the month posted to Auschwitz, where he made an immediate impression on the inmates with his youthful, handsome appearance, his well-tailored uniform and highly polished boots, his politeness and his elegance. All of this set him apart in the most dramatic possible way from the mass of the ill-kempt and undernourished inmates. He saw in Auschwitz the chance to resume his career as a scientific researcher after his break at the front. One of his research projects focused on noma, a disease in which severe malnutrition caused the lining of the cheek to atrophy and a gangrenous hole to open up, exposing the teeth and the jaw. In the search for supposed hereditary elements in the disease, which he thought might affect Gypsies more than other groups, Mengele treated a large number of children suffering from this disease at Auschwitz, giving them vitamins and sulphonamide and effecting a considerable improvement in their condition.218 For Mengele, however, such treatment was a means to a scientific end, not an end in itself. As soon as it had brought about an improvement sufficient to provide convincing evidence of its effectiveness, he stopped it, and the children returned to their former condition and fell victim to the disease again. For him they were experimental subjects, not medical patients. Energetic and workaholic, Mengele developed many further research projects, some of which were supported by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology in Berlin, where his teacher Verschuer received regular reports on his work in the camp.219 He considered his most important project to be the one that built on Verschuer's proposal that hereditary influences could best be studied by research on twins. Auschwitz offered Mengele a unique opportunity for collecting subjects for this research. He could often be found inspecting new arrivals on the selection ramp even when he was off duty, looking for fresh sets of twins. Plunging into the mass of arriving Jews, shouting 'twins out!', he would pluck twins of any age out of the ml'e of frightened families and take them off to one of the three offices he used for the project. Here he would have each of them tattooed with a special prisoner number, and put into living quarters separated from the rest of the camp. They were allowed to keep their own clothes and did not have to have their heads shaved. If they were very young, their mother was saved from the gas chamber in order to look after them. He considered his most important project to be the one that built on Verschuer's proposal that hereditary influences could best be studied by research on twins. Auschwitz offered Mengele a unique opportunity for collecting subjects for this research. He could often be found inspecting new arrivals on the selection ramp even when he was off duty, looking for fresh sets of twins. Plunging into the mass of arriving Jews, shouting 'twins out!', he would pluck twins of any age out of the ml'e of frightened families and take them off to one of the three offices he used for the project. Here he would have each of them tattooed with a special prisoner number, and put into living quarters separated from the rest of the camp. They were allowed to keep their own clothes and did not have to have their heads shaved. If they were very young, their mother was saved from the gas chamber in order to look after them.

Mengele did not allow the twins to be beaten or maltreated in case this interfered with his experiments. He would have them measured in minute detail before injecting them, sometimes in the spine, with a variety of chemicals to see if they reacted differently, or applying chemicals to the skin to observe their effect. Such experiments caused deafness, collapse or even, if the children were very young, death. On occasion, if twins fell ill and there was a disputed diagnosis, Mengele would give them a fatal injection and carry out an autopsy to determine the nature of their ailment. On the whole, however, he kept the twins alive. The older ones were evacuated from Auschwitz in January 1945 and their fate is uncertain. One estimate puts the proportion of those who died as a result of experimentation at around 15 per cent. Although Mengele intended his research to form the basis for his 'Habilitation', the second doctorate required in Germany to qualify for an academic career, its value was dubious in scientific terms. He was, for example, unable to determine whether the twins he collected were identical or not, and indeed some siblings who were close in age and appearance to one another managed to save themselves from the gas chamber by passing themselves off as twins even though they were not.220 Mengele acquired his notoriety among camp survivors not so much from his experiments as from his role in selecting prisoners for extermination. Standing on the ramp, often alone, immaculate in his appearance, and carrying a riding-crop, he would cast his glance briefly at each arrival before pronouncing 'left' or 'right' according to what he perceived to be their physical state and usefulness (or otherwise) for the camp's labour programmes. So frequently was he there that many inmates assumed, quite wrongly, that he was the only camp doctor to carry out this duty. Some thought he looked like a Hollywood movie star. Only if he encountered resistance would he break his elegant pose, beating people with his riding-crop if they refused to be separated from their family, or on one occasion drawing his gun and shooting a mother who physically attacked an SS man trying to separate her from her daughter. Mengele shot the daughter as well and then, as a punishment, sent all the people from the transport to the gas chamber, shouting: 'Away with this shit!' Touring the wards in the camp hospital, with a spotless white coat over his SS uniform, smelling of eau de Cologne and whistling snatches of Wagner, he would indicate with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down which patients were to be selected for the gas chamber. Often he would select them on merely aesthetic grounds, consigning them to their death if they had an ugly scar or a rash on their body. On one occasion he drew a horizontal line on the wall of the children's block and sent all those whose heads could not reach the line to the gas chamber. Sometimes he would not wait, but would inject people with a deadly solution of phenol himself. What struck inmates was the evident sense of enjoyment with which Mengele approached his work. Here was a man completely at ease with the power he was wielding over life and death.221 Mengele did not confine his hereditarian researches to work on twins. He also collected people with physical abnormalities, hunchbacks, transsexuals, and the like, some of whom he had shot so that he could anatomize their bodies on the dissecting table. He was particularly enthusiastic in his search for dwarfs, whom he kept in the twins' quarters for experimentation in his search for hereditary causes of their condition. Mengele also used his position to supply eyes from dead inmates to a research project at his institute in Berlin, where scientists were studying the phenomenon of heterochromia (the two eyes of one person having different colours). If Mengele discovered any inmates with this condition, he ordered them to be killed. On one occasion, when his prisoner assistant put the eyes of all eight members of a Gypsy family together after their death, for shipment to Berlin, the clerk in charge of the shipment discovered that it only contained seven pairs of eyes; the assistant, terrified of what Mengele might do if he found out, scoured the morgue for Gypsy corpses, excised one blue eye from one and one black eye from another, and had them packed up with the rest. Here too, therefore, the scientific work was less than wholly reliable. Characteristically, Mengele took his work a step further, and tried to create perfect Aryan specimens from children he found with blond hair and brown eyes by injecting their eyes with methylene blue. The procedure, of course, failed to bring about any permanent change of eye-colour; but it did cause considerable pain, in some cases damage to the children's eyesight, and in at least one recorded instance, death. In all of these projects, Mengele regarded himself as a normal scientist, even holding a regular research seminar with his assistants, who included medically qualified camp prisoners. Mengele would chair the meeting and ask the prisoner-doctors to discuss particular cases. Freedom of debate was naturally restricted, however, by the fact that, as one of them later remarked, they were reluctant to disagree with Mengele because he could have any of them killed at any moment and on the slightest whim.222 Josef Mengele has come to stand in the decades since the Third Reich as a symbol for the perversion of medical science. Yet his experiments were only a few among a much greater number carried out by a variety of doctors on the inmates of the camps. These included research conducted by Dr Kurt Heissmeyer in the concentration camp at Neuengamme, in which twenty Jewish children between the ages of five and twelve, taken from Auschwitz, were infected with virulent tuberculosis and treated in a variety of ways, including the surgical removal of swollen glands. At the end of the war, in order to try to destroy the evidence of these experiments, the surviving children were taken on 20 April 1945 by one of the doctors to a sub-camp at Bullenhuser Damm and injected with morphine, after which an SS man accompanying them hanged the sleeping children from a hook one by one, pulling on their bodies to make sure they would die. Other medical experiments were carried out at the direct behest of Himmler, for policy rather than scientific purposes. At Auschwitz, for example, doctors working for Himmler experimented on female inmates with injections and x-ray treatment in the search for a quick and cheap means of mass sterilization, resulting in many cases in the loss of their hair and teeth, the complete disappearance of sexual feeling, or in the most serious cases the onset of cancer. Men were bombarded with x-rays aimed at their testicles, often leading to impotence or causing serious physical damage that made it difficult for them to urinate. Senior SS officers fantasized about such methods being applied to 10 million racially inferior people, or to Jewish men needed for labour, but they never got beyond the experimental stage.223 Medical scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes also carried out research on the brains of hundreds of patients killed in the 'euthanasia' action, to see whether they exhibited any consistent signs of degeneracy. Medical scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes also carried out research on the brains of hundreds of patients killed in the 'euthanasia' action, to see whether they exhibited any consistent signs of degeneracy.224 And in November 1942 complaints by the anatomical institutes of German universities that they did not have enough cadavers for dissection in teaching and research led to a ruling of the Ministry of Justice that they could have the remains of offenders executed in German prisons without having to obtain the permission of their relatives, a ruling that less than a year later was leading to further complaints by the institutes, this time that 'the massive deliveries of corpses of executed offenders during the last months has led to a complete overcrowding of our storage facilities'. And in November 1942 complaints by the anatomical institutes of German universities that they did not have enough cadavers for dissection in teaching and research led to a ruling of the Ministry of Justice that they could have the remains of offenders executed in German prisons without having to obtain the permission of their relatives, a ruling that less than a year later was leading to further complaints by the institutes, this time that 'the massive deliveries of corpses of executed offenders during the last months has led to a complete overcrowding of our storage facilities'.225 Were any of the medical experiments carried out in the camps of any medical or scientific value? Some, like Mengele's, were clearly scientifically flawed. Others obviously had no defensible medical application. So it was, for example, with the experiments at the SS hospital in Hohlenlynchen, where a way of injecting people with live tuberculosis bacilli was developed that would kill them quickly and allow physicians to record tuberculosis as the cause of death; this was required because the usual method of killing people by injecting them with phenol or gasoline caused the corpse to emanate a suspicious smell. Sigmund Rascher's invention of small cyanide capsules for suicides was to have wide application at the end of the war, but could hardly be called scientifically or medically useful. However, other experiments carried out on concentration camp inmates in Germany were regarded in Germany as normal science, their results presented at conferences and published in reputable medical journals. Standard experimental protocols were employed in evaluating the experiments carried out, for example, by the Bayer Pharmaceutical Company on women inmates of Auschwitz whom it had purchased for this purpose from the SS at a premium of 700 Reichsmarks each. When Karl Gebhardt and Fritz Fischer had women prisoners injected with gas bacilli, staphylococcus or malignant oedema at Ravensbr*ck and then tested new drugs on them, the results were discussed at a subsequent conference and with leading physicians such as the famous surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch. Yet to suggest that such work was in accordance with the normal scientific protocols of the day in no way legitimizes the methods it employed. Medical research in these cases was unethical because it caused pain and often death in people who had no choice but to participate in it: indeed, it would still have been unethical had the subjects participated in it of their own free will, given the fundamental moral commitment of medicine to preserve life and not to end it.226RESISTANCE.

I.

On 4 October 1943, in Posen, Heinrich Himmler gave a speech to senior SS officers, which he repeated in more or less the same form two days later to Party Regional Leaders and other prominent figures, including Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer.227 The speech contained what have since become some of his most notorious utterances. 'The evacuation of the Jews,' he declared, '. . . is a laudable page in our history that will never be written.' The Jews were a threat to the Reich, he declared. Therefore they were being killed, and not just the men: The speech contained what have since become some of his most notorious utterances. 'The evacuation of the Jews,' he declared, '. . . is a laudable page in our history that will never be written.' The Jews were a threat to the Reich, he declared. Therefore they were being killed, and not just the men: We were approached with the question, what about the women and children? - I decided to find an absolutely clear solution here too. Thus I did not feel I had the right to exterminate - let's say then, kill them or have them killed - the men while I allowed their avengers, in the form of their children, to grow up and avenge them upon our sons and grandsons. The really difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear off the face of the Earth. For the organization that had to carry out the task, it was the most difficult we had so far had.228 Several months later, on 5 May 1944 and again on 24 May 1944, he repeated these sentiments in addresses to senior army officers at Sonthofen, describing how difficult he found 'the fulfilment of this soldierly command that was issued to me' to exterminate the Jews. Killing the women and children as well as the men, he implied, was his own interpretation of Hitler's order; the reference to a 'soldierly command' could only be a reference to Hitler himself, since there was nobody else from whom Himmler would accept commands of any kind. Hitler himself was clear enough about his own overall responsibility, however. As he remarked to senior military personnel on 26 May 1944: 'By removing the Jews, I have removed from Germany the possibility of the construction of any kind of revolutionary cell or nucleus . . . Humanitarianism would mean the greatest cruelty towards one's own people, here as in general, everywhere.'229 It was a life-or-death struggle. If the Jews were not eliminated, they would exterminate the entire German people. Not only the generals and Party satraps, but also Himmler himself seemed to share the view that the extermination of the Jews was a crime, a necessary crime in their view, but a crime none the less: for why, otherwise, would the history books to be written in the future never dare to mention it? Such a crime would invite retribution should Germany lose the war. So these speeches, delivered at a time when Germany's military situation was becoming steadily more desperate, were designed not least to remind the senior Party figures and generals of their complicity in the genocide, in order to ensure that they would carry on fighting to the end, a point fully grasped by Goebbels, who wrote in his diary on 9 October 1944 that Himmler in his speech 'pleaded for the most radical solution and the toughest, namely to exterminate Jewry, bag and baggage. That is certainly the most consistent solution, even if it is also a brutal one. For we have to take on the responsibility of completely solving this question for our time.' It was a life-or-death struggle. If the Jews were not eliminated, they would exterminate the entire German people. Not only the generals and Party satraps, but also Himmler himself seemed to share the view that the extermination of the Jews was a crime, a necessary crime in their view, but a crime none the less: for why, otherwise, would the history books to be written in the future never dare to mention it? Such a crime would invite retribution should Germany lose the war. So these speeches, delivered at a time when Germany's military situation was becoming steadily more desperate, were designed not least to remind the senior Party figures and generals of their complicity in the genocide, in order to ensure that they would carry on fighting to the end, a point fully grasped by Goebbels, who wrote in his diary on 9 October 1944 that Himmler in his speech 'pleaded for the most radical solution and the toughest, namely to exterminate Jewry, bag and baggage. That is certainly the most consistent solution, even if it is also a brutal one. For we have to take on the responsibility of completely solving this question for our time.'230 To SS leaders, on 4 May 1944, Himmler had an even more explicit message. He had no doubt that they would continue the struggle to the bitter end. He wanted to remind them, however, that the extermination of the Jews had to be carried out wherever and whenever it was possible, and without any exceptions: 'The Jewish people will be exterminated', says every Party comrade. 'It's clear, it's in our programme. Elimination of the Jews, extermination and we'll do it.' And then they come along, the worthy eighty million Germans, and each one of them produces his decent Jew. It's clear the others are swine, but this one is a fine Jew. Not one of those who talk like that has watched it happening, not one of them hs been through it. Most of you will know what it means when a hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred or a thousand are lying there. To have stuck it out and - apart from a few exceptions due to human weakness - to have remained decent, that is what has made us tough.231 Even the SS men who carried out the murders, therefore, were told by Himmler that what they were doing went against the wishes of the great majority of Germans.

Most of Europe's Jews had already been murdered by this time; but one very large Jewish community remained more or less untouched, namely the Jews of Hungary, whom Hitler had for some time been pressing the H'rthy regime to hand over. With the rapidly worsening military situation, the signs that H'rthy was preparing to switch sides began to multiply. Still the major source of petroleum for the Reich, Hungary could not be allowed to slip out of German control. Hitler summoned H'rthy to meet him on 18 March 1944 and told him that German forces would occupy his country immediately. The only question was whether it was to be done without bloodshed. H'rthy had no option but to accept the ultimatum, and to agree to install the pro-German Ambassador in Berlin, D*me Szt'jay, as Prime Minister. Not the least of Hitler's complaints against H'rthy was, as he told the Hungarian Regent at their meeting, that 'Hungary did nothing in the matter of the Jewish problem, and was not prepared to settle accounts with the large Jewish population in Hungary.' Now all this was about to change.232 German troops marched into Hungary on 19 March 1944. On the very same day, Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest, to be followed shortly by a special unit led by Theodor Dannecker, charged with the arrest and deportation of the Hungarian Jews. Two radical antisemites, L'szl' Endre and L'szl' Bary, were appointed as the top civil servants in the Interior Ministry, to assist in the round-up. In the usual way, a Jewish Council was established, and on 7 April 1944 the compulsory wearing of the Jewish star was introduced. The first arrests of Jews now began in Hungarian Transylvania and Carpatho-Ukraine, where ghettos and camps were quickly erected, all with the full co-operation of the Hungarian police. In the meantime, the Gestapo arrested several thousand Jewish professionals, intellectuals, journalists, left-wing or liberal politicians and other prominent figures, mostly in Budapest, and sent them off to concentration camps in Austria. Their further fate remained for the moment uncertain. The same was not the case with the provincial Jews now being herded into the new temporary camps and ghettos in Hungary. Although the Council and also many individual Jews knew full well from personal contacts, the Hungarian service of the BBC and many other sources what awaited Jewish deportees who got on to the trains destined for Auschwitz, no steps were taken to warn Jews outside Budapest not to embark on them. Printed and widely distributed reports from four escapees from the camp did not change this situation. Most likely the Jewish Council did not want to cause unrest, and hesitated before urging people to break the law. At the same time, however, several Council members used their contacts with the SS to enable them, their families and their friends to flee to Romania or in some cases to other neighbouring countries. Up to 8,000 Jews managed to escape in this way.233 Meanwhile, in Berlin, the Propaganda Ministry began directing the German press to carry stories about the 'Jewification' of Hungary, which was now finally being rectified by the measures taken after the German invasion. Meanwhile, in Berlin, the Propaganda Ministry began directing the German press to carry stories about the 'Jewification' of Hungary, which was now finally being rectified by the measures taken after the German invasion.234 The first trainloads of Jews left for Auschwitz on 14 May 1944. From now on, between 12,000 and 14,000 were packed into cattle-trucks and sent to the camp every day. Four gas chambers and crematoria were brought into action again and worked round the clock without a break. New Special Detachments were recruited to pull the bodies of the dead out of the gas chambers as fast as they could, to allow the next contingent of victims to be driven in. One prisoner in the buna factory nearby saw flames up to ten metres high roaring out of the crematoria chimneys at night, while the smell of burning flesh reached as far as the factory itself. One crematorium broke down under the strain, and the Special Detachments began burying bodies in pits. Visiting Hitler on 7 June 1944, Prime Minister Szt'jay sought to convince the German Leader that the deportations were causing resentment in Hungary because they were widely perceived as resulting from foreign intervention in the country's internal affairs. Hitler responded with a tirade against the Jews. He had warned H'rthy, he said, that the Jews had too much influence, but the Regent had done nothing. The Jews were responsible for killing tens of thousands of Germans in Allied bombing raids, he claimed. For this reason 'nobody could demand of him that he should have the least pity for this global plague, and he is now only sticking to the old Jewish saying: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" '.235 By this time, the King of Sweden and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had both protested to H'rthy and asked him to bring the deportations to an end. However, Pius XII's intervention, on 25 June 1944, neither mentioned the Jews by name nor specified the fate to which they were being sent. The leading figures in the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy refused to issue any public condemnation of the deportations; one of them, the Archbishop of Eger, considered that 'what is currently happening to the Jews is nothing other than an appropriate punishment for their misdeeds in the past'. By this time, the King of Sweden and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had both protested to H'rthy and asked him to bring the deportations to an end. However, Pius XII's intervention, on 25 June 1944, neither mentioned the Jews by name nor specified the fate to which they were being sent. The leading figures in the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy refused to issue any public condemnation of the deportations; one of them, the Archbishop of Eger, considered that 'what is currently happening to the Jews is nothing other than an appropriate punishment for their misdeeds in the past'.236 On 7 July 1944, finally overcoming the opposition of the most pro-Nazi members of the Hungarian government, H'rthy ordered them to stop. Eichmann managed none the less to send two more trainloads of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, on 19 and 24 July. By this time, in little over two months, no fewer than 438,000 Hungarian Jews had been taken to Auschwitz, where some 394,000 of them had been gassed immediately on arrival. On 7 July 1944, finally overcoming the opposition of the most pro-Nazi members of the Hungarian government, H'rthy ordered them to stop. Eichmann managed none the less to send two more trainloads of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, on 19 and 24 July. By this time, in little over two months, no fewer than 438,000 Hungarian Jews had been taken to Auschwitz, where some 394,000 of them had been gassed immediately on arrival.237 II.

These tragic and desperate events took place in a rapidly deteriorating military situation for the Third Reich. On 3 November 1943 Hitler issued a general directive for the conduct of the war over the coming months. The Red Army might be advancing in the east, but German forces were still deep inside Soviet territory, so for the moment there was no direct threat to the survival of the Reich itself. The danger posed by the imminent Allied invasion of Western Europe, on the other hand, was far more acute, given the relatively short distance the Anglo-American armies would have to traverse before they got to the German border once they had succeeded in landing on the Continent. Priority therefore had to be given to building up defences in the west; the east could for the time being look after itself. At the same time, however, Hitler was unwilling to sacrifice territory in the east that provided Germany with major supplies of grain, raw materials and labour. And the Red Army was pressing on relentlessly, driving the German Army Group South under Manstein back west of Kiev and forcing Kleist's Army Group A back from the Dnieper river bend. All along the front, from the Pripet marshes to the Black Sea, Soviet armoured divisions were pushing through the German armies, now depleted by the transfer of more forces and equipment to the west, outflanking their defences and advancing towards the borders of Hungary and Romania. The 120,000 German and Romanian troops cut off in the Crimea were annihilated by a Soviet pincer movement in April and May 1944. As in the past, Hitler blamed his generals for these defeats, sacking Manstein and Kleist on 28 March 1944 and replacing them with two of his favourite senior officers, Ferdinand Sch*rner and Walter Model.238 These defeats showed that the Red Army had now completely seized the initiative. German counter-attacks on any scale were effectively out of the question. All that Sch*rner, Model and the other field commanders could do was try to guess where the Red Army would strike next. But guessing was not easy. Stalin, Zhukov and the leading Soviet generals decided to deceive their German counterparts into thinking that the push would come in the Ukraine, building on the victories achieved in the spring. Model persuaded Hitler to move substantial reinforcements and equipment to support his own forces (now renamed Army Group North Ukraine), taking reserves away from Army Group Centre in Belarus under Field Marshal Ernst Busch. The central sector of the front was now bulging out to the east after the spring successes of the Red Army to the north and south. Previous attempts by the Soviet forces to reduce the bulge had been unsuccessful. Under conditions of great secrecy, Stalin and his commanders moved massive reinforcements of men, tanks and armaments into this area, concentrating on one big push - codenamed 'Operation Bagration' - rather than dissipating their forces over disparate sectors of the front. Lulled into complacency by repeated and deliberate deceptions carried out on German intelligence by the Russians, Busch went away for a few days, ignoring a massive spread of partisan activity to the rear of his forces. From the night of 19-20 June 1944 onwards pro-Soviet partisans blew up hundreds of railway lines and roads to make it more difficult for the Germans to bring up reinforcements. One and a half million Soviet troops, equipped with enormous quantities of tanks, armour and artillery, began a huge encirclement, of the kind so successfully practised by the Germans earlier in the war, with a series of armoured thrusts. Busch returned to the front, but Hitler refused his appeal to withdraw. In less than two weeks 300,000 German troops were killed or captured as the Red Army swept on. By the middle of July, the Soviet forces had advanced 200 miles in the central sector of the front and had to stop to regroup. On 17 July 1944 some 57,000 German prisoners were paraded through the middle of Moscow in a kind of Roman Triumph. Many of them had simply given themselves up. They were not prepared to undergo another Stalingrad. It was one of the greatest and most spectacular victories of the war.239 'Operation Bagration' opened the way for further victories all along the line. In the north, Soviet troops advanced as far as the Baltic, west of Riga; sent to rescue the situation, Sch*rner managed to fight back and recapture enough of the coastline to restore the line of communication, but his forces still had to retreat from Estonia and much of Latvia to avoid getting cut off. On 5-9 October 1944, Soviet troops pushed through again to the sea. The German forces lacked the resources for a counter-attack, but supplies and reinforcements came in by sea. A new note of desperation characterized their fighting as they defended the German territory of East Prussia. Soviet lines of communication were now over-extended. The German forces managed to slow down the Soviet advance until it ground to a halt. However, the Red Army had also launched an attack on Finland in June 1944, completing the relief of Leningrad and convincing the Finns that there was no option but to sue for peace. On 4 September 1944 a new government under Marshal Mannerheim signed an armistice under which the 1940 borders were to be restored and any German troops in the country arrested and interned. Further south, Model's Army Group North Ukraine, weakened by the transfer of troops and equipment to Army Group Centre, was attacked by a series of savage armoured blows that sent it reeling back to the Carpathian mountains. Red Army commanders were helped by a massive superiority in arms and equipment, and by supremacy in the air after Germany's fighter force had been redeployed to deal with Allied bombing raids from the west. Soviet artillery was being produced in huge quantities to pulverize the enemy before the tanks moved in. Particularly feared was the Katyusha rocket launcher, first used at Smolensk in 1941. It had been kept absolutely secret, so that when it came into action for the first time, firing dozens of rockets against the enemy with a huge noise, not only German troops but also Red Army soldiers fled in panic. Initially rather inefficient, with a range of less than 10 miles, by 1944 the device had been improved and was being manufactured en masse. German soldiers called it the 'Stalin Organ' from the appearance of its closely packed launch-tubes. They had no equivalent to use in eturn.240

19. The Long Retreat, 1942-4 By the autumn of 1944 Soviet forces were fast approaching the gates of Warsaw. Stalin announced the appointment of a puppet Polish government, a rival to the exiled Polish regime in London. The exiled regime's underground Home Army, a nationalist organization opposed to the communists, was being crushed by the Red Army as it moved into Polish territory. Nevertheless, when Stalin called upon the citizens of Warsaw to rise up against their German oppressors, in the expectation that Soviet forces would shortly be entering the city, the Home Army in the city decided to stage an uprising on 1 August 1944, fearing that, if it did not, Stalin would brand it pro-German, and hoping in any case to gain political influence by taking control of the traditional capital of Poland. The Home Army in Warsaw was poorly equipped, since most of its weapons and ammunition were being used for partisan activities in the countryside, and it was ill prepared. Its commanders had paid little attention to the ghetto uprising the previous year, and learned nothing from its fate. With 'Molotov cocktails', pistols and rifles, the Poles fought a stubborn defence against tanks, artillery, machine-guns and flame-throwers. For two months, the terrible scenes of 1943 were repeated on a larger scale, as German SS and police units commanded by Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski confined the insurgents to isolated areas, then reduced them to pockets of resistance, and finally wiped them out altogether, razing most of the city to the ground in the process. 26,000 German troops were killed, wounded or missing, but the Polish dead, men, women and children, numbered more than 200,000. Bach-Zelewski, employing Ukrainians, Soviet renegades and convicts drafted in from the concentration camps, massacred everyone he could find. An insurgent nurse described a typical scene as German and Ukrainian SS troops entered her hospital, kicking and beating the wounded who were lying on the floor and calling them sons of bitches and Polish bandits. They kicked the heads of those lying on the ground with their boots, screaming horribly as they did it. Blood and brains were spattered in all directions . . . A contingent of German soldiers with an officer at its head came in. 'What is going on here?' the officer asked. After driving out the murderers, he gave orders to clear up the dead bodies, and calmly requested those who had survived and could walk to get up and go to the courtyard. We were certain they would be shot. After an hour or two another German-Ukrainian horde came in, carrying straw. One of them poured some petrol over it . . . There was a blast, and a terrible cry - the fire was right behind us. The Germans had torched the hospital and were shooting the wounded.241 Similar and worse incidents repeated themselves throughout the Polish capital during these weeks. Himmler had ordered the whole city and its population to be destroyed. The centre of Polish culture would exist no longer. If the uprising was seen historically, he told Hitler, 'it is a blessing that the Poles are doing it.' It would enable Germany to bring the 'Polish problem' to a decisive end.242 Stalin held back the Red Army while it focused on establishing bridge-heads on the Vistula and Narva rivers. He did nothing to assist the few Anglo-American planes that tried to airlift supplies to the insurgents. Most of the drops fell into German-held territory, and Stalin's refusal to allow the planes to use Soviet airfields, along with the reluctance of the air force commanders, ensured that the airlift had no effect. From Stalin's point of view, the uprising was a success: it inflicted heavy losses on the Germans, and it wiped out the politically inconvenient Polish Home Army as well. Once the last resisters surrendered, on 2 October 1944, he moved his forces in to take over the devastated city.243 'You have to seal your eyes and your heart,' wrote the Warsaw-based German army officer Wilm Hosenfeld as the unequal fight continued. 'The population is being pitilessly exterminated.' 'You have to seal your eyes and your heart,' wrote the Warsaw-based German army officer Wilm Hosenfeld as the unequal fight continued. 'The population is being pitilessly exterminated.'244 After the Warsaw uprising was finally defeated, he watched the 'endless columns of the captured rebels. We were totally amazed by the proud bearing they showed when they came out.' The women in particular impressed him, marching past, heads held high, singing patriotic songs. After the Warsaw uprising was finally defeated, he watched the 'endless columns of the captured rebels. We were totally amazed by the proud bearing they showed when they came out.' The women in particular impressed him, marching past, heads held high, singing patriotic songs.245 His attempt to get the captured resisters recognized as enemy combatants and so subject, at least in theory, to the laws of war, was predictably rebuffed by his superiors. Hosenfeld was ordered to interrogate the survivors. 'I try to rescue everyone,' he wrote, 'who can be saved.' His attempt to get the captured resisters recognized as enemy combatants and so subject, at least in theory, to the laws of war, was predictably rebuffed by his superiors. Hosenfeld was ordered to interrogate the survivors. 'I try to rescue everyone,' he wrote, 'who can be saved.'246 Resistance was also mounting in the west, and particularly in France, where the Maquis now numbered scores of thousands of men and women, engaged in sabotaging German military installations in preparation for the invasion of France across the English Channel. Elaborate deception measures mounted by British and American intelligence services persuaded the German commanders that the invasion would come in Norway or near Calais or some other seaport. Over a million British, American, French, Canadian and other Allied troops were assembled in southern England under the general command of US general Dwight D. Eisenhower. On the night of 5-6 June 1944, more than 4,000 landing craft and over 1,000 warships convoyed the troops across the Channel while three airborne divisions began parachuting down behind the German defences. With the German navy effectively out of action, the German air force seriously weakened by losses in the preceding months and German forces dispersed over other areas and lacking the crack divisions concentrated on the Eastern Front, resistance was weaker than expected. Pulverized by naval and aerial bombardment, German defences were overwhelmed by the force of the landings, and except on Omaha Beach the resistance was quickly overcome. By the end of 6 June 1944, 155,000 men and 16,000 vehicles had been safely landed by the Allied operation. Prefabricated 'Mulberry harbours' were towed in and assembled, and more Allied forces landed and joined up from their five beachheads before the German army could rush in sufficient reinforcements to repel them. The capture of Cherbourg by 27 June 1944 provided them with a seaport, and huge quantities of men and equipment began to come over. German reinforcements were rushed to the front and began to put up stiff resistance, but the German commanders, Rundstedt and his subordinate Rommel, had no effective strategic plan for dealing with the invading forces, who now began to fight their way slowly across Normandy. This was now a war on two fronts.247 Hitler reacted predictably by blaming this situation on the generals. They were constantly plying him with pessimistic assessments of the situation, he raged, and demanding withdrawals and retreats instead of staying put and fighting to the last. On 1 July 1944, worn out by the constant arguments with the Leader, Chief of the Army General Staff Kurt Zeitzler broke down, and simply abandoned his office. Hitler had him drummed out of the army in January 1945 and denied the right to wear a uniform. General Heinz Guderian was appointed his replacement on 21 July 1944. In the west, Field Marshal von Rundstedt was sacked two days later, along with Hugo Sperrle, the air force commander who had made a name for himself in the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, but was now blamed by his Leader for failing to mount an effective airborne defence against the Allied invasion. Field Marshal Gu*nther von Kluge was appointed to replace Rundstedt. On the Eastern Front, Field Marshal Ernst Busch was sacked because of the catastrophic defeat of his Army Group Centre in Operation Bagration, and replaced by Field Marshal Walter Model, one of the few senior officers whom Hitler held in continuing high esteem. As he left the Berghof for the last time on 14 July 1944 to return to his field headquarters at the 'Wolf's Lair' in Rastenburg, Hitler's contempt for so many of his generals was becoming even more open than before.248 III.

The military catastrophes of the spring and early summer of 1944 led to an upsurge of resistance not only in occupied Europe but also in the German Reich itself. Already, the defeats of the previous year had spread disillusion with the regime. The devastating effects of the bombing weakened the authority of the regime still more. Nevertheless, open acts of resistance or defiance were still rare. Individual acts of defiance were met with arrest, trial and not infrequently execution. Collective resistance was difficult in the extreme. Social Democratic and Communist resistance organizations had been crushed by the Gestapo by the mid- 1930s and the leading figures in both parties were either in exile or in prison or concentration camp. Not only the more restrictive police regime of the war years but also the Nazi- Soviet Pact had a dampening effect on the will of former labour movement activists to organize any kind of oppositional activity before June 1941. And the euphoria created by the stunning military victories of 1939 and 1940 was shared by many in the working class, including former Social Democrats. As a precaution, too, the Gestapo arrested and incarcerated a number of former Communist functionaries on the invasion of the Soviet Union in case they should start a campaign of subversion. It was only in 1942, after the defeat of the German army before Moscow, that clandestine Communist resistance groups began to emerge again, in strongholds of the industrial working class like Saxony, Thuringia, Berlin and the Ruhr. Some of them were able to establish contact with the exiled party leadership in Moscow, but it was only intermittent, and in general there was little central co-ordination. The Communists managed to put out some leaflets urging opposition to the Nazis and even advocating acts of sabotage, but in general they achieved relatively little before they too were smashed by the Gestapo. The most spectacular action was undoubtedly that mounted by a group of young Jewish Communists and their sympathizers, led by Herbert Baum, who, as we have seen, managed to blow up part of an anti-Soviet exhibition staged by Goebbels in Berlin, though without causing any serious damage or any casualties. They too were quickly betrayed to the Gestapo; thirty were arrested and tried by the People's Court; fifteen of them were executed.249 Since the mid-1930s, the official party line from Moscow had emphasized the need for Communists to collaborate with Social Democrats in a 'popular front'. But this tactic faced severe difficulties on both sides. The Social Democrats justifiably suspected the clandestine Communist groups of being under far more intensive surveillance than they were themselves, and the dangers of collaboration were dramatically illustrated on 22 June 1944 when a meeting in Berlin between the Social Democrats Julius Leber and Adolf Reichwein and a group of Communist functionaries resulted in the arrest of all those involved. As far as the Communists were concerned, it was more than likely that when the war was over the Social Democrats would re-emerge as their major rivals for the allegiance of the industrial working class, so that any co-operation could only be strictly tactical and temporary and should not involve concessions to a likely future political enemy. Within the concentration camps, and above all in Buchenwald, Communists formed their own groups, which could at times achieve a limited degree of prisoner self-management. The appointment of Communists as capos and block leaders was encouraged by the SS camp management, who saw the Communists as reliable and effective in this role. For their part, the Communist prisoners tried to maintain solidarity amongst themselves and protect their comrades, devolving difficult and dangerous work on to other categories of prisoner such as the 'asocials' and criminals. Through maintaining good relations with the SS they also hoped to improve conditions generally in the camp and so benefit all the inmates in the long run. In such a situation there were only limited prospects of meaningful co-operation with Social Democratic or other political prisoners. Solidarity within the Communist group was all-important. This precarious strategy, trying to strike a balance between ideological purity on the one hand, and self-protection through collaboration with the SS on the other, was to lead to widespread and sometimes bitter controversy after the war.250 One exceptional group with Communist connections, though subject neither to Communist discipline nor to Stalinist ideology, had managed to survive since early on in the Third Reich. This was known by the Gestapo as the 'Red Orchestra' (Rote Kapelle), though it was in fact a series of overlapping and functionally rather different clandestine groups. Beginning late in 1941, German military counter-espionage in Brussels and Paris began to uncover an extensive network of Soviet intelligence agents. It had links to a resistance circle in Berlin, grouped around a civil servant in the Reich Economics Ministry, Arvid Harnack, and an attach' in the Air Ministry, Harro Schulze-Boysen. Harnack was a Marxist economist who believed in a peaceful, socialist Germany, while Schulze-Boysen was a radical nationalist revolutionary who had been arrested and tortured by the Nazis in 1933 but then released on good behaviour. Some of their followers were members of the Communist Party, but the group was essentially independent of any central direction from Moscow. Women played a particularly prominent role in it, notably Harnack's American wife Mildred Harnack-Fish, a literary historian, and Schulze-Boysen's wife Libertas, who gained a critical view of Nazi propaganda through her work in the film section of the Propaganda Ministry. In order to give himself 'cover', Harnack joined the Nazi Party in 1937. The group helped political fugitives to escape from Germany, distributed leaflets not only to Germans but also to foreign forced labourers, and took up contact with both the US and the Soviet embassies, whom they kept informed about the crimes of Nazism. The Soviets were impressed enough to supply them with radio equipment, and they managed to convey some information on the war economy to the Russians, but Stalin refused to believe the group's warning of an imminent invasion in June 1941. Their leaflets became longer and more ambitious, including one written by Schulze-Boysen warning percipiently that Hitler would suffer the same fate in Russia as Napoleon had done. However, their clandestine radio messages to the Russians were intercepted by German military counter-intelligence. This led to Schulze-Boysen's arrest on 30 August 1942 and Harnack's on 7 September 1942. Other arrests followed, eventually numbering more than 130. After a series of rapid trials, more than fifty members of the group were executed, including both the Harnacks and the Schulze-Boysens. On Hitler's personal insistence, the death sentences were carried out by hanging.251 The so-called 'Red Orchestra' was not the ring of Soviet spies portrayed in subsequent Nazi propaganda but a home-grown resistance movement whose contacts with Soviet intelligence were made on its own terms. It was far from being the only left-wing group of this kind, though it was larger than most. One of the most remarkable was a tiny, little-known but tightly knit organization called the 'League: Community for Socialist Living'. Formed in the early 1920s by the adult education lecturer Artur Jacobs, it set up a number of centres where it held discussions, offered dance and movement classes, and tried to build a lifestyle that crossed class boundaries and transcended the egotism of the individual. Some of its members were Communists; others were Social Democrats; a good number had no party affiliation at all. In any case its members, as it were, left their party cards at the door when they entered the League's premises. From the very beginning they identified antisemitism as the core of Nazi ideology, and in 1933 the League and its members went underground and began helping Jews to escape arrest and, from 1941, deportation. Here its small size - there were never more than a few hundred members even at the height of its popularity in the 1920s - and the close personal ties that had grown up between its members helped the League stay intact and to carry on its work undetected by the Gestapo. Its members organized false identities for Jews in hiding, ferried them secretly from one location to another, and helped them evade the attentions of the Gestapo. From the point of view of the League's members, this was a way of keeping the spirit of social and racial equality alive in the face of Nazi persecution. In this way, they provided a practical alternative to the usual activities of left-wing resistance groups, which focused on the largely futile attempt to rouse popular opinion against the Nazis.252 The milieu from which the League emerged in the 1920s, in which small groups of various political hues tried to build new lifestyles of one kind or another, also gave rise, at a greater distance, to a far better-known resistance movement, the self-styled 'White Rose', some of whose members had been involved in the autonomous youth movement of the Weimar years. Any initial enthusiasm they might have had for the Nazi regime was quickly dispelled by its racism and its antisemitism, its restrictions on personal freedom, and above all the extreme violence it unleashed on the Eastern Front in 1941-2. While they were studying medicine at Munich University, some of the young men who played a key role in forming the group had been sent to work in the army medical service on the Eastern Front. The group gradually expanded to include not only Kurt Huber, a Munich professor who acted as a kind of mentor to many of its members, but also friends, colleagues and students in other university towns from Freiburg to Stuttgart, and especially Hamburg. Leading members included the Scholl siblings, Hans and Sophie, as well as a number of other Munich students, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst and Willi Graf. Some of them tried to take up contact with Falk Harnack, brother of the key figure in the 'Red Orchestra' network, though he did not respond to their overtures. As it expanded, the group became bolder, typing, cyclostyling and posting to a wide and more or less random range of recipients a series of six leaflets in quantities ranging from just a hundred up to several thousand. Their aim, like that of traditional left-wing resistance groups, was to rouse popular opinion so that the masses would rise up and bring an end to the war by overthrowing Hitler and his regime. They roundly condemned the mass murder of the Jews and the Polish elites, and pilloried the apathy of the German people in the face of the Nazis' crimes. After Stalingrad they began daubing graffiti on the walls of public buildings in Munich ('Hitler Mass Murderer', 'Freedom' and so on). On 18 February 1943, however, Hans and Sophie Scholl were observed by a university porter scattering copies of their latest leaflet in the courtyard. He reported them to the Gestapo, and they were arrested. Despite their refusal under torture to betray the other members of the group, the police soon identified and arrested Probst and the rest of the 'White Rose' activists. Hitler wanted a quick trial. Probst and the Scholls were brought before the People's Court on 22 February 1943, found guilty of treason and beheaded; Huber, Schmorell and Graf were condemned on 19 April and also executed. Ten others were given prison sentences. The Hamburg group continued to distribute the leaflets but it was also eventually discovered by the Gestapo; the last of its members was arrested in June 1944. Copies of the final leaflet reached the British via Sweden, and the Royal Air Force dropped hundreds of thousands of copies over Germany in the spring of 1943.253 Thus the message of the 'White Rose' did not go unread. Thus the message of the 'White Rose' did not go unread.

For the most part, however, moral and political critics of the regime sat tight, hoping for better times, and keeping their beliefs to themselves. It is impossible to say with any certainty how widespread such behaviour was. One example can be found in the diary of Erika S., born in Hamburg in 1926, into a formerly Social Democratic family. Her journal mixed in unselfconscious juxtaposition with her own daily cares her moral outrage at the larger damage she thought the war was causing. 'Ah,' she wrote on 4 June 1942, 'if only this unholy war were soon at an end! Nothing to eat and then these many cruel murders, it's too terrible, especially when you think of all the victims and those left behind. Nobody knows how many young people have already had to sacrifice their lives for Hitler's devilish cause, it's no longer anything but one huge campaign of murder.'254 Such sentiments were doubtless shared by her father, who was taken into custody by the Gestapo on more than one occasion, the last time on 23 August 1944. Undaunted by this final arrest, Erika sat down and wrote a letter to Himmler, assuring him that her parents had 'brought me and my 14-year-old brother up in a completely National Socialist way'. She reminded the SS chief that she was a member of the League of German Girls and had joined the Nazi Party the previous April. So she could not understand why her father had been taken into custody. After waiting in vain for a reply, she went to the nearest Gestapo office to pursue her quest. The officers were polite, but made no concessions. 'It just can't be borne any longer,' she wrote in her diary, 'how one is treated in Germany. And all the same, one still does everything to avoid attracting attention.' Such sentiments were doubtless shared by her father, who was taken into custody by the Gestapo on more than one occasion, the last time on 23 August 1944. Undaunted by this final arrest, Erika sat down and wrote a letter to Himmler, assuring him that her parents had 'brought me and my 14-year-old brother up in a completely National Socialist way'. She reminded the SS chief that she was a member of the League of German Girls and had joined the Nazi Party the previous April. So she could not understand why her father had been taken into custody. After waiting in vain for a reply, she went to the nearest Gestapo office to pursue her quest. The officers were polite, but made no concessions. 'It just can't be borne any longer,' she wrote in her diary, 'how one is treated in Germany. And all the same, one still does everything to avoid attracting attention.'255 IV.

