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

What might have occurred had the British and Americans in the west and the Soviets in the east taken different strategic decisions can of course only be a matter of speculation. Perhaps the war would have been over much earlier. But just as possibly, other errors or hesitations—war inevitably producing its own frequent surprises and seldom going according to plans laid down on paper—might have played their part and prevented a more rapid conclusion.

In a similar realm of ultimately futile speculation is the question of what the outcome might have been to a successful assassination of Hitler and takeover of the state by the conspirators behind the July plot of 1944. Had they succeeded, Stauffenberg and the successful plotters would unquestionably have sought peace with the west, though almost certainly not in the east. Most likely, the west would have refused consideration of anything other than ‘unconditional surrender’ on all fronts, since to do otherwise would have split the coalition with the Soviet Union, which rested fundamentally on the complete destruction of German militarism as well as Nazism. With Hitler dead, the leaders of the successful coup would have been faced with the choice of either accepting the terms of complete capitulation or fighting on. Probably, they would have felt compelled to agree to total surrender. The war might, therefore, have been over in July 1944, with the saving of the immense bloodshed that occurred in subsequent months. But would the military leadership, especially in the east, have agreed? And would Nazi diehards, most notably in the SS, have gone along with it? Shored up by a new ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend focused on the image of the dead, heroic Führer, portrayed as killed by his own officers when leading Germany’s fight for existence, powerful internal forces might have resisted and even toppled the new government. Civil war might have ensued.

In the nature of things, the endless fascination of such ‘what-if?’ speculation can provide no answers. This book has attempted, therefore, to assess not what might have been, but what did in fact happen, and to evaluate on that basis the reasons for Germany fighting on to the end. On the basis of the evidence presented in earlier chapters, it is time to draw the threads of an answer together.

First of all, it was plainly not the case, as has sometimes been claimed, that the population backed Hitler and the Nazi regime to the end. ‘The people have no confidence any longer in the leadership,’ ran an internal report, one of the many cited above, in March 1945. ‘The Führer is drawn more strongly by the day into the question of confidence and into the criticism.’⁵ The bonds with Hitler, at the top and bottom of society, had, it is true, at least in the short term been strengthened in July 1944 by the failure of Stauffenberg’s bomb plot. As we saw, there was a surge in Hitler’s lagging popularity among the civilian population and among frontline soldiers, to go from their letters home. And most of the generals, even those who were far from regime enthusiasts, were utterly dismayed by the attempt on Hitler’s life, as their private diary entries and remarks not meant for public consumption demonstrate. But apart from this brief resurgence, Hitler’s popularity had been on the wane since winter 1941 and by 1944–5 was in free fall. Significant reserves of his popularity did remain among a dwindling minority of the population—though, to be sure, a minority that still held power. By early 1945, however, support for Hitler was very low.

And by now the Nazi Party was widely hated. As Goebbels admitted, the Party was largely ‘played out’ well before the end, the target of bitter resentment as its functionaries disappeared into the ether, abandoning the population. Despite the intensified efforts of propaganda, the reports reaching Goebbels spoke with a clear voice. Propaganda could do little or nothing to counter what people were seeing with their own eyes. Its gung-ho messages were increasingly scorned by a population yearning for an end to the war and inexorably turning against the regime which had brought such misery upon Germany. There is little to be said for the view that the ‘people’s community’ retained its cohesion and integrative force behind the war effort. The much-vaunted ‘people’s community’ had in fact long since dissolved as it become a question of ‘save yourself, if you can’.