The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

With Himmler’s betrayal, it seemed as if the fight had gone out of Hitler. In the last act of the drama, he married Eva Braun, his partner of many years, who had decided to end her life alongside him, and drew up his Testament. In its political section it included the names of the ministers in the successor government. Dönitz, his fanatical support throughout recognized—also in sending sailors to fight in Berlin’s last battle—was to become Reich President. Goebbels, Bormann, Hanke, Saur, Giesler and Schörner, diehards all of them, were rewarded for their loyalty and zealotry. There was no place for Speer. The task done, and the Soviets almost literally at the gates, all that was left was for Hitler and Eva Braun to make the last preparations to commit suicide. In the mid-afternoon of 30 April, Hitler shot himself and Eva Braun took poison. Dönitz, up in Plön in Schleswig-Holstein, did not learn of Hitler’s death until next morning—not long after he had sent a message, presuming him to be still alive, professing his continued unconditional loyalty. The Wehrmacht and the German people—those who were listening—were not informed until the late evening of 1 May that Hitler had fallen ‘at the head of the heroic defenders of the Reich capital’, a propaganda lie to the last.¹⁶⁶ Joseph and Magda Goebbels had committed suicide that day, after poisoning their six children. The following day, 2 May, the German troops in Berlin were ordered to cease fighting. The Soviet ‘hammer and sickle’ flag fluttered from the Reichstag.

The war was still not over. Outside Berlin, fighting continued. But with Hitler’s death, the insuperable obstacle to capitulation was removed. What had been impossible as long as he was alive became immediately realizable as soon as he was dead. Nothing demonstrates more plainly the extent to which he personally had held together the regime. The bonds with his ‘charismatic community’ and the fragmented structures of rule that had existed throughout the Third Reich and guaranteed his own unchallengeable power had allowed it, at terrible cost to the German people, to continue to operate until the Russians were at the very portals of the Reich Chancellery.

9. Liquidation

Since the western enemies continue their support of the Soviets, the fight against the Anglo-Americans according to the order of the Grand-Admiral carries on.

Head of naval operations staff, 4 May 1945

I

Only two or three years earlier, Hitler’s death would have stunned the nation. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union plunged Germany into a long, attritional and ultimately unwinnable war, the sense of loss would have been immeasurable in every corner of the country. The reactions to Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt in July 1944 show that even then, if Hitler had been killed, the shock waves would have been enormous. By the evening of 1 May 1945, however, when the news of Hitler’s death was broadcast, few tears were shed.

There were of course exceptions. The crew of a minesweeper were said to have been close to tears when they heard the announcement, seeing it as the ‘final heroic tones’ of a long war.¹ An NCO based near Prague recorded the lengthy silence and feelings of dismay that greeted the news in his unit, noting that the death of the Führer was regarded positively as a ‘heroic gesture’ by the soldiers—‘at least by the majority’, he added.² Whether the assessment was accurate cannot be known. It is equally impossible to ascertain the common reaction among the soldiers to the proclamation issued on 3 May by the most Nazified of all generals, Field-Marshal Schörner, to his Army Group Centre, largely located now in Bohemia. Schörner described Hitler as ‘a martyr to his idea and his belief and as a soldier of the European mission’ who had died fighting against Bolshevism ‘to his last breath’.³ Probably, it seems fair to surmise, most soldiers, wherever they were based, were concerned less with the death of the Führer than with their own struggle to escape falling into the clutches of the Red Army.