None of this was ever likely to achieve the overthrow of the Nazi regime. Only one group was in a position to do this, and that was the military resistance that had originally emerged in 1938 among senior army officers concerned about what they saw as Hitler's rashness in risking a general European war by the invasion of Czechoslovakia, when Germany was unprepared for one. The victories of 1939-40 seemed to prove them wrong.256 Only a few, such as the former Ambassador to Italy, Ulrich von Hassell, remained convinced of what he called the criminal irresponsibility of the regime and were appalled at the destruction it was visiting upon Eastern Europe. Hassell found it intolerable, as he wrote in his diary on 8 October 1940, that 'the Jews are systematically being exterminated, and a devilish campaign is being launched against the Polish intelligentsia with the express purpose of annihilating it'. Only a few, such as the former Ambassador to Italy, Ulrich von Hassell, remained convinced of what he called the criminal irresponsibility of the regime and were appalled at the destruction it was visiting upon Eastern Europe. Hassell found it intolerable, as he wrote in his diary on 8 October 1940, that 'the Jews are systematically being exterminated, and a devilish campaign is being launched against the Polish intelligentsia with the express purpose of annihilating it'.257 Other Foreign Ministry officials, including State Secretary Ernst von Weizs*cker, Adam von Trott zu Solz and Hans-Bernd von Haeften, had long shared Hassell's views. Hassell regularly discussed this and other issues with a small number of like-minded civilians who had occupied senior positions in government and administration, notably Carl Goerdeler, the former Price Commissioner and ex-Mayor of Leipzig, and Johannes Popitz, Prussian Minister of Finance. The group included the former Chief of the Army General Staff Ludwig Beck, who was one of the few senior military figures who were not bowled over by the military triumphs of the first phase of the war; others who had once contemplated arresting Hitler and installing a military regime, like Franz Halder, no longer went beyond grumbling about Hitler's conduct of the war even when the going began to get tough in 1941, as we have seen. Like the vast majority of senior officers, Halder supported the concept of a crusade against the Soviet Union and considered the harshest measures justified. The circle around the head of the Military Intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm von Canaris, and his chief of staff, Hans Oster, had also been concerned for some time about Hitler's reckless military ambition. But they bided their time, considering it was pointless trying to undertake anything while popular support for Hitler was so high. The group also included the young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had been an inspirational figure in the Confessing Church but missed its main confrontation with the Nazi regime in the mid-1930s because he had been serving as a pastor in London. Bonhoeffer had been drafted into Military Intelligence in 1940, and soon began working with the oppositional group there. Other Foreign Ministry officials, including State Secretary Ernst von Weizs*cker, Adam von Trott zu Solz and Hans-Bernd von Haeften, had long shared Hassell's views. Hassell regularly discussed this and other issues with a small number of like-minded civilians who had occupied senior positions in government and administration, notably Carl Goerdeler, the former Price Commissioner and ex-Mayor of Leipzig, and Johannes Popitz, Prussian Minister of Finance. The group included the former Chief of the Army General Staff Ludwig Beck, who was one of the few senior military figures who were not bowled over by the military triumphs of the first phase of the war; others who had once contemplated arresting Hitler and installing a military regime, like Franz Halder, no longer went beyond grumbling about Hitler's conduct of the war even when the going began to get tough in 1941, as we have seen. Like the vast majority of senior officers, Halder supported the concept of a crusade against the Soviet Union and considered the harshest measures justified. The circle around the head of the Military Intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm von Canaris, and his chief of staff, Hans Oster, had also been concerned for some time about Hitler's reckless military ambition. But they bided their time, considering it was pointless trying to undertake anything while popular support for Hitler was so high. The group also included the young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had been an inspirational figure in the Confessing Church but missed its main confrontation with the Nazi regime in the mid-1930s because he had been serving as a pastor in London. Bonhoeffer had been drafted into Military Intelligence in 1940, and soon began working with the oppositional group there.258 A small number of mostly aristocratic officers of the younger generation, however, like Fabian von Schlabrendorff and Henning von Tresckow, on the staff of Army Group Centre, were so outraged by the atrocities being committed in the east that they determined to take action. Tresckow in particular, though he had initially supported Hitler, had soon been appalled by the brutality and lawlessness of his regime. A Prussian officer in the classic mould, he considered that enemy soldiers should be treated according to the laws of war, and tried to circumvent the orders he was given to shoot Soviet political commissars on sight. His commanding officer, Field Marshal G*nther von Kluge, expressed an interest in joining the military opposition but was too cautious to commit himself. Moral objections to Nazism were also at the root of the growing opposition expressed (in private) by the Kreisau Circle (a name given to it later by the Gestapo). This was a loose network of intellectuals, eventually numbering over a hundred, who met at the estate of Count Helmuth von Moltke at Kreisau, in Lower Silesia, for discussions about the situation. On three occasions in 1942- 3 the group held larger conferences that included theologians, lawyers, former Social Democratic politicians, and others from a wide variety of backgrounds.

A number of members of the circle held minor government posts, among them Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg (a civil servant in the Price Commissioner's office) and Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, who was Deputy Police President of Berlin. Moltke himself worked in the prisoner-of-war department of the Combined Armed Forces Supreme Command. A number of the Kreisau Circle's members had experience of other countries, which strengthened their critical perspective on Nazism. Their views were strongly idealistic. On 9 August 1943 they agreed a set of basic principles to be implemented after the collapse of Nazism. These emphasized Christianity as the basis for a moral regeneration of the German people. Basic freedoms had to be restored. Politically, Germany was to become a federal state with a weak central power. It was to be divided into provinces of between 3 and 5 million inhabitants each, which would be further divided into self-governing communities, organized into districts. The regions would have parliaments elected by the district assemblies, and a national Reichstag would be elected by the provincial parliaments. The minimum voting age was to be twenty-seven. The Kreisau Circle also wanted some kind of international community of states, to reduce the risk of war happening again. All of this expressed a kind of radical-conservative idealism, grounded in the suspicion of modern 'mass society' and aimed at re-creating a sense of rootedness and belonging based on Christian values and local identities. The members of the Kreisau Circle were suspicious of capitalism, and wanted both common ownership of vital industries and 'co-responsibility' in the individual plant. What they thought of as the excesses of urbanism would be overcome by the state guaranteeing to provide every family with a garden.259 The Kreisau Circle and its members developed multiple and shifting contacts with members of the military and civilian resistance, and on 8 January 1943 a meeting took place between representatives of the two groups. It did not go well. Moltke considered Goerdeler a reactionary, while more politically experienced men like Hassell thought many of the 'youngsters' unrealistic.260 Various attempts by Moltke, Trott and others to forge contacts with the Western Allies and persuade them to work together with them to rebuild Germany after victory came to nothing. Various attempts by Moltke, Trott and others to forge contacts with the Western Allies and persuade them to work together with them to rebuild Germany after victory came to nothing.261 The Allies had their own plans. Distrust of Western parliamentary models of democracy, which the Kreisau Circle regarded as having failed under Weimar, was almost universal in the various arms of the German resistance, and this alone was hardly likely to recommend their constitutional plans to the British or the Americans. Goerdeler and the military conspirators were even less likely to win Allied approval. Leading figures in the group hammered out and repeatedly revised a set of aims that became steadily more modest as Germany's military situation worsened, but even in May 1944 they included a negotiated peace on the basis of the German frontiers of 1914 plus Austria, the Sudetenland and the South Tyrol, autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine, and the retention of an effective defence force in the east. The Allies had their own plans. Distrust of Western parliamentary models of democracy, which the Kreisau Circle regarded as having failed under Weimar, was almost universal in the various arms of the German resistance, and this alone was hardly likely to recommend their constitutional plans to the British or the Americans. Goerdeler and the military conspirators were even less likely to win Allied approval. Leading figures in the group hammered out and repeatedly revised a set of aims that became steadily more modest as Germany's military situation worsened, but even in May 1944 they included a negotiated peace on the basis of the German frontiers of 1914 plus Austria, the Sudetenland and the South Tyrol, autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine, and the retention of an effective defence force in the east.262 The constitutional ideas of the conspirators ranged from an authoritarian, quasi-corporatist state, as suggested by Hassell, to a more parliamentary model advocated by Goerdeler in an attempt among other things to satisfy Social Democrats in the group like Julius Leber. Even here, however, Goerdeler wanted a strong corporative element, with candidates coming from economic interest groups and indirect elections to the Reichstag, which was to be restricted in influence by being granted only advisory powers and subordinated to a second chamber nominated by the head of state. Extra votes were to be given to fathers of families. Like the Kreisau Circle, Goerdeler and the military conspirators were determined to avoid the party-political animosities that had so undermined the Weimar Republic, so open electoral campaigning was not supposed to take place in the state they hoped to found. And like the Kreisau Circle, the military-conservative resistance regarded Christian values as the all-important foundation for the re-emergence of a morally upright Germany, though Leber and the Social Democrats were unhappy about this idea. The Social Democrats' influence, which grew stronger over time, could be found in a degree of overlap with the Kreisau Circle's emphasis on the need to control the capitalist economy. However, the vision of Goerdeler and his group, of a Germany in which class antagonisms would be overcome by the creation of a true national community dominated by the traditional aristocracy (the 'stratum that carries the state', as Schulenburg put it), was never likely to be accepted by the working-class followers of the Social Democrats. The hostility of the military-conservative resistance to a parliamentary constitution and a pluralist, open society demonstrated its backward-looking character and its lack of potential appeal to the masses. Indeed, given the participation of Prussian officers and conservative Prussian politicians in the group, it was hardly surprising that they looked back, as many in the Kreisau Circle also did, to the Prussian reforms of Baron Karl vom Stein at the beginning of the nineteenth century as a model for the future development of Germany. Here, too, their lack of realism was palpable.263 One of the factors motivating the German resistance was undoubtedly outrage and shame at the regime's treatment of the Jews. Already in late August 1941, Helmuth von Moltke was writing to his wife about the mass murder of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war in the east. This was, he said, burdening the German people 'with a blood-guilt that can never be expunged in our lifetime and can never be forgotten'.264 In similar vein, Ulrich von Hassell confided to his diary on 4 October 1941 that General Georg Thomas, the chief procurement officer of the armed forces, had reported on his return from the Eastern Front on 'the continuance of repulsive cruelties, particularly against the Jews, who were shamelessly shot down in batches'. In similar vein, Ulrich von Hassell confided to his diary on 4 October 1941 that General Georg Thomas, the chief procurement officer of the armed forces, had reported on his return from the Eastern Front on 'the continuance of repulsive cruelties, particularly against the Jews, who were shamelessly shot down in batches'.265 'Hundreds of thousands of people have been systematically killed just because of their Jewish descent', noted an outraged memorandum penned by Goerdeler and others on the postwar future of Germany in November 1942. After the fall of Nazism, the authors promised that the Nuremberg Laws and all laws specially affecting the Jews would be abolished. Yet the reason they gave was not that they were unjust, but that they were unnecessary because the very small number of Jewish survivors would no longer constitute a 'danger for the German race'. Nor, significantly, did this prevent the resisters from drawing up plans to classify the surviving Jews on the basis of their race as much as their religion. 'Hundreds of thousands of people have been systematically killed just because of their Jewish descent', noted an outraged memorandum penned by Goerdeler and others on the postwar future of Germany in November 1942. After the fall of Nazism, the authors promised that the Nuremberg Laws and all laws specially affecting the Jews would be abolished. Yet the reason they gave was not that they were unjust, but that they were unnecessary because the very small number of Jewish survivors would no longer constitute a 'danger for the German race'. Nor, significantly, did this prevent the resisters from drawing up plans to classify the surviving Jews on the basis of their race as much as their religion.266 Moreover, a number of the military participants in the conspiracy had themselves ordered actions against the Jews, including for example Karl-Heinrich von St*lpnagel, army commander in Paris. As the senior official in Regional Leader Wagner's Silesia, Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg had implemented antisemitic and anti-Polish policies with enthusiasm, including the forced labour conscription or deportation of Poles and Jews. It was above all the German military defeat at Stalingrad, which he took as evidence of Hitler's military incompetence, that drove Schulenburg into the opposition; and indeed for many of the military figures among the resisters, the belief that Hitler was responsible for the worsening situation of Germany in the war was also crucial.267 Wolf Heinrich, Count Helldorf, Police President of Berlin, also involved in the conspiracy, had actually taken a leading part in persecuting the capital city's Jews in the 1930s. Wolf Heinrich, Count Helldorf, Police President of Berlin, also involved in the conspiracy, had actually taken a leading part in persecuting the capital city's Jews in the 1930s.268 The plot even included among its supporters and informants Arthur Nebe, commander of SS Task Force B in the Soviet Union, responsible for the murder of scores of thousands of Jews; his motives for joining the opposition were particularly obscure. Some of the conspirators, including Johannes Popitz, disapproved of the methods used by the Nazis to deal with 'the Jewish question' because they were too extreme, not because the idea of discriminating against the Jews was wrong in itself. As this suggests, it was not surprising that many of them had initially supported the Nazis for their racial policies as well as for other reasons. Well before 1944, however, such views had been all but obliterated by the view that, as Goerdeler put it, 'the Jewish persecution . . . has taken the most inhuman, merciless and deeply shaming forms, for which no recompense can be adequate'. The plot even included among its supporters and informants Arthur Nebe, commander of SS Task Force B in the Soviet Union, responsible for the murder of scores of thousands of Jews; his motives for joining the opposition were particularly obscure. Some of the conspirators, including Johannes Popitz, disapproved of the methods used by the Nazis to deal with 'the Jewish question' because they were too extreme, not because the idea of discriminating against the Jews was wrong in itself. As this suggests, it was not surprising that many of them had initially supported the Nazis for their racial policies as well as for other reasons. Well before 1944, however, such views had been all but obliterated by the view that, as Goerdeler put it, 'the Jewish persecution . . . has taken the most inhuman, merciless and deeply shaming forms, for which no recompense can be adequate'.269 There was one crucial difference between the military conspirators and the Kreisau Circle. Moltke and most of his friends were against an assassination attempt on Hitler on religious grounds, preferring to wait for the military collapse of the Third Reich before putting their plans into action. To a degree, this view was shared by other members of the civilian resistance. The military had no such scruples. In particular, Henning von Tresckow was convinced that Hitler had to be killed if the Nazi regime was to be overthrown. He began to organize a series of assassination attempts shortly after Stalingrad. On 13 March 1943 he tried to blow up Hitler's plane on a flight between his field headquarters with explosives supplied by Admiral Canaris and military counter-intelligence and smuggled into the plane's hold. But the attempt failed because the detonator would not work in the extremely low temperature of the hold at high altitude. The bomb, disguised as a package containing two bottles of cognac, was still in the hold when the plane landed. In the nick of time, Tresckow's co-conspirator Fabian von Schlabrendorff managed to fly to the scene, get hold of the package and defuse it. On 21 March 1943 another young conspirator, Colonel Rudolf-Christoph, Baron von Gersdorff, took a bag of explosives along to an exhibition of captured Soviet equipment in Berlin, hoping to kill Hitler during his planned visit. But the Nazi Leader rushed through the building at such a pace that the opportunity did not present itself. As one attempt after another came to nothing, Goerdeler pressed the military to move quickly, otherwise millions more lives would be lost and Germany would be so thoroughly defeated that the new regime he envisaged would be in no position to make terms with the Allies. That he believed this would still be possible despite the decision of the Allied leaders at Casablanca early in 1943 to accept nothing other than unconditional surrender from Germany shows the conspirators' lack of political realism; and even had Churchill and Roosevelt been prepared to negotiate, there was no chance that they would accept the terms that Goerdeler and his co-conspirators were offering.270 Moreover, the conspiracy began to get into serious trouble as its members began for one reason or another to come to the attention of the Gestapo. Military Intelligence under Canaris and Oster, which the conspirators viewed as the key logistical centre of their operation, was increasingly threatened by the ambitions of Walter Schellenberg's foreign intelligence department of the SS Security Service. This led to increased surveillance by the Gestapo. In the spring of 1943 Oster and some of his key officers, including Bonhoeffer, were arrested over allegations of currency offences. In January 1944 Hitler's suspicions led to his ordering the takeover of foreign military intelligence, which Oster had been running until his arrest, by the Security Service of the SS. Canaris, an emigmatic figure who some suspected of betraying military secrets to the Allies, was interned. In a further blow, Moltke was arrested in January 1944. Meanwhile, Popitz, in an extraordinary act of political unrealism, approached Himmler with a view to winning him over to the idea of toppling Hitler on his own initiative. The initiative met with a vague expression of interest from the SS chief, but no more. Horrified, Goerdeler and the other civilian conspirators did their best to avoid contact with Popitz after this. Important figures dropped out - Kluge suffered serious injuries in a car accident, the Social Democrat Mierendorff and the retired army chief Hammerstein both died of natural causes. All of this set back the conspiracy by many months and reduced the coherence and potential effectiveness of the plot.271 Deeper problems faced the conspirators as they tried to revive their assassination plans. In order for the plot to succeed, they had to persuade key units of the reserve army to move on Berlin and take over the major institutions of government, but, though they made some headway with the delicate negotiations, there were still many uncertainties. While General Friedrich Olbricht, who headed the armed forces reserve section in Berlin, was with them, actively planning the troop movements that would secure power once Hitler was dead, his boss, General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the reserve army, a man with an eye to the main chance, decided to play a waiting game when he was told about the conspiracy, though he did not betray the conspirators for the time being. Together with the former Chief of the Army General Staff Ludwig Beck, and Tresckow, Olbricht drew up plans for 'Operation Valkyrie', a military coup to be launched immediately Hitler was pronounced dead. But who would kill the Leader? This was the final problem to be solved. It required someone who combined access to Hitler's person with commitment to the resistance - a difficult if not impossible combination to find. On more than one occasion, an attempt had to be abandoned because the man who had agreed to carry it out could not get near the target. But in the late summer of 1943, a new figure entered the conspiracy who fulfilled all these qualities. Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, was a lieutenant-colonel who had been badly injured in North Africa, losing his right hand and the third and fourth fingers of his left. He wore a black patch over one eye. He was due to take up his appointment as chief of staff of the Army General Office on 1 October 1943. An able and extremely energetic officer, Stauffenberg had, like a few others in the military hierarchy, initially supported Nazism, and been enthused by the early victories of German arms in Poland and France. But he had become disillusioned with Hitler's recklessness on the Eastern Front and thought, above all after Stalingrad, that it was taking Germany into the abyss. Stauffenberg also had an unusual kind of moral and patriotic commitment, derived from his youthful membership of the circle around the poet Stefan George. What turned him decisively against Hitler were the atrocities committed by the SS on and behind the Eastern Front against Slavs and Jews, and his feeling that they had to be stopped became ever stronger. With Tresckow, Stauffenberg became the central energizing and organizing figure in the conspiracy. They set up one new assassination attempt after another, only to see them all fail, often by pure chance. In the end, Stauffenberg resolved to kill Hitler himself.272 As the Gestapo began to close in on the plotters, finding a way of getting to Hitler became ever more urgent. On 1 July 1944 it presented itself out of the blue when Stauffenberg was promoted to a colonelcy and appointed chief of staff to Fromm, head of the army reserve. This gave him access to Hitler as Fromm's emissary. At the same time, the purpose of the assassination was changing with the fast-moving military situation. After the Normandy landings, Stauffenberg doubted whether killing Hitler would serve any useful political purpose. Surely there was no hope any longer, if there had ever been any, of reaching a negotiated settlement with the Allies and rescuing something of Germany from the ruins. But, as Tresckow told him: 'The assassination must be attempted at any cost. Even should that fail, the attempt to seize power in the capital must be undertaken. We must prove to the world and to future generations that the men of the German resistance movement dared to take the decisive step and to hazard their lives upon it. Compared with this object, nothing else matters.273 On 20 July 1944 Stauffenberg visited Hitler's field headquarters at Rastenburg, carrying a briefcase containing two bombs. With only a thumb and two fingers at his disposal, he was slow in priming the time-delayed detonator, and he only had time to prepare one of the bombs before being ushered in to the barracks where Hitler was conducting a review of the military situation with his staff; the other bomb he entrusted to his companion Werner von Haeften, who later threw it out of his car. Putting the case down next to the large wooden map-table over which Hitler was leaning, Stauffenberg left the room, saying he had to make a phone call. He watched from a distance as the bomb exploded, wrecking the barracks. Then he bluffed his way through the SS security cordons, got into a plane and flew back to Berlin. On 20 July 1944 Stauffenberg visited Hitler's field headquarters at Rastenburg, carrying a briefcase containing two bombs. With only a thumb and two fingers at his disposal, he was slow in priming the time-delayed detonator, and he only had time to prepare one of the bombs before being ushered in to the barracks where Hitler was conducting a review of the military situation with his staff; the other bomb he entrusted to his companion Werner von Haeften, who later threw it out of his car. Putting the case down next to the large wooden map-table over which Hitler was leaning, Stauffenberg left the room, saying he had to make a phone call. He watched from a distance as the bomb exploded, wrecking the barracks. Then he bluffed his way through the SS security cordons, got into a plane and flew back to Berlin.274 Assured by Stauffenberg over the phone that Hitler could not have survived the explosion, Olbricht and the leading conspirators at army headquarters in Berlin launched the military takeover. But very quickly things began to go wrong. Had Stauffenberg been able to prime both bombs, or even left the unprimed one in his briefcase along with the other, there is no doubt that Hitler would have been killed. But the force of one explosion was not enough. The blast was not contained by the flimsy wooden walls of the barracks but blew them out together with the windows, while the heavy wooden map-table protected Hitler, who was standing on the other side. Even so, four of those present, standing near where the bomb went off, were either killed instantly or died later of their wounds. Hitler staggered out of the door, putting out the flames that were burning on his trousers. He ran into Keitel, the sycophantic Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, who burst into tears, crying: 'My Leader, you are alive, you are alive!' Hitler's clothing was torn and he had burns and abrasions on his arms and legs and some splinters of wood in his legs. Like everyone else in the hut apart from Keitel, he had burst ear-drums. But he had no serious injuries. This was to prove decisive. Almost as ominous for the conspirators was the fact that, while they had managed to sever some communications with the Rastenburg field headquarters, they had been unable to cut them all off. Within a short time, members of Hitler's staff were able to telephone Berlin and pass on the news that Hitler was still alive.

In Berlin, the cautious General Fromm, asked by the conspirators to set the military coup in motion, telephoned Rastenburg to see if their claim that Hitler was dead was correct. He was told that it was not. Trying to arrest Olbricht and the other conspirators at army headquarters, he was himself placed under arrest as they attempted to go on with the coup. Amid mounting confusion, some army units went into action according to the planned 'Operation Valkyrie', but others were stopped in their tracks as Hitler began to have instructions transmitted from Rastenburg countermanding the conspirator's orders. Caught in the cross-fire of claim and counter-claim, Major Otto Ernst Remer, commander of a guards battalion in the capital, and a fanatical Nazi, had obeyed orders to surround the government quarter with his troops, in the belief that Hitler was dead. With machine-gunners taking up positions near the Brandenburg Gate, things looked bad for ministers, such as Goebbels, who were caught in the trap. Fearing the worst, Goebbels pocketed a supply of cyanide pills before moving into action. He persuaded Remer to come and discuss the situation with him, in the presence of Albert Speer, who later remembered the Propaganda Minister's nervousness as the major entered his room. Hitler was not dead, Goebbels assured Remer: and surely the Leader could override the orders of any general. He telephoned Hitler's direct line in Rastenburg. Hitler spoke to Remer in person and ordered him to restore order. Remer withdrew his troops from the government ministries. Those of Olbricht's subordinates who had not been taken into his confidence now joined forces with Remer. Shooting broke out at army headquarters, and Stauffenberg was wounded. Fromm was released, and now arrested Olbricht, Stauffenberg and the other conspirators in turn. Beck produced a revolver and shot himself twice; as he lay injured on the floor, Fromm ordered a sergeant to take him into the next room and finish him off. Then he hurriedly condemned the other conspirators to death. If they were left alive to talk to the Gestapo, his own earlier complicity in the plot would have been revealed. A firing-squad lined up Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and their fellow-plotter Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim in the courtyard and shot them one by one. As he was about to be killed, Stauffenberg shouted: 'Long live sanctified Germany!'275 V.

The news of Hitler's survival torpedoed the conspiracy not only in Berlin but also in Prague and Vienna, where some of the conspirators had also tried to stage a coup. In Paris, the military commander of occupied France, General Karl-Heinrich von St*lpnagel, put the coup in motion as soon as Stauffenberg telephoned him to say Hitler was dead. Over a thousand SS officers were arrested, including the top commanders of the SS and its Security Service in Paris, Carl-Albrecht Oberg and Helmut Knochen. But before any more could be done, the vacillating Field Marshal Kluge discovered that Hitler was after all alive, and stopped the measures in their tracks. The SS men were released. For Oberg and Knochen, their detention and their failure to take any steps against the conspiracy were deeply shaming and potentially dangerous. Kluge's representative in Paris, General G*nther Blumentritt, took advantage of their evident embarrassment to patch up a deal over several bottles of champagne in the Salon Bleu of the Htel Rapha*l. He put the main events down to a misunderstanding and prevented the complicity of most of the conspirators in Paris from being discovered. For St*lpnagel, however, there was no reprieve. 'So, Herr General,' Oberg had said to St*lpnagel on entering the hotel, 'you seem to have bet on the wrong horse.' Indeed, Kluge had already reported St*lpnagel's actions to Berlin. Guessing the fate that was in store for him, the general drove out of Paris towards the First World War battlefield of Verdun, where he stopped his car, got out and shot himself in the head. Like Beck, however, he did not succeed in killing himself. Blinded and badly disfigured, he was taken to Berlin under arrest.276 News of the bomb and Hitler's survival had already been broadcast over the radio by this time. Shaken but not badly injured, Hitler managed to find time for a prearranged meeting with Mussolini at his field headquarters, showing him proudly round the scene of the explosion, before broadcasting to the nation just before one in the morning of 21 July 1944. Reassuring Germans that he was alive and unharmed, he declared that 'a tiny clique of ambitious, unscrupulous and at the same time criminally stupid officers hatched a plot to remove me, and together with me, virtually to exterminate the staff of the German Supreme Command.' Providence, he continued predictably, had preserved his life. Privately, he fulminated against the conspirators, raging that he would 'annihilate and exterminate' every one of them. He appointed Himmler to replace Fromm, whose attempt to cover up his own complicity had not fooled anyone. Guderian became Chief of the Army General Staff. All Germans, said Hitler, had to join in hunting down those responsible. By this time, Remer and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the SS Security Service, had arrived at army headquarters in Berlin, and Otto Skorzeny, who had sprung Mussolini from captivity a year before, turned up with an armed squad of SS men. They stopped any other executions from taking place. Meanwhile, Fromm attempted to telephone Hitler from Goebbels's office, but the suspicious Propaganda Minister made the call himself, and received orders to put the general under arrest. Goebbels instructed the media to emphasize again that only a small group of reactionary aristocrats had been involved. Public demonstrations had to be organized to celebrate the failure of the coup.277 Meanwhile, Himmler and the Gestapo moved into action to identify and arrest the surviving conspirators. As the investigation gathered pace, it became apparent that Hitler's first estimation that the plot was the work of no more than a handful of reactionary officers was mistaken. Soon Canaris, Oster and the Military Intelligence group were brought in for questioning, along with many army officers involved in the conspiracy. Arrests of civilians followed, including Hjalmar Schacht, the former economic supremo of the Third Reich. Schacht had been in touch with the plotters, but even before he knew this, Hitler ordered him to be taken in because, he still felt, Schacht had sabotaged rearmament in the 1930s. Hess too would be arrested when England was finally beaten, he raged. He would be 'mercilessly hanged' because he had given the others an 'example of treason'. Johannes Popitz and the Social Democratic participants and sympathizers, including Gustav Noske and Wilhelm Leuschner, were also arrested. Carl Goerdeler went into hiding, then made his way eastwards, camping out in forests, until he was finally recognized, denounced and arrested in his turn. Exhausted, demoralized and subjected to sleep deprivation by his captors, and like some of the other resisters in thrall to a moral conviction not only that the truth had to be told but also that it would have a persuasive effect on those who heard it, he gave the Gestapo the names of other members of the conspiracy, making it clear that it was far more than a plot hatched by a handful of military malcontents. He never wavered from his now openly expressed conviction that Hitler was a 'vampire' and that 'the bestial murder of a million Jews' was a crime that besmirched the name of Germany.278 Himmler organized a huge sweep of known opponents of the regime, arresting in the end as many as 5,000 people. As late as 23 September 1944, documents came to light implicating the earlier conspirators, including top army officers such as Halder, Brauchitsch and the armed forces' chief procurement officer, General Georg Thomas. Many others had already given themselves up, like Ulrich von Hassell, or courted death by resisting arrest, or committed suicide by shooting themselves. Henning von Tresckow, still on the Eastern Front, drove out towards the enemy lines on the morning of 21 July and blew himself up with a grenade after learning that the plot had failed. Worried that torture might force him to name names, he told Fabian von Schlabrendorff before he set out: 'Hitler is the arch-enemy not only of Germany but of the whole world.'279 Others took poison, or shot themselves for similar reasons. One army officer who had joined the coup attempt in Berlin put a grenade in his mouth and pulled the pin as he was about to be led away by the Gestapo. A number of the resisters were severely beaten. Metal spikes were driven underneath their fingernails to make them talk. But they did not reveal the names of their co-conspirators. Hitler's growing suspicion of Kluge, who he feared would negotiate a surrender with the invading Allies, led him on 17 August 1944 to appoint the ever-faithful Model Commander-in-Chief in the west in his stead. Knowing the game was up, Kluge drove off eastwards, and near the spot where St*lpnagel had tried to kill himself, he stopped the car and swallowed a phial of poison. The popular Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who had known of the conspiracy but not approved of it, had nevertheless told Hitler to his face that he should bring the war to an end. Rommel was still convalescing from war wounds when Hitler presented him with the alternatives of suicide disguised as death from his injuries and followed by a state funeral, or arrest, trial and public humiliation. As the SS surrounded the village where he was resting, Rommel realized he would never reach Berlin alive, and took poison. The state funeral duly followed. Twenty-two other military conspirators were dismissed with dishonour from the army by a court-martial hastily convened on Hitler's orders and presided over by Field Marshal von Rundstedt. Others took poison, or shot themselves for similar reasons. One army officer who had joined the coup attempt in Berlin put a grenade in his mouth and pulled the pin as he was about to be led away by the Gestapo. A number of the resisters were severely beaten. Metal spikes were driven underneath their fingernails to make them talk. But they did not reveal the names of their co-conspirators. Hitler's growing suspicion of Kluge, who he feared would negotiate a surrender with the invading Allies, led him on 17 August 1944 to appoint the ever-faithful Model Commander-in-Chief in the west in his stead. Knowing the game was up, Kluge drove off eastwards, and near the spot where St*lpnagel had tried to kill himself, he stopped the car and swallowed a phial of poison. The popular Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who had known of the conspiracy but not approved of it, had nevertheless told Hitler to his face that he should bring the war to an end. Rommel was still convalescing from war wounds when Hitler presented him with the alternatives of suicide disguised as death from his injuries and followed by a state funeral, or arrest, trial and public humiliation. As the SS surrounded the village where he was resting, Rommel realized he would never reach Berlin alive, and took poison. The state funeral duly followed. Twenty-two other military conspirators were dismissed with dishonour from the army by a court-martial hastily convened on Hitler's orders and presided over by Field Marshal von Rundstedt.280 On 7 August 1944 the trial of the first eight conspirators, including General Erwin von Witzleben, who had been involved in military conspiracies against Hitler since 1938, and Yorck von Wartenburg, opened before the People's Court in Berlin. Subsequent trials were held over the following weeks, involving many other conspirators, including Schulenburg, Trott, Goerdeler, Leuschner, Hassell and the blinded St*lpnagel. The trial of Leber, Popitz and the former W*rttemberg state president, Eugen Bolz, and members of the Kreisau Circle, including Moltke, took place as late as January 1945. Many of the conspirators had hoped that a trial would give them the opportunity to expound their views, and indeed Hassell among others had probably given himself up in this expectation. But the President of the People's Court, Roland Freisler, bullied and hectored the accused men, showered them with crude insults, and did not allow them to speak more than a few words at a time. His conduct was so outrageous that even Nazi Minister of Justice Otto-Georg Thierack complained about it. Most of the lawyers appointed to defend them prudently accepted the prosecution's case from the start and made no attempt to plead mitigation. To try to ensure they would appear as pathetic and undignified as possible, the accused had been physically maltreated beforehand, were forbidden to wear neckties, and were banned from using belts or braces to hold up their trousers. Nevertheless, a few managed to get a word in edgeways. When Freisler told one of them he would soon roast in hell, the defendant bowed and responded swiftly: 'I'll look forward to your own imminent arrival, your honour!' Another told Freisler that though his own neck would shortly be on the block, 'in a year it will be yours!' But Hitler had personally ordered that they should be hanged, a dishonouring punishment generally reserved by this time for foreign workers, though also applied to the 'Red Orchestra'. The first group of men were hanged from crude hooks suspended from the ceiling in an outbuilding at the Pl*tzensee prison in Berlin. Specially thin rope was used so that they would die of slow strangulation. As they died, their trousers were pulled down in a last act of humiliation. Hitler had the executions filmed and watched them in his headquarters at night.281 Some of the conspirators escaped death and lived on after the Third Reich was over, to tell their story to posterity. They included Fabian von Schlabrendorff, who was sheltering in the cellar of the People's Court with the judge and legal officials on 3 February 1945 when an Allied bombing raid demolished the courthouse. A beam crashed through the floor into the cellar below. Freisler was killed instantly. His was the only injury, but the trial had to be postponed; by the time it restarted, in mid-March, the court was beginning to temporize in the face of imminent defeat, and acquitted him because he had been illegally tortured, a scruple that had not troubled it at all in the months before. Altogether perhaps 1,000 people were killed or committed suicide in the wake of the failed coup attempt. In addition, Himmler, declaring that anyone involved in such a heinous crime against Germany must have bad blood, drew on what he said was the old Germanic tradition of punishing criminals' families as well as the criminals themselves, and arrested the wives and children, and in some cases brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, uncles and aunts of a number of the conspirators. Stauffenberg's wife was sent to Ravensbr*ck concentration camp and her children given a new identity and put into an orphanage. Those whose families were treated in similar fashion included Goerdeler, Hammerstein, Oster, Popitz, Tresckow, Trott and others. The property and assets of the conspirators and their families were confiscated by the state.282 The plot, the most serious and widespread attempt to overthrow Hitler since he had come to power in 1933, had failed, with the most disastrous possible consequences for almost everybody involved in it, for a variety of reasons, both specific and general. The conspirators had not managed to kill Hitler, nor had they succeeded in preventing news of his survival being broadcast from his field headquarters to the outside world. Their preparations were careless and paid too little attention to detail. Although it was fast fading, Hitler's charismatic authority, backed by Goebbels, G*ring, Himmler and Bormann, was still enough to prevent vacillating senior officers like Fromm and Kluge from throwing their weight behind the coup attempt. Goebbels, Hitler, Himmler and the SS acted quickly and decisively, while the conspirators were dilatory. The plotters had not managed to persuade enough key military commanders to back the coup; although the majority of senior officers knew by now that there was little hope of Germany winning the war, most of them were still locked into a rigid military mentality in which orders from above had to be obeyed, the oath they had taken to Hitler was sacrosanct, and killing the head of state was an act of treachery. Typical was the attitude taken by General Gotthard Heinrici, who in his diary insisted on the sacred nature of the personal oath of allegiance he had taken to Hitler, as had all other German soldiers, and strongly disapproved of the July 1944 bomb plot.283 Those who backed the coup attempt were always in a small minority. Some top officers were no doubt influenced by the money lavished on them by Hitler. Many officers were deterred by the fear that they would be blamed for Germany's defeat in the kind of 'stab-in-the-back' which many of them thought had been responsible for Germany losing the First World War. More generally, the ideas of the conspirators were backward-looking, and for all their attempts to forge a unified programme, they were deeply divided on many central issues. As the most clear-headed among them already recognized in June 1944, the assassination attempt was more a moral gesture than a political act. Had they succeeded in their earlier attempts on Hitler's life, in 1943, they might have made more of a difference. But they were dogged by ill-fortune from the start. Had Stauffenberg managed to kill Hitler, the result would most likely have been a civil war between army units backing the plotters, and those which opposed them, supported by the SS. Even then, it seems unlikely that the plotters would have won: the forces at their command were simply not strong or numerous enough. The Allies had no intention of negotiating with them, and indeed, when the news of the attempt reached London and New York, it was quickly dismissed as a meaningless squabble within the Nazi hierarchy. Some of the conspirators had hoped that a coup would enable them to make a separate peace with the Western Allies, but the British and Americans were aware of this, and were concerned about the damage it would do to their alliance with the Soviet Union if they gave any kind of positive response to the conspiracy. A separate peace would have raised the alarming prospect of a conflict with the Soviet Union, and this was something that Churchill and Roosevelt were not prepared to contemplate.284 The plotters' aim was to stage a military coup, and despite Stauffenberg's attempts to gain wider backing by negotiating with Social Democrats like Leber, the military-conservative resistance had very little support in the German population at large.285 Yet the death of Hitler might well have hastened the disintegration of the regime, loosened the bonds of loyalty that tied so many Germans to it still in mid-1944, and shortened the war by some months, saving millions of lives on all sides by doing so. This alone was more than enough justification for the undertaking. It was not easy for the conspirators to reach the conclusions they reached or take the actions they took. In the end, however, they acted. Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg implicitly spoke for them all when he wrote in his last letter to his mother, shortly before his execution, that 'it was not ambition or lust for power which determined my actions. My actions were influenced solely by my patriotic feeling, my concern for my Germany as it has grown over the past two thousand years.' Yet the death of Hitler might well have hastened the disintegration of the regime, loosened the bonds of loyalty that tied so many Germans to it still in mid-1944, and shortened the war by some months, saving millions of lives on all sides by doing so. This alone was more than enough justification for the undertaking. It was not easy for the conspirators to reach the conclusions they reached or take the actions they took. In the end, however, they acted. Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg implicitly spoke for them all when he wrote in his last letter to his mother, shortly before his execution, that 'it was not ambition or lust for power which determined my actions. My actions were influenced solely by my patriotic feeling, my concern for my Germany as it has grown over the past two thousand years.'286 His, like theirs, was the Germany of the past, above all the Prussian past, and he had come to recognize that Hitler, in myriad different ways, was destroying it. His, like theirs, was the Germany of the past, above all the Prussian past, and he had come to recognize that Hitler, in myriad different ways, was destroying it.

PART 7.DOWNFALL.

'A LAST SPARK OF HOPE' HOPE'

I.

