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

There were indeed some fanatical supporters of Hitler in every military unit to the end, though usually by now in a minority. One officer recalled how, hearing the news that the Führer had ‘fallen’, a single young soldier leapt to his feet, raised his arm and shouted ‘Heil Hitler’, while the others carryed on eating their soup as if nothing had happened.⁴ There must have been a spectrum of emotions at the news among generals, ranging from relief to sorrow, mingled with a sense of the inevitable. ‘Führer fallen! Terrible, and yet expected,’ noted one former front commander, Colonel-General Georg-Hans Reinhardt, in his diary.⁵ When a small group of senior officers, gathered at the field headquarters of the 3rd Panzer Army in Mecklenburg, heard the announcement, there was no sign that any of them was moved.⁶ Even among senior officers in British captivity, divided opinions on Hitler were voiced when they heard of his death. ‘A tragic personality, surrounded by an incompetent circle of criminals’, ‘a historical figure’ whose achievements would only be recognized in a future age, summarized the overall view, as they debated whether, having sworn an oath of allegiance to him personally, they were now freed from their military oath.⁷

Among the civilian population, most Germans were too preoccupied with fending off hunger, eking out an existence in the ruins of their homes, avoiding marauding Soviet soldiers, or piecing together broken lives under enemy occupation to pay much attention to the demise of the Führer.⁸ A mother in Celle was concerned with a practical issue: whether her children should still greet people with ‘Heil Hitler’ now that he was dead. ‘I told them, they could continue to say “Heil Hitler” because Hitler remained the Führer to the last,’ was her judgement. ‘But if that seems odd to them, they should say “good day” or “good morning”.’⁹ In Göttingen, which had been in Allied hands for three weeks, a woman observed that those who had effusively cheered Hitler a few years earlier now scarcely noticed his end. No one mourned him.¹⁰ ‘Hitler is dead and we—we act as if it’s of no concern to us, as if it’s a matter of the most indifferent person in the world,’ wrote a woman in Berlin, a long-standing opponent of National Socialism. ‘What has changed? Nothing! Except, that we have forgotten Herr Hitler during the inferno of the last days.’¹¹

Increasing numbers had come to realize in the last months of the war that Hitler, more than anyone, had been responsible for the misery that had afflicted them. ‘A pity that Hitler hasn’t been sent to Siberia,’ one woman in Hamburg wrote. ‘But the swine was so cowardly as to put a bullet through his head instead.’¹² ‘Criminals and gamblers have led us, and we have let them lead us like sheep to the slaughter,’ was the view of one young woman in Berlin, exposed to the tender mercies of Red Army soldiers and not yet aware of Hitler’s death. ‘Now hatred is blazing in the wretched mass of the people. “No tree is high enough for him,” it was said this morning at the water-pump about Adolf.’¹³ The earlier idolization, the personalized attribution to Hitler of praise and adulation for all that had seemed at one time positive and successful in the Third Reich was already being transformed into demonization of the man on whom all blame for what had gone wrong could be focused.

For ordinary people, concerned only with getting through the misery, Hitler’s death on the face of it changed nothing. The same was true for soldiers in their billets or still serving on the front, and for naval and Luftwaffe crews, some of whom had been drafted into the increasingly desperate fight on land. Indeed, as Grand-Admiral Dönitz took up the reins of office as President of the German Reich, continuity rather than a break with the immediate past seemed on the surface the order of the day. Nevertheless, a fundamental change had actually taken place. It was as if a bankrupt organization had, with the departure of a managing director who refused point-blank to accept realities, been placed in administration, left with the mere task of winding up orders and the process of liquidation.