At the end of July 1943, when the cleaning-up squads were sifting through the ruins of Hamburg after the Allied bombers had departed, they pulled a fifteen-year-old schoolboy out of the rubble, alive and unharmed. Thanking his rescuers, Ulrich S. joined a column of refugees making their way out of the city and after a few days found refuge with an uncle who lived in the nearby countryside. The child of passionately Social Democratic parents, he wanted nothing more to do with the war, and hid himself away in the attic of his uncle's house in the woods to evade the attentions of the Hitler Youth. He followed events by listening on the radio to the BBC and wrote a diary to ward off the inevitable sense of isolation, giving it the title: 'The Enemy Speaks!' His diary entry on the failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944 was typical of its tone in general: 'Unfortunately, as if by a miracle, the pig-dog was not wounded . . . Hitler might have escaped his just punishment this time, but this mass-murderer will get what he deserves before too long.'1 After the first trials, he wrote of the condemned conspirators: 'Their enterprise will be carried on to the end. The Nazis want to sacrifice an entire people just to postpone their own downfall a little longer.' After the first trials, he wrote of the condemned conspirators: 'Their enterprise will be carried on to the end. The Nazis want to sacrifice an entire people just to postpone their own downfall a little longer.'2 The boy's reactions were extreme, to say the least. It is of course impossible to know how far they were shared in a milder form by other members of former Social Democratic and Communist families. For many men from such backgrounds fighting at the front, however, the attempt seemed like a betrayal; for if they approved of it, what then were they fighting for? 'We know,' wrote one soldier on 7 August 1944, 'that these soundrels are all Freemasons and thus in cahoots with, or, better put, in thrall to, international Jewry. A pity that I couldn't take part in the action against these rogues.'3 Convinced Nazis were deeply shocked. The long-term Austrian brownshirt Alfred Molter, who served on the ground staff with the German air force, wrote to his wife Inge on 20 July 1944 from Vienna, where he was visiting his mother: Convinced Nazis were deeply shocked. The long-term Austrian brownshirt Alfred Molter, who served on the ground staff with the German air force, wrote to his wife Inge on 20 July 1944 from Vienna, where he was visiting his mother: Darling, have you heard the news about the attempt to assassinate the Leader? Darling, I had the feeling I just had to run somewhere and pray. Thank heavens that the Leader has been preserved for us. Inge, if the Leader was killed, then the war would be lost, and G*ring would surely be killed as well. And that's what the bandits were looking to achieve. What venal pig must have raised his hand to do this! When I heard about it, I couldn't be alone. So I waltzed off to the SA.4 Here, reminiscing with an old brownshirt comrade about the days when they had fought together against the Austrian dictator Schuschnigg, he found reassurance. 'Nothing can shake our belief in the Leader.'5 Yet many troops mixed feelings of shock and outrage with other sentiments too. The paratrooper Martin P*ppel, by now promoted from the ranks to the officer corps, did not approve of the assassination attempt. Soldiers had a duty to carry on fighting. But, he thought by now, Hitler had let them down badly. He should have left the conduct of the war to the professionals. As the Allied troops advanced, the situation of P*ppel's unit in northern France became steadily more hopeless. But, when he told his men they would have to surrender, many of them felt ashamed at the prospect. 'As paratroopers,' they asked, 'how will we be able to look our wives in the face if we surrender voluntarily?' Eventually P*ppel was able to persuade them that they had no alternative. But their despairing question indicated the power of the sense of military duty and masculine honour that were among the factors that kept many German soldiers fighting on the Western Front to the bitter end. Yet many troops mixed feelings of shock and outrage with other sentiments too. The paratrooper Martin P*ppel, by now promoted from the ranks to the officer corps, did not approve of the assassination attempt. Soldiers had a duty to carry on fighting. But, he thought by now, Hitler had let them down badly. He should have left the conduct of the war to the professionals. As the Allied troops advanced, the situation of P*ppel's unit in northern France became steadily more hopeless. But, when he told his men they would have to surrender, many of them felt ashamed at the prospect. 'As paratroopers,' they asked, 'how will we be able to look our wives in the face if we surrender voluntarily?' Eventually P*ppel was able to persuade them that they had no alternative. But their despairing question indicated the power of the sense of military duty and masculine honour that were among the factors that kept many German soldiers fighting on the Western Front to the bitter end.6 Reactions on the home front were mixed as well. On 28 July 1944, the Security Service of the SS dutifully claimed general popular relief that Hitler had escaped with his life, and the determination of the German people to carry on fighting. 'We hear again and again the view expressed that, if the attempt had succeeded, the only result would be the creation of another 1918.' People were anxious to know more. How long had the conspiracy been brewing? Who was behind it? Were British secret agents involved? For some, the leading role taken by Prussian aristocrats was a cause for anger. They were reported as saying 'that the aristocracy should be completely exterminated'. The involvement of so many army officers suggested to many an explanation for Germany's continuing defeats - they had been sabotaging the German war effort for months by holding back troops and munitions. Some even alleged that the problems of the war economy were also the result of sabotage.7 These views were strongly encouraged by Goebbels, who told Nazi Party officials on 8 August 1944 that the bomb plot explained why the German armies had been doing so badly over the past months. It was clear that traitorous generals had not wanted to win. They had been in league with the Allies to bring about Germany's defeat. These views were strongly encouraged by Goebbels, who told Nazi Party officials on 8 August 1944 that the bomb plot explained why the German armies had been doing so badly over the past months. It was clear that traitorous generals had not wanted to win. They had been in league with the Allies to bring about Germany's defeat.8 The public meetings that Goebbels had called for attracted large crowds, anxious to hear more details of the attempt. They were indeed described in one report as an implicit plebiscitary endorsement of Hitler and his regime. Goebbels himself concluded that the failed coup had had a cleansing effect, doing the regime more good than harm. The public meetings that Goebbels had called for attracted large crowds, anxious to hear more details of the attempt. They were indeed described in one report as an implicit plebiscitary endorsement of Hitler and his regime. Goebbels himself concluded that the failed coup had had a cleansing effect, doing the regime more good than harm.9 It was hardly surprising, however, that convinced Nazis and agents of the regime rushed to declare their faith in Hitler, in a situation in which anyone who showed the slightest sympathy with the conspirators was liable to be arrested, tortured, tried and executed. There was no possibility of an open reaction to the attempt. As the gendarmerie in the rural Bavarian district of Bad Aibling and Rosenheim reported on 23 July 1944: When the evening news was broadcast at 8 o'clock on Thursday the 20.7.1944 and before it the special announcement of the violent attack was made, there were among others some twelve farmers from the present reporting area sitting in a local inn. They listened to the special announcement quietly and with rapt attention. After the announcement, nobody dared say anything, and everyone sat silently at the tables.10 In Berchtesgaden, the Security Service of the SS reported that women in particular were desperate for the war to come to an end, and that some thought that Hitler's death might bring this about. 'In an air-raid bunker, after the alarm had sounded, one could hear a female voice in the dark: "Well, if only it had got him." '11 People could only trust themselves to say such things under cover of anonymity. In general, despite a temporary upsurge of relief, the attempt had no People could only trust themselves to say such things under cover of anonymity. In general, despite a temporary upsurge of relief, the attempt had no general general effect on popular morale. 'Nobody believes any more,' the gendarmerie report continued, 'that the war can be won.' And the popular mood was 'the worst imaginable'. effect on popular morale. 'Nobody believes any more,' the gendarmerie report continued, 'that the war can be won.' And the popular mood was 'the worst imaginable'.12 Most people had more important things to worry about than the coup attempt. Two days after Stauffenberg exploded his bomb, the SS Security Service reported that the worsening military situation was causing a continuing deterioration in morale. Worse still, 'a kind of creeping mood of panic has gripped numerous national comrades, especially a large number of women. The comments we have collected predominantly reflect dismay, perplexity and despondency.' Most people had more important things to worry about than the coup attempt. Two days after Stauffenberg exploded his bomb, the SS Security Service reported that the worsening military situation was causing a continuing deterioration in morale. Worse still, 'a kind of creeping mood of panic has gripped numerous national comrades, especially a large number of women. The comments we have collected predominantly reflect dismay, perplexity and despondency.'13 Even in western Germany, events on the Eastern Front were said to be putting everything else into the shadow. At best, people were still expressing their confidence in Hitler; at worst, they were saying that the military situation was more desperate than they could imagine - 'and,' one report noted, 'the pessimists are in the majority'.14 Letters from soldiers on the Eastern Front, and reports from those invalided out, were making clear that the German forces were not engaged in a planned withdrawal but a wholesale retreat. Entire units were running away or giving themselves up to the enemy, and the troops 'already have no more desire to fight'. Letters from soldiers on the Eastern Front, and reports from those invalided out, were making clear that the German forces were not engaged in a planned withdrawal but a wholesale retreat. Entire units were running away or giving themselves up to the enemy, and the troops 'already have no more desire to fight'.15 'The mood in many troop units is said by men on leave to be even worse than at home because the great majority of the soldiers do not believe in victory any more.' 'The mood in many troop units is said by men on leave to be even worse than at home because the great majority of the soldiers do not believe in victory any more.'16 The deterioration in popular morale continued through the remaining months of the war unaffected by the news of the bomb plot. People were beginning to flee from the territories that lay in the path of the advancing Red Army, taking their money and possessions with them. On 10 August 1944 the SS Security Service was reporting 'war-weariness amongst the majority of national comrades', alongside a willingness (the reporter felt perhaps obliged to add) to fight on to victory in what he revealingly called the 'final battle'. The deterioration in popular morale continued through the remaining months of the war unaffected by the news of the bomb plot. People were beginning to flee from the territories that lay in the path of the advancing Red Army, taking their money and possessions with them. On 10 August 1944 the SS Security Service was reporting 'war-weariness amongst the majority of national comrades', alongside a willingness (the reporter felt perhaps obliged to add) to fight on to victory in what he revealingly called the 'final battle'.17 Hitler and Goebbels might have blamed the generals for systematically undermining the war effort for years, but if this had been the case, some asked, then either the Nazi leaders had been extremely stupid or careless in allowing this to happen or they had known about it but not chosen to let the German people into their confidence. The consequence, so the Security Service of the SS reported from Stuttgart at the beginning of August 1944, was 'that most national comrades, even those who up to now have believed unwaveringly, have now lost all faith in the Leader'. Hitler and Goebbels might have blamed the generals for systematically undermining the war effort for years, but if this had been the case, some asked, then either the Nazi leaders had been extremely stupid or careless in allowing this to happen or they had known about it but not chosen to let the German people into their confidence. The consequence, so the Security Service of the SS reported from Stuttgart at the beginning of August 1944, was 'that most national comrades, even those who up to now have believed unwaveringly, have now lost all faith in the Leader'.18 By November 1944, the same office was reporting that Hitler's reputation had, if possible, declined still further. One citizen said: 'It's always being claimed that the Leader was sent to us by God. I don't doubt it. The Leader was sent to us by God, not to rescue Germany but to destroy it. Providence has decided to annihilate the German people, and Hitler is its executioner.' By November 1944, the same office was reporting that Hitler's reputation had, if possible, declined still further. One citizen said: 'It's always being claimed that the Leader was sent to us by God. I don't doubt it. The Leader was sent to us by God, not to rescue Germany but to destroy it. Providence has decided to annihilate the German people, and Hitler is its executioner.'19 Successive reports could only note a further decline in morale as the Red Army moved ever further towards, and then into, Germany itself. A seemingly endless series of defeats against the invading Allied armies in the west only added to the deepening gloom. Diplomatically, too, the Reich was becoming increasingly isolated. Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on 2 August 1944 and Bulgaria declared war on Germany as Soviet troops entered the country on 8 September 1944. After the remnants of the Romanian army disintegrated in the face of the Soviet advance, leading to the annihilation of eighteen German divisions in Romania by the Red Army, Marshal Antonescu was ousted from power on 23 August 1944 and Romania went over to the Allies, hoping to regain the territory it had lost to Hungary in 1940. All this threatened to cut off German forces in Greece, and on Hitler's authorization they withdrew into Macedonia in October, also evacuating Albania and southern Yugoslavia. The defection of Turkey in particular caused yet further demoralization in Germany itself.20 The loss of Romania brought the Red Army to the borders of Hungary, where the ruler, Admiral H'rthy, organized fierce resistance to the invaders. H'rthy realized, however, that the game was up and wrote to Stalin claiming, somewhat implausibly, that he had joined the war on the German side in 1941 as a result of a misunderstanding. On 15 October 1944 he announced that Hungary was no longer allied to the Reich. The loss of Romania brought the Red Army to the borders of Hungary, where the ruler, Admiral H'rthy, organized fierce resistance to the invaders. H'rthy realized, however, that the game was up and wrote to Stalin claiming, somewhat implausibly, that he had joined the war on the German side in 1941 as a result of a misunderstanding. On 15 October 1944 he announced that Hungary was no longer allied to the Reich.21 Hitler had already planned his counter-move to this long-anticipated defection. On the same day as Hungary left the alliance, Otto Skorzeny, acting on Hitler's orders, broke into the fortress in Budapest where Admiral H'rthy and his government were ensconced, and kidnapped the Hungarian leader's son, also called Mikl's, rolling him up in a blanket and rushing him out of the building to a waiting lorry. Within a short time, the younger H'rthy was incarcerated in the concentration camp at Mauthausen. Hitler now informed H'rthy that his son would be shot and the fortress stormed unless he surrendered. The admiral gave in, resigned and was taken off to a relatively comfortable exile in a Bavarian castle. In the meantime, Ferenc Sz'lasi, the leader of the fascist Arrow Cross, seized power with the backing of the Germans. Sz'lasi lost no time in passing new laws reconstructing the state along fascist-style, corporate lines. His men began murdering surviving Jews across Budapest, assisted in some cases by Catholic priests, one of whom, Father Kun, got into the habit of shouting 'In the name of Christ, fire!' as the Arrow Cross paramilitaries levelled their guns at their Jewish victims. As 35,000 Jewish men who had been rounded up into labour battalions to construct fortifications around the Hungarian capital started crossing the Danube into the city in a hasty retreat before the oncoming Red Army, Arrow Cross units blocked their way, killed them on the banks or bridges and threw the bodies into the water. So many bodies were found lying around in the streets that even the police complained. On 18 October 1944 Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest again and organized the arrest of another 50,000 Jews, who were sent out of the city on foot in the direction of Vienna with the idea of working on fortifications there: they were poorly provisioned and brutally maltreated, and many thousands died on the futile march - so many, indeed, that Sz'lasi stopped the deportations in mid-November, perhaps now fearing, justifiably enough, that he would be held to account for them. In Budapest itself the remaining Jews were confined to ghetto quarters. By January 1945 there were 60,000 living in just 4,500 dwellings, sometimes fourteen to a room. Subject to repeated raids by Arrow Cross murder squads, the inhabitants were also soon starving, disease-ridden and suffering rapidly escalating death rates. A small group of international diplomats in the Hungarian capital, among whom the Swedish representative Raoul Wallenberg was particularly prominent, made strenuous and partially successful attempts to protect the Jews, and succeeded in getting nearly 40,000 sets of exemption papers - many of them forged - recognized by the Arrow Cross.22 This was not quite the last major extermination of Jews in a European country. In August 1944 it became clear that the Slovakian military, led by the Defence Minister, were plotting to overthrow the puppet government that had run the country under German tutelage since 1939, and switch sides to the Allies. As a consequence, German troops occupied Slovakia on 29 August 1944. A full-scale uprising ensued. The nationalist and pro-Soviet insurgents could not co-ordinate their activities, however. The Western Allies thought it unnecessary to fly in support since the Red Army was already on the border. The Soviet forces failed to move quickly enough to come to the partisans' aid. By October 1944 the uprising had been brutally suppressed. Meanwhile the German occupiers had lost no time in ordering the resumption of the deportation of the country's remaining Jews, which the collaborationist regime there had brought to a halt in October 1942 after some 58,000 had been taken away to the extermination camps. The first trainloads left in September 1944 and continued until March 1945. By this time, almost 8,000 Slovakian Jews had been rounded up and deported to Auschwitz, more than 2,700 to Sachsenhausen and over 1,600 to Theresienstadt.23 Not only Himmler's SS but also the German civilian and military authorities thus continued to pursue the Jews long after it had become clear to most of them that the war was lost. Revenge for the Jews' imagined role in the imminent defeat had become their prime motivation, and they pursued it to the bitter end. Not only Himmler's SS but also the German civilian and military authorities thus continued to pursue the Jews long after it had become clear to most of them that the war was lost. Revenge for the Jews' imagined role in the imminent defeat had become their prime motivation, and they pursued it to the bitter end.

II.

A popular joke told in the summer of 1944 had a naive young man being shown a globe, on which, it was explained, the large green area was the Soviet Union, the huge red area the British Empire, the enormous mauve area the United States and the vast yellow area China. 'And that little blue spot?' he asks, pointing to the middle of Europe. 'That is Germany!' 'Oh! Does the Leader know how small it is?'24 The rapid deterioration of the Reich's military situation in 1943-4 was obvious to everyone. As the self-proclaimed greatest military leader of all time, Hitler felt instinctively that Germany would still be winning if the generals had not been constantly undermining his strategy, disobeying his commands and deliberately retreating in the face of an enemy he alone knew how to defeat. Only a last effort, and everything would come right. He appointed Goebbels Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort on 18 July 1944, an initiative stemming from Goebbels himself, who was claiming his reward for his loyalty and presence of mind during the coup attempt. Goebbels's rival, Hermann Go*ring, felt himself outflanked, and sulked on his estate at Rominten for several weeks afterwards. In alliance now with Martin Bormann, Goebbels unleashed a flurry of measures, many of which were to be implemented not by the cumbersome bureaucracy of the state but by the Party Regional Leaders in the provinces. They concentrated in particular on trying to draft yet more men into the armed forces. This brought him up against Speer, who wanted more men for the arms industry. But Hitler overruled his former favourite. With the Leader's backing, Goebbels and Bormann summoned the Armaments Minister and told him bluntly that he was under their command. He was to make no further attempts to influence Hitler directly. The rapid deterioration of the Reich's military situation in 1943-4 was obvious to everyone. As the self-proclaimed greatest military leader of all time, Hitler felt instinctively that Germany would still be winning if the generals had not been constantly undermining his strategy, disobeying his commands and deliberately retreating in the face of an enemy he alone knew how to defeat. Only a last effort, and everything would come right. He appointed Goebbels Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort on 18 July 1944, an initiative stemming from Goebbels himself, who was claiming his reward for his loyalty and presence of mind during the coup attempt. Goebbels's rival, Hermann Go*ring, felt himself outflanked, and sulked on his estate at Rominten for several weeks afterwards. In alliance now with Martin Bormann, Goebbels unleashed a flurry of measures, many of which were to be implemented not by the cumbersome bureaucracy of the state but by the Party Regional Leaders in the provinces. They concentrated in particular on trying to draft yet more men into the armed forces. This brought him up against Speer, who wanted more men for the arms industry. But Hitler overruled his former favourite. With the Leader's backing, Goebbels and Bormann summoned the Armaments Minister and told him bluntly that he was under their command. He was to make no further attempts to influence Hitler directly.25 Goebbels's renewed drive to 'total war' produced a series of labour-saving measures, as three-quarters of the staff of the Reich Culture Chamber were made redundant, and theatres, orchestras, newspapers, publishing houses and other institutions deemed inessential to the war effort were cut back or closed down. There was a fresh clampdown on consumer goods industries. Hitler himself vetoed Goebbels's suggestion to stop sending newspapers and magazines to soldiers at the front on the grounds that this would damage morale, but other cuts in the postal service went ahead, and redundancies in local government and administration brought further efficiency savings. The upper age-limit for women to be drafted into war industries was raised from forty-five to fifty-five, and some 400,000 women, most of them foreign, were moved out of domestic service into war-relevant areas of the economy. The attempt to merge the Prussian Ministry of Finance, over which the bomb plot conspirator Popitz had presided, into the Reich Finance Ministry proved too complex to resolve, but overall, the measures freed up more than 450,000 additional men for the war. With further men taken out of reserved occupations in war industries, all of this helped send a million more men to the front from the beginning of August to the end of December 1944. Yet over the same period, more than a million soldiers were killed, captured or wounded, and the area the Reich covered, and hence the number of people it could call upon, were shrinking fast. The Reich was running faster and faster to try to stay in the same place.26 By 20 November 1944 the Red Army had come within striking distance of Hitler's field headquarters at Rastenburg, and Hitler, yielding to the entreaties of Martin Bormann, left it for good, making his way back to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Yet the Red Army's advance now slowed down as it reached Germany itself, where the front narrowed between the Baltic and the Carpathians, and the German forces had interior communication lines. The Soviet forces were exhausted after their rapid advances, they had to regroup and reorganize themselves, and it took some time to solve the supply problems caused by the narrower gauge of the railway lines in the areas they were now entering, compared to the broad gauge used in the Soviet Union and the Balkans. The pause allowed Hitler to undertake one last attempt to reverse the situation in the west, where supply and manpower difficulties had also slowed down the Allied advance. By early December, the German armies had been forced back behind the fortifications of the West Wall. Hitler planned to break out with thirty freshly formed and equipped divisions, spearheaded by an armoured punch through the defences of the Americans, for whose fighting qualities he had nothing but contempt. This was to be a repeat in many ways of the campaign of 1940, dividing the enemy forces, pinning them against the sea and destroying them in a massive encirclement. The blow this would strike was intended to keep the Western Allies at bay while a new generation of 'wonder-weapons' was developed that would decisively turn the fortunes of war in Hitler's favour. If the offensive was really successful, indeed, and managed to capture Antwerp, Hitler and Jodl thought that it might even bring the Western Allies to the negotiating table. The generals and commanders to whom Jodl put the plans on 3 November 1944 dismissed it as wholly unrealistic. A rapid advance to the coast in 1940, against a confused and unprepared enemy, was one thing; under the conditions of December 1944, with a massively superior force ranged against them, and hampered by shortages of men, munitions and above all fuel, it was quite another. But Jodl told them there was no alternative. A mere tactical victory such as the recapture of Aachen would not suffice.27 On 11 December 1944, Hitler arrived at his new field headquarters near Bad Nauheim, close to the launch-point for the offensive. On 16 December 1944 the attack began. Aided both by surprise and by bad weather that prevented Allied planes from flying, 200,000 German troops and 600 tanks with 1,900 artillery pieces broke through the American lines, which were defended by 80,000 soldiers and 400 tanks, and pushed forwards 65 miles towards the river Meuse. But they soon began running out of petrol, and on Christmas Eve American armour fought them to a halt, supported by continual bombardment of the German lines by 5,000 Allied aircraft once the weather improved. Although the British, under the over-cautious Bernard Montgomery, failed to react quickly enough to cut off the German forces now occupying a large salient that gave the encounter its name - the 'Battle of the Bulge' - the Americans under George Patton mounted a successful armoured counter-attack from the south. The German air force tried to neutralize Allied air supremacy by launching a series of raids with 800 fighters and bombers on Allied airfields on 1 January 1945, but this operation cost as many German planes as Allied ones - about 280 - and failed in its objective. A subsidiary German attack in Alsace also came to nothing. Frustrated by their failure to make the decisive breakthrough, the men of the SS First Panzer Division massacred a large number of American prisoners of war at Malm'dy on 17 December 1944. This simply served to enrage the American forces now resuming their advance towards Germany. Altogether some 80,000 German and 70,000 American troops were killed, wounded or reported missing in the battle, and each side lost around 700 tanks and armoured vehicles. For the Germans, these losses were irreplaceable. The Americans made good their losses with ease from the vast quantities of men and equipment continually being transported across the Channel into the combat zone. Hitler's last major counter-attack had failed. On 3 January 1945 he recognized reality and withdrew his main forces from the battlefield to defensive positions further east.28 Defeat now seemed inevitable. On 15 January 1945 Hitler boarded his special train and returned to Berlin. Defeat now seemed inevitable. On 15 January 1945 Hitler boarded his special train and returned to Berlin.29 Increasingly, Hitler and the Nazi leadership turned their thoughts not to victory, but to revenge. In particular, Hitler hoped to develop the means to pay back the Allied bombing campaign in its own coin, and some more. Although he had from the very beginning of his career regarded terror as a key means of fighting his enemies, he had not initially regarded bombing raids on Rotterdam, London and other cities as what Allied propaganda referred to as 'terror raids'. Even the Blitz on London was aimed above all at the docks, while the notorious attack on Coventry was mounted because of the city's key function in armaments production. The purpose of such raids was to weaken the British war economy and bring Churchill to the negotiating table, not, as Hitler explicitly noted, to terrorize the civilian population. In April 1942, following the British raid on L*beck, he had ordered the beginning of 'terror raids' on Britain. For many months, however, he lacked the means to undertake them to any effect. Meanwhile the rapidly intensifying Anglo-American raids on German towns and cities, during which - in 1943 - up to 70 per cent of high-explosive bombs and 90 per cent of incendiaries fell on residential areas - had created a widespread popular desire for retaliation, not in order to wreak revenge on the British but in order to force them to bring the destruction to a halt.

Propaganda Minister Goebbels was particularly exercised by the effects of the raids on popular morale. If G*ring ('a disaster' in Goebbels's view) had failed to provide adequate protection against the raids, then something needed to be done to convince people that the regime had not failed altogether. Somewhat callously, Hitler initially took the view that the destruction offered the opportunity for urban improvement ('From the aesthetic viewpoint,' he opined, 'the towns do not present all that good a picture. Most industrial cities are badly laid out, fusty and abominably built. Here, the British air raids will give us space').30 Nevertheless, he too became increasingly angered by the destruction, and declared that 'the British will stop only if their cities are destroyed ... Terror is broken by terror.' Nevertheless, he too became increasingly angered by the destruction, and declared that 'the British will stop only if their cities are destroyed ... Terror is broken by terror.'31 Characteristically, Goebbels favoured bombing the parts of British cities 'where the plutocrats live'.32 To demand this degree of precision, however, was clearly unrealistic. Moreover, the German air force had no four-engined bombers, no high-altitude bombers, and no specialized night-bombers. Senior officers were delaying production of new models by demanding that they should be capable of dive-bombing enemy infantry and tanks. G*ring declared in September 1942 that Germany's lack of long-distance bombers made him 'weep'. To demand this degree of precision, however, was clearly unrealistic. Moreover, the German air force had no four-engined bombers, no high-altitude bombers, and no specialized night-bombers. Senior officers were delaying production of new models by demanding that they should be capable of dive-bombing enemy infantry and tanks. G*ring declared in September 1942 that Germany's lack of long-distance bombers made him 'weep'.33 Nevertheless, the air force scraped together some 440 bombers, mostly older models like the Ju88, for a raid on London on the night of 21 - 2 January 1944, derisively nicknamed the 'Baby Blitz' by the British. About 60 per cent of the 475 tons of bombs carried as payload were incendiaries: this was to be a retaliatory raid, causing maximum damage to the English capital city's housing stock. In the event, however, only 30 tons fell on the target, and indeed only half the bombs managed to hit the English mainland at all. Another raid a week later was no better. More than 100 planes suffered mechanical problems and had to turn back. Half the new Heinkel 177s were lost, four of them when their engines caught fire. The machine still had not been properly tried and tested. Hitler called it a 'crap machine ... probably the worst machine that was ever produced'. Nevertheless, the air force scraped together some 440 bombers, mostly older models like the Ju88, for a raid on London on the night of 21 - 2 January 1944, derisively nicknamed the 'Baby Blitz' by the British. About 60 per cent of the 475 tons of bombs carried as payload were incendiaries: this was to be a retaliatory raid, causing maximum damage to the English capital city's housing stock. In the event, however, only 30 tons fell on the target, and indeed only half the bombs managed to hit the English mainland at all. Another raid a week later was no better. More than 100 planes suffered mechanical problems and had to turn back. Half the new Heinkel 177s were lost, four of them when their engines caught fire. The machine still had not been properly tried and tested. Hitler called it a 'crap machine ... probably the worst machine that was ever produced'.34 Two dozen or so further raids followed on a variety of targets from Portsmouth to Torquay, each involving around 200 aircraft, until losses and mechanical failures reduced the numbers to little more than 100 towards the end of the campaign, in April and May 1944. The damage done was not very significant. Except in the successful raids on London on 18, 20 and 24 February and 21 March 1944, most bombs failed to reach their target, and the total tonnage dropped was tiny compared to what was hitting Germany. Long before the offensive came to an end in May 1944, it was clear that something new was required. A range of 'miracle' or 'wonder-weapons' was under development already. Hitler and Goebbels held out the promise that these would soon reverse the fortunes of war and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Two dozen or so further raids followed on a variety of targets from Portsmouth to Torquay, each involving around 200 aircraft, until losses and mechanical failures reduced the numbers to little more than 100 towards the end of the campaign, in April and May 1944. The damage done was not very significant. Except in the successful raids on London on 18, 20 and 24 February and 21 March 1944, most bombs failed to reach their target, and the total tonnage dropped was tiny compared to what was hitting Germany. Long before the offensive came to an end in May 1944, it was clear that something new was required. A range of 'miracle' or 'wonder-weapons' was under development already. Hitler and Goebbels held out the promise that these would soon reverse the fortunes of war and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.35 III.

The first of these weapons to be deployed was a pilotless 'flying bomb'. It was named, with Hitler's immediate approval, the V-1 by Hans Schwarz van Berkl, a journalist on Goebbels's organ The Reich The Reich, on 17 June 1944. The name signified its function as a means of retaliation against the Allies, in revenge for the destruction of German towns and cities by Allied bombs, in a situation where raids by piloted bombers were clearly having no significant effect. The 'V' stood for Vergeltung Vergeltung, retribution, an appellation that already betrayed an unspoken assumption that their moral purpose was greater than their military effectiveness could ever be. The V-I resulted from experimental projects developed in the mid-1930s, when the engineer Paul Schmidt had begun work on a pulsejet system that would operate through rapid intermittent explosions. To speed up progress, the Air Ministry had asked the Argus air-engine company to take the project over in 1939, and the pulsejet engine was tried out on a small fighter plane in 1941-2. However, its extreme noisiness and the vibrations it caused made it impossible to use in manned aircraft. The alternative was an 'aerial torpedo', or what would now be called a cruise missile, and in June 1942 the Air Ministry gave its formal approval to a full development programme to be carried out by the aircraft manufacturing firm of Fieseler. It took another two years to reach the production stage. On 13 June 1944, at Hitler's urgent command, the first ten V-I flying bombs were catapulted from their coastal launch ramps towards London. Their fuel was calculated to run out over the British capital, when they would fall to the ground and explode. Londoners listened to the throbbing of the motors as the V-IS came over, waiting anxiously for them to cut out, then counting the seconds till the explosion. The psychological effect was considerable. Hitler ordered a massive boost in production late in June 1944. A total of 22,384 of the missiles were fired (1,600 from aircraft, the rest from launch ramps), but between a third and a half failed to reach their target. Some ran out of fuel too soon, while others were shot down by anti-aircraft fire or by fighter planes that could outfly the slow-moving missiles, whose speed of 375 mph they could easily better. Speer later thought that Hitler and his entourage, including himself, 'far overestimated its effects'. As the Allies overran the launch-sites, increasing numbers of V-IS were launched from Germany at Belgium, and particularly at Antwerp, which was hardly the purpose for which they had been designed. By September 1944 it was clear that the V-I had failed to break British morale, and the programme was scaled back; the few that were launched at London from within Germany itself in 1945 had to carry much smaller warheads to enable them to cover the longer distance, and had little effect.36 The second and more technically sophisticated of the two 'V' weapons was a ballistic rocket developed by the army as a rival to the air force's V-I. Scientists had first begun working on liquid-fuel rockets at the end of the 1920s, in part inspired by a Fritz Lang film, The Woman in the Moon The Woman in the Moon. A variety of groups, some backed by aircraft manufacturers like Hugo Junkers, experimented with various kinds of fuel, some of them dangerously volatile. By the late 1930s, a wealthy young aristocrat, Wernher von Braun, had emerged as the most important of the rocketry pioneers. Born in 1912, the young von Braun had grown up in a conservative, nationalist family; his father had lost his job as a civil servant as a result of supporting the Kapp putsch in 1920 and subsequently become a banker. In 1932 von Braun senior had become Minister of Agriculture in the reactionary government of Franz von Papen, but he had lost this job too when Hitler had come to power. The older von Braun's right-wing politics, however, provided his son with a set of attitudes that made it easy for him to enter the service of the Nazi government. After studying mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and completing a Ph.D. in applied physics, on liquid-fuel rocketry, Wernher von Braun got funding from the army and the air force, and set up a testing range at Peenem*nde, a remote wilderness of beaches, marshes and dunes on the northern end of the island of Usedom, on the Baltic coast, where his grandfather had spent holidays many years before, hunting ducks. Joining the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS three years later, von Braun possessed the credentials, connections, charm and charisma needed to persuade the military to increase the funds they devoted to this improbable project. The problems von Braun and his expanding team had to solve were formidable: the fuel had to be stable as well as powerful, the aerodynamics of the rockets had to be reliable, the guidance systems effective. Von Braun had to fight for allocations of key equipment like steel and indispensable components like gyroscopes, transmitters and turbopumps, and he had to acquire scientific experts and skilled workers against competition from areas of the war economy with a higher priority than the testing and development of experimental rockets.37 Crucially, however, von Braun managed to convince Albert Speer of the importance of the project. 'I liked mingling with this circle of non-political young scientists and inventors headed by Wernher von Braun - twenty-seven years old, purposeful, a man realistically at home in the future,' Speer later recalled.38 Visiting Peenem*nde shortly after his appointment as Armaments Minister, along with General Fromm, Field Marshal Milch and a representative of the navy, Speer watched the first firing of a remote-controlled rocket. 'With the roar of an unleashed giant,' he later recalled, 'the rocket rose slowly from its pad, seemed to stand upon its jet of flame for the fraction of a second, then vanished with a howl into the low clouds. Wernher von Braun was beaming.' Deeply impressed by this technical wizardry, Speer was being told by the technicians the 'incredible distances the projectile was covering, when, a minute and a half after the start, a rapidly swelling howl indicated that the rocket was falling in the immediate vicinity. We all froze where we stood. It struck the ground only a half a mile away.' Visiting Peenem*nde shortly after his appointment as Armaments Minister, along with General Fromm, Field Marshal Milch and a representative of the navy, Speer watched the first firing of a remote-controlled rocket. 'With the roar of an unleashed giant,' he later recalled, 'the rocket rose slowly from its pad, seemed to stand upon its jet of flame for the fraction of a second, then vanished with a howl into the low clouds. Wernher von Braun was beaming.' Deeply impressed by this technical wizardry, Speer was being told by the technicians the 'incredible distances the projectile was covering, when, a minute and a half after the start, a rapidly swelling howl indicated that the rocket was falling in the immediate vicinity. We all froze where we stood. It struck the ground only a half a mile away.'39 Not surprisingly, on hearing reports of the trial, Hitler was not convinced of the project's future. But his initial scepticism was overcome after Speer reported the first successful trial, on 14 October 1942, when one of the rockets travelled 120 miles and fell within two and a half miles of its target. Now it was Hitler's turn to be enthused. With a disregard for reality that was becoming obvious in other fields as well, he declared that 5,000 missiles had to be produced for launching against the British capital. A film presentation by von Braun convinced Hitler that the rocket would become 'the decisive weapon of the war'. Not surprisingly, on hearing reports of the trial, Hitler was not convinced of the project's future. But his initial scepticism was overcome after Speer reported the first successful trial, on 14 October 1942, when one of the rockets travelled 120 miles and fell within two and a half miles of its target. Now it was Hitler's turn to be enthused. With a disregard for reality that was becoming obvious in other fields as well, he declared that 5,000 missiles had to be produced for launching against the British capital. A film presentation by von Braun convinced Hitler that the rocket would become 'the decisive weapon of the war'.40 With this backing, the rocket programme now prospered. Before long, however, it became necessary to shift production away from Peenem*nde to somewhere more secure. Allied intelligence and reconnaissance flights had provided alarming information about this and other secret weapons sites, and a fleet of almost 600 bombers had been sent to the rocket development complex at Peenem*nde to destroy it. The site survived the raid on 18 August 1943, but a good deal of damage had been caused none the less. Keen to extend his own power over the programme, Himmler persuaded Hitler that production should be relocated to an underground site well away from the destructive attention of Allied bombers. Himmler commissioned a senior SS officer, Hans Kammler, to set up this new manufacturing centre. Kammler had an engineering background and had played a significant role in the Air Ministry before moving across to help manage the building of the extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Belzec. From early in 1942 he was in charge of the construction department of the SS Economy and Administration Head Office.40 Speer thought he bore an uncanny resemblance to Reinhard Heydrich, 'blond, blue-eyed, long-headed, always neatly dressed, and well bred', but also 'a cold, ruthless schemer, a fanatic in the pursuit of a goal, and as carefully calculating as he was unscrupulous'. Yet, at first, Speer got on well with Kammler, describing him as 'in many ways my mirror image', a middle-class university graduate who 'had gone far and fast in fields for which he had not been trained', a man whose 'objective coolness' he found attractive. Speer thought he bore an uncanny resemblance to Reinhard Heydrich, 'blond, blue-eyed, long-headed, always neatly dressed, and well bred', but also 'a cold, ruthless schemer, a fanatic in the pursuit of a goal, and as carefully calculating as he was unscrupulous'. Yet, at first, Speer got on well with Kammler, describing him as 'in many ways my mirror image', a middle-class university graduate who 'had gone far and fast in fields for which he had not been trained', a man whose 'objective coolness' he found attractive.41 After scouting various possibilities, Speer, Kammler and the rocket team settled on a complex of old gypsum mines near the town of Nordhausen in the Harz mountains in Thuringia. Kammler quickly began arranging the conversion of the mines into a new rocket production centre, known as the 'Central Works' ( After scouting various possibilities, Speer, Kammler and the rocket team settled on a complex of old gypsum mines near the town of Nordhausen in the Harz mountains in Thuringia. Kammler quickly began arranging the conversion of the mines into a new rocket production centre, known as the 'Central Works' (Mittelwerk) in a vague allusion to their geographical position, and organized the transfer of the salvageable equipment and papers from Peenem*nde.42 To carry out the construction work, the SS established a sub-camp of Buchenwald, known as 'Work Camp Dora', at the site. By October 1943, 4,000 prisoners, most of them Russian, Polish and French, were at work in the mine, blasting, digging and mixing and pouring concrete; by the end of November 1943 their number had doubled. 'Pay no attention to the human cost,' declared Kammler. 'The work must go ahead, and in the shortest possible time.'43 Rather than spend time and money on building barracks to house the prisoners outside the mines, as originally intended, Kammler had the SS wall off cross-tunnels 43 to 46 and got the prisoners to put together wooden bunk-beds, each of them four levels high. The damp atmosphere of the cold tunnels, where the temperature never rose above 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit), was made worse by constant dust from blasting work. There were no proper sanitary facilities, the water supplies were in no way sufficient, and the prisoners were unable to wash. Makeshift toilets consisted of large oil-drums sawn in half, with wooden boards placed over them. It was one of the SS guards' favourite jokes to approach the workers from behind as they sat on the boards and push them in. The prisoners, sleeping two or more to a bed, quickly became dirty, unkempt and lice-ridden. Rather than spend time and money on building barracks to house the prisoners outside the mines, as originally intended, Kammler had the SS wall off cross-tunnels 43 to 46 and got the prisoners to put together wooden bunk-beds, each of them four levels high. The damp atmosphere of the cold tunnels, where the temperature never rose above 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit), was made worse by constant dust from blasting work. There were no proper sanitary facilities, the water supplies were in no way sufficient, and the prisoners were unable to wash. Makeshift toilets consisted of large oil-drums sawn in half, with wooden boards placed over them. It was one of the SS guards' favourite jokes to approach the workers from behind as they sat on the boards and push them in. The prisoners, sleeping two or more to a bed, quickly became dirty, unkempt and lice-ridden.44 One French prisoner described his arrival at the site on 14 October 1943: One French prisoner described his arrival at the site on 14 October 1943: The Kapos and SS drive us on at an infernal speed, shouting and raining blows down on us, threatening us with execution . . . The noise bores into the brain and rends the nerves. The demented rhythm lasts for fifteen hours. Arriving at the dormitory . . . we do not even try to reach the bunks. Drunk with exhaustion, we collapse onto the rocks, onto the ground. Behind, the Kapos press us on. Those behind trample over their comrades. Soon over a thousand despairing men, at the limit of their existence and racked with thirst, lie there hoping for sleep which never comes; for the shouts of the guards, the noise of the machines, the explosions and the ringing of the bell reach them even there.45 Prisoners were kept in the tunnels all the time, only seeing the light of day once a week, when they had to stand outside for hours on end during the weekly roll-call. Many had dysentery; those who were too weak to make their way to the parade-ground were beaten mercilessly by the SS, often until they were dead.46 At his subsequent trial in Nuremberg, Speer denied ever having visited a labour camp of any kind, and did not mention the Dora-Central Works complex.47 In fact, however, as his Ministry's chronicle reveals, Speer visited the new V-2 production centre on 10 December 1943. He later professed himself appalled by the conditions under which the prisoners worked. According to his memoirs, he had immediately ordered the construction of proper accommodation for the prisoners, the improvement of sanitary facilities and the upgrading of their rations. In fact, however, as his Ministry's chronicle reveals, Speer visited the new V-2 production centre on 10 December 1943. He later professed himself appalled by the conditions under which the prisoners worked. According to his memoirs, he had immediately ordered the construction of proper accommodation for the prisoners, the improvement of sanitary facilities and the upgrading of their rations.48 But his office chronicle made no mention of any protest; on the contrary, on 17 December 1943 Speer wrote to Kammler congratulating him on his success in setting up the new production centre in two months, an achievement 'that far exceeds anything ever done in Europe, and is unsurpassed even by American standards'. But his office chronicle made no mention of any protest; on the contrary, on 17 December 1943 Speer wrote to Kammler congratulating him on his success in setting up the new production centre in two months, an achievement 'that far exceeds anything ever done in Europe, and is unsurpassed even by American standards'.49 It was not until 13 January 1944 that the Armaments Ministry's chief physician reported the terrible health situation at the camp, which led to a Ministry investigation. Deaths rose from eighteen in October 1943 to 172 in November 1943 and 670 in December 1943; within six months of the camp's opening, 2,882 prisoners had died. By March 1944 a crematorium had been installed to deal with the bodies. Only with the arrival of warmer weather and the completion of outside dormitories in May 1944 did the death rate begin to decline. It was not until 13 January 1944 that the Armaments Ministry's chief physician reported the terrible health situation at the camp, which led to a Ministry investigation. Deaths rose from eighteen in October 1943 to 172 in November 1943 and 670 in December 1943; within six months of the camp's opening, 2,882 prisoners had died. By March 1944 a crematorium had been installed to deal with the bodies. Only with the arrival of warmer weather and the completion of outside dormitories in May 1944 did the death rate begin to decline.50 Eventually, 20,000 of the 60,000 men forced to work at the V-2 production plant and live in Dora or one of no fewer than thirty sub-camps dotted around the site died of disease, starvation and maltreatment. Eventually, 20,000 of the 60,000 men forced to work at the V-2 production plant and live in Dora or one of no fewer than thirty sub-camps dotted around the site died of disease, starvation and maltreatment. 51 51 Meanwhile, no sooner had Speer fallen ill, on 18 January 1944, than Himmler moved in to try to take the enterprise over completely and turn it into yet another division of the burgeoning economic empire of the SS. Just over two months later, having failed to persuade Wernher von Braun to go along with his plans, Himmler had the rocketeer, his brother and two of his closest collaborators arrested on charges of belonging to a (completely fictional) left-wing resistance organization and trying to sabotage the rocket programme. Within a short time, however, Speer had pleaded with Hitler, during the Leader's visit to his sickbed, to order their release. Energetic pressure was also put on the Nazi Leader by Walter Dornberger, the army officer with overall responsibility for the V-2 programme. Himmler was obliged to order the rocketeers' release on the grounds of their scientific and technical indispensability, and his attempt to take the enterprise over came to nothing. Von Braun's arrest was to prove convenient when he came to defend his record during the Nazi years after the war by presenting himself as an unpolitical technical expert. His expertise was severely put to the test in the following months, as the rockets kept on blowing up during test flights and the first production models, rushed off the assembly-line at the Central Works, proved equally unsatisfactory. Not surprisingly, the poor physical condition, maltreatment and lack of expertise of the slave-workers led to workmanship of the poorest quality. Constant adjustments and refinements meant that no fewer than 65,000 changes were made to the blueprints by the end of the war. Even when conditions at Dora were improved by the provision of barracks and various amenities, the murderously brutal treatment of the prisoners by guards and overseers continued unabated, and there is no evidence that either Dornberger or von Braun, or for that matter Speer, ever did anything to try to improve the situation. Only in September 1944, when the teething troubles were finally solved, were the first rockets launched against London. Soon the factory was producing more than twenty a day, or up to 700 a month.52 By this time, the management of the production programme had been turned over from the army, which had lost enormously in power and influence after the July 1944 bomb plot, to a limited company set up by the rocketeers to try to forestall the growing influence of Kammler and the SS. Conditions at the Dora camp grew even worse with the arrival on 1 February 1945 of a new commandant, Richard Baer, who had previously served as the last commandant of Auschwitz, with orders to suppress the now-active resistance movement among the inmates. Baer had former German Communists bludgeoned to death and staged a number of mass executions, including one of 162 inmates in March 1945, which the other prisoners were forced to watch. Shortly afterwards the camp was evacuated. Only 600 workers, too sick to be moved, were left at Dora when Allied forces arrived, along with another 405 at a nearby sub-camp. The factory, together with the Peenem*nde facility, had succeeded in constructing about 6,000 rockets by this time; the Central Works factory also made several thousand V-1 flying bombs. Altogether, 3,200 V-2 rockets had been successfully fired, most of them not at Britain but at targets in Belgium. There was no defence against them: they came down almost vertically at an unstoppable speed, something like 2,000 miles an hour. But they could not carry more than a small conventional payload of a ton of high explosive, and so were unable to cause significant destruction. The total number of people killed by the rocket was no more than 5,000. The V-2 was thus, as its historian Michael Neufeld has remarked, 'a unique weapon: more people died producing it than died from being hit by it'.53 IV.

As early as the spring of 1942, as we have seen, General Fromm, who was to be arrested for his complicity in the bomb plot just over two years later, was already pessimistic about the outcome of the war. But Fromm did not despair completely. He was convinced that the only thing that could win the war in the face of the massive arms programmes being implemented by Britain, America and the Soviet Union would be a super-bomb being developed by a group of physicists under the leadership of the leading theoretical physicists Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg. The attempt made by some extreme Nazi scientists in the 1930s to reject theoretical physics, and especially the theory of relativity, as 'Jewish' had been successfully rebuffed by the physics community at a dramatic confrontation in Munich on 15 November 1940.54 Theory, it had resolved, was not Jewish but quintessentially German. A good deal of damage had been done in the meantime, however. The physicists pointed out that, while German scientists in 1927 had published forty-seven articles on nuclear physics, American and British scientists between them had managed only thirty-five. By 1939, however, the ratio had changed dramatically, and the Germans managed only 166 to the Anglo-Americans' 471. By this time, too, there were thirty particle accelerators in the USA against only one in Germany. Theory, it had resolved, was not Jewish but quintessentially German. A good deal of damage had been done in the meantime, however. The physicists pointed out that, while German scientists in 1927 had published forty-seven articles on nuclear physics, American and British scientists between them had managed only thirty-five. By 1939, however, the ratio had changed dramatically, and the Germans managed only 166 to the Anglo-Americans' 471. By this time, too, there were thirty particle accelerators in the USA against only one in Germany.55 The potential military consequences were serious. As Hahn had discovered in 1938, if uranium was bombarded by neutrons, it released enough energy to set up a chain reaction with an almost incalculable destructive power. Yet Germany had clearly fallen behind in the race to turn this discovery to practical military use. The potential military consequences were serious. As Hahn had discovered in 1938, if uranium was bombarded by neutrons, it released enough energy to set up a chain reaction with an almost incalculable destructive power. Yet Germany had clearly fallen behind in the race to turn this discovery to practical military use.56 Nevertheless, Heisenberg persisted in trying to develop a nuclear bomb. In doing so, however, he faced insurmountable problems. Although the Danish scientist Niels Bohr had worked out before the war that uranium-235 was the best material for this purpose, Heisenberg and Hahn never managed to calculate the quantity needed for a bomb, nor how to keep the fission process under control during production. They were right in thinking that 'heavy water' (an isotope of ordinary water) was needed for this latter purpose, and things looked set for success when the only factory in the world that could produce major quantities of it was captured in Norway in April 1940. But Allied intelligence realized its importance and effectively destroyed the factory in a series of raids by commandos and bomber planes in 1943. Even without this setback, Heisenberg's team failed to recognize the importance of graphite as well as heavy water in controlling nuclear fission. And even with a massive investment of money and resources it would take two, perhaps three years before an 'atomic bomb' could be ready. Like the army generals, Speer knew that the Third Reich simply did not have the leisure to wait. The investment needed would simply divert much-needed resources from meeting the immediate needs of the war economy: aircraft, guns, tanks, ammunition, submarines, men and supplies that were required to inflict total defeat on the Red Army within the next few months, cut off the Atlantic supply-lines of the British, and get ready to meet the onslaught that was undoubtedly coming from the Americans. When lobbied by Heisenberg, Speer was impressed by the idea and gave it some financial resources. But these did not go nearly far enough. As early as the summer of 1942 the basic decision had been made only to allow development on a relatively small scale because Hitler and the leading German economic managers did not expect the war to last more than a few months more, so that the atom-bomb would have to wait until after it was over. The army, which in 1940 had taken over the main centre of research in this area, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, where Heisenberg was based, handed it back to the Reich Research Council, since it no longer seemed to be of direct military relevance. 57 57 Had such a bomb existed, Speer thought later, Hitler would not have had any doubts or hesitations about using it. Watching a newsreel on the bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, ending with a montage showing a plane diving towards a map of the British Isles, which were then blown into the sky, Hitler had remarked to Speer: 'That is what will happen to them! That is how we will annihilate them!' Using funds provided by Speer, Heisenberg and his team built a cyclotron that succeeded in splitting an atomic nucleus by the summer of 1944. But there was not enough uranium available to go much further, particularly in view of the fact that Germany's stocks of the element were needed to provide cores for solid ammunition after supplies of wolframite from Portugal were cut off in 1943.58 Moreover, in any case, the usual infighting within the regime militated against the concentration of effort needed. For there was another team besides Heisenberg's. It was led by the young physicist Manfred von Ardenne, backed, somewhat improbably, by Reich Postal Minister Wilhelm Ohnesorge. The latter's friend the court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann persuaded Hitler to take a personal interest in the research. Ardenne was assisted by Kurt Diebner, an army physicist, and a team of about 100 other researchers spread across seventeen different institutions. They made some progress in developing a tactical nuclear weapon of a different kind to Heisenberg's super-bomb, using enriched plutonium. Later claims that Ardenne's team succeeded in carrying out test explosions on the Baltic island of R*gen in October 1944 and later in Thuringia on 3 and 12 March 1945 have met with some scepticism from historians, however. Here too, concentration camp prisoners were used in the construction process, and several hundred died while building the test site in March 1945. Whether or not Ardenne and Diebner were successful, it was all too late to make a difference. By this stage, the necessary supplies of uranium and plutonium could not be obtained. Moreover, in any case, the usual infighting within the regime militated against the concentration of effort needed. For there was another team besides Heisenberg's. It was led by the young physicist Manfred von Ardenne, backed, somewhat improbably, by Reich Postal Minister Wilhelm Ohnesorge. The latter's friend the court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann persuaded Hitler to take a personal interest in the research. Ardenne was assisted by Kurt Diebner, an army physicist, and a team of about 100 other researchers spread across seventeen different institutions. They made some progress in developing a tactical nuclear weapon of a different kind to Heisenberg's super-bomb, using enriched plutonium. Later claims that Ardenne's team succeeded in carrying out test explosions on the Baltic island of R*gen in October 1944 and later in Thuringia on 3 and 12 March 1945 have met with some scepticism from historians, however. Here too, concentration camp prisoners were used in the construction process, and several hundred died while building the test site in March 1945. Whether or not Ardenne and Diebner were successful, it was all too late to make a difference. By this stage, the necessary supplies of uranium and plutonium could not be obtained.59 Hitler's backing was also no more than half-hearted, because he still believed at bottom that nuclear physics was a Jewish discipline, as did the Ministry of Education, which did nothing to support research in this area. In any case, even if the money, the men and the materials had been available, time was not. Germany lacked the resources that the United States devoted to the creation of the atomic bomb; and even there, it took until 1945 before the Manhattan Project, with its billions of dollars, huge numbers of scientists and limitless supply of materials, came up with a usable weapon. Hitler's backing was also no more than half-hearted, because he still believed at bottom that nuclear physics was a Jewish discipline, as did the Ministry of Education, which did nothing to support research in this area. In any case, even if the money, the men and the materials had been available, time was not. Germany lacked the resources that the United States devoted to the creation of the atomic bomb; and even there, it took until 1945 before the Manhattan Project, with its billions of dollars, huge numbers of scientists and limitless supply of materials, came up with a usable weapon.60 Potentially just as destructive were the nerve gases being developed by the I. G. Farben combine. In 1938 I. G. Farben scientists Schrader, Ambros, R*diger and Van der Linde had synthesized an extremely deadly organiphosphorus compound which they christened Sarin, after their surnames. As a director of I. G. Farben and head of the special committee in Speer's Ministry responsible for poison gas, Ambros was in a particularly strong position to develop such chemical agents, of which there was another one, called Tabun, ready to manufacture, and a third, called Soman, synthesized by scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, led by Richard Kuhn, early in 1944. By 1942, factory production of Sarin and Tabun had begun at a site north of Breslau. 12,000 tonnes of Tabun had been produced by June 1944. These nerve agents were tested on animals, and it has been alleged that they were also tried out on concentration camp inmates, though there is no hard evidence for this. But there were serious problems to overcome before they could be deployed. During the development stage, the nerve gases, which were lethal if even a tiny amount came into contact with the skin, had caused convulsions or other injuries in over 300 workers (many of them forced labourers) and at least ten fatalities. The Nazi leader of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley, a chemist by training, was none the less enthusiastic about the new chemical weapons: Albert Speer later recalled him saying at this time, over the inevitable glasses of strong wine, stammering with excitement: 'You know we have this new poison gas - I've heard about it. The Leader must do it. He must use it. Now he has to do it! When else! This is the last moment. You too must make him realize that it's time.' Hitler did indeed consider using nerve gas against the Red Army. But Speer knew that the factories producing basic ingredients had been damaged so badly in Allied bombing raids that this idea could not be put into practice.61 In any case, there was no known effective protection against the gases. It was simply too dangerous to deploy them on the battlefield. Supposing the wind turned and blew them back on the German troops? Putting them into bombs or missiles was almost as dangerous. Mistakes always occurred, and nobody could be certain of the direction the gas cloud would take when a gas-bomb went off. Hitler's Plenipotentiary for Chemical Warfare, Karl Brandt (who was also his personal doctor), was convinced, like other scientists, that the Allies' superior resources must mean that they were more advanced in the development and production of nerve gases. If Germany started to use them, he reasoned, then Allied air supremacy would mean that there would be no defence if the Allies decided to retaliate. In the autumn of 1944, reflecting this thinking, gas-mask production in Germany was rapidly increased, and millions of masks were manufactured within the space of a few months. In fact, the Allies did not possess modern nerve gases, though they did have stocks of phosgene and mustard gas. They too were well equipped with gas masks, which had been distributed in their millions to the British population even before the war began. Whether such simple devices would have offered any protection against Sarin or Tabun, however, is extremely doubtful.62 Flying-bombs, rockets, atom-bombs and nerve gases were far from being the only technologically advanced devices under development in Germany during the war. As Speer remarked, by 1944 there was a whole variety of wonder-weapons in preparation: We possessed a remote-controlled flying bomb, a rocket plane that was even faster than the jet plane, a rocket missile that homed on an enemy plane by tracking the heat rays from its motors, and a torpedo that reacted to sound and could thus pursue and hit a ship fleeing in a zigzag course. Development of a ground-to-air missile had been completed. The designer Lippisch had jet planes on the drawing board that were far in advance of anything so far known . . . We were literally suffering from an excess of projects in development. Had we concentrated on only a few types we would surely have completed some of them sooner.63 But none of these came to anything. The regime's inability to prioritize, based partly on in-fighting between different agencies, partly on a general overestimation of its ability to finance and construct such programmes, partly on a general underestimation of the time and resources needed to get from research and development to production, doomed them to failure. Instead of concentrating on the 'Waterfall' ground-to-air missile, for example, which in Speer's view would have played a vital role in reducing the impact of Anglo-American bombing raids, Hitler ordered a concentration of resources on the V-1 flying bomb and then the V-2 rocket. This left the missile programme to stagger on from one problem to another, denied the workforce and equipment that might have hastened its development to a point where it could actually have come into operation.64 Speer and others were aware of the lack of co-ordination; some projects were being continued despite their obvious lack of practical military relevance. Yet the perpetual struggle for power within the regime meant that no one could do anything about it. The costs of these projects were enormous: there were more operational staff employed at the V-2 site in Peenem*nde, for example, than there were on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. In the end, all these schemes imposed a huge financial burden on Germany without having any effect on the outcome of the war. Speer and others were aware of the lack of co-ordination; some projects were being continued despite their obvious lack of practical military relevance. Yet the perpetual struggle for power within the regime meant that no one could do anything about it. The costs of these projects were enormous: there were more operational staff employed at the V-2 site in Peenem*nde, for example, than there were on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. In the end, all these schemes imposed a huge financial burden on Germany without having any effect on the outcome of the war.65 It was a similar story with the jet-engined fighter, which might also have helped defend Germany's cities. The scientific and technological expertise was certainly available. By 1941 Ernst Heinkel had succeeded in developing and testing a jet engine, which was to be put into a revolutionary new fighter plane, the twin-engined Me262, giving it a speed of over 500 miles per hour. It first flew in July 1943. Speer was enthusiastic about the new aircraft, and blamed the subsequent failure to bring it into mass production on repeated interventions by Hitler, who first ordered a halt, then changed his mind but declared that it had to be a bomber instead of a fighter. Speer and many others, including the top commanders of the air force, tried to convince Hitler that the Me262 would be able to inflict enormous damage on the British and American bombers now devastating Germany's towns and cities if it was developed and deployed as a fighter plane. But Hitler took this as criticism of his military and technical expertise and became so irritated with these repeated attempts to get him to change his mind that he banned all discussion of the Me262 from the autumn of 1944 onwards. In any case, Allied bombing was disrupting the plane's development and manufacturing sites well before this stage had been reached. Thus few were produced. Fuel supplies were being destroyed, the necessary supplies of metal alloys to construct the plane in large numbers were lacking, and the time and facilities for training pilots to fly the plane were absent. Most important of all, however, much more time was needed to test and refine the design until the inevitable teething troubles were dealt with and the plane could be flown safely and effectively. The Air Ministry committed itself whole-heartedly to developing the aircraft; Messerschmitt simply lacked the time and resources to bring the project to fruition.66 High hopes were entertained for a new generation of submarines, equipped with powerful batteries that would enable them to remain submerged for long periods so that they could not be detected by radar. The new craft were built for speed so that they could overtake convoys and sink them before the accompanying destroyers could steam into action. The first of the new U-boats was delivered in June 1944, and over 150 had been built by February 1945. But they had been rushed into production before being properly tried and tested, and many of them succumbed almost immediately to teething troubles. In any case, without aerial reconnaissance they would have found it difficult to locate their targets. A crash programme of construction of a long-range reconnaissance aircraft, the Ju290, had to be called off in the summer of 1944 after the damage inflicted by Allied air raids on production centres had made the futility of the project clear. Soon afterwards, the U-boat bases on the French coast fell into Allied hands. The new U-boats did not succeed in sinking a single ship, though the priority given to the construction programme, and the hopes held out for its success, convinced Hitler that the commander of the U-boat fleet, Admiral D*nitz, was one of the few remaining leaders in the armed forces who still possessed the will to victory that he demanded.67 Another wonder-weapon, dubbed the V-3, was intended purely as a measure of revenge against the British. An enormous gun with a barrel over 150 metres long, it was intended to shoot shells all the way from the Continent to the middle of London, boosting them with small explosions as they went up the barrel and so increasing their velocity. It was still under development when Allied bombs destroyed the firing site, and by the time the facilities had been repaired the war was irrevocably lost.68 Yet another wonder-weapon, a four-stage rocket with powder instead of liquid fuel, was to lead eventually to the multi-stage, solid-fuel rockets of the postwar era, but the army never succeeded in producing more than a handful, which were launched from the end of 1944 against Antwerp, but overshot and fell into the sea. The only damage done by this weapon was when a trial firing sent a rocket whizzing towards a nearby farm, killing several chickens and a dog and injuring two cows. Yet another wonder-weapon, a four-stage rocket with powder instead of liquid fuel, was to lead eventually to the multi-stage, solid-fuel rockets of the postwar era, but the army never succeeded in producing more than a handful, which were launched from the end of 1944 against Antwerp, but overshot and fell into the sea. The only damage done by this weapon was when a trial firing sent a rocket whizzing towards a nearby farm, killing several chickens and a dog and injuring two cows.69 The list of wonder-weapons was seemingly endless. In early April 1945 Albert Speer encountered the Labour Front leader Robert Ley with Martin Bormann and others deep in discussion: The list of wonder-weapons was seemingly endless. In early April 1945 Albert Speer encountered the Labour Front leader Robert Ley with Martin Bormann and others deep in discussion: Ley came rushing towards me with the news: 'Death rays have been invented! A simple apparatus that we can produce in large quantities. I've studied the documentation; there's no doubt about it. This will be the decisive weapon!' With Bormann nodding confirmation, Ley went on, stuttering as always, to find fault with me. 'But of course your Ministry rejected the inventor. Fortunately for us, he wrote to me. But now you personally must get this project going. Immediately. At this moment there's nothing more important.'70 Speer's team soon found that the inventor was an eccentric amateur who was asking for equipment so out of date that it had not been manufactured for forty years.71 In the end, the main significance of the wonder-weapons was as a propaganda device that offered hope to those who still wanted Nazism to win. The German media carried lurid stories of the devastation caused by the V-1 and V-2, trying to satisfy people's demand for effective retaliatory action on the British that would bring the bombing raids to an end. Many of these were invented. In all, fewer than 6,000 V-1s fell on Britain and just over 1,000 V-2s. 31,600 houses were destroyed, mostly in London, and nearly 9,000 people were killed by the two weapons, with 24,000 being injured. This damage did not compare to the devastation inflicted by Allied bombing in Germany, and in no way met the demand for massive retaliation. People called the V-1 the Volksverdummer Nr 1 Volksverdummer Nr 1 (Stultifier of the People Number 1) or the (Stultifier of the People Number 1) or the Versager Nr 1 Versager Nr 1 (Failure Number 1). Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry was aware of this scepticism. So the co-ordinated media pumped out vague promises of new, as yet unspecified wonder-weapons of a far greater destructiveness. As early as 19 February 1943 Hitler was talking in public of 'hitherto unknown, unique weapons' that were on the way and would turn the tide of war. (Failure Number 1). Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry was aware of this scepticism. So the co-ordinated media pumped out vague promises of new, as yet unspecified wonder-weapons of a far greater destructiveness. As early as 19 February 1943 Hitler was talking in public of 'hitherto unknown, unique weapons' that were on the way and would turn the tide of war.72 Yet such promises soon lost any potency they might have had. Even in November the same year, a joke about them was doing the rounds. It revealed how well people knew that Germany's lack of resources was losing the war. '1950,' so went the imaginary report. 'Meeting in the Leader's headquarters about the date fixed for Vengeance. It is postponed once more because there is no agreement on whether the two airplanes should fly side-by-side or one in front of the other.' Yet such promises soon lost any potency they might have had. Even in November the same year, a joke about them was doing the rounds. It revealed how well people knew that Germany's lack of resources was losing the war. '1950,' so went the imaginary report. 'Meeting in the Leader's headquarters about the date fixed for Vengeance. It is postponed once more because there is no agreement on whether the two airplanes should fly side-by-side or one in front of the other.'73 Towards the end of the war even the most optimistic and convinced followers of Nazism were beginning to have their doubts about the wonder-weapons. On 3 September 1944 Inge Molter wrote to her husband Alfred: Fred, darling, we've got to keep going until the new weapons are ready, it can't be that the enemy will force us on to our knees before that happens. Darling, I simply can't believe that. Will it all have been in vain, will there be no more Germany? No, darling, I can't believe that. But unfortunately this view is very gradually trickling through into the shops and everywhere that one sees several people gathered together .74 On 12 November 1944 a concerned radio listener sent a letter to the head of the news service in the Propaganda Ministry, Hans Fritsche, asking: 'Why haven't at least some of the new weapons been put into action, when the enemy is standing so close before our borders to the west and the east?' He did not receive an answer.75 By March 1945, Germany's situation, wrote the university student Lore Walb, was 'unspeakably bitter': By March 1945, Germany's situation, wrote the university student Lore Walb, was 'unspeakably bitter': And in this situation the government is still talking of victory! In my innermost heart I too do not want to believe that our people are destined to downfall. But if you only think about them just a little, things look very black. You can't see any chink of light any more. The new weapons haven't turned up, and will most likely never turn up. I certainly believe that they were planned and that construction of them was begun, but at this point they won't succeed in getting them ready any more.76 'Until the last few days,' reported the Security Service of the SS at the end of March 1945, 'people retained a remnant of the belief in a miracle that has been so skilfully and purposefully nurtured by the propaganda about the new weapons.' But this small residue of hope had to be seen as a kind of psychological defence mechanism to cope with the despair that was now overwhelming the German people. The report concluded: 'Nobody believes that we can still escape a catastrophe with the methods and possibilities of waging war that have existed up to now. The last spark of hope remains rescue from outside, or a completely exceptional set of circumstances, or a secret weapon of enormous power. This hope too is being extinguished.'77 V.

If new weapons could not rescue Germany, then perhaps new soldiers could. Already at the end of 1943 the call-up of increasingly older age-cohorts of men to the armed forces was prompting a variety of popular jokes. 'Vengeance will come,' so one went, 'when you see notices on the old people's homes: "Closed because of the call-up".'78 On 26 September 1944, in a desperate attempt to deal with the shortage of military personnel, Hitler ordered the creation of the 'People's Storm' ( On 26 September 1944, in a desperate attempt to deal with the shortage of military personnel, Hitler ordered the creation of the 'People's Storm' (Volkssturm), in which all men from the ages of sixteen to sixty were required to take up arms, and to undergo training for a final stand. They were to be organized by the Party, with the aim, Hitler said, of defending the German people against the attempt of its 'Jewish-international enemies' to annihilate them. All of them had to swear a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler, allegiance unto death. The official date for the launch of the People's Storm was chosen by Himmler as 18 October, the anniversary of the defeat of Napoleon's army in the 'Battle of the Nations' at Leipzig in 1813. This was to be a national uprising just like the one that - in popular legend - had ended French rule over Germany just over 130 years before. But the reality fell far short of the rhetoric. The men of the People's Storm were never going to be a very effective fighting force. They had no uniforms - there was no way of providing them by this stage - and had to come in their own clothes, bringing with them a rucksack, a blanket and cooking equipment. The arms and ammunition they needed were never fully forthcoming, and by the final stage of the war they were little more than a poor imitation of an army. Wandering out from his woodland hiding-place one day, the Social Democratic schoolboy Ullrich S. noted 400 men of the People's Storm come into the nearby village. 'Tired and exhausted, most of them were wearing uniforms borrowed from the air force, or plundered. A few only had their mufti. I only saw 5 soldiers in all who were bearing arms, the rest were not even carrying a bayonet.' With the characteristic disdain of the adolescent for the middle-aged, he added: 'Most of them were between 45 and 60 years of age. The whole crowd made a very pitiable impression on us. They almost looked like an old people's home on an outing.'79 This view was widespread. 'Two men with shovels are walking across the graveyard,' went one popular joke of the day. 'An old man shouts after them: "So you want to dig out reinforcements for the People's Storm?" ' This view was widespread. 'Two men with shovels are walking across the graveyard,' went one popular joke of the day. 'An old man shouts after them: "So you want to dig out reinforcements for the People's Storm?" '80 For the men of the People's Storm, however, enlistment was more than a joke. No fewer than 175,000 were eventually killed fighting against the professional armies of the Russians and the Western Allies. For the men of the People's Storm, however, enlistment was more than a joke. No fewer than 175,000 were eventually killed fighting against the professional armies of the Russians and the Western Allies.81 The draft for the People's Storm was deeply unpopular. People were well aware of its futility in military terms, and the sacrifices they were being asked to make were bitterly resented. In Stuttgart, the red posters put up around the city on 20 October 1944 advertising the creation of the People's Storm reminded citizens of the red placards used to announce executions. 'It's announcing an execution too,' people were reported saying, 'namely the execution of the German people.'82 Recruitment was completely indiscriminate. The draft for the People's Storm thus caught many unsuspecting and reluctant men in its net. One of its victims was the theatre critic, writer and pseudo-aristocratic fantasist Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen. When the People's Storm was set up he was living peacefully on his little estate in the Bavarian hills with his second wife, Irmgard, whom he had married in March 1935, and their three daughters, born in 1939, 1941 and 1943. At this point, his own history of lies and deceptions came back to haunt him. Reck had boasted widely of having enjoyed a heroic military career during the First World War as a Prussian officer, so it was scarcely surprising that the leadership of the People's Storm in the nearby town of Seebruck asked him to enlist. Recruitment was completely indiscriminate. The draft for the People's Storm thus caught many unsuspecting and reluctant men in its net. One of its victims was the theatre critic, writer and pseudo-aristocratic fantasist Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen. When the People's Storm was set up he was living peacefully on his little estate in the Bavarian hills with his second wife, Irmgard, whom he had married in March 1935, and their three daughters, born in 1939, 1941 and 1943. At this point, his own history of lies and deceptions came back to haunt him. Reck had boasted widely of having enjoyed a heroic military career during the First World War as a Prussian officer, so it was scarcely surprising that the leadership of the People's Storm in the nearby town of Seebruck asked him to enlist.

Reck, who had in fact never been on active service and never fired a shot at anybody in his life, ignored the request. Four days later, on 13 October 1944, he was arrested on the orders of the military recruitment office in Traunstein for undermining the German military effort and imprisoned for a week. The Gestapo now had their eye on Reck. They knew him apart from anything else as the author of books whose thrust was unmistakeably anti-Nazi, such as his study of the Anabaptists' reign of terror in sixteenth-century M*nster (subtitled 'History of a Mass Delusion') and his account of Charlotte Corday's assassination of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, both published in 1937.

Unable to get at him on the basis of such subversive books because they had after all been published perfectly legitimately in Germany, with the approval of Goebbels's censorship apparatus, the Gestapo acted instead upon a denunciation passed to them by the director of the publishers Knorr and Hirth, in Munich, Alfred Salat, who had seen a letter sent to his colleague Fritz Hasinger by Reck on 10 July 1944 about his royalties. An aside in the letter that referred to the 'Mark of today' as being worth 'only half of what you get elsewhere for a more powerful coinage', coupled with general if rather vague complaints about the way publishers had treated their authors since 1933, was enough to have Reck arrested on 29 December 1944 on the charge of 'insulting the German currency' and 'statements denigrating the state'. When the jail where he was being held in Munich was destroyed by bombing, on 7-8 January 1945, Reck was transferred with the other prisoners to the concentration camp at Dachau, where the Gestapo ordered him to be kept for further interrogation. Conditions in the camp worsened rapidly in the last months of the war, and Reck soon fell ill. He was transferred to the block reserved for the sick, and, though he recovered sufficiently at one time to be released back into normal custody in the camp, he became sick again, and died at 8.30 a.m. on 16 February 1945. The death certificate gave the cause of death as enterocolitis, but a number of witnesses, including Reck's neighbour in the hospital block, the camp doctor who attended him in the final days and saw him die and the medical clerk in the camp, subsequently testified that he had died of typhus, a disease the presence of which in the camp officials even at this late stage were eager to deny.83 Not only older civilians like Reck, but also young boys and, increasingly, girls, were drafted in to man anti-aircraft guns and searchlights during bombing raids and take part in the war effort in other ways. Even Party officials were complaining in October 1944 of the 'recruitment of age-cohorts that are scarcely able to carry out any practical tasks', as adolescents from the Hitler Youth were called up for work on building defences 'on almost all borders of the Reich'.84 On 17 March 1945, for example, all fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old pupils of the elite Napola secondary school at Oranienstein were enlisted to man the western defences. Five days later an SS instructor arrived to teach the other pupils how to use hand-held anti-tank guns. On 17 March 1945, for example, all fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old pupils of the elite Napola secondary school at Oranienstein were enlisted to man the western defences. Five days later an SS instructor arrived to teach the other pupils how to use hand-held anti-tank guns.85 Women too were drafted into the armed forces as auxiliaries and subjected to military discipline. One young East Prussian woman told how her unit of raw recruits had been together for three weeks, learning how to use a pistol, when enemy fighter-planes strafed their training camp. One girl who was on guard outside the camp ran for cover. For this she was condemned to death: Women too were drafted into the armed forces as auxiliaries and subjected to military discipline. One young East Prussian woman told how her unit of raw recruits had been together for three weeks, learning how to use a pistol, when enemy fighter-planes strafed their training camp. One girl who was on guard outside the camp ran for cover. For this she was condemned to death: We were all forced to stand by the fence and watch our comrade being shot . . . A whole series of girls fainted. Then we were driven back to the camp . . . The impression that this execution had made on us was indescribable. All of us did nothing but stay in bed and cry for the whole day. None of us went to work. For this we were all locked into cells . . . We had to stay there for 4 days on nothing but bread and water. We were allowed to take a copy of My Struggle My Struggle or the Bible with us, but I declined the offer. or the Bible with us, but I declined the offer.86 The futility of this final draft of young women into the armed forces was nowhere clearer than in the case of the twenty-three-year-old Rita H., a seamstress, whose duties consisted of little more than helping the evacuation of army administrative offices, including the burning of incriminating documents. As the women tried to light a fire in the pouring rain, 'the singed papers and files were lying around the whole area, for the wind was repeatedly rummaging through our little heaps of paper. It was strange,' she added, writing as a pious Catholic, 'and yet wonderful to stand there like that and in a way to experience the downfall of a Godless government.'87' W E ' L L TAKE A WORLD WITH U S' U S'

I.

Hitler's last speech, broadcast on 30 January 1945, the twelfth anniversary of his appointment as Reich Chancellor, aroused more sympathy than enthusiasm among his listeners. He did not even bother to hold out the hope that the 'wonder-weapons' would turn the situation around. Instead, he railed as ever against the 'Jewish-international world conspiracy' that was hell-bent on the annihilation of Europe. Germans, he said, had to continue resisting until victory was achieved. There was to be no stab in the back as there had been in the First World War. Not even committed Nazis found the speech inspirational. As Melita Maschmann later wrote: During the last months of the war I always had to fight back tears when I heard Hitler's voice on the radio or saw him on the newsreels. One's conscious mind might refuse to recognize the signs of an imminent collapse, which were becoming more and more obvious, but the immediate impressions one received through one's eyes and ears could not be falsified, and one's heart was gripped with fear at the appalling truth: the newsreels showed an ageing man, who walked with a stoop and glanced anxiously about him. His voice sounded shrill with despair. Was he, then, destined to fail? For us he embodied the unprecedented effort that had made the German nation take over the government of the continent. In looking at him one saw the sum total of all the countless sacrifices of lives, health and property which that effort had demanded. Had all this been in vain?88 Many of the most committed Nazis, or the most naive, continued to hope against hope that it had not. One fifteen-year-old girl, whose entire education had been aimed not least at building up an image of Hitler as a father-figure, could write in her diary after recording the latest military disasters: 'Our poor, poor Leader, he can't be sleeping at night any more, and yet he's had Germany's good in mind.'89 The tone of her remarks was far from exceptional in such circles. Now trained as an air force officer, Albert Molter joined in a party held to listen to Hitler's speech in his officers' mess. Patriotic songs were sung, and extracts from Hanns Johst's play Schlageter Schlageter were performed. were performed.90 Then the radio was switched on and everyone settled down to listen. 'As always,' Albert wrote to his wife Inge, 'it was wonderful to hear the Leader's voice. How heavy must be the burden he bears. Seen in this way it's almost mean to listen to the Leader's words in the hope that they will bring a decision. But actually a decision has been taken. No miracle will rescue us except that of German grit.' Then the radio was switched on and everyone settled down to listen. 'As always,' Albert wrote to his wife Inge, 'it was wonderful to hear the Leader's voice. How heavy must be the burden he bears. Seen in this way it's almost mean to listen to the Leader's words in the hope that they will bring a decision. But actually a decision has been taken. No miracle will rescue us except that of German grit.'91 In response, his wife compared the cause of National Socialism to that of Christianity, and Hitler's supposed sufferings to those of Jesus. Christ's life, she recalled, had ended in crucifixion. 'Fred, darling,' she asked her husband, 'are we to be asked for a similar sacrifice so that our idea can last for ever?' In response, his wife compared the cause of National Socialism to that of Christianity, and Hitler's supposed sufferings to those of Jesus. Christ's life, she recalled, had ended in crucifixion. 'Fred, darling,' she asked her husband, 'are we to be asked for a similar sacrifice so that our idea can last for ever?'92 Their identification with Hitler was complete. 'We must stand by Germany, by the Leader,' wrote Alfred to his wife on 9 March 1945, 'only in this way will we stand by ourselves.' Their identification with Hitler was complete. 'We must stand by Germany, by the Leader,' wrote Alfred to his wife on 9 March 1945, 'only in this way will we stand by ourselves.'93 Shortly afterwards, his unit was sent to Berlin to fight alongside the infantry defending the German capital. Within a few weeks, the British had occupied Nienburg, where Inge was now living, and arrested her Nazi father. 'Our beloved, beautiful Germany,' she wrote in despair to her husband, 'all her sacrifices, all her heroism in vain.' Shortly afterwards, his unit was sent to Berlin to fight alongside the infantry defending the German capital. Within a few weeks, the British had occupied Nienburg, where Inge was now living, and arrested her Nazi father. 'Our beloved, beautiful Germany,' she wrote in despair to her husband, 'all her sacrifices, all her heroism in vain.'94 He never replied. By the time she wrote this letter, he had gone missing in action. His body was never found. He never replied. By the time she wrote this letter, he had gone missing in action. His body was never found.95 While the most faithful of his followers wallowed in maudlin pity for his plight, Hitler's thoughts turned increasingly to suicide. Sheltering from an air raid in the bunker underneath the Reich Chancellery shortly after the German defeat in the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler briefly gave way to despair. The army had betrayed him, he said; the air force was a broken reed. 'I know the war is lost,' he told his adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, and he continued: 'Most of all, I'd like to put a bullet through my own head.' But if he was to perish, then Germany would perish too. 'We'll not capitulate. Never. We can go down. But we'll take a world with us.'96 When it came to public propaganda, Hitler and Goebbels now focused increasingly on the threat of annihilation they saw coming from the east. Fear was to galvanize Germans into fighting on. On 21 January 1945, in an editorial for the When it came to public propaganda, Hitler and Goebbels now focused increasingly on the threat of annihilation they saw coming from the east. Fear was to galvanize Germans into fighting on. On 21 January 1945, in an editorial for the Reich Reich, Goebbels ranted despairingly against 'the world conspiracy of a parasitic race', the Jews, who had succeeded in mobilizing the entire world against National Socialism. Despite everything, he proclaimed defiantly, 'not Europe, but the Jews themselves will perish'.97 Despite such bluster, it was clear to most Germans that the war was now drawing to a rapid close as the Red Army, now regrouped and re-equipped after its rapid advances of the previous months, resumed the attack once more. After the loss of the Romanian oilfields, the German army desperately needed to cling on to its source of supplies in Hungary or there would be virtually no fuel left to power its remaining tanks, lorries, mobile artillery and transport vehicles. Hitler refused permission to the German forces in Budapest to withdraw, and the Hungarian capital was soon surrounded by Soviet forces. A major offensive aimed at breaking the encirclement failed in February 1945, with the loss of nearly 30,000 men killed or captured. An armoured thrust by the Sixth SS Panzer Army, taken out of the Battle of the Bulge, failed just as decisively, and by the end of March the Red Army had occupied almost the whole of Hungary. In the north, the German forces in Latvia held out, but they were completely isolated. The main Soviet attack came in the central sector, in mid-January, when armoured formations of the Red Army took advantage of the removal of key German units to the Hungarian campaign to pulverize the German front and crush the remaining German armour. By the end of January, the Red Army had occupied most of prewar Poland. Some pockets of resistance remained, notably the city of Breslau, which held out until May. But the Red Army now stood on the river Oder, at the gates of the German Reich. It had captured the major industrial area of Silesia and gained control over the oilfields of Hungary, and it was nearing Vienna. Its commanders paused to regroup and build up munitions and supplies for the final offensive.98 In the west, after the failure of the German counter-offensive in the Battle of the Bulge, 1.5 million Americans, more than 400,000 British and Canadians and 100,000 Free French troops assembled at the end of January for an attack on the Rhine. They took more than 50,000 prisoners as they advanced, driving the German forces across the river. On 7 March 1945, as American troops reached Remagen, they noticed German soldiers desperately trying to blow up the bridge across the river, the last one left standing. Rushing up reinforcements, they drove across and established a bridgehead the other side, allowing many troops across before the bridge finally collapsed. By the time the Rhine had been crossed, another 300,000 German troops had been captured and a further 60,000 killed or wounded. The Americans pushed on eastwards, towards Saxony, while Canadian forces advanced into Holland. British forces drove north-east towards Bremen and Hamburg, and yet more American divisions mounted a huge encirclement operation in the Ruhr, capturing more than 300,000 German prisoners. On 25 April 1945 American troops met their Red Army counterparts for a ceremonial handshake at the small town of Torgau on the river Mulde, a tributary of the Elbe. Others were heading south-east towards Munich, aiming to meet Allied forces advancing towards the Brenner Pass from northern Italy, where a final assault had begun on 9 April 1945. The Red Army had already entered Vienna on 3 April 1945, as American troops were pushing into Austria from the west. Amidst constant negotiation, the invading forces agreed a rough division of territory between themselves as the final reckoning approached. Despite some doubts on the British side, the German capital was left to the Red Army to take. Soviet forces now held complete command of the skies, and possessed overwhelming superiority in armour, artillery, ammunition and manpower on the ground. In fierce fighting in March and early April 1945, they destroyed almost all the remaining German armies, and the fortresses on which Hitler had set such hopes, in East Prussia and Pomerania, while Rokossovskii launched a massive assault into Mecklenburg in the north. By the middle of April 1945, two and a half million men were now poised for the final attack on Hitler's capital.

The German armed forces had little left to throw at the enemy. In March 1945, some 58,000 sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were sent into the fray: their training was perfunctory, and however indoctrinated they might have been in the Nazi cause, they were no match for the tough veterans of the Red Army or the well-equipped battalions of the British and Americans and their allies.99 German losses on the Eastern Front had risen from 812,000 in 1943 to 1,802,000 in 1944. By the end of the year, over three and a half million German troops had been killed or captured by the Red Army. Overall, more than 450,000 members of the German armed forces were killed in January 1945, 295,000 in February, 284,000 in March and 281,000 in April: indeed, over a third of all German troops killed during the war died in its last four and a half months. By the end of 1944 some 800,000 German troops were in the custody of the Western Allies, a figure that had climbed to over a million by April and four million by the time the war was over. 700,000 members of the German armed forces were in Soviet camps. By April 1945 there were 600,000 sick and wounded soldiers, airmen and sailors in hospital. German losses on the Eastern Front had risen from 812,000 in 1943 to 1,802,000 in 1944. By the end of the year, over three and a half million German troops had been killed or captured by the Red Army. Overall, more than 450,000 members of the German armed forces were killed in January 1945, 295,000 in February, 284,000 in March and 281,000 in April: indeed, over a third of all German troops killed during the war died in its last four and a half months. By the end of 1944 some 800,000 German troops were in the custody of the Western Allies, a figure that had climbed to over a million by April and four million by the time the war was over. 700,000 members of the German armed forces were in Soviet camps. By April 1945 there were 600,000 sick and wounded soldiers, airmen and sailors in hospital.100 In the second half of 1944 alone, the air force lost more than 20,000 planes. The command of the skies passed to the Allied bombers, the Red Army and the invasion forces in the west. In the second half of 1944 alone, the air force lost more than 20,000 planes. The command of the skies passed to the Allied bombers, the Red Army and the invasion forces in the west.101 Speer was redoubling his efforts to increase arms production, and in September 1944 almost 3,000 fighter planes were completed. But the more territory Germany lost, the faster the war economy shrank. In particular, the loss to the Red Army of major industrial areas in the east, notably Upper Silesia, deprived the Reich of key economic resources. It was no longer possible to recruit fresh forced labour from the occupied areas. Germany's sources of fuel in Romania and Hungary were gone. The attempt to provide a substitute by manufacturing synthetic fuel had proved futile. There was no longer any defence against the destruction now raining down continually on German cities from the air. The German armies were no longer disciplined, effective and motivated fighting forces but rapidly shrinking in number, demoralized and disorganized, little more than an armed rabble. Speer was redoubling his efforts to increase arms production, and in September 1944 almost 3,000 fighter planes were completed. But the more territory Germany lost, the faster the war economy shrank. In particular, the loss to the Red Army of major industrial areas in the east, notably Upper Silesia, deprived the Reich of key economic resources. It was no longer possible to recruit fresh forced labour from the occupied areas. Germany's sources of fuel in Romania and Hungary were gone. The attempt to provide a substitute by manufacturing synthetic fuel had proved futile. There was no longer any defence against the destruction now raining down continually on German cities from the air. The German armies were no longer disciplined, effective and motivated fighting forces but rapidly shrinking in number, demoralized and disorganized, little more than an armed rabble. 102 102 II.

Nazi propaganda now concentrated increasingly on instilling fear of the invader into the German people. Hitler's written message read out over the radio on 24 February 1945, the anniversary of the promulgation of the Nazi Party programme in 1920, warned that Germans would be shipped off to Siberia as slaves if the Red Army proved triumphant.103 The next day, 25 February 1945, Goebbels warned, in an article in The next day, 25 February 1945, Goebbels warned, in an article in The Reich The Reich, that, if Germany surrendered, Stalin would immediately occupy south-eastern Europe, and 'an iron curtain would immediately fall on this huge territory, together with the vastness of the Soviet Union, and nations would be slaughtered behind it'.104 Hitler's final appeal to the troops on the Eastern Front, issued to all ranks on 15 April 1945, used fear as its main weapon in calling for resistance to the last man: 'The deadly Jewish-Bolshevik enemy with his masses is beginning his final attack. He is attempting to destroy Germany and exterminate our people ... The old men and children will be murdered, women and girls will be degraded as barracks whores. The remainder will march to Siberia.' But Germany would be spared this fate if they stood firm. 'The Bolshevik ... will bleed before the capital of the German Reich.' Hitler's final appeal to the troops on the Eastern Front, issued to all ranks on 15 April 1945, used fear as its main weapon in calling for resistance to the last man: 'The deadly Jewish-Bolshevik enemy with his masses is beginning his final attack. He is attempting to destroy Germany and exterminate our people ... The old men and children will be murdered, women and girls will be degraded as barracks whores. The remainder will march to Siberia.' But Germany would be spared this fate if they stood firm. 'The Bolshevik ... will bleed before the capital of the German Reich.'105 Goebbels made a point of repeating these warnings in detail in these final weeks. He dragged up once more the allegation that the Allies intended to exterminate the German race. His warnings were echoed by Heinz Guderian, Chief of the Army General Staff, who declared that all the Red Army wanted to do in Germany was to rob, rape and kill. Goebbels made a point of repeating these warnings in detail in these final weeks. He dragged up once more the allegation that the Allies intended to exterminate the German race. His warnings were echoed by Heinz Guderian, Chief of the Army General Staff, who declared that all the Red Army wanted to do in Germany was to rob, rape and kill.106

20. The End of the War But such dire warnings had for some time been just as likely to backfire as to succeed. Many Germans, as we have seen, felt that they had no right to criticize the Red Army in view of the atrocities that Germany had committed itself. It was not just the Jews whose maltreatment aroused such feelings of guilt. A Party member in the Stuttgart area was reported to have asked rhetorically: 'Weren't our SS people frequently even more cruel towards Germans, their own fellow-citizens, than the Russians have been towards the East Prussians? We have shown the others how to deal with political enemies.'107 Public exhortation to carry on fighting had equally little effect. On 24 February 1945 Bormann issued an appeal on the anniversary of the proclamation of the Nazi Party programme in 1920. Anyone who thought of retreat or surrender, he said, was a traitor to the nation. Self-sacrifice would be rewarded by victory. If only the German people's will stood firm, Germany would triumph. Public exhortation to carry on fighting had equally little effect. On 24 February 1945 Bormann issued an appeal on the anniversary of the proclamation of the Nazi Party programme in 1920. Anyone who thought of retreat or surrender, he said, was a traitor to the nation. Self-sacrifice would be rewarded by victory. If only the German people's will stood firm, Germany would triumph.108 Not long afterwards, in Berlin, three women were observed looking at a poster displayed in the shop window of the KdW department store, proclaiming: 'Berlin is working, fighting and standing.' A few more bombing raids like the previous day's, one was overheard saying, 'and the only thing standing will be ruins . . . We didn't see much evidence of Berlin fighting last Sunday. The Americans dropped their bombs wherever they wanted. They flew all over the sky without any opposition, without any fighting.' Not long afterwards, in Berlin, three women were observed looking at a poster displayed in the shop window of the KdW department store, proclaiming: 'Berlin is working, fighting and standing.' A few more bombing raids like the previous day's, one was overheard saying, 'and the only thing standing will be ruins . . . We didn't see much evidence of Berlin fighting last Sunday. The Americans dropped their bombs wherever they wanted. They flew all over the sky without any opposition, without any fighting.'109 In the invaded areas, people began to seek a way of surrendering. Their attempts did not go down well with Nazi fanatics. 'In a session of the town council,' noted Lore Walb, who had gone back from Munich to her home town of Alzey in the Rhineland, 'Dr Sch. also pleaded for the surrender of the town, since further struggle is pointless, and in order to preserve everything that still remains. The District Leader [of the Nazi Party] was of course in favour of fighting to the finish.' In the invaded areas, people began to seek a way of surrendering. Their attempts did not go down well with Nazi fanatics. 'In a session of the town council,' noted Lore Walb, who had gone back from Munich to her home town of Alzey in the Rhineland, 'Dr Sch. also pleaded for the surrender of the town, since further struggle is pointless, and in order to preserve everything that still remains. The District Leader [of the Nazi Party] was of course in favour of fighting to the finish.'110 In one rural part of western Germany, soldiers who tried to set off explosive charges in front of the advancing Americans were attacked by local people with pitchforks. In one rural part of western Germany, soldiers who tried to set off explosive charges in front of the advancing Americans were attacked by local people with pitchforks.111 As propaganda failed, terror began to take its place. On 15 February 1945 Reich Justice Minister Otto-Georg Thierack ordered that anyone attempting to avoid his duty to fight on, thus jeopardizing Germany's determination to win, would be tried by a drumhead court-martial, consisting of a criminal court judge, a Nazi official and an officer of the armed forces, the Military SS or the police, and, if found guilty, executed on the spot.112 As these makeshift courts swung into action, the more fanatical and energetic Nazi Party officials quickly dispensed with the rules. On 18 March 1945 Field Marshal Model ordered the military police to shoot any soldiers or civilians engaged in acts of sabotage. 'Where a white flag appears,' Himmler instructed his officers in the SS and police, 'all the male persons of the house concerned are to be shot. There must,' he added, 'be no hesitation in carrying out these measures.' As these makeshift courts swung into action, the more fanatical and energetic Nazi Party officials quickly dispensed with the rules. On 18 March 1945 Field Marshal Model ordered the military police to shoot any soldiers or civilians engaged in acts of sabotage. 'Where a white flag appears,' Himmler instructed his officers in the SS and police, 'all the male persons of the house concerned are to be shot. There must,' he added, 'be no hesitation in carrying out these measures.'113 And in his last orders to the soldiers of the Eastern Front, in mid-April 1945, Hitler repeated that there was to be no retreat, no surrender: 'Anyone who gives you the order to retreat must be arrested immediately if you do not know exactly who he is, and if necessary is to be killed on the spot, quite irrespective of whatever rank he may carry.' And in his last orders to the soldiers of the Eastern Front, in mid-April 1945, Hitler repeated that there was to be no retreat, no surrender: 'Anyone who gives you the order to retreat must be arrested immediately if you do not know exactly who he is, and if necessary is to be killed on the spot, quite irrespective of whatever rank he may carry.'114 'Strength Through Fear' became the slogan of the hour, replacing 'Strength Through Joy' - in German the initials, KdF, were the same. 'Strength Through Fear' became the slogan of the hour, replacing 'Strength Through Joy' - in German the initials, KdF, were the same.

Up to 10,000 people were summarily executed in this final phase of terror and repression.115 They included a significant number of the 190,000 or so criminal offenders who now crowded Germany's state prisons and penitentiaries, many of them put there by political repression or the wartime crackdown on looting, theft and 'undermining morale'. As the Allied armies advanced, the prison authorities began to evacuate the jails. The governor of the women's penitentiary in Fordon, near Bromberg, took out the 565 inmates under guard on 21 January 1945, and marched them to another women's prison at Krone, 36 kilometres away. Only forty of them reached their destination. 'It was about minus 12 degrees,' reported the governor, 'and it was very icy. As a result, the prisoners as well as the warders were falling over all the time . . . During the march,' he continued, 'I observed numerous prisoners who were left behind, struggling to drag themselves forward. Many were sitting or lying by the side of the road, and nothing could induce them to get up again.' They included a significant number of the 190,000 or so criminal offenders who now crowded Germany's state prisons and penitentiaries, many of them put there by political repression or the wartime crackdown on looting, theft and 'undermining morale'. As the Allied armies advanced, the prison authorities began to evacuate the jails. The governor of the women's penitentiary in Fordon, near Bromberg, took out the 565 inmates under guard on 21 January 1945, and marched them to another women's prison at Krone, 36 kilometres away. Only forty of them reached their destination. 'It was about minus 12 degrees,' reported the governor, 'and it was very icy. As a result, the prisoners as well as the warders were falling over all the time . . . During the march,' he continued, 'I observed numerous prisoners who were left behind, struggling to drag themselves forward. Many were sitting or lying by the side of the road, and nothing could induce them to get up again.'116 When the Krone prisoners were evacuated in their turn, the same scenes repeated themselves. Coming across the column, an SS unit on the retreat gunned down one group of the prisoners, while other women prisoners were taken roughly out of the line by passing German soldiers and raped. When the Krone prisoners were evacuated in their turn, the same scenes repeated themselves. Coming across the column, an SS unit on the retreat gunned down one group of the prisoners, while other women prisoners were taken roughly out of the line by passing German soldiers and raped.117 All over Germany and the incorporated territories, state prisoners were forced to go on similar marches, some of them to concentration camps. Some, classified by penal officials as reformable, were released into a special formation of the Military SS. Thousands of the supposedly incorrigible, on the other hand, were simply taken out and shot. At Sonnenburg, a penitentiary located to the east of Berlin, the regional state prosecutor, Kurt-Walter Hanssen, a former personal assistant of Martin Bormann, had most of the prisoners murdered by a unit of SS and police officers brought in for the purpose on 30 January. The prisoners were made to kneel down in groups of ten, and were shot in the back of the neck; sick inmates were shot in their beds in the prison infirmary. More than 800 prisoners were killed in the space of a few hours, the majority of them foreign forced labourers who had been jailed for infringements of the harsh rules under which they had been obliged to live and work. The rest - a mere 150 - who had been classified as 'useful', were marched out in the direction of Berlin. For those left behind, conditions worsened dramatically with the arrival of evacuated prisoners from elsewhere; food supplies became even more scarce, disease was rife, and death rates rocketed. Reich Justice Minister Thierack personally ordered a large number of prison executions as late as April 1945. Army commanders who saw prison inmates as a military threat also ordered executions: Field Marshal Walter Model, surrounded by the Americans in the Ruhr area, ordered penitentiary inmates to be selected and executed if they were found to be 'dangerous': these included a number of German political prisoners as well as foreign workers. Altogether, 200 prisoners, including a number who were only on remand, were shot in this area over the following week.118 Model's murderous actions paralleled those of Hitler himself and reflected a similar mentality. The more desperate the military situation became, the more vital it seemed to such men to eliminate anyone who might threaten the regime from within. Obsessed to the end with the imaginary precedent of 1918, Hitler did not want another 'stab in the back'. 'I've ordered Himmler, in the event of there some day being reason to fear troubles back at home,' he had said some years earlier, on the night of 14- 15 September 1941, 'to liquidate everything he finds in the concentration camps. Thus at a stroke the revolution would be deprived of its leaders.'119 This included foreigners, such as the 141 French resistance workers who were shot in Natzweiler the day before the camp was evacuated in the face of the advancing Allied armies. Most of all, however, Hitler's murderous attention was turned towards his internal enemies. This included foreigners, such as the 141 French resistance workers who were shot in Natzweiler the day before the camp was evacuated in the face of the advancing Allied armies. Most of all, however, Hitler's murderous attention was turned towards his internal enemies.120 The trials and executions of those involved in the bomb plot of 20 July 1944 continued almost to the end. On 4 April 1945 an evil chance led to the discovery of Admiral Canaris's personal diaries. Reading them in his Berlin bunker, Hitler convinced himself that Canaris and his fellow-conspirators had been working against him from the outset. All his remaining enemies had to be killed, he decided. He began by ordering the head of the SS Security Service, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, to do away with the surviving plotters. On 9 April 1945 Canaris, Oster, Bonhoeffer and two other political inmates of Flossenb*rg concentration camp were stripped naked and hanged by crude ropes from wooden hooks in the courtyard. The bodies were immediately cremated. To Hitler's thirst for revenge was added Himmler's determination that prominent opponents of Nazism should not survive into the postwar era. As Gestapo chief Heinrich M*ller told Helmuth von Moltke, 'We won't make the same mistake as in 1918. We won't leave out internal German enemies alive.' The trials and executions of those involved in the bomb plot of 20 July 1944 continued almost to the end. On 4 April 1945 an evil chance led to the discovery of Admiral Canaris's personal diaries. Reading them in his Berlin bunker, Hitler convinced himself that Canaris and his fellow-conspirators had been working against him from the outset. All his remaining enemies had to be killed, he decided. He began by ordering the head of the SS Security Service, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, to do away with the surviving plotters. On 9 April 1945 Canaris, Oster, Bonhoeffer and two other political inmates of Flossenb*rg concentration camp were stripped naked and hanged by crude ropes from wooden hooks in the courtyard. The bodies were immediately cremated. To Hitler's thirst for revenge was added Himmler's determination that prominent opponents of Nazism should not survive into the postwar era. As Gestapo chief Heinrich M*ller told Helmuth von Moltke, 'We won't make the same mistake as in 1918. We won't leave out internal German enemies alive.'121 On the same day as Canaris and the others were executed, as the Red Army was closing in on the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, one of the inmates, Georg Elser, who had narrowly missed killing Hitler with a home-made time-bomb in November 1939, was moved out of his quarters in the camp to Dachau, where the commandant interviewed him briefly before having him taken out and shot in the back of the neck. Himmler had given orders for the execution, and instructed the camp authorities to attribute his death to a British air raid. A week later it was duly announced as such in the press. On the same day as Canaris and the others were executed, as the Red Army was closing in on the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, one of the inmates, Georg Elser, who had narrowly missed killing Hitler with a home-made time-bomb in November 1939, was moved out of his quarters in the camp to Dachau, where the commandant interviewed him briefly before having him taken out and shot in the back of the neck. Himmler had given orders for the execution, and instructed the camp authorities to attribute his death to a British air raid. A week later it was duly announced as such in the press.122 A further series of murders took place between 20 and 24 April in Berlin, where the SS shot more of the people who had been involved in the bomb plot of July 1944. A further series of murders took place between 20 and 24 April in Berlin, where the SS shot more of the people who had been involved in the bomb plot of July 1944.123 This was the kind of reckoning Hitler had carried out once before, when he had taken the opportunity of the purge of Ernst R*hm's stormtroopers at the end of June 1934 to settle old scores and eliminate possible members of an alternative government. But now it was being done on a much larger scale. Among the victims was the former Communist leader Ernst Th*lmann. Incarcerated in a variety of prisons and camps since 1933, Th*lmann had few illusions about his fate should the Red Army succeed in entering Germany. In August 1943 he was moved to the state prison at Bautzen, and a few months later his wife and daughter were arrested and taken to the Ravensbr*ck concentration camp. 'Th*lmann,' Himmler jotted down in his notes for a meeting with Hitler on 14 August 1944, 'is to be executed.' Hitler signed the order, and three days later Th*lmann was taken out of his cell and driven to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Before he arrived, the prisoners, who included many former Communists, were locked into their barracks. One Polish inmate managed none the less to conceal himself near the entrance to the crematorium area, where the ovens were being stoked up in readiness for the disposal of Th*lmann's corpse. He saw a large automobile arrive, and a broad-shouldered man get out, flanked by two Gestapo officers. The man was not wearing a hat, and the Pole noticed that he was bald. Prodded forward by the Gestapo, the man passed through the crematorium entrance, which was flanked by SS men. Immediately, three shots could be heard, then shortly afterwards, a fourth. The door was closed, then, twenty-five minutes later or so, they were reopened and the SS men came out. The Pole overheard their conversation. 'Do you know who that was?' one SS man asked his fellow officer. 'That was the Communist leader Th*lmann,' came the answer. The official announcement of his death blamed it on a British air raid.124 A similar fate was clearly intended for a number of other prominent prisoners of the regime, including the ex-Chief of the Army General Staff General Franz Halder, the former Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, the sacked head of Army Procurement General Georg Thomas (all three arrested after the bomb plot), the last Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, the French politician and ex-Prime Minister L'on Blum, the Confessing Church leader Martin Niem*ller, the former Hungarian Prime Minister Mikl's Kall'y, the bomb plotter Fabian von Schlabrendorff, and the families of a number of his co-conspirators, including the Stauffenbergs, Goerdelers and von Hassells, along with a nephew of the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, assorted British agents, and army commanders from countries formerly allied to Germany. Some 160 people in all were gathered together in an SS convoy and taken to a mountainous area of the South Tyrol on 28 April 1945. Here, it had been decided, they were all to be shot and their bodies disposed of.

When a guard accidentally let slip their intended fate, one of the prisoners managed to contact the local German army commander, who sent a subordinate officer, Captain Wichard von Alvensleben, to investigate: gathering a posse of armed troops, the captain arrived at the scene, and before anything could happen, he used his aristocratic hauteur hauteur to browbeat the SS men into releasing their prisoners. They were all unharmed, but it had been a narrow escape. to browbeat the SS men into releasing their prisoners. They were all unharmed, but it had been a narrow escape.125 III.

There were still some 700,000 prisoners in the concentration camps altogether at the beginning of 1945. As well as the main camps, there were at least 662 sub-camps dotted across the Reich and the incorporated territories at this time. By now, they held more prisoners in total than were housed in principal centres such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbr*ck. As the Red Army advanced, Himmler ordered the camps in its path to be evacuated. Precisely when and how this was to be done was left largely to the commandants' own initiative. The largest of the camp complexes, at Auschwitz, held no fewer than 155,000 prisoners. Most of them were Poles and Russians. Roughly half of them were transported to camps further west. Huge quantities of material, equipment and personal effects went with the evacuees from Auschwitz. While the evacuation was in progress, work continued on new buildings, including a large set of additional facilities at Birkenau, dubbed 'Mexico' by the prisoners. Only in October 1944 was building work halted. The same month saw some 40,000 people perish in the existing gas chambers at Birkenau. In November, however, Himmler ordered all the gas chambers in every camp to be closed down and dismantled. At Auschwitz, the trenches used to incinerate corpses were levelled out, mass burial areas were filled up with earth and turfed over, the ovens and crematoria were dismantled, and the gas chambers destroyed or converted into air-raid bunkers.126 Now working for the concentration camp inspectorate, the former commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf H*ss, was sent by Oswald Pohl to the camp towards the end of 1944 'in the hope of reaching Auschwitz in time to make sure that the order for the destruction of everything important had been properly carried out', as he later recalled. H*ss drove some distance across Silesia but was unable to reach the camp in the face of the relentless advance of the Red Army. 'On all the roads and tracks in Upper Silesia west of the Oder,' he reported, 'I now met columns of prisoners, struggling through the deep snow. They had no food. Most of the non-commissioned officers in charge of these stumbling columns of corpses had no idea where they were supposed to be going.' They requisitioned food from the villages through which they passed, but 'there was no question of spending the night in barns or schools, since these were all crammed with refugees'. H*ss 'saw open coal trucks, loaded with frozen corpses, whole trainloads of prisoners who had been shunted on to open sidings and left there without food or shelter'. There were German refugees, too, in headlong flight from the advancing Russians, women 'pushing perambulators stacked high with their belongings'. The route taken by the 'miserable columns' of evacuated prisoners was easy to follow, he added, 'since every few hundred yards lay the bodies of prisoners who had collapsed or been shot'. Stopping his car by a dead body, he got out to investigate shots he heard near by 'and saw a soldier in the act of stopping his motor-cycle and shooting a prisoner leaning against a tree. I shouted at him, asking him what he thought he was doing, and what harm the prisoner had done him. He laughed impertinently in my face, and asked me what I proposed to do about it.' H*ss's reaction to this challenge to his authority as a senior officer in the SS was unequivocal: 'I drew my pistol and shot him forthwith.'127 On 19 January 1945, despite H*ss's failure to reach the camp, 58,000 prisoners began to make their way slowly out of Auschwitz westwards, most of them on foot, a few by train. SS guards shot stragglers and left their bodies by the roadside. As many as 15,000 of the prisoners died of starvation or cold or were killed by the SS. A few Poles defied the threats of the SS and gave some of them food or shelter; ethnic Germans stayed indoors. In the end, some 43,000 prisoners reached camps in the west. Only the very sick remained at Auschwitz, where the SS were desperately trying to blow up the remaining installations and burn incriminating documents before the Red Army arrived. The camp's building, administration and political department files were taken westwards; many ended up at Gross-Rosen. Medical equipment used in experimentation was dismantled or destroyed. In the chaos, the Special Detachment prisoners, key witnesses to mass murder, managed to melt into the crowds marching out of the camp and evade the SS, who had planned to kill them. The camp doctor Josef Mengele also absconded, taking his research notes and papers with him. On 20- 21 January 1945, the SS guards abandoned the watchtowers, blew up the remains of the principal crematoria and set fire to the vast store of personal effects known to the inmates as 'Canada'. Executions continued right up to the last minute, until Crematorium V, where they took place, was blown up too, on 25-6 January 1945. The SS killed some 700 prisoners at the various camps and sub-camps belonging to the Auschwitz complex before they left, but they did not have the time to murder them all. On 27 January 1945 the Red Army marched in. 600 corpses were lying on the ground outside, but some 7,000 prisoners were still alive, many in a very weak condition. In the storerooms that had not been burned, the Russian soldiers painstakingly catalogued 837,000 women's coats and dresses, 44,000 pairs of shoes and 7.7 tons of human hair.128 Jewish prisoners were a particular target on the forced marches out of Auschwitz and other camps. When the prisoners employed on the manufacture of armoured personnel carriers at the Adler Works in Frankfurt were evacuated in March 1945 as the Americans approached the city, the SS pulled out the Jewish prisoners from the marching column and shot them; some of the victims were pointed out by their Polish fellow prisoners.129 In East Prussia, some 5,000 mostly female Jewish prisoners were marched out of the various sub-camps belonging to Stutthof until they came to a halt at the fishing village of Palmnicken, where their way was blocked; the Regional Leader of East Prussia, together with the sub-camp commandants and local officers of the SS and the Todt Organization decided to kill them, and shot all apart from two or three hundred. In East Prussia, some 5,000 mostly female Jewish prisoners were marched out of the various sub-camps belonging to Stutthof until they came to a halt at the fishing village of Palmnicken, where their way was blocked; the Regional Leader of East Prussia, together with the sub-camp commandants and local officers of the SS and the Todt Organization decided to kill them, and shot all apart from two or three hundred.130 At a sub-camp of Flossenb*rg, Helmbrechts, near the Franconian town of Hof, which housed mostly Polish and Russian women working in an arms factory, just over 1,100 prisoners were marched out in three groups on 13 April 1945, accompanied by forty-seven armed guards, male and female. Working their way towards no fixed destination, they had marched 195 miles by 3 May. Leaving the non-Jews behind after the first week, the guards proceeded southwards, beating and shooting the stragglers and the sick and depriving the prisoners of food and drink. More beatings were administered when local townspeople on occasion took pity on the prisoners and tried to throw them scraps of food. On 4 May, reaching the Czech border town of Prachtice, the column was attacked by an American plane, killing one of the guards; the remaining guards opened fire on the prisoners indiscriminately. Some of the survivors were marched up a nearby wooded hill and shot one by one as they collapsed with exhaustion. Before they fled, the guards set the others to walk into the town, where Czech townspeople gave them food and shelter. For many it was too late; twenty-six died before or shortly after the arrival of US troops, on 6 May 1945. Altogether at least 178 Jewish prisoners had perished on the march; a US army doctor later claimed that half the survivors were only saved by the prompt attentions of his medical team. Not for nothing were such aimless and murderous treks known by prisoners as 'death marches'. Many had no clear destination. Some of the marches, indeed, meandered across the country, even doubling back on themselves; a death march from Flossenb*rg covered a good 250 miles, going north for a third of the way, then turning south, passing not far from the camp itself before continuing on to Regensburg. At a sub-camp of Flossenb*rg, Helmbrechts, near the Franconian town of Hof, which housed mostly Polish and Russian women working in an arms factory, just over 1,100 prisoners were marched out in three groups on 13 April 1945, accompanied by forty-seven armed guards, male and female. Working their way towards no fixed destination, they had marched 195 miles by 3 May. Leaving the non-Jews behind after the first week, the guards proceeded southwards, beating and shooting the stragglers and the sick and depriving the prisoners of food and drink. More beatings were administered when local townspeople on occasion took pity on the prisoners and tried to throw them scraps of food. On 4 May, reaching the Czech border town of Prachtice, the column was attacked by an American plane, killing one of the guards; the remaining guards opened fire on the prisoners indiscriminately. Some of the survivors were marched up a nearby wooded hill and shot one by one as they collapsed with exhaustion. Before they fled, the guards set the others to walk into the town, where Czech townspeople gave them food and shelter. For many it was too late; twenty-six died before or shortly after the arrival of US troops, on 6 May 1945. Altogether at least 178 Jewish prisoners had perished on the march; a US army doctor later claimed that half the survivors were only saved by the prompt attentions of his medical team. Not for nothing were such aimless and murderous treks known by prisoners as 'death marches'. Many had no clear destination. Some of the marches, indeed, meandered across the country, even doubling back on themselves; a death march from Flossenb*rg covered a good 250 miles, going north for a third of the way, then turning south, passing not far from the camp itself before continuing on to Regensburg.131 The evacuation of the concentration camp at Neuengamme, which housed, with its fifty-seven sub-camps, some 50,000 prisoners, was undertaken in co-operation with the Regional Leader of nearby Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann. Most of the sub-camp inmates were taken on murderous and exhausting 'death marches' to 'collection camps', including Bergen-Belsen, by mid-April. That still left 14,000 in the main camp. Kaufmann had already decided, after representations from business and military leaders, to surrender the city to the Allies. Kaufmann feared that if he had the prisoners released, they would descend upon the city in the search for food and shelter. By this time there were no other camps left on the German side of the front line to which they could be evacuated, so Kaufmann decided to put them on board ships. 4,000 Danish and Norwegian prisoners had already been taken to Sweden in March 1945 on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, with the agreement of Count Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler hoped thereby to gain the confidence of the Swedish royal family, of which Bernadotte was a member, as intermediaries for the negotiations he felt (entirely without any justification) that he could carry out with the British. The remaining 10,000 prisoners from the main camp at Neuengamme were marched off to L*beck between 21 and 26 April 1945 and put on to three ships Kaufmann had commandeered as 'floating concentration camps' - the freighters Athens Athens and and Thielbeck Thielbeck, and a luxury liner, the Cap Arcona Cap Arcona. No provision had been made for the prisoners, who were crammed into the holds, with no toilets and no water. Cauldrons of soup were lowered down when the SS opened the hatches, but there were no bowls or spoons, and much of the food spilled over on to the floor of the hold, mixing with the excrement now rapidly piling up. The SS took away the lifebelts to prevent escapes. Every day a launch brought out fresh water and returned to the shore with the corpses of prisoners who had died in the night. On 3 May 1945 British fighter-bombers spotted the ships, identified them as troop transports and attacked them with their rockets. The Thielbeck Thielbeck and and Cap Arcona Cap Arcona were badly hit. The were badly hit. The Thielbeck Thielbeck sank, drowning all but fifty of the 2,800 prisoners on board. The sank, drowning all but fifty of the 2,800 prisoners on board. The Cap Arcona Cap Arcona caught fire. Most of its lifeboats were destroyed in the inferno. As prisoners leaped into the icy waters of the Baltic, their clothes ablaze, a huge explosion ripped through the ship. It listed on to its port side and came to rest on the shallow bottom of the bay, half of the hull still above the water-line. 4,250 of the prisoners on board were drowned, burned to death, or shot by the bullets that filled the air as the planes exchanged fire with a group of U-boats in the nearby harbour. 350 prisoners were rescued after clinging to the hull for several hours. 400 of the 500 SS officers on board survived. caught fire. Most of its lifeboats were destroyed in the inferno. As prisoners leaped into the icy waters of the Baltic, their clothes ablaze, a huge explosion ripped through the ship. It listed on to its port side and came to rest on the shallow bottom of the bay, half of the hull still above the water-line. 4,250 of the prisoners on board were drowned, burned to death, or shot by the bullets that filled the air as the planes exchanged fire with a group of U-boats in the nearby harbour. 350 prisoners were rescued after clinging to the hull for several hours. 400 of the 500 SS officers on board survived.132

21. The Death Marches Other evacuees from the camps were deliberately murdered en masse by the SS. A column of about a thousand prisoners evacuated from the Dora camp was penned into a barn at the town of Gardelegen for the night, and when the barn walls collapsed under the pressure of bodies, police and Hitler Youth poured petrol over the roof and burned those inside alive. Only a few were able to make their escape. The bodies were still burning when the Americans arrived the following day.133 On some occasions, the local population in the areas through which the prisoners were marched joined in the killing. On 8 April 1945, for instance, when a column of prisoners scattered during a bombing raid on the north German town of Celle, ex-policemen and others, including some adolescents, helped hunt them down. Yet for all the particular sadism and violence directed by the SS against Jewish prisoners, the death marches were not, as has sometimes been claimed, simply the last chapter of the 'Final Solution'; many thousands of non-Jewish camp inmates, state prisoners, forced labourers and others had to endure them, and they can best be seen as the last act in the brutal and violent history of the Third Reich's system of repression in general, rather than an exclusive exterminatory action directed against Jews. On some occasions, the local population in the areas through which the prisoners were marched joined in the killing. On 8 April 1945, for instance, when a column of prisoners scattered during a bombing raid on the north German town of Celle, ex-policemen and others, including some adolescents, helped hunt them down. Yet for all the particular sadism and violence directed by the SS against Jewish prisoners, the death marches were not, as has sometimes been claimed, simply the last chapter of the 'Final Solution'; many thousands of non-Jewish camp inmates, state prisoners, forced labourers and others had to endure them, and they can best be seen as the last act in the brutal and violent history of the Third Reich's system of repression in general, rather than an exclusive exterminatory action directed against Jews.134 For those who survived to reach their destination, further horrors lay in store. The camps in the central area of the Reich became grossly overcrowded as a result of the arrival of the bedraggled columns of evacuees: the population of Buchenwald, for instance, went up from 37,000 in 1943 to 100,000 in January 1945. Under such conditions, death rates rose dramatically, and some 14,000 people died in the camp between January and April 1945, half of them Jews. At Mauthausen, the arrival of thousands of prisoners from sub-camps in the region led to a deterioration in conditions so drastic that 45,000 inmates died between October 1944 and May 1945. Conditions in the sub-camps that lasted to the end of the war were no better. Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald near Gotha, was the first to be discovered by the American army as it advanced through Thuringia. It had contained 10,000 prisoners engaged in excavating underground bunkers. The SS had marched out some of the inmates a few days before and shot many of them. The soldiers who discovered the camp on 5 April 1945 were so shocked by what they saw that their commander invited Generals Patton, Bradley and Eisenhower to visit it. 'More than 3,200 naked, emaciated bodies,' Bradley recalled later, 'had been flung into shallow graves. Lice crawled over the yellowed skin of their sharp, bony frames.' The generals came across a shed piled high with dead bodies. Bradley was so shaken that he was physically sick. Eisenhower reacted by ordering all his troops in the area to tour the camp. Similar scenes were repeated in many other places as the Americans advanced. Some of the former guards were still in the camp, disguised as prisoners; surviving inmates identified the former guards to the Allied troops, who sometimes shot the SS men in disgust; other guards had already been killed by angry prisoners wreaking their revenge.135 The terrible conditions prevailing in the camps in the final months of the war were most evident in the place that came to symbolize the inhumanity of the SS more than any other to the British, who liberated it at the end of the war: Belsen. The concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen had been converted from a prisoner-of-war camp early in 1943. Its special function was to serve as a place of temporary accommodation for a relatively small number of Jews from various European countries, and particularly from the Netherlands, whom Himmler and his allies in the Foreign Office thought might be used as bargaining chips or hostages in international negotiations. As the difficulty of carrying out exchanges of such prisoners became more apparent, the SS decided in March 1944 to use Bergen-Belsen as a 'convalescence camp', or, to put it more realistically, a dumping-ground, for sick and exhausted prisoners from other camps whose weakness made them incapable of work. Up to the end of 1944, some 4,000 such prisoners had been delivered to the camp, but since they were not provided with any adequate medical facilities, the death rate quickly rose to more than 50 per cent. In August 1944 the camp was further extended to include Jewish women, many of them from Auschwitz. By December 1944 there were more than 15,000 people in the camp, including 8,000 in the women's quarters. One of them was the young Dutch girl Anne Frank, who had been sent there at the end of October as an evacuee from Auschwitz; she died of typhus the following March. The commandant, Josef Kramer, appointed on 2 December 1944, was a long-time SS officer. He had previously served in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he had recently overseen the murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews in the gas chambers. A number of officials, including women guards, accompanied him. Kramer immediately removed the few privileges enjoyed by the 6,000 or so 'exchange Jews' who remained from the original camp contingent, and began a regime of rapidly increasing chaos and brutality.136 As Bergen-Belsen became the destination for prisoners evacuated from other camps in the face of the advancing Red Army, it became even more overcrowded. The number of inmates had increased to more than 44,000 by the middle of March 1945. Attempts to evacuate some of them to Theresienstadt ran into bomb attacks, and two trains were brought to a halt in open countryside on the way, when the guards absconded and Allied troops arrived to free the starving passengers, or those of them who were still alive. Meanwhile thousands more were still being delivered to Bergen-Belsen, including a large contingent from the Dora works, so that the total number of inmates reached 60,000 on 15 April 1945. Kramer had made no adequate or timely preparations for proper sanitary arrangements for them, so that these 60,000 had to make do with exactly the same number of washrooms, showers and toilets as had been provided a year earlier for a camp population of no more than 2,000. Soon excrement lay on the barrack floors up to a metre thick. Food supplies were completely inadequate; they ceased altogether as the war broke the last remaining communications. The water supply stopped when a bomb hit the pumping station, making the kitchens impossible to operate. Kramer did not bother to try to remedy the situation; yet after the British took over the camp on 15 April they were able to restore the water and food supplies and repair the cooking facilities within a few days. A doctor among the inmates later reported witnessing well over 200 cases of cannibalism among the prisoners. Kramer made things worse by constantly staging lengthy roll-calls in the open air, no matter how cold or wet the weather. Epidemics began to rage. Typhus killed thousands. But for the efforts of the doctors among the prisoners, the situation would have been even worse. Nevertheless, between the beginning of 1945 and the middle of April some 35,000 people died at Bergen-Belsen. The British, who took over the camp on 15 April 1945, were unable to rescue another 14,000, who were too weak, diseased or malnourished to recover.137 Altogether, across Germany as a whole it has been estimated that between 200,000 and 350,000 concentration camp prisoners died on the 'death marches' and in the camps to which they were taken in these final months: up to half of the prisoners who were held in the camp system in January 1945, in other words, were dead four months later. Altogether, across Germany as a whole it has been estimated that between 200,000 and 350,000 concentration camp prisoners died on the 'death marches' and in the camps to which they were taken in these final months: up to half of the prisoners who were held in the camp system in January 1945, in other words, were dead four months later.138 IV.

The final phases of the war saw some of the most devastating air raids of all. Bombing continued on an almost daily basis, sometimes with such intensity that firestorms were created similar to the one that had caused such destruction in Hamburg in the summer of 1943. In Magdeburg on 16 January 1945 a firestorm killed 4,000 people and totally flattened a third of the town; it was made worse by a raid by seventy-two Mosquitos the following night, dropping mines and explosives to disrupt the work of the fire brigades and clean-up squads. Increasingly, too, bombs with time-fuses were dropped, to make things even more dangerous. Small squadrons of fast, long-range Mosquito fighter-bombers flew at will over Germany's towns and cities, causing massive disruption by provoking repeated alarms and defensive mobilizations in the apprehension that a major raid was on the way. On 21 February 1945 more than 2,000 bombers attacked Nuremberg, flattening large areas of the city and cutting off water and electricity supplies. Two days later, on the night of 23-4 February 1945, 360 British bombers carried out the war's only raid on the south-west German town of Pforzheim, which they bombed so intensively over a period of 22 minutes that they created a firestorm that obliterated the city centre and killed up to 17,000 out of the town's 79,000 inhabitants. Berlin also saw its largest and most destructive raid of the war at this time. Over a thousand American bombers attacked the capital in broad daylight on 3 March 1945, pulverizing a large part of the city centre, rendering more than 100,000 people homeless, depriving the inhabitants of water and electricity, and killing nearly 3,000 people. At the request of the Soviet air force, more than 650 American bombers devastated the harbour of Swinem*nde on 12 March, where many German refugees from the advancing Red Army had taken refuge. Some 5,000 people were killed, though popular legend soon had it that the death toll was many times higher. This was followed by an attack on Dortmund, like many of these other late raids aimed at destroying transport and communications hubs. On 16-17 March it was the turn of W*rzburg, where 225 British bombers destroyed more than 80 per cent of the built-up area of the town and killed around 5,000 of its inhabitants. The last substantial British night-raid of the war was launched against Potsdam on 14- 15 April 1945, killing at least 3,500.139 The most devastating air raid of the final phase of the war was carried out on Dresden. Up to this point, the baroque city on the Elbe had been spared the horrors of aerial bombardment. However, it was not just a cultural monument but also an important communications hub and a centre of the arms industry. The Soviet advance, now nearing the Elbe, was to be aided by Allied bombing raids intended to disrupt German road and rail communications in and around the city. And the German will to resist was to be further shattered. On 13 February 1945 two waves of British bombers attacked the city centre indiscriminately, unopposed by flak batteries, which had been removed in order to man defences further east against the oncoming Red Army, or by German fighters, which remained grounded because they had no fuel. The weather was clear, and the pathfinder planes had an easy task. The British raids were followed by two daylight attacks by American bombers. The prolonged and concentrated succession of raids created a firestorm that destroyed the whole of the city centre and large parts of the suburbs. The city, wrote one inhabitant, 'was a single sea of flames as a result of the narrow streets and closely packed buildings. The night sky glowed blood-red.'140 35,000 people were killed. 35,000 people were killed.141 Among the inhabitants of the city on those fatal days was Victor Klemperer. As one of the few remaining Jews in Germany, his life hitherto safeguarded by the loyalty of his non-Jewish wife, Eva, Klemperer had other things to worry about than the possibility of air raids. On the very morning of the first attack, an order arrived at the 'Jews' House', where he was being forced to live, announcing that the remaining Jews in Dresden were to be evacuated on the 16th. The order claimed that they would be required for labour duties, but since children were also named in the accompanying list, no one had any doubts as to what it really meant. Klemperer himself had to deliver copies of the circular to those affected. He himself was not on the list, but he had no illusions about the fact that he would be on the next one. Even in the final months of the war, the Nazis were grinding the machinery of extermination ever finer. Among the inhabitants of the city on those fatal days was Victor Klemperer. As one of the few remaining Jews in Germany, his life hitherto safeguarded by the loyalty of his non-Jewish wife, Eva, Klemperer had other things to worry about than the possibility of air raids. On the very morning of the first attack, an order arrived at the 'Jews' House', where he was being forced to live, announcing that the remaining Jews in Dresden were to be evacuated on the 16th. The order claimed that they would be required for labour duties, but since children were also named in the accompanying list, no one had any doubts as to what it really meant. Klemperer himself had to deliver copies of the circular to those affected. He himself was not on the list, but he had no illusions about the fact that he would be on the next one. Even in the final months of the war, the Nazis were grinding the machinery of extermination ever finer.142 That evening, while Klemperer was still contemplating his likely and imminent fate, the first wave of bombers flew over the city and began releasing their deadly cargo. At first, Klemperer hid in the cellar of the Jews' House. Then the house was hit by a bomb-blast. He went upstairs. The windows were blown in, and there was glass everywhere. 'Outside it was bright as day.' Strong winds were sweeping through the streets, caused by the immense firestorm in the city centre, and there were continual bomb-blasts. 'Then an explosion at the window close to me. Something hard and glowing hot struck the right side of my face. I put my hand up, it was covered in blood. I felt for my eye. It was still there.' In the confusion, Klemperer became separated from his wife. Taking her jewellery and his manuscripts in a rucksack, he scrambled out of the house, past the half-destroyed cellar and into a bomb crater and on to the street, joining a group of people who were making their way up through the public gardens to a terrace overlooking the city, where they thought it would be easier to breathe. The whole city was ablaze. 'Whenever the showers of sparks became too much for me on one side, I dodged to the other.' It began to rain. Klemperer wrapped himself in a blanket and watched towers and buildings in the city below glowing white and then collapsing in heaps of ashes. Walking to the edge of the terrace, he came by a lucky chance upon his wife. She was still alive. She had escaped death because someone had pulled her out of the Jews' House and taken her to a nearby cellar reserved for Aryans. Wanting to light a cigarette to relieve the stress, but lacking matches, she had seen that 'something was glowing on the ground, she wanted to use it - it was a burning corpse'.143 Like many others, she had made her way out of the inferno to the park. Like many others, she had made her way out of the inferno to the park.

At this point, Klemperer's friend Eisenmann, another surviving Jew, came up to the couple, holding one of his children; the rest of his family had disappeared. Eisenmann dispensed some sound advice. 'I would have to remove my star,' Klemperer reported him as saying, 'just as he had already taken off his. Eva thereupon ripped the star from my coat with a pocket knife.' With this act, the Klemperers had effectively gone underground. In the chaos and destruction the Gestapo and other authorities would, for a time at least, have other things to do than to round up Dresden's remaining Jews, and all their lists had probably been destroyed anyway. Klemperer and his wife walked slowly along the river-bank: Above us, building after building was a burnt-out ruin. Down here by the river, where many people were moving along or resting on the ground, masses of the empty, rectangular cases of the stick incendiary bombs stuck out of the churned-up earth. Fires were still burning in many of the buildings on the road above. At times, small and no more than a bundle of clothes, the dead were scattered across our path. The skull of one had been torn away, the top of the head was a dark red bowl. Once an arm lay there with a pale, quite fine hand, like a model made of wax such as one sees in barber's shop windows. Metal frames of destroyed vehicles, burnt-out sheds. Further from the centre some people had been able to save a few things, they pushed handcarts with bedding and the like or sat on boxes and bundles. Crowds streamed unceasingly between these islands, past the corpses and smashed vehicles, up and down the Elbe, a silent, agitated procession.144 Making their way through the still-burning city, they came to the Jews' House, to find it almost completely destroyed. Klemperer had his eye treated by an ambulance crew, then the couple reached a medical centre, where they were able to sleep and get a bite to eat, though not much more. Eventually they were all taken to an air base outside the city, where they received more food. Here Klemperer received further medical attention. He registered himself under his real name, but leaving out the tell-tale 'Israel' that he had been forced by law to carry since the beginning of 1939. Making their way out of Dresden to the north by train - banned to Jews on pain of death - the Klemperers arrived at Piskowitz, where their former domestic servant Agnes lived; she assured them that she had not told anyone she had worked for a Jewish couple, and gave them shelter. Klemperer answered the inevitable question from the local mayor ('You are not of Jewish descent or of mixed race?') with a firm 'no'.145 For them, as for a tiny number of other Jews, the chaos and destruction of the final months of the war offered a chance of survival. They took it gladly. For them, as for a tiny number of other Jews, the chaos and destruction of the final months of the war offered a chance of survival. They took it gladly.

Only the most convinced Nazis saw the air raids as a spur to further defiance of the Allies. Shortly after the Allied bombing of Dresden, Luise Solmitz met an acquaintance who worked for the Propaganda Ministry: When I said, 99 per cent of Hamburgers wanted these attacks to end, and what came afterwards would have to be borne, X shouted: 'But that's surely madness, that's the point of view of the stupid plebs! We have to stand before History with honour. You can't paint the consequences of a defeat in colours that are in any way adequate' . . . For him, Dresden is 'the biggest organized mass murder in history'.146 For the latter part of the war, she spent much of her time simply trying to keep her family alive. Although she was a non-smoker, she applied for a cigarette ration card because, as she noted, 'cigarettes are currency, hard currency'. Thus she was able to exchange them for food rations for her infant grandson. The gas connection to her home had been broken in the air raids at the end of July 1943 and not been restored until January 1944; but by early 1945 both gas and electricity supplies were in any case being regularly shut off for so-called 'gas-saving days' and 'current-saving days'. By this time, too, four-week ration cards were having to last for five weeks. At the end of 1944 official food rations began to be cut to levels which nobody could survive on. In the second week of January 1945 the monthly bread ration was cut from ten and a half kilos to 8,750 grams, and by mid-April it had fallen to 3,600 grams; the meat ration was reduced from 1,900 grams to 550 over the same period, the fat ration from 875 grams to 325.147 The country's infrastructure was crumbling rapidly. 'I'm at the end of my strength, my will; completely exhausted and finished,' Luise Solmitz wrote despairingly on 9 April 1945. The country's infrastructure was crumbling rapidly. 'I'm at the end of my strength, my will; completely exhausted and finished,' Luise Solmitz wrote despairingly on 9 April 1945.148 Under the impact of defeat and retreat, and worn out by the constant bombing raids on her home city of Hamburg, Luise Solmitz at last began to lose her faith in Hitler, though she was too cautious to say so too explicitly even in the privacy of her diary. Gathering together her thoughts about the Germans and their current situation on 8 September 1942, she had written: For me, a great man is only one who knows how to moderate himself, because there is not just a present time in which revenge can be tasted, but also a future in which retribution will come. Bismarck could restrain himself, one of the few who resisted being swept away by the power of success, a man who opposed his own internal law to the kind of law of nature that carried the conqueror away. The inescapable fate of most conquerors is self-destruction.149 But it was not until her daughter Gisela left her newborn son Richard in her safekeeping that Luise Solmitz really turned against Hitler. It was bad enough to think that she and her husband Friedrich might die in the bombing, but the threat it posed to their baby grandchild, the innocent carrier of Germany's future, appalled her. By this time, she had only 'hate' and 'curses' for Hitler. 'I got into the habit of accompanying every bomb with a "Let Hitler die a miserable death" when we were amongst ourselves,' she wrote.150 The family started to refer to the Nazis as 'Herr Jaspers', allowing them to discuss the decline and forthcoming end of the Nazi system without fear of being arrested if anyone overheard them. Every time Goebbels or another leading Nazi came on to the radio, they rushed across the room to switch it off. The family started to refer to the Nazis as 'Herr Jaspers', allowing them to discuss the decline and forthcoming end of the Nazi system without fear of being arrested if anyone overheard them. Every time Goebbels or another leading Nazi came on to the radio, they rushed across the room to switch it off.151 The constant bombing was destroying what little was left of the popular belief in Hitler and support for the Nazi regime. The constant bombing was destroying what little was left of the popular belief in Hitler and support for the Nazi regime.

As the situation became more desperate, theft and illegal black-marketeering became the only ways to survive. Looting grew more widespread, above all from the summer of 1944 onwards. In Essen, for example, more than ninety grocery stores were looted in just two weeks in the autumn of 1944. People took advantage of the owners' absence during night-time air raids. Bomb damage provided them with further opportunities. Mostly they took small amounts of food and clothing. Police patrols were increased, and the Gestapo expanded its network of informers in the communities of foreign workers. In September 1944 Gestapo officers were authorized to carry out summary executions of looters, an order formalized by the Reich Security Head Office in early November 1944 initially only with regard to eastern workers, then to all. Local police and administrative authorities were thus, in effect, encouraged to take matters into their own hands. Members of the People's Storm were used to stand guard over bomb-damaged buildings, and to arrest and indeed to shoot eastern workers caught with loot from bomb-sites. In October 1944 one Gestapo officer in the west German town of Dalheim, not far from Cologne, coming across some eastern workers, all of them women, carrying what seemed to be looted goods, got his men to arrest seven of them; they confessed under interrogation and he had them all shot the following day. Sometimes local people would join in. Early in April 1945, for instance, a telephone operator on his way home from work in Oberhausen noticed four eastern workers coming out of a house the inhabitants of which had evidently taken refuge in an air-raid shelter; he gathered some other men, and arrested one of the workers, whom the men then started beating. The worker confessed to stealing some potatoes, and was taken to an office of the armed forces, where the telephone operator was given a gun. Taking his prisoner to a sports field, he was joined by a crowd, who also started beating the man with clubs and planks. The telephone operator then shot the man, but he did not die immediately; as he lay moaning on the ground the crowd gathered round and beat him to death.152 In such circumstances, it is not surprising that increasing numbers of foreign workers began to abscond or go underground. French workers given leave of absence to visit their families back home often simply failed to return - in the I. G. Farben factory in Ludwigshafen, for example, fully 68 per cent of the western European workers given leave to visit home in May and June 1943 never came back. To have banned home leave, however, would have caused widespread unrest among these workers, and punitive measures were not possible because they were from 'friendly' countries. Half or more of the workers who deserted their jobs were from the east, and these men and women were undoubtedly acting illegally. The chances of their actually making it back home were remote, but many of them managed to find work elsewhere, particularly if it was less demanding than the job they had left. Most tried their best to relocate to areas that were not threatened by bombing raids. The Gestapo tracked down and arrested a large number of them, organizing widespread manhunts and intensifying their checks on railway stations, bars and public places. By 1944 the number of escapes had increased to the staggering figure of half a million a year, at least according to Albert Speer, who insisted that, because of their importance to the war economy, the most that should be done to the absconding workers when they were arrested was to return them to their original place of work. Other foreign labourers increasingly signed themselves off sick, or simply worked more slowly. The police found the following chain-letter in the pocket of a French worker in May 1944: 'The Ten Commandments of a Perfect French Worker: 1. Walk slowly in the workshop. 2. Walk quickly after knocking off work. 3. Go to the toilet frequently. 4. Don't work too hard. 5. Annoy the foreman. 6. Court the beautiful girls. 7. Visit the doctor often. 8. Don't count on a vacation. 9. Cherish cleanliness. 10. Always have hope.'153 Some workers deliberately sabotaged the weapons they were being forced to make. Others just produced shoddy work because they were tired and malnourished. Some workers deliberately sabotaged the weapons they were being forced to make. Others just produced shoddy work because they were tired and malnourished.

Resistance or refractoriness of this kind was almost always on an individual basis. In some places, Communist foreign labourers set up clandestine resistance movements, but these seldom did much more than organize escapes or identify and deal with informers. Far more common were gangs of escaped foreign workers hiding in bombed-out buildings and living off their wits, often together with young Germans. Their main source of support was usually the black market. With food in increasingly short supply, tobacco, as Luise Solmitz had noticed, became a kind of currency, to be exchanged when needed for bread or clothes. Western workers, especially the French, were better paid than their eastern counterparts, and often received food parcels from their relatives back home, so they were able to use this advantageous situation to build up a thriving clandestine market in the food so desperately needed by Soviet and Italian workers. Lacking purchasing power, Russian prisoners of war and civilian forced labourers began to make little toys and other knick-knacks from industrial waste and sell them on the streets or in the factories, though this was soon banned on the grounds that the materials they used were important for the war economy.154 Large gangs began to emerge, building on their role in such often dangerous trades. By September 1944, encouraged by the approach of the Allied armies, these gangs were growing in number, especially in ruined west German towns like Cologne. They were often armed and were not afraid of shooting it out with the police. In Cologne, one gang of about thirty members, mainly eastern workers, was reported to be living off stolen and looted food, and when the Gestapo broke it up after a gunfight in which a police inspector was killed, the leading figure, Mishka Finn, found his way to another gang led by a former concentration camp inmate, a German. Most of the members were army deserters and escaped prisoners. This gang worked in turn with a more political group of younger working-class men known as the Edelweiss Pirates, who had been attacking members of the Hitler Youth and robbing grocery shops and other premises. When the group became more ambitious and started planning to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in the city, the police located and arrested its members. They hanged six of them, all eastern workers, in public, before a large crowd, on 25 October 1944, following this with the public execution of thirteen members of the German gang on 10 November 1944. Large gangs began to emerge, building on their role in such often dangerous trades. By September 1944, encouraged by the approach of the Allied armies, these gangs were growing in number, especially in ruined west German towns like Cologne. They were often armed and were not afraid of shooting it out with the police. In Cologne, one gang of about thirty members, mainly eastern workers, was reported to be living off stolen and looted food, and when the Gestapo broke it up after a gunfight in which a police inspector was killed, the leading figure, Mishka Finn, found his way to another gang led by a former concentration camp inmate, a German. Most of the members were army deserters and escaped prisoners. This gang worked in turn with a more political group of younger working-class men known as the Edelweiss Pirates, who had been attacking members of the Hitler Youth and robbing grocery shops and other premises. When the group became more ambitious and started planning to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in the city, the police located and arrested its members. They hanged six of them, all eastern workers, in public, before a large crowd, on 25 October 1944, following this with the public execution of thirteen members of the German gang on 10 November 1944.155 However, this did not bring such activities in the city to an end; indeed, the head of the Cologne Gestapo was killed shortly afterwards in a shoot-out with yet another gang of eastern workers. One gang in Duisburg was a hundred strong and carried out break-ins on a more or less daily basis. The Gestapo responded to this mounting chaos with a policy of mass arrests and executions on an ever-larger scale. In Duisburg, twenty-four members of the eastern workers' gang were shot in February 1945, followed in March by sixty-seven more people, a number of them Germans suspected of sheltering members of the gang. In Essen the Gestapo chief, together with his superior officer from D*sseldorf, had thirty-five prisoners, mostly held on suspicion of looting or burglary, taken out of the police jail and shot. Thirty more eastern workers were executed on 20 March 1945 near Wuppertal, twenty-three in Bochum, and eleven in Gelsenkirchen. In Dortmund, the Gestapo shot some 240 men and women in March and April 1945, carrying on their killings right up to the moment when the Allied troops entered the city. Their victims were people imprisoned under suspicion of looting, theft, Communist resistance activities, espionage and a variety of other offences. Anger at Germany's impending defeat fuelled a spirit of vengeance, and a desire to restore a Nazi sense of order in a world rapidly descending into chaos, where people the Gestapo thought of as racially inferior were roaming almost unchecked through the major industrial cities of the German west. Gang activity in this region was driven more by a sense of survival than by any desire to offer overt resistance to the Nazi regime; but, as so often, the regime's response was political in its very essence, ideological to the last.156 V.

According to the Soviet Union's own estimates, the Red Army's losses in the war totalled more than 11 million troops, over 100,000 aircraft, more than 300,000 artillery pieces, and nearly 100,000 tanks and self-propelled guns. Other authorities have put the losses of military personnel far higher, as high indeed as 26 million. Red Army troops were untrained, uneducated, often unprepared. The losses continued unabated right to the end of the war; indeed, more tanks were lost every day in the final battle for Berlin than had been lost even in the Battle of Kursk. Stalin sought victory at any price, and the price his men paid was astronomically high. Red Army officers and troops were told to obey orders without question and to avoid undertaking anything on their own initiative. Instead of mounting tactically sophisticated attacks, they often stormed the enemy lines in frontal assaults, incurring losses so heavy that it took time even with the vast resources at the Red Army's disposal to replace them. The result was that the war on the Eastern Front took far longer to win than it would have done with more intelligent and less profligate military leadership.157 On top of this, however, the sufferings the troops had to endure and the enormous losses they suffered infused the Soviet soldiers' commitment to victory with a strong dose of bitterness and hatred for the enemy. This became apparent as soon as they reached the borders of Germany. On top of this, however, the sufferings the troops had to endure and the enormous losses they suffered infused the Soviet soldiers' commitment to victory with a strong dose of bitterness and hatred for the enemy. This became apparent as soon as they reached the borders of Germany.

In July 1944 Soviet troops entered Majdanek, the first extermination camp to be discovered by any of the Allied armies. The barracks and yards were littered with corpses - Russians, Poles and many others, as well as Jews. Appalled reporters went round the gas chambers, which the Germans had not been able to dismantle in time. Thousands of Red Army soldiers were conducted round the camp at Majdanek to see for themselves. Pravda Pravda ('Truth'), the main Soviet daily newspaper, printed vivid reports, to add to the already well-known stories of the millions of Soviet prisoners of war deliberately starved and left to die by the Germans. As they made their way westwards into Germany, the Soviet forces discovered other killing centres, not only Auschwitz but smaller places like Klooga, near Tallinn, where photographers took pictures of the bodies of murdered Jews piled up with logs ready for a mass cremation that the Germans had not had time to begin. The deep impression made by such sights added fuel to the anger against the Germans built up over years of suffering at their hands. The memories of burned-out and looted cities like Kiev or Smolensk intensified as the troops entered a country whose standard of living seemed unimaginably high compared to their own. If Germany was so rich, then why had the Germans started the war? The contrast only seemed to deepen the Russian soldiers' fury. 'We will take revenge,' wrote one as he crossed into East Prussia in January 1945, 'revenge for all our sufferings . . . It's obvious from everything we see that Hitler robbed the whole of Europe to please his bloodstained Fritzes . . . Their shops are piled with goods from all the shops and factories of Europe.' ('Truth'), the main Soviet daily newspaper, printed vivid reports, to add to the already well-known stories of the millions of Soviet prisoners of war deliberately starved and left to die by the Germans. As they made their way westwards into Germany, the Soviet forces discovered other killing centres, not only Auschwitz but smaller places like Klooga, near Tallinn, where photographers took pictures of the bodies of murdered Jews piled up with logs ready for a mass cremation that the Germans had not had time to begin. The deep impression made by such sights added fuel to the anger against the Germans built up over years of suffering at their hands. The memories of burned-out and looted cities like Kiev or Smolensk intensified as the troops entered a country whose standard of living seemed unimaginably high compared to their own. If Germany was so rich, then why had the Germans started the war? The contrast only seemed to deepen the Russian soldiers' fury. 'We will take revenge,' wrote one as he crossed into East Prussia in January 1945, 'revenge for all our sufferings . . . It's obvious from everything we see that Hitler robbed the whole of Europe to please his bloodstained Fritzes . . . Their shops are piled with goods from all the shops and factories of Europe.'158 'We hate Germany and the Germans deeply,' wrote another. 'You can often see civilians lying dead in the street . . . But the Germans deserve the atrocities that they unleashed. You only have to think about Majdanek.' 'We hate Germany and the Germans deeply,' wrote another. 'You can often see civilians lying dead in the street . . . But the Germans deserve the atrocities that they unleashed. You only have to think about Majdanek.'159 Political commissars, themselves the subject of a special murder order issued to the German forces in 1941, urged the troops on to take their revenge. 'The soldiers' rage in battle must be terrible,' went one widespread Soviet political slogan of the time. 'You said that we should do the same things in Germany as the Germans did to us,' wrote another soldier to his father. 'The court has begun already: they are going to remember this march by our army over German territory for a long, long time.' Political commissars, themselves the subject of a special murder order issued to the German forces in 1941, urged the troops on to take their revenge. 'The soldiers' rage in battle must be terrible,' went one widespread Soviet political slogan of the time. 'You said that we should do the same things in Germany as the Germans did to us,' wrote another soldier to his father. 'The court has begun already: they are going to remember this march by our army over German territory for a long, long time.'160 The Soviet military and civilian authorities ordered the occupied parts of Germany to be stripped bare. They carted off vast quantities of railway track, locomotives and wagons, weapons and ammunition, and much more besides, to replenish as far as they could the Soviet plant and equipment destroyed in the war. The Americans found that 80 per cent of Berlin's industrial machinery had been removed to the Soviet Union by the time they arrived in the city in 1945. Artworks were part of the officially sanctioned plunder too. In their hasty retreat, the Germans were forced to leave behind numerous collections, like others across Europe by this time placed for safe keeping in cellars, mines and other hiding places away from the heat of battle and the destructiveness of bombing raids. Special Soviet art recovery units roamed the countryside searching for these hoards, and those they succeeded in finding were carried off to a special repository in Moscow. In a deep quarry tunnel at the village of Groscotta near Dresden, they found numerous paintings stored by the Dresden museums, including Raphael's Sistine Madonna Sistine Madonna and Rembrandt's and Rembrandt's Abduction of Ganymede Abduction of Ganymede. The huge Pergamon Altar was dismantled and taken away. One and a half million cultural objects were eventually returned to East Germany, after 1949, but a good deal went astray. The mayor of Bremen, for example, had sent the city's art collection for safekeeping to a castle not far from Berlin, where Red Army troops found it. Arriving to inspect the collection, Viktor Baldin, a Russian architect enlisted in the Red Army, found the valuable works scattered around the area, and did his best to recover them, in one case trading a Russian soldier a pair of boots for an etching by Albrecht D*rer. While Baldin kept the hundreds of drawings he had found in safe keeping, seeking an opportunity to return his collection to Bremen, other items from the same collection began to turn up on the art market later on; one dealer gave a Berlin woman 150 marks and a pound of coffee in return for a Cranach as late as 1956. The Russians kept much of their 'trophy art' even after 1990, asking pointedly why they should return looted art to Germany when so many of their own cultural treasures had disappeared or been destroyed as a result of the actions of the invading German armies.161 Ordinary Red Army soldiers looted at will. The fierceness of the fighting in the final months of the war only added to the Soviet soldiers' fury. Perhaps, too, they were releasing the anger and frustration built up over many years of suffering, inflicted not only by Hitler but also by Stalin before him. Like the German soldiers entering Russia in 1941, they fought in close-knit groups united by a common ethos of masculine aggressiveness. The atrocities they committed were a symptom not of the breakdown of discipline and morale but of the group cohesion and collective mentality forged in the heat of battle. The Germans had plundered and destroyed, so why should they not do the same? Ordinary Soviet soldiers helped themselves to whatever they could find, irrespective of the military regulations. Food was the most important: soldiers plundered German military stores, broke into wine cellars and drank themselves into insensibility, and sent food parcels back to their families in enormous quantities. Officers took rare books, paintings, hunting rifles, typewriters, bicycles, bedding, clothes, shoes, musical instruments, and especially radios, a much-prized rarity back home. All of them stole wristwatches. At the railhead in Kursk, the monthly total of parcels arriving from soldiers in Germany jumped from 300 in January 1945 to 50,000 in April. By mid-May 1945, some 20,000 railway wagons of loot were waiting to be unloaded or sent on to their destinations. But there was violence and senseless destruction as well.162 The Red Army soldiers torched houses, farms and even whole towns and villages; they shot civilians by the thousand, men, women and children. 'Happy is the heart,' wrote one soldier to his parents in February 1945, 'as you drive through a burning German town. We are taking revenge for everything, and our revenge is just. Fire for fire, blood for blood, death for death.' The Red Army soldiers torched houses, farms and even whole towns and villages; they shot civilians by the thousand, men, women and children. 'Happy is the heart,' wrote one soldier to his parents in February 1945, 'as you drive through a burning German town. We are taking revenge for everything, and our revenge is just. Fire for fire, blood for blood, death for death.'163 Driven by hatred, vengefulness and seemingly endless quantities of alcohol, the troops indulged in a systematic campaign of rape and sexual violence against German women. This had in the end very little to do with releasing months and years of sexual frustration and pent-up lust; other factors, notably hatred and aggression, were far more important. Most of the adult civilians the Red Army troops found in Germany were women: the men were dead, still fighting, or working in munitions factories. It was as women that the Germans became the object of the Soviet soldiers' wrath. Interviewed later on, German women typically recalled that, when they tried to protest, they were met not with counter-stories of German soldiers raping Russian women but with 'the image of a German soldier swinging a baby, torn from its mother's arms, against a wall - the mother screams, the baby's brains splatter against the wall, the soldier laughs.'164 It had after all been the Germans who had invaded Russia, unprovoked, and caused an almost unimaginable degree of death, suffering and destruction. They would be given a lesson that would last a thousand years. As one Red Army soldier wrote: 'It's absolutely clear that if we don't really scare them now, there will be no way of avoiding another war in the future.' It had after all been the Germans who had invaded Russia, unprovoked, and caused an almost unimaginable degree of death, suffering and destruction. They would be given a lesson that would last a thousand years. As one Red Army soldier wrote: 'It's absolutely clear that if we don't really scare them now, there will be no way of avoiding another war in the future.'165 One young officer coming upon a unit that had overtaken a column of German refugees fleeing westward later recalled: 'Women, mothers and their children lie to the right and left along the route, and in front of each of them stands a raucous armada of men with their trousers down. The women who are bleeding or losing consciousness get shoved to one side, and our men shoot the ones who try to save their children.' A group of 'grinning' officers was standing near by, making sure 'that every soldier without exception would take part'.166 Women and girls were subjected to serial rape wherever they were encountered. Rape was often accompanied by torture and mutilation and frequently ended in the victim being shot or bludgeoned to death. The raging violence was undiscriminating. Often, especially in Berlin, women were deliberately raped in the presence of their menfolk, to underline the humiliation. Women and girls were subjected to serial rape wherever they were encountered. Rape was often accompanied by torture and mutilation and frequently ended in the victim being shot or bludgeoned to death. The raging violence was undiscriminating. Often, especially in Berlin, women were deliberately raped in the presence of their menfolk, to underline the humiliation.

The men were usually killed if they tried to intervene. In East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia it is thought that around 1,400,000 women were raped, a good number of them several times. Gang-rapes were the norm rather than the exception. The two largest Berlin hospitals estimated that at least 100,000 women had been raped in the German capital. Many caught a sexually transmitted disease, and not a few fell pregnant; the vast majority of the latter obtained an abortion, or, if they did give birth, abandoned their baby in hospital. The sexual violence went on for many weeks, even after the war formally came to an end. German women learned to hide, especially after dark; or, if they were young, to take a Soviet soldier, preferably an officer, as a lover and protector. On 4 May 1945 an anonymous Berlin woman wrote in her diary: 'Slowly but surely we're starting to view all the raping with a sense of humour - gallows humour.'167 She noted with a certain satisfaction that the Russian soldiers tended to prefer plump and well-fed women as their victims after the initial fury was over, and that these, unsurprisingly, were usually the wives of Nazi Party functionaries. She noted with a certain satisfaction that the Russian soldiers tended to prefer plump and well-fed women as their victims after the initial fury was over, and that these, unsurprisingly, were usually the wives of Nazi Party functionaries.168 Rightly afraid of what might happen to them when the Red Army arrived, millions of Germans fled before the advance of the Soviet troops. Pathetic columns like those of the women, children and old people who had taken to the roads of Europe from Belgium to Belarus in fear for their lives as the German armies marched into their countries in 1940 and 1941 could now be seen making their way back towards Germany in 1944 and 1945: only this time they consisted of Germans. The lucky ones carried their possessions on a car or a horse and cart, the less fortunate trudged along on foot. Many children froze to death on the journey. Some refugees still managed to find an undamaged railway line and a place on a train. Nazi officials in some towns piled people on to open goods wagons, shivering, and without food or drink. By the time one such trainload arrived in Schleswig-Holstein, it was reported, the refugees were 'in a dreadful state. They were riddled with lice and had many diseases such as scabies. After the long journey, there were many dead lying in the wagons.'169 Towards the end of January 1945, up to 50,000 refugees were arriving in Berlin by rail every day. The Nazi authorities estimated in mid-February 1945 that more than 8 million people were fleeing westwards into the heart of the Reich. Along the Baltic coast, some half a million refugees were trapped in Danzig, and food parcels taken in by air or sea were frequently looted by starving German soldiers. Another 200,000 were bottled up by the fighting in the small port of Pillau. Local and regional officials began to organize their evacuation by sea. The 'Strength Through Joy' cruise liner Towards the end of January 1945, up to 50,000 refugees were arriving in Berlin by rail every day. The Nazi authorities estimated in mid-February 1945 that more than 8 million people were fleeing westwards into the heart of the Reich. Along the Baltic coast, some half a million refugees were trapped in Danzig, and food parcels taken in by air or sea were frequently looted by starving German soldiers. Another 200,000 were bottled up by the fighting in the small port of Pillau. Local and regional officials began to organize their evacuation by sea. The 'Strength Through Joy' cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff Wilhelm Gustloff took some 6,600 from Gdynia on to the Baltic: a Soviet submarine came across it, fired three torpedoes and sank it with the loss of 5,300 lives. It was not the only refugee ship to be sunk in this way. Faced with bitter accusations of having committed a major atrocity, the Soviet navy claimed that the ship had been full of U-boat crewmen. It knew that Grand Admiral D*nitz had ordered that the evacuation of members of the armed forces had priority over that of civilians. In this case, however, it had made a terrible mistake. Nevertheless, the captain of the submarine that sank the ship was rewarded by being spared the prison sentence he faced because of the discovery of his long-term affair with a foreign woman; in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. took some 6,600 from Gdynia on to the Baltic: a Soviet submarine came across it, fired three torpedoes and sank it with the loss of 5,300 lives. It was not the only refugee ship to be sunk in this way. Faced with bitter accusations of having committed a major atrocity, the Soviet navy claimed that the ship had been full of U-boat crewmen. It knew that Grand Admiral D*nitz had ordered that the evacuation of members of the armed forces had priority over that of civilians. In this case, however, it had made a terrible mistake. Nevertheless, the captain of the submarine that sank the ship was rewarded by being spared the prison sentence he faced because of the discovery of his long-term affair with a foreign woman; in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.170

22. German Refugees and Expellees, 1944-50 Those Germans who remained in the occupied and conquered territories of the east faced a difficult future. During the war they had formed part of the often brutal and violent ruling ethnic elite. Now they were the vanquished. Over the following months, Czech, Polish and other re-established governments organized the forcible expulsion and expropriation of almost the entire ethnic German population of their states, driven out to join the millions who had already fled. Altogether perhaps 11 million German refugees and expellees arrived in the 'Old Reich' between 1944 and 1947. People fled in large numbers before the advancing Allied troops in the west as well. Back in her home town of Alzey in the Rhineland, Lore Walb saw people packing their bags as the Americans approached. 'The columns of cars have been going past our little house all evening in an unbroken procession,' she wrote on 26 March 1945. 'They were all coming from the Front and driving eastwards.' A quarter of the town's population, she reckoned, joined the columns of refugees.171 Everywhere in Germany in the first months of 1945 people were on the move, living with the permanent threat of violence and death, waiting for the end with a mixture of fear and hope. Everywhere in Germany in the first months of 1945 people were on the move, living with the permanent threat of violence and death, waiting for the end with a mixture of fear and hope.THE FINAL DEFEAT.

I.

In the mounting chaos and destruction of the last months of the war, Hitler's influence over the German masses finally disappeared. Even supporters of the regime, noted the SS Security Service on 28 March 1945, were criticizing him. Nobody believed his assurances of victory any longer.172 'Do you believe then,' some were reported as saying, 'that the German people has completely given up thinking? Do you think then that the German people can be kept going for much longer with empty phrases and promises?' In 1941 Hitler had announced that the last battle-ready Russian divisions had been destroyed. With the Russians now at the gates, 'who can take it badly when we don't believe the Leader's word any more?' 'Do you believe then,' some were reported as saying, 'that the German people has completely given up thinking? Do you think then that the German people can be kept going for much longer with empty phrases and promises?' In 1941 Hitler had announced that the last battle-ready Russian divisions had been destroyed. With the Russians now at the gates, 'who can take it badly when we don't believe the Leader's word any more?'173 'Doubts about our leadership,' the Security Service was forced to admit, 'are making no exception of the Leader's person.' When Hitler's proclamation of 24 February 1945 was read out over the radio, it did not make a favourable impression on listeners. 'The Leader is making another prophecy,' mocked a lower Nazi official in L*neburg. 'It's the old record yet again,' said another. 'Doubts about our leadership,' the Security Service was forced to admit, 'are making no exception of the Leader's person.' When Hitler's proclamation of 24 February 1945 was read out over the radio, it did not make a favourable impression on listeners. 'The Leader is making another prophecy,' mocked a lower Nazi official in L*neburg. 'It's the old record yet again,' said another.174 Anger at the Nazi leadership had become general. People now feared the threat of the SS and of die-hard Nazi activists more than they feared defeat. Anger at the Nazi leadership had become general. People now feared the threat of the SS and of die-hard Nazi activists more than they feared defeat.175 Among ordinary Germans, from whom his identity as a Jew was carefully kept hidden, Victor Klemperer now began to find spontaneous, mostly retrospective expressions of sympathy for the Jews, 'these poor people'. Among ordinary Germans, from whom his identity as a Jew was carefully kept hidden, Victor Klemperer now began to find spontaneous, mostly retrospective expressions of sympathy for the Jews, 'these poor people'.176 Only a few still professed belief in Hitler, blaming others for Germany's defeat. Only a few still professed belief in Hitler, blaming others for Germany's defeat.177 People began removing swastikas from buildings and destroying other Nazi insignia displayed in public places. People began removing swastikas from buildings and destroying other Nazi insignia displayed in public places.178 There was increasing anger, too, at the Nazi leadership's failure to surrender when everything was so obviously lost. Those who remembered the First World War recalled that the military leaders of the day had thrown in the towel when they had realized that they were about to be defeated, thus saving many lives. 'What decent people Hindenburg and Ludendorff were by comparison,' one said. 'When they saw that the game was up, they brought it to an end and didn't let us go on being murdered, But these people! these people! Just so they can rule for another couple of weeks ...' Just so they can rule for another couple of weeks ...'179 Millions were indeed dying in this final phase of the war. Lore Walb reflected bitterly on Hitler's 'really great guilt. Why,' she asked on 23 April 1945, 'doesn't he finally give up the fight - and why is he rushing us all into a civil war at the end as well?' She was deeply angered by what she called the 'unreason of the fanatics', amongst whom she now clearly numbered Hitler himself. Millions were indeed dying in this final phase of the war. Lore Walb reflected bitterly on Hitler's 'really great guilt. Why,' she asked on 23 April 1945, 'doesn't he finally give up the fight - and why is he rushing us all into a civil war at the end as well?' She was deeply angered by what she called the 'unreason of the fanatics', amongst whom she now clearly numbered Hitler himself.180 And indeed, far from deciding to bring the death and destruction to an end, Hitler was determined if anything to make it worse. Faced with an invasion of German territory by the autumn of 1944, and perhaps taking a leaf out of Stalin's book, he urged a policy of 'scorched earth', denying the enemy armies the ability to live off the land, just as the Russians had tried to do earlier in the war. The idea was completely unrealistic. Allied forces had ample supplies from their own bases. The only victims would have been German civilians. Government ministries agreed that the idea was impracticable, and Speer persuaded Hitler to disable industry in the battle zone by removing vital components rather than by blowing up factories or flooding mines. The armaments minister still thought that it would be possible to reoccupy the conquered territories in the near future and wanted essential production facilities to be ready for reuse. But after the Battle of the Bulge and the resumption of the Soviet advance at the beginning of 1945, Speer finally realized the inevitability of defeat. He decided that the German people would need as far as possible to inherit a functioning economy after the war was over, and he began, no doubt, to be concerned about his own reputation with the Allies. The main person now standing in the way of a managed surrender was Hitler himself. In mid-February 1945, according to his own later account, Speer conceived the idea of dropping poison gas down a ventilation shaft into Hitler's bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. He managed to get the air filter system removed in response to Hitler's complaints that the air below ground was stuffy. But he was still casting around for a suitable chemical when Hitler, obsessed with security after the July bomb plot, recalled that poison gas was heavier than air, had a ten-foot chimney built over the air intake to the bunker and posted SS sentries all around the roof, which was now equipped with searchlights to identify anyone found lurking there at night. Speer quietly abandoned the project; whether it had ever existed outside his own fantasies remained unclear. And indeed, far from deciding to bring the death and destruction to an end, Hitler was determined if anything to make it worse. Faced with an invasion of German territory by the autumn of 1944, and perhaps taking a leaf out of Stalin's book, he urged a policy of 'scorched earth', denying the enemy armies the ability to live off the land, just as the Russians had tried to do earlier in the war. The idea was completely unrealistic. Allied forces had ample supplies from their own bases. The only victims would have been German civilians. Government ministries agreed that the idea was impracticable, and Speer persuaded Hitler to disable industry in the battle zone by removing vital components rather than by blowing up factories or flooding mines. The armaments minister still thought that it would be possible to reoccupy the conquered territories in the near future and wanted essential production facilities to be ready for reuse. But after the Battle of the Bulge and the resumption of the Soviet advance at the beginning of 1945, Speer finally realized the inevitability of defeat. He decided that the German people would need as far as possible to inherit a functioning economy after the war was over, and he began, no doubt, to be concerned about his own reputation with the Allies. The main person now standing in the way of a managed surrender was Hitler himself. In mid-February 1945, according to his own later account, Speer conceived the idea of dropping poison gas down a ventilation shaft into Hitler's bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. He managed to get the air filter system removed in response to Hitler's complaints that the air below ground was stuffy. But he was still casting around for a suitable chemical when Hitler, obsessed with security after the July bomb plot, recalled that poison gas was heavier than air, had a ten-foot chimney built over the air intake to the bunker and posted SS sentries all around the roof, which was now equipped with searchlights to identify anyone found lurking there at night. Speer quietly abandoned the project; whether it had ever existed outside his own fantasies remained unclear. 181 181 On 18 March 1945 Speer sent Hitler a memorandum outlining plans for the preservation of Germany's economic infrastructure to allow reconstruction after the end of the war. Hitler told the military briefing that evening that there would be no point in taking such a course of action. The German nation had failed in the struggle for the survival of the fittest. The future belonged to the victors. Those Germans remaining after the struggle was over would be poor racial stock because the best had been killed. So it was not necessary to provide them with the basis for their future existence, on however primitive a level. Then he turned his anger on to Speer's memorandum. His response to it was to strip his Armaments Minister of most of his powers. On 19 March 1945 Hitler issued what quickly came to be known as his 'Nero order', after the Roman Emperor who had supposedly commanded the destruction of the city of Rome by fire. All military, transport, communication, industrial and supply installations and equipment within the Reich that might fall into the hands of the enemy were to be destroyed. 'It is an error,' Hitler said, 'to believe that after the recapture of lost areas it will be possible to use undamaged or only temporarily paralysed transport, communications, industrial and supply installations again for one's own purposes.' When the enemy was finally beaten back, he would 'leave only scorched earth behind him and . . . abandon all concern for the population'.182 This was a fantasy on several different levels, of course. But it could cause immense suffering if implemented. Albert Speer determined to stop it. He toured the battle-fronts and arranged with sympathetic army commanders that Hitler's command to destroy everything should be ignored. Speer learned that the Regional Leaders were preparing to flood the coalmines, blow up the lift machinery and block the canals. Speer and his team quietly disposed of the explosives and other equipment that would be needed to carry out the plan, met with the Regional Leaders and went some way towards persuading them of its impracticality. He had already arranged with Heinrici, Model and Guderian to preserve the physical infrastructure of the invaded areas, east and west, as far as was possible under conditions of war. This was a fantasy on several different levels, of course. But it could cause immense suffering if implemented. Albert Speer determined to stop it. He toured the battle-fronts and arranged with sympathetic army commanders that Hitler's command to destroy everything should be ignored. Speer learned that the Regional Leaders were preparing to flood the coalmines, blow up the lift machinery and block the canals. Speer and his team quietly disposed of the explosives and other equipment that would be needed to carry out the plan, met with the Regional Leaders and went some way towards persuading them of its impracticality. He had already arranged with Heinrici, Model and Guderian to preserve the physical infrastructure of the invaded areas, east and west, as far as was possible under conditions of war.183 Back in Berlin, Hitler accused his Armaments Minister of trying to persuade the Regional Leaders to countermand his orders, and told him that he would only keep his job if he could convince himself that the war could still be won. Speer demurred. There was no doubt that the war was lost, he said. Hitler asked him again, in 'an almost pleading tone, and for a moment,' Speer later recalled, 'I thought that in his piteousness he was even more persuasive than in his masterful poses. Under other circumstances I would probably have weakened and given in. This time, what kept me from submitting to his spell was the thought of his destructive plans.'184 Hitler gave him twenty-four hours to come up with an answer. Speer drafted a letter of refusal, but Hitler's secretaries informed him they had been forbidden to type it on the special large-character typewriter used for documents to be perused by the short-sighted Leader, so Hitler would not be able to read it. Speer gave in. Back in the Chancellery, he told Hitler: 'My Leader, I stand unreservedly behind you.' Hitler's eyes filled with tears of affection and relief. Speer had avoided dismissal. Indeed, he secured Hitler's authority to implement the Nero order himself and regained most of his powers. On 30 March 1945, following this interview, Speer persuaded Hitler to issue a clarification of the Nero order, which laid down that the destruction had to take place only in order to deny the enemy the use of industrial plant to bolster his own military strength. It was permissible to do this by crippling plant rather than destroying it. Speer continued to work against Party fanatics who wanted to destroy everything. In practice, too, by this stage both industrial firms and their workers had every incentive to protect their factories and mines from destruction, and many of them did so. Hitler gave him twenty-four hours to come up with an answer. Speer drafted a letter of refusal, but Hitler's secretaries informed him they had been forbidden to type it on the special large-character typewriter used for documents to be perused by the short-sighted Leader, so Hitler would not be able to read it. Speer gave in. Back in the Chancellery, he told Hitler: 'My Leader, I stand unreservedly behind you.' Hitler's eyes filled with tears of affection and relief. Speer had avoided dismissal. Indeed, he secured Hitler's authority to implement the Nero order himself and regained most of his powers. On 30 March 1945, following this interview, Speer persuaded Hitler to issue a clarification of the Nero order, which laid down that the destruction had to take place only in order to deny the enemy the use of industrial plant to bolster his own military strength. It was permissible to do this by crippling plant rather than destroying it. Speer continued to work against Party fanatics who wanted to destroy everything. In practice, too, by this stage both industrial firms and their workers had every incentive to protect their factories and mines from destruction, and many of them did so.185 In any case, such arguments were becoming increasingly academic as the Allied troops advanced further into the heartland of Germany. In any case, such arguments were becoming increasingly academic as the Allied troops advanced further into the heartland of Germany.

Hitler's mood of apocalyptic defeatism alternated during these final weeks with outward displays of defiant confidence in his ability to turn the situation round. He continued to hope for a split in the alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Some, like the Chief of the Army General Staff Heinz Guderian, advocated surrendering in the west and throwing all Germany's troops and resources into the defence of Berlin against the Red Army, in the hope that this would persuade Britain and America to join a new struggle against the Soviet domination of Central Europe. But Hitler would not hear of any kind of surrender, not even a partial one, and accused Guderian of committing high treason. For the moment he took no further action, but from late January 1945 onwards, his meetings with the Chief of the Army General Staff were held with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the SS Security Service, a silently menacing witness, in attendance. Others too, however, thought of pursuing a similar line, including Ribbentrop and G*ring. Yet they were unwilling to take any serious steps towards a negotiated peace in the west in the light of Hitler's intransigence. Hitler himself blamed Britain's persistence in opposing him on Churchill's love of conflict, but he also thought that it would be easier to make peace with Stalin, who would not have to contend with the kind of independent public opinion that hamstrung the Western leaders. At the same time, however, he did not think Stalin could be brought to the negotiating table unless the Red Army was so severely beaten before the gates of Berlin that he saw no alternative, so the end result was the same here too: Germany had no alternative but to fight on.186 Hitler had not survived the attempt to kill him on 20 July 1944 entirely unscathed. Although the blast temporarily cured his Parkinsonian tremor, most easily visible in the shaking of his left hand and lower arm, it was back by the middle of September 1944, and to it was added dizziness, an inability to stand for long periods, and a serious ear injury that took many weeks to overcome. On 23 September 1944 he had developed severe stomach cramps, and four days later symptoms of jaundice. He had become exhausted, developed a high temperature and taken to his bed. Only on 2 October 1944 had he begun to recover; by this time he had lost 16 pounds in weight. The doctor treating him for his ear problem had tried to blame his symptoms on the pills Morell was prescribing him, and he had won the support of Hitler's other attending physicians, including Karl Brandt, but Hitler's reaction had simply been to dismiss them all and reaffirm his faith in Morell's expertise. Indeed, the fact that Hitler had recovered while continuing to take the pills gave the lie to their assertion that Morell was trying to poison the Nazi Leader.187 Nevertheless, in the last months of his life, according to Albert Speer, Hitler's health continued to deteriorate. By early 1945, Hitler was, he wrote, Nevertheless, in the last months of his life, according to Albert Speer, Hitler's health continued to deteriorate. By early 1945, Hitler was, he wrote, shrivelling up like an old man. His limbs trembled; he walked stooped, with dragging footsteps. Even his voice became quavering and lost its old master-fulness. Its force had given way to a faltering, toneless manner of speaking. When he became excited, as he frequently did in a senile way, his voice would start breaking . . . His complexion was sallow, his face swollen; his uniform, which in the past he had kept scrupulously neat, was often neglected in this last period of life and stained by the food he had eaten with a shaking hand.188 Perhaps it was pity for him, Speer thought, that kept his entourage from raising any objections 'when, in the long since hopeless situation, he continued to commit non-existent divisions or to order units supplied by planes that could no longer fly for lack of fuel'.189 They listened in silence when he told them that Stalin and the west would surely come to blows before they had won the war, or claimed that, in such a situation, the west would find it impossible to do without him. Speer himself was still happy enough to spend time with him poring over the plans they had drawn up for the rebuilding of Linz after the war. Yet Hitler's charisma was now ebbing away even amongst his immediate following. Speer noted later that where once everyone had stood when he entered a room, 'now conversations continued, people remained seated, servants took their orders from guests, associates who had drunk too much went to sleep in their chairs, and others talked loudly and uninhibitedly'. They listened in silence when he told them that Stalin and the west would surely come to blows before they had won the war, or claimed that, in such a situation, the west would find it impossible to do without him. Speer himself was still happy enough to spend time with him poring over the plans they had drawn up for the rebuilding of Linz after the war. Yet Hitler's charisma was now ebbing away even amongst his immediate following. Speer noted later that where once everyone had stood when he entered a room, 'now conversations continued, people remained seated, servants took their orders from guests, associates who had drunk too much went to sleep in their chairs, and others talked loudly and uninhibitedly'.190 Hitler now spent increasing amounts of time in the bunker complex beneath the Reich Chancellery. Initially he still lunched in the undamaged part of the Chancellery, but his apartment had been destroyed along with much else in an air raid on 3 February 1945, and he worked and slept underground, coming up only to exercise his dog Blondi in the Chancellery garden, surrounded by heaps of rubble. He would rise at midday or shortly afterwards, shave and dress, then have lunch before conducting a conference on the military situation, attended not only by senior commanders but also by Himmler, Bormann, Kaltenbrunner and sometimes Ribbentrop. After dinner, at around eight, there would be another military briefing, after which he would retire to his study and hold forth in his accustomed manner to his entourage until he went to bed, often at five or six in the morning.191 On 24 February 1945, on the anniversary of the promulgation of the Nazi Party programme in 1920, Hitler held a final meeting for the Nazi Party Regional Leaders in a still-standing hall in the Reich Chancellery. Arriving from all over Germany, the 'Old Fighters', many of whom had not seen him for some months, were shocked by the way he had aged. He shuffled rather than walked into the room, his eyes were bloodshot, his left hand and arm were visibly trembling, and he had to give up an attempt to raise a glass of water to his mouth to refresh himself. One participant noticed that he occasionally dribbled as he spoke. Attempting to rally them for one last effort, he promised yet again the arrival of wonder-weapons that would change the course of the war. They had to get the people of their districts to fight on until the new weapons were deployed, he said. Otherwise, if the German people were defeated, it would be clear that they did not deserve to win. The faith he expressed in the wonder-weapons was patently not sincere. But his belief in the Darwinian doom about to overtake the German people certainly was. On 24 February 1945, on the anniversary of the promulgation of the Nazi Party programme in 1920, Hitler held a final meeting for the Nazi Party Regional Leaders in a still-standing hall in the Reich Chancellery. Arriving from all over Germany, the 'Old Fighters', many of whom had not seen him for some months, were shocked by the way he had aged. He shuffled rather than walked into the room, his eyes were bloodshot, his left hand and arm were visibly trembling, and he had to give up an attempt to raise a glass of water to his mouth to refresh himself. One participant noticed that he occasionally dribbled as he spoke. Attempting to rally them for one last effort, he promised yet again the arrival of wonder-weapons that would change the course of the war. They had to get the people of their districts to fight on until the new weapons were deployed, he said. Otherwise, if the German people were defeated, it would be clear that they did not deserve to win. The faith he expressed in the wonder-weapons was patently not sincere. But his belief in the Darwinian doom about to overtake the German people certainly was.192 II.

By now, indeed, Hitler was looking mainly to what he imagined would be his place in history. Issuing a proclamation to the armed forces on 11 March 1945 ('Heroes' Memorial Day'), he announced that he had decided to provide the world with an example, going down, he implied, fighting, rather than surrendering cravenly as had been the case in 1918. Goebbels too decided that, if defeat was to come, then it would be a heroic defeat. He would devote his final weeks to creating inspiring images of Nazi self-sacrifice for future generations. Goebbels tried to persuade Hitler to broadcast to the nation again, but the Leader replied gloomily that he had nothing new to offer, and he was aware of reports from the Security Service of the SS that his proclamation of 24 February 1945 had not met with a positive reception. Goebbels was deeply frustrated. But Hitler knew that propaganda had finally failed in the face of the hard facts of invasion and defeat. At another level, as he moved increasingly depleted and in some cases non-existent armies around on his map in the bunker conference room, Hitler was now living a life almost entirely removed from reality. Such illusions were shared in full by Martin Bormann, who exercised his power over the Nazi Party by issuing a stream of directives, decrees and exhortations on a whole variety of issues. Goebbels complained that he was making a paper chancellery out of the Party Chancellery. The Regional Leaders, he thought, would not have the time to read the decrees, let alone the means to implement them. In government ministries, civil servants continued working despite their rapidly shrinking sphere of influence, like cartoon characters running off the edge of a cliff and keeping going despite the yawning abyss beneath.193 At the Berlin headquarters of the Hitler Youth at this time, wrote Melita Maschmann: Every one of us worked with hectic energy. Countless projects were started up, knocked out by the effects of the war, abandoned, taken up again, cancelled, altered, rejected once again and so on. During the last months of this, the feeling crept over us that all this feverish activity on the part of the Reich Youth Leadership was hardly producing the slightest response in the country. Our office was like a termites' nest, gradually pervaded by a sense of the coming collapse without a single person daring to breathe a syllable about it . . . Our brains gave birth to plans and still more plans, lest we should have a moment to stop and think and then to have to recognize that all this bustle was already beginning to resemble the convulsions of a dance of death.194 In the last weeks of the war, she gave up anything more than the occasional appearance at the office, and busied herself with helping refugees fleeing from the Red Army. Coming across a group of injured anti-aircraft auxiliaries, all schoolboys, many weeping after a bomb had destroyed their emplacement and killed many of their comrades, she heard one say when asked if he was in pain: 'Yes, but it doesn't matter, Germany must triumph.'195 'From all those weeks which immediately preceded the collapse of Germany,' she recalled, 'I cannot remember a single conversation in which the probability of our defeat was mentioned. ' 'From all those weeks which immediately preceded the collapse of Germany,' she recalled, 'I cannot remember a single conversation in which the probability of our defeat was mentioned. '196 But she moved in circles of true Nazi believers, of course. And even here, the atmosphere began to take on the bizarre characteristics of the last days of a crumbling empire. While Berlin burned, Maschmann's boss, Reich Youth Leader Arthur Axmann, a man who boasted regularly of his working-class origins, held social evenings at the Youth Leadership's inn at Gatow, to the west of Berlin, where, according to the puritanical Maschmann, by her account a reluctant participant, 'the eating and drinking there was often sheer gluttony', and the party-goers included film starlets, 'charlatans and self-important egoists'. But she moved in circles of true Nazi believers, of course. And even here, the atmosphere began to take on the bizarre characteristics of the last days of a crumbling empire. While Berlin burned, Maschmann's boss, Reich Youth Leader Arthur Axmann, a man who boasted regularly of his working-class origins, held social evenings at the Youth Leadership's inn at Gatow, to the west of Berlin, where, according to the puritanical Maschmann, by her account a reluctant participant, 'the eating and drinking there was often sheer gluttony', and the party-goers included film starlets, 'charlatans and self-important egoists'.197 The death of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945 momentarily lifted the gloom in Hitler's Berlin bunker. For Hitler, waving a newspaper clipping at Speer, this was 'the miracle I always predicted. Who was right? The war isn't lost. Read it! Roosevelt is dead!'198 Providence had come to his aid again. For a short while, fantastic schemes circulated round the corridors of the bunker. Speer would fly to meet Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, and peace would be signed. Hitler's study had a picture of Frederick the Great on the wall; the Prussian King had recovered during the Seven Years' War even after the Russians had occupied Berlin, and Hitler took inspiration from his example: indeed, Goebbels memorized the passage from Thomas Carlyle's biography of the King in which the author, addressing the monarch directly, reassured him that he would prevail in the end, then recited it to the Nazi Leader as an encouragement. Providence had come to his aid again. For a short while, fantastic schemes circulated round the corridors of the bunker. Speer would fly to meet Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, and peace would be signed. Hitler's study had a picture of Frederick the Great on the wall; the Prussian King had recovered during the Seven Years' War even after the Russians had occupied Berlin, and Hitler took inspiration from his example: indeed, Goebbels memorized the passage from Thomas Carlyle's biography of the King in which the author, addressing the monarch directly, reassured him that he would prevail in the end, then recited it to the Nazi Leader as an encouragement.199 Hitler felt that the American President's death was just like this turning-point in the wars of Frederick the Great, when the Tsarina Elizabeth had died, and Russia suddenly abandoned the anti-Prussian coalition. Before long, however, as it became clear that Truman had no intention of reneging on the policies of his predecessor, the brief euphoria subsided. Hitler felt that the American President's death was just like this turning-point in the wars of Frederick the Great, when the Tsarina Elizabeth had died, and Russia suddenly abandoned the anti-Prussian coalition. Before long, however, as it became clear that Truman had no intention of reneging on the policies of his predecessor, the brief euphoria subsided.200 On 20 April 1945 the Red Army opened the assault on Berlin. It was Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday. On 20 April 1945 the Red Army opened the assault on Berlin. It was Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday.

In previous years the Leader's birthday had been the occasion for nationwide festivities. Remembering these amidst the ruins of Berlin was too painful, and Hitler banned the usual office celebrations, though his staff none the less lined up in the bunker to give him their congratulations. Hitler emerged into the open briefly to review a small detachment of Hitler Youth in the Chancellery garden, where they had gathered with representatives of the army and the SS. He congratulated the boys, none of them more than fourteen years old, on their bravery, patted one or two of them, and then vanished below again. It was his last public appearance, and the last time he was formally caught on camera. In the following days, most of the remaining senior figures in the regime left the centre of Berlin, driving out of the city through the smouldering rubble on the few roads still left open before the Russians closed the circle. Speer, D*nitz, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and a host of government ministers were among them. Hitler sent most of his personal staff away by plane to Berchtesgaden. Hermann G*ring had already shipped much of his enormous art collection from his hunting lodge Carinhall, north of Berlin, to the south in a convoy of trucks, before saying his goodbyes to Hitler and departing for Bavaria himself. Only a few remained, notably Bormann, Hitler's long-term factotum Julius Schaub, and the top military men, including Keitel and Jodl. Hitler now gave way to hysteria. He threatened to have his doctor, Morell, shot for trying to drug him with morphine. On 22 April 1945 he ranted at the generals. Everyone had betrayed him, he shouted, even the SS. Breaking down in despair, he told them for the first time openly that he knew the war was lost. He would stay and shoot himself. All attempts to dissuade him failed. Eventually Goebbels, to whom he had ranted in similar vein over the telephone, arrived and calmed him down. They agreed that the Propaganda Minister, his wife and his six young children would come to stay in the bunker for the final days. Hitler's two remaining secretaries had also volunteered to stay. Meanwhile, Schaub burned Hitler's private documents and then left for Berchtesgaden to make sure the same was done there.201 Two days later Speer returned to speak with Hitler one last time. Speer's claim that he confessed his disobedience to Hitler in an outpouring of emotion was a later invention. The two men did not discuss their personal relationship at all, despite their years of friendship. Hitler simply asked him if he should give in to the entreaties of his entourage and leave Berlin for Berchtesgaden. Speer's reply confirmed Hitler's own intentions: he would stay on in the Reich capital, and kill himself to avoid being captured by the Russians. Eva Braun, his long-time companion, who had arrived in the bunker some weeks before, would die with him. Their bodies would be burned to avoid desecration. After an eight-hour stay, Speer flew out again, this time for good.202 Shortly afterwards Hitler's resolve was strengthened when he learned of the fate that had overtaken Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. The pair were picked up by partisans on 27 April 1945 in a column of cars, trucks and armoured vehicles full of German troops and Italian Fascists on its way to Italy's northern border, near Lake Como. An armed detachment led by the Communist partisan 'Colonel Valerio', who had spent five years in prison in the 1930s for anti-Fascist activities, put them up against a wall and shot them with a sub-machine gun in an act of 'Italian people's justice'. After executing fifteen more prisoners in the small town of Dongo, Valerio and his squad took all the bodies to Milan, where they dumped them on the Piazzale Loreto. A crowd gathered and desecrated the corpses in every possible way, spitting and urinating on them and shouting insults. Eventually Mussolini, Petacci and some of the others were hung upside-down from the gantry of a petrol station, where they were exposed to further insults. Shortly afterwards Hitler's resolve was strengthened when he learned of the fate that had overtaken Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. The pair were picked up by partisans on 27 April 1945 in a column of cars, trucks and armoured vehicles full of German troops and Italian Fascists on its way to Italy's northern border, near Lake Como. An armed detachment led by the Communist partisan 'Colonel Valerio', who had spent five years in prison in the 1930s for anti-Fascist activities, put them up against a wall and shot them with a sub-machine gun in an act of 'Italian people's justice'. After executing fifteen more prisoners in the small town of Dongo, Valerio and his squad took all the bodies to Milan, where they dumped them on the Piazzale Loreto. A crowd gathered and desecrated the corpses in every possible way, spitting and urinating on them and shouting insults. Eventually Mussolini, Petacci and some of the others were hung upside-down from the gantry of a petrol station, where they were exposed to further insults.203 If anything were needed to confirm Hitler's decision to kill himself, this was surely it. If anything were needed to confirm Hitler's decision to kill himself, this was surely it.

Only now, at the very end, did Hitler's closest associates begin to desert him. Informed of Hitler's intentions by one of the generals present at the Leader's hysterical outburst on 22 April, Hermann G*ring assumed that the 1941 decree naming him as head of state if Hitler was unable to carry out his duties would now come into force. He sent a telegram to the bunker announcing that he would take over if he heard nothing by 10 p.m. on 24 April. Persuaded by G*ring's arch-enemy Bormann that this was an act of treason, Hitler sent a reply rescinding the 1941 decree and demanding the Reich Marshal resign all his offices for reasons of health. G*ring did as he was told. Within a few hours he was under house arrest on the Obersalzberg. Himmler was next to defect. For several weeks, the head of the SS had been secretly negotiating with the Swedish Red Cross for the release of Scandinavian prisoners from the remaining concentration camps. On 23 April 1945, hearing of Hitler's decision to kill himself, he met his intermediary, Count Bernadotte. Himmler grandly declared that he was now effectively the leader of Germany, and drafted an instrument of surrender to be passed to the Western Allies. Once more, Hitler exploded when he learned of what he called 'the most shameful betrayal in human history'. He took out his fury on one of Himmler's subordinates who had the misfortune to be in the bunker at the time: Hermann Fegelein, a corrupt SS officer who had entered Hitler's entourage by marrying Eva Braun's sister. Earlier in the week, Fegelein had left the bunker without warning and disappeared. He had been discovered later, in his apartment, drunk, dressed in civilian clothes and in the company of a young woman who was not his wife. Around him were bags full of money, ready for his getaway. Fegelein was arrested and brought before Hitler, who threw furious accusations at him. He was working for Himmler, he had disappeared from the bunker to plot Hitler's arrest or assassination, he was a traitor. Hitler convened a drumhead court-martial which sentenced Fegelein to death. The guilty man was taken up to ground level and executed by firing-squad. 204 204 All the while, Hitler was still convening his military conferences and directing the defence of Berlin. But the armies he was ordering to punch through the Soviet lines or break through the gathering encirclement from outside scarcely existed any more as coherent units. They numbered no more than a few score thousand, hardly enough to repel more than 2 million Soviet troops now pushing forward for the final assault. By 25 April 1945 the Soviet generals Zhukov and Konev had closed the ring around Berlin and begun advancing through the suburbs towards the city centre. As in Stalingrad, the war degenerated into bitter, uncoordinated street fighting. General Gotthard Heinrici, whose reputation as a skilful commander of defensive operations had brought him command of the Army Group defending the capital, had maintained a semblance of order only by ignoring Hitler's injunctions to stand firm, but on 29 April he finally resigned his post, unable to cope any longer with the Leader's increasingly meaningless commands.205 Heinrici's patriotic convictions, together with the habits of military discipline and the fear of what would happen if he surrendered to the Russians, were still shared by many German soldiers, who carried on fighting even when all was so obviously lost. The thousands of members of the People's Storm who were drafted in to defend the capital were not so determined; many of them deserted to go back to their families whenever the opportunity presented itself. Heinrici's patriotic convictions, together with the habits of military discipline and the fear of what would happen if he surrendered to the Russians, were still shared by many German soldiers, who carried on fighting even when all was so obviously lost. The thousands of members of the People's Storm who were drafted in to defend the capital were not so determined; many of them deserted to go back to their families whenever the opportunity presented itself.206 By 29 April 1945 Soviet troops were entering the government quarter round the Potsdamer Platz at the heart of Berlin. The end was surely only hours away. Hitler made his last preparations. He summoned a city councillor, Walter Wagner, to the bunker. Now that there was no longer any need for concealment, he said, he would marry Eva Braun. As bombs and shells crashed down outside, Wagner performed the ceremony in front of Goebbels and Bormann as witnesses. A short champagne reception followed. At three in the morning, Hitler heard from Keitel that the last attempt at relieving Berlin from the outside had failed. As dawn broke, Soviet guns began bombarding the Reich Chancellery above. The military commanders told Hitler that it would all be over by the end of the day. After lunch, Hitler said farewell to his secretaries. All the remaining inhabitants of the bunker had been given prussic acid capsules, but Hitler did not entirely trust their effectiveness, although the previous day he had successfully had his dog Blondi put down with one. He retired to his study with Eva Braun at half-past three in the afternoon. Opening the door ten minutes or so later, Hitler's valet Heinz Linge, accompanied by Bormann, found Hitler's body on the sofa, blood oozing from a hole in his right temple, his pistol at his feet; Eva Braun's body was next to his, giving off a strong smell of bitter almonds. She had taken poison. Following Hitler's prior instructions, his personal adjutant Otto G*nsche, assisted by Linge and three SS men, took the bodies, wrapped in blankets, up into the Reich Chancellery garden, where, watched by Bormann, Goebbels and the two remaining senior military officers, Krebs and Burgdorf, they were doused in a large quantity of petrol and set alight. Observing the macabre scene from behind the partly opened bunker door, the funeral party raised their arms in a last 'Hail, Hitler!' and returned underground. Not long after six in the evening, G*nsche sent two SS men to bury the charred remains. All that remained to identify them when Soviet investigators found them a few days later were dental bridges that the technician who had worked for Hitler's dentist since 1938 certified belonged to the former Nazi leader and his companion.207 Hitler left a brief private will, disposing of his personal possessions, and a much longer 'Political Testament', dictated to his secretary on 29 April 1945, in which he denied bringing about the war that had begun in 1939. It was remarkable for its scarcely veiled confession - or rather, boast - that he had had the Jews killed in revenge for the part he supposed they had played in starting the war. That war, he reaffirmed, 'was willed and incited exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests'. Recalling once more his prophecy of 30 January 1939, and thinking of the First World War and, perhaps, the Depression that had been so crucial in bringing him to power, he reminded his future readers that he had left nobody in any doubt that the real people to blame for this murderous struggle would be: the Jews! I further left nobody in any doubt that this time not only would millions of . . . grown men suffer death and not only would hundreds of thousands of women and children be incinerated in the cities and bombed to death, but also that the real guilty parties would also have to expiate their guilt, even if by more humane means.

He ended by calling upon Germany and the Germans 'to observe the racial laws precisely and to resist pitilessly the world-poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry'.208 III.

After the completion of Hitler's will, Goebbels had dictated a codicil of his own to the secretary. Weeping copiously, he said that for the first time he was going to disobey a direct order from his Leader. Hitler had told him to leave Berlin. But he was going to stay 'at the Leader's side to end a life which for me personally has no further value if it cannot be used in the service of the Leader and by his side'.209 The day before, Magda Goebbels had written to her son by her first marriage, informing him that she was going to kill herself along with her husband and their children: The day before, Magda Goebbels had written to her son by her first marriage, informing him that she was going to kill herself along with her husband and their children: The world that will come after the Leader and National Socialism will not be worth living in, and therefore I have taken my children away. They are too dear to endure what is coming next, and a merciful God will understand my intentions in delivering them from it. We have now only one aim: loyalty unto death to the Leader. That we can end our lives with him is a mercy of fate that we never dared hope for.210 At twenty to nine in the evening of 30 April 1945, Helmut Kunz, an SS doctor, gave each of the six Goebbels children a morphine injection to put them to sleep, then Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's physician in the last period of his life, put a phial of prussic acid into each child's mouth and crushed it, causing instant death. Goebbels and his wife climbed up the steps to the Reich Chancellery garden, and bit on their capsules. An SS man shot each body twice just to make sure they were dead. The bodies were then set alight, but there was very little petrol left over from the incineration of Hitler and Eva Braun's corpses, so the bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels were easily recognized by the Red Army troops when they came into the garden the following day.211 The two remaining generals, Wilhelm Burgdorf and Hans Krebs (Hitler's last Chief of the Army General Staff) also killed themselves, along with the commander of Hitler's military escort, Franz Sch*dle. The rest of the bunker's inhabitants made their way into an underground railway tunnel in a desperate attempt to escape. Emerging into the open at the Friedrichstrasse station, they were confronted by a scene of unbelievable devastation, with shells falling everywhere, the buildings reduced to smoking rubble, and Soviet troops engaging small groups of German soldiers in the final assault. Amidst the noise and confusion, the secretaries and a few others somehow succeeded in evading capture and found their way to the west; others, including G*nsche and Linge, were taken prisoner; many were killed by stray bullets or suspicious Soviet soldiers. Bormann and Stumpfegger managed to get as far as the Invalidenstrasse but found their way blocked by Red Army troops and took poison to avoid capture. The two remaining generals, Wilhelm Burgdorf and Hans Krebs (Hitler's last Chief of the Army General Staff) also killed themselves, along with the commander of Hitler's military escort, Franz Sch*dle. The rest of the bunker's inhabitants made their way into an underground railway tunnel in a desperate attempt to escape. Emerging into the open at the Friedrichstrasse station, they were confronted by a scene of unbelievable devastation, with shells falling everywhere, the buildings reduced to smoking rubble, and Soviet troops engaging small groups of German soldiers in the final assault. Amidst the noise and confusion, the secretaries and a few others somehow succeeded in evading capture and found their way to the west; others, including G*nsche and Linge, were taken prisoner; many were killed by stray bullets or suspicious Soviet soldiers. Bormann and Stumpfegger managed to get as far as the Invalidenstrasse but found their way blocked by Red Army troops and took poison to avoid capture.212 The deaths in the bunker and the burned-out streets above were only the crest of a vast wave of suicides without precedent in modern history. Like Hitler, some senior Nazis killed themselves out of a warped sense of honour, fearing the indignity of being put on trial, the shame of being publicly condemned for their crimes, and the insults that would perhaps be done to their bodies. Hermann G*ring was the most prominent among them. As American troops entered his Bavarian hideout near Berchtesgaden on 9 May 1945, he gave himself up voluntarily, evidently thinking he would be regarded as a significant figure from a defeated regime who would be used to negotiate terms of surrender. The American commander shook his hand and gave him a meal, after which reporters were allowed to quiz him on his role in the Third Reich and his views on what lay ahead ('I see a black future for Germany and the whole world'). A furious Eisenhower embargoed the reports and had G*ring moved to prison, put on a diet, weaned off his drug dependency and subjected to gentle but persistent interrogation. Recovering much of his former energy, the ex-Reich Marshal charmed his interrogators and impressed his captors with the way he quickly came to dominate his fellow prisoners. Unrepentent and still proud of what he had done, he was condemned to death by hanging, and when his demand that he should be allowed to die an honourable soldier's death before a firing-squad was rejected, he obtained a poison capsule, probably through one of the guards, and killed himself on 15 October 1946.213 Almost a year before this, the former German Labour Front leader Robert Ley had hanged himself in the prison cell where he was awaiting trial. Ley's mental deterioration, caused by a combination of an air crash during the First World War and heavy drinking thereafter, accelerated under the conditions of confinement, and he occupied himself mainly by writing lengthy letters to his wife, Inge, who had herself committed suicide in 1942. He also wrote in the dead Inge's imaginary responses to his letters ('You have courageously portrayed the Leader as he really is: The greatest German of all time The greatest German of all time') and tried to communicate with the American automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, whom he regarded, not without some justification, as a fellow antisemite. On receiving his indictment for war crimes, Ley shouted: 'Stand us against the wall and shoot us! You are the victors!' He rejected the charges laid against him and killed himself, as he wrote in his suicide note, because he could not bear the shame of being treated as a criminal when he was none.214 Heinrich Himmler also killed himself. Leaving Flensburg disguised with an eye-patch and a false passport, and accompanied by a few aides, including Otto Ohlendorf, Himmler had managed to cross the river Elbe before running into a British checkpoint, where he and his companions were arrested. On their arrival at an internment camp near L*neburg, the commandant sent the others to their cells while detaining Himmler (a 'small, miserable-looking and shabbily dressed' man) for further questioning. Realizing the game was up, Himmler took off the eyepatch and put on a pair of spectacles instead. It was instantly obvious who he was, even before he whispered the name 'Heinrich Himmler'. He was searched, and a phial of poison was taken off him, but his interrogators were still not satisfied, and ordered a medical examination. When the doctor ordered Himmler to open his mouth, he noticed a small black object between the SS leader's teeth. As he took Himmler's head to turn it towards the light for a better look, Himmler snapped his teeth sharply together. There was a crunching sound, and he fell to the ground. He had bitten into a glass cyanide capsule and was dead within seconds. He was forty-four years old. Other leading SS officers followed his example, including Odilo Globocnik, who also took poison, Ernst Grawitz, the SS chief medical officer and enthusiastic experimenter on concentration camp inmates, who blew himself up together with his family by detonating two hand-grenades, and Friedrich Wilhelm Kr*ger, the SS and police chief who had made such trouble for Hans Frank in the Polish General Government. Heinrich Himmler also killed himself. Leaving Flensburg disguised with an eye-patch and a false passport, and accompanied by a few aides, including Otto Ohlendorf, Himmler had managed to cross the river Elbe before running into a British checkpoint, where he and his companions were arrested. On their arrival at an internment camp near L*neburg, the commandant sent the others to their cells while detaining Himmler (a 'small, miserable-looking and shabbily dressed' man) for further questioning. Realizing the game was up, Himmler took off the eyepatch and put on a pair of spectacles instead. It was instantly obvious who he was, even before he whispered the name 'Heinrich Himmler'. He was searched, and a phial of poison was taken off him, but his interrogators were still not satisfied, and ordered a medical examination. When the doctor ordered Himmler to open his mouth, he noticed a small black object between the SS leader's teeth. As he took Himmler's head to turn it towards the light for a better look, Himmler snapped his teeth sharply together. There was a crunching sound, and he fell to the ground. He had bitten into a glass cyanide capsule and was dead within seconds. He was forty-four years old. Other leading SS officers followed his example, including Odilo Globocnik, who also took poison, Ernst Grawitz, the SS chief medical officer and enthusiastic experimenter on concentration camp inmates, who blew himself up together with his family by detonating two hand-grenades, and Friedrich Wilhelm Kr*ger, the SS and police chief who had made such trouble for Hans Frank in the Polish General Government.215 Hans Kammler, the senior SS officer who had been the key figure in the recruitment and exploitation of forced labour at the Dora-Central Works rocket factory, had acquired one last promotion from a grateful Hitler, who just before the end of the war had given him the entirely meaningless title 'Plenipotentiary of the Leader for Jet Aircraft'. After travelling across Germany trying to rally SS forces for a last stand, Kammler finally arrived in Prague, where he was shot by his adjutant, on his own command, at the very end of the war, desperate to avoid falling into the hands of Czech partisans.216 Theodor Dannecker, the roving ambassasdor of death responsible for the deportation of many Jews to Auschwitz from different countries, fled to relatives in the north German town of Celle at the end of the war, but was arrested on a visit to his wife in Berlin on 9 December 1945, where he was denounced by her neighbours. The following day, he hanged himself in prison. On hearing of his death, his wife decided to kill herself along with their two young sons, but, as she was murdering the older boy, his cries awoke his younger brother, and she was unable to complete the killings. She was arrested and tried, but acquitted on grounds of diminished responsibility, and emigrated to Australia. Theodor Dannecker, the roving ambassasdor of death responsible for the deportation of many Jews to Auschwitz from different countries, fled to relatives in the north German town of Celle at the end of the war, but was arrested on a visit to his wife in Berlin on 9 December 1945, where he was denounced by her neighbours. The following day, he hanged himself in prison. On hearing of his death, his wife decided to kill herself along with their two young sons, but, as she was murdering the older boy, his cries awoke his younger brother, and she was unable to complete the killings. She was arrested and tried, but acquitted on grounds of diminished responsibility, and emigrated to Australia.217 Another senior SS officer, Philipp Bouhler, head of Hitler's personal Chancellery and organizer of the 'euthanasia' murders of the mentally ill and handicapped, killed himself together with his wife on 19 May 1945. Another senior SS officer, Philipp Bouhler, head of Hitler's personal Chancellery and organizer of the 'euthanasia' murders of the mentally ill and handicapped, killed himself together with his wife on 19 May 1945.218 Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust committed suicide on 8 May 1945, finally belying the reputation for indecision he had acquired during his years of office. Reich Justice Minister Otto-Georg Thierack was arrested by the British, and killed himself in an internment camp on 2 November 1946. The President of the Reich Supreme Court, Erwin Bumke, killed himself too, while the Reich Doctors' Leader Leonardo Conti, who was arrested and imprisoned prior to being tried in Nuremberg for his part in the murder of mental patients, hanged himself in his cell on 6 October 1945. Konrad Henlein, leader of the Sudeten German Nazis, killed himself after being captured by the Americans. Altogether, 8 out of 41 Regional Leaders, 7 out of 47 Higher SS and Police Leaders, 53 out of 554 army generals, 14 out of 98 air force generals and 11 out of 53 admirals killed themselves. Field Marshal Walter Model, Hitler's favourite military man, shot himself in a forest near D*sseldorf towards the end of April 1945 in order to avoid the shame of surrendering, in conformity with the injunction Hitler himself had issued to all German troops. Another general, Johannes Blaskowitz, who had been denied promotion after condemning German atrocities in Poland in 1939, was none the less arraigned for war crimes and eventually killed himself by jumping out of his cell window at Nuremberg on 5 February 1948. Regional Leader Jakob Sprenger of Hesse-Nassau committed suicide along with his wife as soon as he heard of Hitler's death.219 Many others contemplated suicide. Rudolf H*ss, the former commandant of Auschwitz, considered death as an option in 1945. 'With the Leader gone, our world had gone. Was there any point in going on living?' Eventually, after much debate, H*ss and his wife decided in the end to live on 'because of the children'. He later came to regret this decision. 'We were bound and fettered to that other world, and we should have disappeared with it.'220 His attitude was shared by many other Nazis, especially young people whose adult lives had been wholly bound up with the regime. Melita Maschmann was firmly convinced that I would not outlive the 'Third Reich'. If it was condemned to go under, then so was I. The one thing would automatically follow the other without my having to do anything about it. I did not picture my death as a last sacrifice which I should have to make. Nor did I think of suicide. I was filled with a shadowy impression that 'my world' would be flung off its course, like a constellation in a cosmic catastrophe, and would drag me with it - like a tiny speck of dust - into outer darkness.221 She and her friends did not, she confessed, 'want anything to outlive the Third Reich'.222 In the event, she too decided to live on and face the unknown terrors of a future without Nazism. Others were more determined. Interviewed by Gitta Sereny in 1991, Martin Bormann's son told how he had been driven to the Obersalzberg when his school, the Reich School of the Nazi Party at Feldafing, was closed on 23 April 1945, and was sitting with many of the staff from his father's office and the Berghof in a nearby inn on 1 May when the radio announced Hitler's death. Everyone was still and silent for a while, he remembered, 'but very soon afterwards, people started to go outside, first one - then there was a shot. Then another, and yet another. Not a word inside, no other sound except those shots from outside, but one felt that that was all there was, that all of us would have to die.' So the fifteen-year-old Bormann too went out, carrying his gun. 'My world was shattered; I couldn't see any future at all.' But in the back yard of the inn, 'where bodies were already lying all over the small garden', he saw another boy, aged eighteen, sitting on a log, and he 'told me to come and sit with him. The air smelled good, the birds sang, and we talked ourselves out of it.' In the event, she too decided to live on and face the unknown terrors of a future without Nazism. Others were more determined. Interviewed by Gitta Sereny in 1991, Martin Bormann's son told how he had been driven to the Obersalzberg when his school, the Reich School of the Nazi Party at Feldafing, was closed on 23 April 1945, and was sitting with many of the staff from his father's office and the Berghof in a nearby inn on 1 May when the radio announced Hitler's death. Everyone was still and silent for a while, he remembered, 'but very soon afterwards, people started to go outside, first one - then there was a shot. Then another, and yet another. Not a word inside, no other sound except those shots from outside, but one felt that that was all there was, that all of us would have to die.' So the fifteen-year-old Bormann too went out, carrying his gun. 'My world was shattered; I couldn't see any future at all.' But in the back yard of the inn, 'where bodies were already lying all over the small garden', he saw another boy, aged eighteen, sitting on a log, and he 'told me to come and sit with him. The air smelled good, the birds sang, and we talked ourselves out of it.'223 Out of the many who contemplated killing themselves at this time, however, a good number did indeed take the fatal step. The wave of suicides went far beyond the ranks of committed Nazis. In a report on popular behaviour and morale drawn up at the end of March 1945, the Security Service of the SS recorded an atmosphere such as might be found at the end of the world: A large part of the people has become used to living only for the day. Any kind of pleasures that present themselves are exploited. Even the most pointless occasion is taken as an opportunity to drink down the last bottle, originally reserved for the celebration of victory, the end of the blackout, the return of husband and son. People are getting used to the idea of making an end to themselves. Everywhere there is a great demand for poison, for a pistol, and for other means of putting an end to life. Suicides out of genuine despair at the catastrophe that is expected with certainty are on the agenda.224 Earlier the same month, the pastor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin had felt it necessary to deliver a sermon against suicide. But his words were not heeded. Official statistics recorded a jump from 238 suicides in the capital city in March 1945 to no fewer than 3,881 the following month, falling to 977 in May. Ordinary citizens were disoriented, despairing, unable to see a future after the collapse of the Third Reich. Suicide notes discovered by the police mentioned 'the current situation', or 'fear of the Russian invasion', as a reason for killing oneself, without going into further detail. As one said, 'life did not have a point' any more after the end of the Third Reich. A number of parents underlined their lack of a future perspective by killing their children before they killed themselves.'225 Suicide rates rose almost everywhere, including in Catholic regions, though here it is likely that they were affected by an influx of refugees from Protestant areas, where the taboo on killing oneself was not so strong. In Upper Bavaria, for example, there were 421 suicides in April and May 1945, in comparison to only three to five in the same months in previous years. But such increases were dwarfed by those recorded in the areas invaded by the Red Army, including Berlin. In the city's district of Friedrichshain, a grammar-school student reported that more than a hundred people killed themselves the day the Russians arrived. 'A blessing that there is no gas,' she added, 'otherwise even more would have taken their lives; perhaps we might also be dead.'226 In the Pomeranian village of Schivelbein, a Protestant clergyman reported that 'whole good, churchgoing families took their lives, drowned themselves, hanged themselves, slit their wrists, or allowed themselves to be burned up along with their homes' as soon as the Red Army arrived. Mass suicides were reported from other small Pomeranian towns - 500 in Sch*nlanke, for example, and 700 in Demmin, following the arrival of the Red Army. The burial register for the town of Teterow, where some 10,000 people lived in 1946, recorded 120 suicides in early May. Rapes by Russian soldiers were undoubtedly a major reason for this increase. In Teterow, shame and wounded masculinity after such incidents drove fathers of families to kill their wives and children, often with the woman's consent, before killing themselves. In the Sudetenland, it was reported that 'whole families would dress up in their Sunday finest, surrounded by flowers, crosses and family albums, and then kill themselves by hanging or poison'. In the Pomeranian village of Schivelbein, a Protestant clergyman reported that 'whole good, churchgoing families took their lives, drowned themselves, hanged themselves, slit their wrists, or allowed themselves to be burned up along with their homes' as soon as the Red Army arrived. Mass suicides were reported from other small Pomeranian towns - 500 in Sch*nlanke, for example, and 700 in Demmin, following the arrival of the Red Army. The burial register for the town of Teterow, where some 10,000 people lived in 1946, recorded 120 suicides in early May. Rapes by Russian soldiers were undoubtedly a major reason for this increase. In Teterow, shame and wounded masculinity after such incidents drove fathers of families to kill their wives and children, often with the woman's consent, before killing themselves. In the Sudetenland, it was reported that 'whole families would dress up in their Sunday finest, surrounded by flowers, crosses and family albums, and then kill themselves by hanging or poison'.227 Yet suicide was always a minority action. Many committed Nazis were thrown into confusion without succumbing to despair. Charlotte L., born in 1921 and employed doing welfare work in the Reich Labour Service, was a convinced Nazi who seems to have had no thought of killing herself. Political education had inspired a burning commitment in her. Writing in her diary on 5 February 1940, she had recorded the 'pleasure' with which she had taken a class on 'the consequences of Jewry'.228 By 22 April 1945 the Americans had occupied her home town of Helmstedt, but Charlotte still refused to accept that the war was lost. 'I believe firmly in our Leader,' she wrote, '& that Germany has a future that we Germans deserve.' Her world collapsed when she heard that Hitler was dead. 'Our beloved Leader, who has done everything for us, for Germany.' She was disgusted at how many people were now changing their views. 'As wonderful as things were under the Leadership of Adolf Hitler,' she wrote on 3 June 1945, 'they can no longer be for a long time. The newspapers are telling lies and screwing up their propaganda beyond measure. Behind all this stands the Jew. Will the world ever realize that the Jew is the evil for us all?' she asked. Inge Molter, daughter of an active Nazi, also carried on hoping for victory until the very end. But gradually such people also began to achieve distance from the Nazi leadership. After her husband, the former stormtrooper Alfred, had gone missing during the final battle for Berlin, she obtained a job as a nurse in a hospital where a doctor told her at length of the atrocities the Nazis had committed. 'I often really don't know any more,' she wrote to her absent husband, in whose death she still refused to believe, 'how I regard all those things. By 22 April 1945 the Americans had occupied her home town of Helmstedt, but Charlotte still refused to accept that the war was lost. 'I believe firmly in our Leader,' she wrote, '& that Germany has a future that we Germans deserve.' Her world collapsed when she heard that Hitler was dead. 'Our beloved Leader, who has done everything for us, for Germany.' She was disgusted at how many people were now changing their views. 'As wonderful as things were under the Leadership of Adolf Hitler,' she wrote on 3 June 1945, 'they can no longer be for a long time. The newspapers are telling lies and screwing up their propaganda beyond measure. Behind all this stands the Jew. Will the world ever realize that the Jew is the evil for us all?' she asked. Inge Molter, daughter of an active Nazi, also carried on hoping for victory until the very end. But gradually such people also began to achieve distance from the Nazi leadership. After her husband, the former stormtrooper Alfred, had gone missing during the final battle for Berlin, she obtained a job as a nurse in a hospital where a doctor told her at length of the atrocities the Nazis had committed. 'I often really don't know any more,' she wrote to her absent husband, in whose death she still refused to believe, 'how I regard all those things.

Sometimes I really have to think now that it wouldn't have been good if we had won the war.'229 IV.

On 5 May 1945 the soldier and former stormtrooper Gerhard M. found time once more to write an entry in his diary. 'Our Leader Adolf Hitler,' he began, 'is no more.' But, he continued with evident puzzlement, 'This fact has not shattered us as one might have supposed.' With his comrades he had spent a little time reminiscing about the adventures of the previous twenty years. 'Then, however, everyday life carried on anyway, and we reconciled ourselves to it. Life goes on, even if the last Leader of the Great German Reich is no more.'230 Similar reactions were reported by others. The German people had been officially told in a radio broadcast just before half-past ten at night on 1 May 1945 that Hitler had died heroically fighting to defend the capital of the Reich against the Bolshevik hordes. The truth would have undermined any further will to fight, and thereby destroyed any last remaining possibility of a negotiated settlement - a possibility that in fact only existed in the imagination of the new leaders of the Reich. Indeed, when the German commander in Berlin told his troops to lay down their arms, on 2 May 1945, he justified his order by telling them that Hitler had abandoned them by killing himself. Similar reactions were reported by others. The German people had been officially told in a radio broadcast just before half-past ten at night on 1 May 1945 that Hitler had died heroically fighting to defend the capital of the Reich against the Bolshevik hordes. The truth would have undermined any further will to fight, and thereby destroyed any last remaining possibility of a negotiated settlement - a possibility that in fact only existed in the imagination of the new leaders of the Reich. Indeed, when the German commander in Berlin told his troops to lay down their arms, on 2 May 1945, he justified his order by telling them that Hitler had abandoned them by killing himself.231 Many people refused to believe what seemed to them an unlikely story, and speculated that Hitler had taken poison. In any case, with his death, the last remaining reason for supporting Nazism had evaporated. There were no scenes of grief. No distraught citizens wept in public, as Russians were to do on the death of Stalin eight years later. The eighteen-year-old Erika S. went out on to the streets of Hamburg shortly after the announcement of Hitler's death to see how people were reacting. 'Strange,' she reported, 'nobody wept or even looked sad, although the beloved, honoured Leader, whom the total idiots regarded almost as a God, is no longer alive . . . Strange . . .' Only in school did she see a few girls weeping after the announcement in the morning assembly. Many people refused to believe what seemed to them an unlikely story, and speculated that Hitler had taken poison. In any case, with his death, the last remaining reason for supporting Nazism had evaporated. There were no scenes of grief. No distraught citizens wept in public, as Russians were to do on the death of Stalin eight years later. The eighteen-year-old Erika S. went out on to the streets of Hamburg shortly after the announcement of Hitler's death to see how people were reacting. 'Strange,' she reported, 'nobody wept or even looked sad, although the beloved, honoured Leader, whom the total idiots regarded almost as a God, is no longer alive . . . Strange . . .' Only in school did she see a few girls weeping after the announcement in the morning assembly.232 Lore Walb, whose admiration of Hitler had been boundless five years before, now wrote, on 2 May 1945: Hitler fallen fallen, now he is at rest, it's surely the best thing for him. But ourselves? We're abandoned and delivered up to all and sundry and in our lifetime we can't rebuild any more what this war has destroyed. In the beginning the ideas Hitler wanted to realize were positive, and in domestic policy some good things happened. But he failed totally in foreign policy, and particularly as the supreme warlord. 'The path of an idea'. What a path! And the people must now pay for it . . . What a bitter end . . . Hitler is dead now. But we and those who are to come will carry throughout our lives the burden he laid on us.233 'That's now the end,' wrote a twenty-three-year-old office worker in Hamburg on 2 May 1945. 'Our Leader, who promised us so much, has achieved what nobody in power in Germany has so far achieved, he has left behind a Germany that is totally destroyed, he has taken away everyone's house and home, he has driven them from their homeland, he has caused millions to die, in short, he has achieved an appalling chaos.'234 After experiencing the bombing of her home town of Siegen and then hand-to-hand fighting between German and American troops as she cowered in a cellar, one fifteen-year-old girl who had believed in the promise that Germany would win at the last minute with new, secret weapons could see all was lost. 'I had to go into the dining room on my own, and there I threw myself on to the sofa and wept bitterly.' Everything had been destroyed. 'At first I didn't feel any resentment against the Leader . . . but now, now I have fought through to the opinion that the Leader isn't worth feeling sorry for.' She felt betrayed by him, and by the other Nazi leaders, who were now committing suicide one after the other. Now indeed she could see the sense of the assassination attempt of 20 July 1944, which she had condemned so bitterly at the time. 'The men of 20th July had realized that the Leader's death was Germany's only salvation.'235 In Hamburg on 30 April 1945, hearing of Hitler's death, which she believed to have been caused by his having poisoned himself, Luise Solmitz at last felt free to release the hatred that she had been building up for him over the previous months. He was, she wrote in her diary, 'the shabbiest failure in world history'. He was 'uncompromising, unbridled, irresponsible', qualities that had at first brought him success but then led to catastrophe. 'National Socialism,' she now thought, 'brought together all the crimes and depravities of all the centuries.' Twelve years previously she had thought very differently, but 'Hitler turned me from a meek and mild being into an opponent of war.' Goebbels was also dead: but 'no death can expunge such crimes'. As for Hitler: 'Now that we hopefully have his unimaginable crimes, lies, meannesses behind us, his botch-ups and his incompetence, his 5 years and 8 months of war, most Germans are saying: the best day of our life!' She noted: 'Hitler's promise: "Give me 10 years and you'll see what I've made out of Germany" has for months been his most often-quoted, out of bitterness.' On 5 May 1945 the Solmitzes burned their Nazi flag. But it was not just Nazism that was defeated. 'Never has a people supported such a bad cause with such enthusiasm,' she wrote on 8 May 1945, perhaps thinking of her own earlier attitudes, 'never so impelled itself to self-annihilation'. The Germans were 'lemmings' rushing to self-destruction. Not only the Nazis, but also the Germans, she concluded, had lost. In Hamburg on 30 April 1945, hearing of Hitler's death, which she believed to have been caused by his having poisoned himself, Luise Solmitz at last felt free to release the hatred that she had been building up for him over the previous months. He was, she wrote in her diary, 'the shabbiest failure in world history'. He was 'uncompromising, unbridled, irresponsible', qualities that had at first brought him success but then led to catastrophe. 'National Socialism,' she now thought, 'brought together all the crimes and depravities of all the centuries.' Twelve years previously she had thought very differently, but 'Hitler turned me from a meek and mild being into an opponent of war.' Goebbels was also dead: but 'no death can expunge such crimes'. As for Hitler: 'Now that we hopefully have his unimaginable crimes, lies, meannesses behind us, his botch-ups and his incompetence, his 5 years and 8 months of war, most Germans are saying: the best day of our life!' She noted: 'Hitler's promise: "Give me 10 years and you'll see what I've made out of Germany" has for months been his most often-quoted, out of bitterness.' On 5 May 1945 the Solmitzes burned their Nazi flag. But it was not just Nazism that was defeated. 'Never has a people supported such a bad cause with such enthusiasm,' she wrote on 8 May 1945, perhaps thinking of her own earlier attitudes, 'never so impelled itself to self-annihilation'. The Germans were 'lemmings' rushing to self-destruction. Not only the Nazis, but also the Germans, she concluded, had lost.236 Life went on not least because most people were far too busy trying to keep themselves alive amidst the ruins of the Reich to worry overmuch about Hitler's death, its meaning or its possible consequences. The arrangements Hitler made in his Political Testament for the continuation of government were an irrelevance in a situation where most of the Reich was now in the hands of the Allies. He rewarded Grand Admiral Karl D*nitz for his loyalty by making him Reich President, a post which Hitler had once said was so bound up with the memory of the previous incumbent, Paul von Hindenburg, that it should never be reinvented. Clearly, inconsistency was not going to get in the way of Hitler's own exclusive purchase on the title 'Leader'. D*nitz was also made head of the armed forces. Goebbels was named Reich Chancellor and Bormann Party Minister. Goebbels had managed finally to secure the dismissal of his hated and despised rival Joachim von Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister and his replacement by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, while Karl Hanke, a Regional Leader still resisting the Red Army in beleaguered Breslau, was named Himmler's successor as Reich Leader of the SS. The disloyal Speer was replaced as Armaments Minister by Karl-Otto Saur, and Goebbels's State Secretary Werner Naumann was promoted to the position of Propaganda Minister. A few existing ministers, like Backe, Funk, Schwerin von Krosigk and Thierack were allowed to continue in government. But by now they had virtually nothing left to govern. From his headquarters in Flensburg, near the Danish border in Schleswig-Holstein, D*nitz tried to buy time to allow the troops still fighting the Red Army to withdraw to the west by agreeing to the surrender of the German forces in northern Italy, north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. The German armies in Austria and Bavaria capitulated as well, under orders from their commander, Albert Kesselring. D*nitz's tactic was partially successful, allowing over one and three-quarter million German troops to surrender to the Americans or the British instead of the Soviets, whose tally of prisoners amounted to less than a third of the total. But his bid to negotiate a separate general capitulation to the Western Allies met with a brusque rejection. Under threat of a continuation of bombing raids, Jodl agreed to a total and unconditional surrender, to be effective by the end of 8 May 1945, authorized reluctantly by D*nitz and signed in the early hours of 7 May 1945. The act was repeated with the full text drawn up earlier by all four Allies at Marshal Zhukov's headquarters outside Berlin two days later, back-dated to the previous day. The war was over.237AFTERMATH.

I.

For the vast majority of Germans, 8 May 1945 did not come as a liberation, however much it might have appeared as such in retrospect. Germany's defeat was unambiguous. People were struggling to adjust their minds to the new situation, and to free themselves from the moral and mental burden of Nazism. Many had already taken the first steps along this road. The end of the war for the Germans was not a single event but a process, affecting different people at different times, over a period of months, as the Allied armies advanced slowly across the Reich. Wherever and whenever they were overrun by the Allied armies, however, the German people submitted meekly to their conquerors. The partisan organization which Himmler and Bormann had hoped to organize against the Allied occupation, in imitation of the Soviet partisans who had caused so much havoc in the German rear during the previous years, was set up too late for any real momentum to develop. Known as the 'Werewolf' movement, it tried to recruit fanatics of the Hitler Youth generation for continuing resistance behind the lines. A few units were formed, and on 25 March 1945 one of them managed to assassinate Franz Oppenhoff, who had been installed as mayor of Aachen by the invading Allies.238 In the Bavarian mining town of Penzberg, the workers deposed the Nazi mayor in order to open the way for the advancing American troops to enter the area peacefully, but a local army unit arrested them and executed them on the orders of the Munich Regional Party Leader, and further executions took place when a Werewolf unit arrived on the scene. In the Bavarian mining town of Penzberg, the workers deposed the Nazi mayor in order to open the way for the advancing American troops to enter the area peacefully, but a local army unit arrested them and executed them on the orders of the Munich Regional Party Leader, and further executions took place when a Werewolf unit arrived on the scene.239 But such actions were isolated and without wider-reaching consequences. For this, there were many reasons. But such actions were isolated and without wider-reaching consequences. For this, there were many reasons.

To begin with, the Nazi Party, like the SS, the armed forces and virtually every other organization in the Third Reich, was in a state of complete disintegration and collapse. Large numbers of people who might in other circumstances have been able to provide leadership for a resistance movement were dead or captured. Communication was difficult if not impossible. The death of Hitler had in any case destroyed the factor that had cemented many people's loyalty to the Nazi cause. Many people had believed they were fighting for Hitler as much as for Germany; there seemed little reason to go on fighting now he was gone. More generally, Nazi dogma, repeated on innumerable occasions throughout the history of the Third Reich, proclaimed that 'might is right', that success carried its own justification with it. Germany's total defeat seemed therefore to confirm that the Allies after all had right on their side, a belief strengthened by the strong feelings of guilt for the extermination of the Jews that had begun to haunt the consciences of many Germans well before the end of the war. So complete was the defeat, so all-encompassing the devastation of Germany, that many patriots in any case blamed Hitler and the Nazis for it. Nobody could argue it away. Moreover, the Allied presence in Germany was pervasive, and the Allied occupying forces were very much alert to the threat of a partisan or resistance movement thanks to the propaganda pumped out by Goebbels's media urging young Germans to join it. On the other hand, the Allied forces, including even after the first few weeks the Russians and the French, proved less vengeful and more sympathetic than ordinary Germans had feared. Goebbels's prophecy that millions of Germans would be taken off to Siberia proved unfounded, even in the east. Resistance movements had indeed emerged to the German occupation of other European countries, but (with the exception of Yugoslavia) only after an initial period of two or three years when the vast majority of people were waiting to see which way the war would go, resigned to occupation at least for the time being. The same was the case in Germany. And finally, the Nazis had never won more than 37.4 per cent of the votes in a free national election. At times, notably following the victories of 1940, their popularity had been far greater. But popular opinion in Germany as elsewhere was commonly fickle and volatile, and by early 1945 support for the Nazis, as we have seen, had sunk to depths not plumbed since the middle of the 1920s.

Nevertheless, there were, of course, large numbers of committed Nazis still at large in Germany at the end of the war despite all the suicides and deaths. To deal with them, and in particular to settle accounts with the remaining Nazi leaders, the Allies established an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In a series of trials, beginning with the major war criminals (November 1945 to October 1946), Allied prosecutors presented a wealth of evidence of Nazi criminality, accusing Go*ring, Ribbentrop and others of waging an aggressive war of conquest, committing the mass murder of innocent civilians and carrying out a wide variety of atrocities and crimes against humanity and in violation of internationally agreed laws of war. The legitimacy of the proceedings was undermined to a degree by the participation of Soviet judges and by the Western Allies' carpet-bombing of German cities. It proved difficult to make some of the charges stick, notably the charge of conspiracy. Nevertheless, the Tribunal established a crucial precedent for the future. It was also widely publicized. The reporters present included William L. Shirer, who had left Germany in December 1940, possibly because he was told the Gestapo were compiling a dossier on his activities. Shirer subsequently used the documentary evidence compiled for the trial as an important source for his best-selling history of Nazi Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which he published in 1960 and which was still in print at the time of his death thirty-three years later. For the mass of ordinary Germans, however - some at least of whom had been made by Allied troops to help clear up the dead bodies of prisoners in concentration camps at the end of the war - the trials were further evidence, along with the bombing and the expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, that they were being singled out as victims in a war where justice was inevitably being meted out by the victors. 240 240

23. Post War Arrangements in Central Europe The Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals resulted in a number of death sentences being handed out, one of them (Bormann) in absentia in absentia. Hans Frank (General Governor of Poland), Wilhelm Frick (Reich Interior Minister and Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia since 1943), Hermann Go*ring, General Alfred Jodl (head of operations at the Combined Armed Forces Supreme Command), Ernst Kaltenbrunner (head of the Security Service of the SS from 1943), Wilhelm Keitel (Jodl's superior), Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Julius Streicher were all sentenced to death; all were executed apart from G*ring, who, as we have seen, committed suicide the night before he was due to be hanged. Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent his last years as a solitary prisoner in Spandau jail and hanged himself in 1987 at the age of ninety-three, the last of the Nazi suicides. Hans Fritzsche, head of the news division in the Propaganda Ministry and a well-known radio commentator, was tried as a substitute for Goebbels, but it was clear that his crimes were in no way comparable to those of his boss, and he was acquitted. Hjalmar Schacht, the economics supremo in the 1930s, who had largely provided the funding for rearmament before the war, was also acquitted; he had after all retired some time before the war began. He wrote his memoirs and died in 1970 at the age of ninety-three. Walther Funk, his successor, received a life term but was released on health grounds in 1957, dying three years later. Karl Do*nitz was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, served his full term and died in 1980; his predecessor as head of the navy, Erich Raeder, was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released on health grounds in 1955, dying in 1960. Konstantin von Neurath received a fifteen-year sentence but was freed because of ill-health in 1954; he died two years later. His fellow aristocrat Franz von Papen, Hitler's Vice-Chancellor in 1933-4 and subsequently Ambassador to Austria and then Turkey, was acquitted, but rearrested and sentenced to eight years in prison for war crimes by a German court in 1947; he was released on appeal two years later and died in 1969. Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth and subsequently Regional Leader of Vienna, was sentenced to twenty years in jail; released on 1 October 1966, he died on 8 August 1974.241 Albert Speer was also sentenced to twenty years in jail at Nuremberg. He escaped a death sentence by presenting a subtle and sophisticated mixture of self-exculpation and self-blame. He had not known about Auschwitz, he said - a palpable untruth - but he should have done. Some thought his smooth, professional middle-class demeanour had won over the judges, and that he was as much to blame for the murderous exploitation of forced labour as was Fritz Sauckel, whose rough image earned him the noose instead. During his time at Spandau prison, Speer fought boredom and lassitude by measuring out during his daily constitutional an imaginary walk round the globe, and wrote a secret diary (on lavatory paper), as well as more than 25,000 letters, smuggled out by sympathetic visitors. He was released in 1966, and published a widely acclaimed set of memoirs. The book was remarkable for its frank appraisal of his relationship with Hitler, and for its shrewd judgements on the Nazi system of rule. But as time went on, it also became clear that the memoirs were less than honest. Speer embellished or edited many incidents, usually to his own credit, and concealed his knowledge of the extermination of the Jews. Towards the end of his life, in a remarkable series of interviews with the journalist Gitta Sereny, Speer was forced to retreat from the position he had adopted in his memoirs on many issues of detail, but, despite Sereny's claim to the contrary, he admitted no more to her about his knowledge of Auschwitz than he had to the court at Nuremberg. He died of a stroke during a visit to London in August 1981.242 There were other trials apart from those held at Nuremberg. Many of them were held in Poland, among them the trial of Rudolf H*ss, former commandant of Auschwitz. At the end of the war, H*ss went to the holiday island of Sylt, entering the Naval Intelligence School under a false identity. He managed to find work on a farm under an assumed name, but was finally tracked down and arrested on 11 March 1946. He had accidentally broken his little phial of poison two days before. He was harshly treated and complained of being beaten and he signed confessions that were not wholly accurate. The interrogators, he claimed, were all Jews. H*ss did not abandon his Nazi convictions. Before the war, he thought, the concentration camps had been necessary and served a valuable purpose as re-education centres. But the extermination of the Jews had been 'fundamentally wrong' because it had not only drawn down on Germany 'the hatred of the entire world' but also 'in no way served the cause of antisemitism, but on the contrary brought the Jews far closer to their ultimate objective'.243 H*ss was brought to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal on a number of occasions as a witness, most notably for the defence of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, but most of the time he was imprisoned in Cracow, where he wrote a lengthy autobiography, inaccurate in many details but unconsciously revealing the attitudes and beliefs that had made him the commandant of the largest murder factory in history. On 11 March 1947 Ho*ss was brought into the dock in a trial attended by numerous foreign observers; he was found guilty of murder, sentenced to death and hanged in the main camp at Auschwitz, next to the SS camp administration building, on 16 April 1947. H*ss was brought to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal on a number of occasions as a witness, most notably for the defence of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, but most of the time he was imprisoned in Cracow, where he wrote a lengthy autobiography, inaccurate in many details but unconsciously revealing the attitudes and beliefs that had made him the commandant of the largest murder factory in history. On 11 March 1947 Ho*ss was brought into the dock in a trial attended by numerous foreign observers; he was found guilty of murder, sentenced to death and hanged in the main camp at Auschwitz, next to the SS camp administration building, on 16 April 1947.244 Later in the year, in November 1947, the Cracow Supreme Court tried forty SS officers and guards from the camp. Twenty-three were sentenced to death, including the camp leader, Hans Aumeier, and another former commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel. Others received prison sentences of varying length; one, the SS doctor Hans M*nch, who had researched malnutrition among prisoners, was acquitted because of many testimonials on his behalf from former inmates. The engineer Kurt Pr*fer, who had designed the gas chambers, was arrested in Erfurt in 1946 and sent to a Soviet labour camp, where he died in 1952. Ludwig Topf, co-owner of the firm Pr*fer had worked for, Topf & Sons, committed suicide, but his brother, Ernst Wolfgang Topf, escaped unscathed and set up a new business in Wiesbaden making ovens for crematoria. Of the manufacturers of the poison gas Zyklon-B, two, the owner and chief executive of the Hamburg firm Tesch and Stabenow, were executed by a British military court, but others, including the general director of Degesch, Gerhard Peters, were acquitted.245 Those executed after being tried for their crimes in various European countries included Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS commander who had been responsible for massacres of Jews in Riga and elsewhere; Otto Ohlendorf and Werner Naumann, who had led the murderous SS Task Forces in the east; the police chief Kurt Daluege; the SS commander who had destroyed the Warsaw ghetto uprising, J*rgen Stroop; the head of the concentration camp organization, Oswald Pohl; and the Nazi Party Regional Leaders Arthur Greiser and Albert Forster, who had ruled over the incorporated territories in Poland. Erich Koch, Regional Leader of East Prussia, was condemned to death by the Poles, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on grounds of ill-health. Many others were condemned to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Those executed after being tried for their crimes in various European countries included Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS commander who had been responsible for massacres of Jews in Riga and elsewhere; Otto Ohlendorf and Werner Naumann, who had led the murderous SS Task Forces in the east; the police chief Kurt Daluege; the SS commander who had destroyed the Warsaw ghetto uprising, J*rgen Stroop; the head of the concentration camp organization, Oswald Pohl; and the Nazi Party Regional Leaders Arthur Greiser and Albert Forster, who had ruled over the incorporated territories in Poland. Erich Koch, Regional Leader of East Prussia, was condemned to death by the Poles, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on grounds of ill-health. Many others were condemned to lengthy terms of imprisonment.246 The diarist Felix Landau, an Austrian SS man responsible for mass shootings as part of a Task Unit in occupied eastern Poland in 1941, and further murders carried out in his capacity as organizer of Jewish forced labour in the Lemberg district, was recognized in Linz by one of his former workers in 1946 and put in a prison camp by the Americans, but the following year he escaped. He lived as an interior decorator under a false name near N*rdlingen until his arrest in 1959, followed by his trial and sentence to life imprisonment in 1962; he died in 1983. The diarist Felix Landau, an Austrian SS man responsible for mass shootings as part of a Task Unit in occupied eastern Poland in 1941, and further murders carried out in his capacity as organizer of Jewish forced labour in the Lemberg district, was recognized in Linz by one of his former workers in 1946 and put in a prison camp by the Americans, but the following year he escaped. He lived as an interior decorator under a false name near N*rdlingen until his arrest in 1959, followed by his trial and sentence to life imprisonment in 1962; he died in 1983.247 II.

Apart from the trial of the 'major war criminals', twelve other trials at Nuremberg, involving 184 defendants, were held by the American occupying authorities to deal with a variety of lesser offenders. At the first of them, senior medical men were arraigned for carrying out cruel experiments on human beings without their consent, for killing the mentally ill and handicapped in the 'euthanasia' action, and other crimes. Among them were Viktor Brack and Karl Brandt: both were convinced they had done nothing wrong in ordering the killing of the handicapped; both were sentenced to death. In other trials, members of staff at the 'euthanasia' centres were tried for their crimes. Hermann Pfannmu*ller was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in 1951, and Friedrich Mennecke killed himself while under sentence of death.248 The two medical scientists who had deliberately infected the Pontine marshes with malaria in 1943, causing in all probability 100,000 Italians to catch the disease and an unknown number to die of it, had mixed fortunes after the war. Ernst Rodenwaldt, denounced by his students for his Nazi affiliations, lost his chair, but he had the backing of a number of his colleagues, and was commissioned by the Allies to compile a report on hygiene in the Third Reich (from which he tactfully omitted his own special area of racial hygiene). He published an epidemiological atlas of the world and some works of medical history and issued a suitably discreet volume of memoirs. The Institute of War Medicine and Hygiene of the West German Army, located in Koblenz, was named after him in 1967. The two medical scientists who had deliberately infected the Pontine marshes with malaria in 1943, causing in all probability 100,000 Italians to catch the disease and an unknown number to die of it, had mixed fortunes after the war. Ernst Rodenwaldt, denounced by his students for his Nazi affiliations, lost his chair, but he had the backing of a number of his colleagues, and was commissioned by the Allies to compile a report on hygiene in the Third Reich (from which he tactfully omitted his own special area of racial hygiene). He published an epidemiological atlas of the world and some works of medical history and issued a suitably discreet volume of memoirs. The Institute of War Medicine and Hygiene of the West German Army, located in Koblenz, was named after him in 1967.249 Martini continued to publish as well, though he was not able to return to his post in Hamburg. In 1952 he published a fourth edition of his standard textbook on medical entomology. He died in 1960. Martini continued to publish as well, though he was not able to return to his post in Hamburg. In 1952 he published a fourth edition of his standard textbook on medical entomology. He died in 1960.250 Dr Josef Mengele, whose selections on the ramp at Auschwitz had sent so many to their deaths, left the camp before its dissolution, and worked briefly at Gross-Rosen, before joining an army unit headed by a former colleague. He was captured by the Americans but gave a false name and was released in July 1945, when he began working as a farmhand near Rosenheim in Bavaria. Fearing discovery, he obtained help from another former colleague to flee via Switzerland and northern Italy to Argentina, where he re-established himself, buying a half-share in a pharmaceutical company in 1955. In 1959 he moved to a German colony in Paraguay, but left for Brazil the following year. In the meantime he had divorced and remarried, both legal acts that drew attention for the first time to the fact that he was still alive. His flight and concealment owed a great deal to the help of clandestine networks of former Nazis. He continued to elude capture, and died in 1979 after suffering a heart attack while swimming. It was only in 1985 that his grave was located, and the body exhumed and identified from dental records.251 By contrast, Mengele's mentor, Otmar von Verschuer, resumed his career after the war. He was elected President of the German Society for Anthropology in 1952 and two years later he became Dean of the Medical Faculty at M*nster University, where he had been Professor of Genetics since 1951. In 1954 he published his book By contrast, Mengele's mentor, Otmar von Verschuer, resumed his career after the war. He was elected President of the German Society for Anthropology in 1952 and two years later he became Dean of the Medical Faculty at M*nster University, where he had been Professor of Genetics since 1951. In 1954 he published his book Human Genetics Human Genetics, which built on his Hereditary Pathology Hereditary Pathology, published twenty years before. He eventually died in a car crash in 1969.252 Not only Josef Mengele but also Franz Stangl and Adolf Eichmann escaped to Latin America. Stangl was transferred to northern Italy when the death camp at Treblinka, where he had been commandant, was closed. His orders were to oversee the construction of defensive fortifications and the suppression of partisan movements. At the end of the war, he escaped to Austria but was arrested by American troops and interned. As war crimes investigations proceeded, his role in the euthanasia action was discovered, and the Americans appear to have discovered at some point that he had been commandant of a death camp. By this time, however, most Allied war crimes tribunals had ceased operation, and he was transferred to the Austrian authorities, who put him in an open prison in Linz. On 30 May 1948 he absconded and, using false identity papers he had acquired in jail, managed to cross the Alps into Italy, where he had made many useful contacts. Reaching Rome, he made contact at the Vatican with Bishop Alois Hudal, a priest and part of the circle of German and Austrian clerics with whom Pope Pius XII surrounded himself. Hudal was in charge of the German Catholic community in the Italian capital. An Austrian, he did a great deal to help his compatriot escape justice. He found him somewhere to stay, gave him money and kitted him out with a Red Cross passport before buying him a ticket for the sea passage to Syria. Stangl's family joined him there, and in 1951 they emigrated to Brazil. Many other former Nazis and SS men found the same route to safety. In Brazil, the Stangls, making no mention of Franz's past, found work and a social life in the expatriate German community. The Stangls kept their name and made no attempt to hide, but, though Franz was on the official wanted list of the Austrian and German governments, he was only tracked down by the efforts of Simon Wiesenthal, who had established an information centre dedicated to locating and securing the arrest of former leading Nazis still at large. On 28 February 1967 Stangl was arrested by Brazilian police and deported to Germany, where he was tried for the 900,000 murders he had ordered at Treblinka. It was apparently only at this point that his wife, who travelled over from Brazil to attend the trial, learned of what he had really been doing in the camp. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 December 1970 and died in prison on 28 June the following year.253 Towards the end of the war, Adolf Eichmann had formed a small partisan resistance movement in the Austrian Alps on the orders of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, with the assistance of Otto Skorzeny and the former Romanian Iron Guard leader Horia Sima. But Himmler soon put a stop to the enterprise, and Eichmann went underground, using forged identity papers. Fearing discovery, he too took advantage of the Vatican's policy of helping 'anti-Communist fighters' to escape to Latin America and arrived in Argentina, where the quasi-fascist dictatorship of Juan Peron provided a refuge for a variety of former Nazis and SS men. One of them was Otto Skorzeny, who had escaped from a prison camp in Germany in 1948 and lived in a variety of locations, including Spain and Ireland (he died in Germany in 1975). Eichmann's identity and location were discovered by the anti-Nazi state prosecutor in Hesse, Fritz Bauer, a Jewish German who had spent the war in exile in Sweden. At his prompting, the Israeli secret service kidnapped Eichmann in Buenos Aires in May 1960 and smuggled him to Jerusalem, where he stood trial for mass murder the following year amidst a blaze of publicity. He was sentenced to death and hanged at midnight on 31 May 1962.254 III.

From the late 1940s to the late 1950s, the political climate of the Cold War militated against any major war crimes trials in West Germany. It was widely felt, both by the NATO Allies and by the West German government, that such trials would fuel East German charges that the country was rife with Nazi criminals, and perhaps also destabilize the Federal Republic's fledgling democracy by alienating large numbers of ex-Nazis who feared that they too might be brought before a court. By 1958, however, there were signs that the situation was beginning to change. The foundation of a Central Office of the Provincial Justice Administrations in Ludwigsburg laid the basis for the nationwide co-ordination of prosecutions. But it was the Eichmann trial that really put pressure on the West Germans to act. Once more, Fritz Bauer was the driving force behind the investigations. These culminated in the trial of a number of SS officers and guards in Frankfurt am Main in 1964. The last commandant of Auschwitz, Richard Baer, who was arrested in 1960 after having lived for many years as a forestry worker under a false name, was to have been a defendant, but he died before the trial began. In the dock were twenty-two men including block leaders, SS camp guards and others who were accused of specific acts of individual, physical violence against prisoners. More than 350 former inmates travelled to the court to give evidence. In August 1965, seventeen of the defendants were given mostly lengthy prison sentences. The trial proved a crucial turning-point in bringing the attention of the younger generation of West Germans to the crimes of the Third Reich; it was followed by four smaller trials in West Germany, in which more Auschwitz guards and block leaders were sentenced to imprisonment. The East Germans riposted with a trial of their own, arresting and executing the camp doctor Horst Fischer in 1966. He had been practising medicine openly in the communist state, under his own name, without hindrance, for more than twenty years before his arrest.255 The survival in positions of responsibility in postwar Germany of men like Fischer suggested strongly to many observers that the process of 'denazification' carried out by the Allies had been less than thorough. In the years immediately following the end of the war, millions of Germans were required to fill in and submit lengthy forms on their activities and beliefs under the Third Reich. They were then brought before tribunals, which heard evidence from interested parties and categorized the individual concerned as a Nazi, implicated in Nazism, a fellow traveller, or uninvolved. The process was vast in scope. More than 3,600,000 people in the western zones were affected, of whom 1,667 were classified as 'chief culprits', just over 23,000 as 'incriminated', and slightly more than 150,000 as 'less incriminated'. Thus under 5 per cent were judged to have been hard-core Nazis. 996,000 were categorized as merely nominal members of the Nazi Party (27 per cent), and 1,214,000 were exonerated (33 per cent). By the time the process was wound up, in 1948, 783,000 remained uncharged, 358,000 were amnestied, and 125,000 remained unclassified. In a similar process carried out in the Soviet Zone, more than 300,000 people were dismissed from their jobs, and 83,000 were banned from further employment altogether. Denazification could not, of course, ban all 6.5 million members of the Party from employment in positions of responsibility. The need for the expertise of judges, doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, bankers and many others was too great. Many of those who had condemned political offenders to death in the courts, taken part in 'euthanasia' killings in the hospitals, preached Nazi doctrines in the schools and universities, or participated in 'desk-top murders' in the civil service resumed their posts. The professions closed ranks and deflected criticism of their behaviour in the Third Reich, and a veil of silence descended over their complicity, not to be lifted until after the leading participants retired, towards the end of the century.256 The intrusiveness of the action alienated Germans, who wanted above all to forget, and popular approval of denazification as revealed in opinion polls fell from 57 per cent in March 1946 to 17 per cent in May 1949. The superficiality of the denazification process failed to change many of the Nazi views held by those it affected. And yet, overall, despite everything, the action was a success. The open expression of Nazi opinions became a taboo, and those who revealed them were generally forced to resign their posts. The internment, screening and trial before denazification tribunals of tens of thousands of hard-core Nazis opened the way for the re-emergence of anti-Nazis - Social Democrat, Catholic, liberal - and others who had taken no part in the regime, to occupy leading positions in politics, administration, culture and the media. Attempts to revive Nazism in the form of neo-Nazi political movements like the Socialist Reich Party or, later, the National Democratic Party never won more than marginal popular support; if they were too blatant, like the former, then they were legally suppressed. A postwar career like that of Werner Best, who survived more than one trial and condemnation to spend the rest of his long life - he died in 1989 - organizing help for former Nazis and campaigning for a general amnesty, was unusual. All the same, public opinion polls revealed that a majority continued well into the 1950s to regard Nazism as 'a good idea, badly carried out', and a worryingly large proportion of the population considered that Germany was better off without the Jews. It was not until the arrival of a new generation on the scene, symbolized by the year 1968, that a real confrontation with the past began. Nevertheless, the political culture of both East and West Germany was from the outset based on a vigorous repudiation of Nazi ideology and values, including the long tradition of German nationalism and militarism that had persuaded so many people to support it. The realities of the total defeat and, in the 1950s and 1960s, the prosperity generated by the 'economic miracle' persuaded the overwhelming majority of Germans to embrace the political culture of parliamentary democracy, European integration and international peace with growing enthusiasm and commitment.257 Few Germans found adjusting to this new world easy. Many still regretted the failure of the Third Reich. When Hitler's former military commanders came to write their memoirs, they took the opportunity to put forward the unrealistic but for many years widely accepted view that, if only Hitler had let them get on with the job, they could have won the war. The conduct of the German army on the Eastern Front went uncriticized in these works, and for decades, therefore, unquestioned. General Gotthard Heinrici was eventually captured on 28 May 1945 and did not get back to Germany until 1948. For the rest of his life he remained convinced that he had fought in a good cause - the German cause. He died peacefully on 13 December 1971.258 Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was not so lucky. On 3 May 1945, in compulsory retirement since the summer of 1942, he was being driven with his wife, his stepdaughter and a friend through the countryside towards Oldenburg, hoping to meet his friend Field Marshal Manstein to discuss the end of the war. The car was spotted by a British fighter plane, which swooped low over it and strafed it with bullets. The car burst into flames; Bock staggered out, the only survivor; he was picked up and taken to hospital, but died of his injuries the following day. Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was not so lucky. On 3 May 1945, in compulsory retirement since the summer of 1942, he was being driven with his wife, his stepdaughter and a friend through the countryside towards Oldenburg, hoping to meet his friend Field Marshal Manstein to discuss the end of the war. The car was spotted by a British fighter plane, which swooped low over it and strafed it with bullets. The car burst into flames; Bock staggered out, the only survivor; he was picked up and taken to hospital, but died of his injuries the following day.259 Among other senior military commanders, Walther von Brauchitsch died in a British prison in 1948, Gerd von Rundstedt was captured and interrogated by the British but never faced trial because of his heart condition, and died in 1953; Friedrich Paulus, who had surrendered at Stalingrad, lived in East Germany until his death in 1957, still outwardly committed to the Communist cause he had embraced in captivity; Erich von Manstein was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment by a British military court in 1949 for crimes against non-combatants, was released in 1953 and became a military adviser to the West German government, dying in 1973. Like the tank commander Heinz Guderian, who was briefly imprisoned after the war and died in 1954, Manstein was widely respected for his generalship; questions about his involvement in Nazism and its crimes went largely unanswered. Among other senior military commanders, Walther von Brauchitsch died in a British prison in 1948, Gerd von Rundstedt was captured and interrogated by the British but never faced trial because of his heart condition, and died in 1953; Friedrich Paulus, who had surrendered at Stalingrad, lived in East Germany until his death in 1957, still outwardly committed to the Communist cause he had embraced in captivity; Erich von Manstein was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment by a British military court in 1949 for crimes against non-combatants, was released in 1953 and became a military adviser to the West German government, dying in 1973. Like the tank commander Heinz Guderian, who was briefly imprisoned after the war and died in 1954, Manstein was widely respected for his generalship; questions about his involvement in Nazism and its crimes went largely unanswered.

Lower down the military hierarchy, the diarist and letter-writer Wilm Hosenfeld was taken prisoner by a Red Army unit as he retreated from Warsaw on 17 January 1945 and put into a prison camp. His health deteriorated, and he suffered a stroke on 27 July 1947. By this time he was able to write letters to friends and family, and he desperately listed as many as he could remember of the Poles and Jews whom he had rescued, trying to get them to petition for his release. Some did. But it was to no avail. As a member of the German military administration during the Warsaw uprising of 1944, he was accused of war crimes, put on trial and sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment. On 13 August 1952 he suffered another stroke, this time fatal.260 Many other German prisoners of war were kept in Soviet labour camps for a full decade after the war, until their final release in the mid-1950s. Civilian life proved difficult to adjust to for many of them. The soldier and long-time stormtrooper Gerhard M. found that the hardest thing to bear about the new political world he entered on 8 May 1945 was the fact that he was no longer able to wear a uniform. 'I have always liked wearing a uniform,' he confided to his diary, 'and indeed not just because of the many silver insignia . . . but mainly because of the forceful appearance of the breech-trousers and the better way the clothes fitted.' Many other German prisoners of war were kept in Soviet labour camps for a full decade after the war, until their final release in the mid-1950s. Civilian life proved difficult to adjust to for many of them. The soldier and long-time stormtrooper Gerhard M. found that the hardest thing to bear about the new political world he entered on 8 May 1945 was the fact that he was no longer able to wear a uniform. 'I have always liked wearing a uniform,' he confided to his diary, 'and indeed not just because of the many silver insignia . . . but mainly because of the forceful appearance of the breech-trousers and the better way the clothes fitted.'261 He could not understand why he was not allowed to resume his prewar duties as a fireman. 'Yeah,' the new head of the fire service told him, 'you Nazis risked a very loud tone up to now, but now it's all over with that.' Gerhard M. found his dismissal incomprehensible. 'I absolutely couldn't pull myself together.' Bitterly he reflected on the war 'that our leaders, who had built Germany up in such exemplary fashion, unleashed a war of the strength of the world and thereby allowed the destruction of what not only they but also previous generations had created, merely because they wanted to go down in history as great military leaders'. He could not understand why he was not allowed to resume his prewar duties as a fireman. 'Yeah,' the new head of the fire service told him, 'you Nazis risked a very loud tone up to now, but now it's all over with that.' Gerhard M. found his dismissal incomprehensible. 'I absolutely couldn't pull myself together.' Bitterly he reflected on the war 'that our leaders, who had built Germany up in such exemplary fashion, unleashed a war of the strength of the world and thereby allowed the destruction of what not only they but also previous generations had created, merely because they wanted to go down in history as great military leaders'.262 It took another nine years before he was able to resume his career in the fire service. It took another nine years before he was able to resume his career in the fire service.263 Others found it equally difficult to come to terms with their new situation and achieve a self-critical distance to their Nazi past. As a former leading member of the League of German Girls, Melita Maschmann, afraid like many of Allied retribution, hid in Alpine valleys in Austria, using forged papers and living off bartered or stolen food, until mid-June 1945, when she was finally arrested and identified. Imprisonment finally brought home to her the fact that the Third Reich was over. The best thing about prison, she later recalled, was the enforced idleness, which gave her time to reflect and recuperate from the years of hard and unremitting effort she had put into the Nazi cause. The limited amount of 're-education' to which she was subjected was, she said, lamentable, and the re-educators were often less educated than middle-class women such as herself, who frequently bettered them in argument. She refused to believe the stories of the extermination camps and dismissed the photographs she was shown as fakes. When she listened to a radio relay of the closing speech of the head of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach, at the Nuremberg trial in 1946, she felt betrayed by his admission of guilt and put it down to the stress of imprisonment. She remained convinced, as she wrote in her notes at the time, 'that National Socialism as the idea of racial renewal, the Greater German Reich and a united Europe . . . was one of the greatest political conceptions of modern times'. She thought it more honourable to undergo the process of denazification as a convinced Nazi than to be written off as a fellow traveller. And for some years afterwards, idealistic as ever, she devoted herself to helping former Nazis in distress, giving away much of her earnings in the process. It took a dozen years for her to achieve a degree of distance to the Nazi past, helped by religion, and in particular by her friendship with an Evangelical pastor. She enrolled as a university student and actively sought out the acquaintance of foreign students from other races. The final stage in her liberation from the ideology which had consumed her for much of her earlier life was her acceptance that the reports she began to read about the fate of individual Jews in Warsaw and the camps were true. Nazism, she concluded, had possessed the ability to attract many good, idealistic young people who were so carried away by their enthusiasm and dedication to the cause that they blinded themselves to what was really happening. She herself, however, remained susceptible to the appeal of ideologies, and later in her life became seriously interested in Indian spirituality.264 IV.

German cultural life resumed relatively quickly after the war, encouraged by the Allies. But those who had been too closely involved in Nazi propaganda were unable to resume their careers. In the film world, Emil Jannings was forced to retire to his farm in Austria, dying in 1950; Leni Riefenstahl found it impossible to make films any more, and devoted her time to photography, celebrating the life of Nubian tribes and filming underwater life on coral reefs; she died in 2003, aged 101. Riefenstahl always claimed that she had been entirely unpolitical, but few who had seen Triumph of the Will Triumph of the Will were able to believe her. By contrast, Veit Harlan successfully defended his record in a denazification trial on the grounds that he was an artist, and the propaganda content of his films had been imposed on him by Goebbels. He made a few more films before he died in 1964. were able to believe her. By contrast, Veit Harlan successfully defended his record in a denazification trial on the grounds that he was an artist, and the propaganda content of his films had been imposed on him by Goebbels. He made a few more films before he died in 1964.265 Werner Egk, the leading modernist composer of the Third Reich, was able to resume his career, becoming a conservatory director and playing a central part in the reconstruction of musical life in West Germany; he died in 1983, laden with honours, a year after Carl Orff, whose postwar career was similarly successful. The former head of Goebbels's Chamber of Music, composer Richard Strauss, was perhaps too eminent to be disturbed by denazification proceedings; living quietly in Vienna, he survived the war to produce a final sequence of limpid, Mozartian works that count among his best, from the Werner Egk, the leading modernist composer of the Third Reich, was able to resume his career, becoming a conservatory director and playing a central part in the reconstruction of musical life in West Germany; he died in 1983, laden with honours, a year after Carl Orff, whose postwar career was similarly successful. The former head of Goebbels's Chamber of Music, composer Richard Strauss, was perhaps too eminent to be disturbed by denazification proceedings; living quietly in Vienna, he survived the war to produce a final sequence of limpid, Mozartian works that count among his best, from the Metamorphoses Metamorphoses for string orchestra to the oboe concerto; he died in 1949 before he could hear the first performance of his final masterpiece, the for string orchestra to the oboe concerto; he died in 1949 before he could hear the first performance of his final masterpiece, the Four Last Songs Four Last Songs.266 The postwar career of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwa*ngler was longer, but also more controversial. A denazification tribunal cleared him of all charges, and he continued to conduct and make recordings as a freelance up to his death in 1954, but the offer of an appointment as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was rescinded in 1949 after protests by eminent Jewish musicians including Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubinstein. His fellow-conductor Bruno Walter, forced into exile under the Nazis because of his Jewish ancestry, told him forcefully that throughout the Nazi years your art was used as a conspicuously effective means of propaganda for the Regime of the Devil, that you performed high service to this regime through your prominent image and great talent, that the presence and performance of an artist of your stature abetted every horrible crime against culture and morality, or at least, gave considerable support to them.267 Furtwa*ngler claimed to have intervened on behalf of Jewish victims of the regime, as he had indeed done in a few individual cases early on in the Third Reich. But, Walter pointed out, he had never been in danger, and he had carried on his career as Germany's leading conductor throughout the whole period. 'In light of all that,' he concluded, 'of what significance is your assistance in the isolated cases of a few Jews?'268 Hitler's favourite sculptor, Arno Breker, was also brought before a denazification tribunal, but he could point in mitigation of his close association with Hitler to a number of instances in which he had helped people in distress, including a Jewish woman who modelled for Maillol, Dina Vierny. Breker had visited Heinrich M*ller, head of the Gestapo, and secured her release from the French transit camp from which she was due to be deported to Auschwitz. He had also helped Picasso evade the attentions of the Gestapo in Paris. Breker's sculptures were popular not only with Hitler but also with Stalin, who offered him a commission in 1946 (Breker declined, saying: 'one dictatorship is sufficient for me'). All of this, bolstered by 160 affidavits testifying to the probity of his conduct during the Third Reich, succeeded in having him classified merely as a 'fellow traveller', with a fine of 100 Deutschmarks plus the costs of the trial (which he never paid). He subsequently rebuilt his career, partly with the help of architects from Speer's old office, and his admirers organized exhibitions of his work, but his campaign for rehabilitation did not succeed with the mainstream art world, which continued to regard him primarily as the state sculptor of the Third Reich all the way up to his death in 1991. A commentary in a leading conservative German newspaper on his ninetieth birthday the year before described him as 'the classic example of a seduced, deluded and also overbearing talent'.269 Of more immediate interest to the Allies after the war than artists and composers were the scientists and engineers who had worked so expertly, and to such little effect, on wonder-weapons like the V-1 and V-2. Special teams were put together by the Soviet and American authorities to locate and take key military technological equipment back home for further development. The inventors of the nerve gases Sarin and Tabun were arrested and interrogated; jet engines, advanced submarines, rocket planes and much more besides were dismantled and taken away for study. The Soviets removed several thousand scientists and engineers to work on updating their military technology and equipment, while the British and Americans turned their attention to the V-2 rocket team, Together with Wernher von Braun and some of his staff, they oversaw the launch of three V-2 missiles from the German North Sea coast in October 1945. 120 of the rocket programme staff, including von Braun, were taken off to a new base near El Paso, in Texas, to work on rocket development; they were not made available for the trial of those responsible for the crimes committed at Camp Dora. By 1950 the programme had been relocated to Huntsville, Alabama, where it became the leading missile development centre in the USA, eclipsing previous institutions like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Ten years later, building on the experience of the V-2, von Braun and the Huntsville team constructed the mighty Saturn rocket, which was used to launch men into space and within a decade to send them to the moon. Not only the Americans but also the Soviets, the British and the French used the expertise of members of the Peenemu*nde team wherever they could find them, in developing and building a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, rendered infinitely more dangerous than their German predecessor by the invention of the atomic bomb.270 Other scientists, notably the pioneers of atom bomb research Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, remained in Germany and resumed their careers. Hahn took over the directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1946, unsuccessfully opposing its renaming as the Max Planck Society at the behest of the British occupation authorities in the wake of the great scientist's death in 1947. What Hahn did succeed in doing, however, was to distance the Society successfully from its close involvement in Nazi research, a topic that remained undiscussed until almost the very end of the twentieth century. Hahn went to Stockholm to get his Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission, and died in G*ttingen in 1968. Werner Heisenberg became director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and rejoined the international scientific community, dying in 1971. His rivals, the champions of 'German Physics', did not prosper. Heisenberg had the pleasure of testifying against Johannes Stark at the latter's trial in 1947. Stark's sentence of four years' imprisonment was in the end not implemented, and he died, largely forgotten, in 1957. Ten years before, his mentor Philipp Lenard had died at the age of 85. Other, more minor figures in the German Physics movement were systematically shut out of academic life when it resumed again after the war.271 V.

The ordinary, unassuming citizens whose voluminous and conscientiously kept diaries form such a vital record of everyday life under the Nazis suffered a variety of fates after the war. Dr Zygmunt Klukowski published a five-volume work on German war crimes and the underground resistance in the Zamos'c' area. This led to his being called as a witness in one of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Klukowski soon found himself living under another dictatorship, however, as the Soviet occupying power suppressed the Polish nationalist movement and installed a Communist regime in power. Klukowski now helped the Polish underground resistance to the Communists and kept a diary of the Communist terror, just as he had done of the Nazi. He was arrested by the Soviet political police twice, and, though he was not imprisoned, he was demoted from his long-held post of head of hospital to the status of a humble ward physician. In 1952 he was arrested again, while trying - unsuccessfully - to prevent his son Tadeusz from being executed for resistance activities, and spent four years in Wronki prison. In the thaw of 1956 he was pardoned and rehabilitated, and moved to Lublin, where he published his war diaries two years later. These made him famous: the book was quickly reprinted, and won a major literary prize, to go along with numerous other Polish national awards. By this time, however, Klukoswki was already suffering from cancer. He died on 23 November 1959, and was buried in Szczebrzeszyn, along with other soldiers of the Home Army: in 1986 the town erected a monument to him in the main square. His diaries reached a wider readership with their publication in English in 1993 on the initiative of his surviving son and grandson and remain the most vivid and detailed record we have of life in Poland under German occupation.272 Victor Klemperer and his wife Eva moved back into the house in the Dresden suburb of D*lzschen from which they had been evicted in 1939, and gradually put it back in order. At sixty-three, he had no intention of sinking into a quiet retirement. His ex-colleagues from the Technical University at Dresden, who had avoided him during the Nazi period because he was Jewish, now spoke to him again as if nothing had happened in the intervening years. Former friends and neighbours, acquaintances and even complete strangers approached him for support in their claim that they were innocent of the Third Reich's crimes. Klemperer enjoyed his new-found status as one of the persecuted of the Third Reich. He was restored to his Professorship at the University, though he did not return to teach there, and then was appointed in rapid succession to more prestigious chairs at Greifswald, Halle and Berlin. He retrieved his manuscripts from his non-Jewish friend Annemarie K*hler, and published his study of Nazi language, LTI LTI, which was immediately recognized as a classic. He resumed work on his study of eighteenth-century French literature, and this was published too. Dresden lay in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, and after some hesitation Klemperer joined the Communist Party, which he saw as the only convincing vehicle of retribution and reconstruction; for him, nothing else could give any assurance that the break with Nazism was complete. His membership opened up a wide range of cultural and educational work for him, and after the German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 he became a deputy in the country's parliament, a position for which he was no more obliged to campaign or stand against an opponent than any other member was. The growing Stalinization of East Germany made him more sceptical; he ran into political criticism of his work, and he privately concluded that at bottom he was a liberal after all.273 In 1951 Klemperer's wife Eva, whose steadfast love had kept him alive during the Third Reich, died of a heart attack in her sleep shortly before her sixty-ninth birthday. 'I am quite alone,' he wrote in his diary, 'everything is valueless for me now.'274 Initially, he took solace in work, but within a few months he began a relationship with the twenty-five-year-old Hadwig Kirchner, one of his students; despite feeling that he might be making a fool of himself, he fell in love, his sentiments were reciprocated, and the couple were married on 23 May 1952. He continued to teach French literature well into his seventies. In 1959 he fell seriously ill, and died on 11 February 1960 at the age of seventy-eight. There could be no question of publishing his voluminous diaries under the East German dictatorship, given their complete failure to follow the Communist Party line on either the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich or the postwar era; but after the fall of the Berlin Wall his widow made them available for publication, and they appeared in instalments through the 1990s, immediately establishing themselves as the most meticulous, vivid and honest account of the life of a Jew in Germany during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Initially, he took solace in work, but within a few months he began a relationship with the twenty-five-year-old Hadwig Kirchner, one of his students; despite feeling that he might be making a fool of himself, he fell in love, his sentiments were reciprocated, and the couple were married on 23 May 1952. He continued to teach French literature well into his seventies. In 1959 he fell seriously ill, and died on 11 February 1960 at the age of seventy-eight. There could be no question of publishing his voluminous diaries under the East German dictatorship, given their complete failure to follow the Communist Party line on either the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich or the postwar era; but after the fall of the Berlin Wall his widow made them available for publication, and they appeared in instalments through the 1990s, immediately establishing themselves as the most meticulous, vivid and honest account of the life of a Jew in Germany during the first six decades of the twentieth century.275 Luise Solmitz and her Jewish husband Friedrich also survived the war unscathed. They lived in quiet retirement in Hamburg. Luise continued to keep a daily record of her life, as she had done ever since 1905, filling one 700-page notebook with closely spaced lines of tiny, crabbed handwriting every year. In December 1953 she donated her diaries to the Hamburg State Archive as a historical record, but a year later, she found that she could not bear to be without them and retrieved them for her private use. She donated them again in 1967, but took them back home once more three months later, keeping them until her death in 1973 at the age of eighty-four. In the 1960s the Research Centre for the History of National Socialism in Hamburg secured her agreement to come in every day and dictate from the diaries for 1918-45 to a shorthand typist. As she went through them, she occasionally wondered at the views she had expressed in the early 1930s, views that had changed so radically by 1945. Coming across her description from January 1933 of Nazis singing about Jewish blood spurting from the knife, she added a comment: 'Who took that seriously then?'276 VI.

Luise Solmitz's failure in the 1930s to recognize the violence that lay at the heart of Nazism was shared by many. As late as 1939 the great majority of Germans were hoping against hope that there would not be a general European war; and a large part of the euphoria that swept the country in the wake of the victory over France the following year expressed the relief that the traditional enemy had been defeated, and the humiliation of the 1919 Peace Settlement avenged, with what seemed to be a minimum of bloodshed. Yet Nazism was from the very beginning a creed based on violence and hatred, born of bitterness and despair. The depth and radicalism of the political, social and economic crises that assailed Germany under the Weimar Republic spawned a correspondingly deep and radical response. Germany's enemies within and without were to be utterly destroyed in order that Germany should rise again, this time to unprecedented heights of power and domination. Even the promises of economic reconstruction and social cohesion that won over so many Germans to the Nazi cause in the 1930s were subordinated in the end to the drive to war. In seeking to re-create the atmosphere of August 1914 - or what the Nazis imagined it to have been - internal conflict was to be banished and social and political divisions subsumed in the all-encompassing myth of the organic national and racial community of all Germans. The subversion that had supposedly led to the German army being stabbed in the back by Jewish revolutionaries feeding on domestic discontent in 1918 was to be prevented by ensuring that the Jews were removed from Germany by any means possible and that Germans themselves were well fed, racially pure and politically committed. These were aims that could only be achieved by the application of violence at its most ruthless and extreme.

The war that began in September 1939 unleashed it with a force that had so far only been apparent on specific occasions such as the maltreatment of the Jews of Vienna after the annexation of Austria in March 1938, or the nationwide pogrom of the 'Night of Broken Glass' the following November. The policies that unfolded in Poland in the opening months of the war set the tone for the Nazi occupation of other parts of Eastern Europe from the middle of 1941 onwards: expropriation, forcible deportation, imprisonment, mass shootings, murder on a hitherto unimaginable scale. These policies were applied to all the people who lived in the region apart from ethnic Germans, but they were applied with particular venom to the Jews, who were subjected to sadistic and systematic humiliation and torture, ghettoization and extermination by poison gas in facilities specially built for the purpose. Other groups, mainly though in many cases not exclusively German, were also killed in large numbers: the mentally ill and handicapped, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, 'asocials', petty criminals, the politically refractory and the socially marginal. Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in their millions, and people of many nationalities were taken forcibly to Germany and made to work and live under conditions that proved fatal for a large number of them. Some people who belonged to these other groups were, like many Jews, gassed to death; but only the Jews were singled out as the 'world enemy', a global threat to Germany's existence that had to be exterminated wherever it was found.

These policies were put into action to one degree or another by hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Germans, who were committed to the Nazi cause, or who - especially if they belonged to the younger generation - had been indoctrinated since 1933 with the belief that Slavs were subhuman, Jews were evil, Gypsies, criminals, the marginal and the deviant were at best a nuisance, at worst a threat. Nazism's encouragement of murderous violence, theft, looting and wanton destruction was not without its effect on the behaviour of German troops in Poland, the Soviet Union, Serbia and other parts of Europe. Only a very few, mostly impelled by a strong Christian conscience, raised their voices in criticism. Yet the majority of Germans felt uneasy at the mass murder of Jews and Slavs, and guilty that they were too afraid to do anything to stop it. In the case of the mentally ill and handicapped, who belonged in many cases to their own families and communities, they were upset enough to protest, at first indirectly and then, channelling their anger and despair through the Christian Churches, openly and to some effect.

In launching a war to be fought on a European scale with the goal of world domination as the long-term aim, Hitler and the Nazis were living out the fantasies that had impelled them into politics in the first place: fantasies of a great and resurgent Germany, expunging the stain of defeat in 1918 by establishing an imperial domination on a scale the world had never seen before. These fantasies were shared to a significant degree by key parts of the German Establishment, including the civil service, the professions and the top generals in the army. Despite their doubts, they all went along with it in the end. But Germany's economic resources were never adequate to turn these fantasies into reality, not even when the resources of a large part of the rest of Europe were added to them. No amount of 'mobilization for total war', no degree of economic rationalization, could alter this fundamental fact of life. Initially, the German armed forces managed to score a series of quick victories using tactics that defeated their enemies as much by surprise as by anything else. But they were unable to defeat Britain in 1940, and a stalemate ensued. This was the first major turning-point of the war.

The invasion of the Soviet Union the following year was in part an attempt to break this stalemate. But it was also the accelerated implementation of a desire long held by Hitler and the leading Nazis: the conquest of Eastern Europe, the acquisition of its notionally vast natural resources, and the racial subjugation and extermination of a large proportion of its inhabitants in order to make way for a new and permanent German hegemony. Operation Barbarossa inaugurated a war of attrition that the Third Reich could not win. The drive across North Africa to secure the prize of Middle Eastern oil could not succeed, for all Rommel's brilliance; the attempt to cut off the supplies sent to Britain and the Soviet Union in growing quantities from the United States failed because there were not enough U-boats to sustain it. A second turning-point in the war came at the end of 1941, when the German armies failed to take Moscow, and the United States brought their immense resources into the conflict on the Allied side. A third turning-point came a year later, in the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad.