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

The problem was compounded by the fact that Hitler was not just supreme commander of the Wehrmacht as a whole, but also Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Even compared with other authoritarian regimes, the personalization of rule in Hitler’s regime was extreme. Structures of power, each imbued in varied measure with Nazi ideological values, were all bound to Hitler, gaining legitimation from his ‘charismatic leadership’. The fragmentation of governance reflected the character of Hitler’s absolute power, even when this started to wane in the very last weeks. Though Hitler’s mass appeal as a charismatic leader had been in steep decline since the middle of the war, the fragmentation of rule beneath him that had been a hallmark of his charismatic rule from the beginning lasted to the end. It was a fundamental reason why an earlier collapse, or a resort to a negotiated settlement—any alternative to the inexorable course to self-destruction—did not take place.

The mindset of the ruling elite had attuned to the character of charismatic domination and underpinned the structural determinants preventing any challenge to Hitler. Among Nazi leaders, the personal bonds forged with him at an earlier time proved almost impossible to break even when the nimbus of infallibility built into the personality cult faded. So did the utter dependence on Hitler for positions of power. Speer admittedly distanced himself, though very belatedly, and even he felt an inward urge to make a perilous and futile last trip back into the Führer Bunker in the very last days to say his personal farewell to the leader he had once idolized. Göring, despite bearing the brunt of Hitler’s fury at the failure of the Luftwaffe, never broke with him. His deposition from all his offices on 23 April followed a misunderstanding wilfully exploited by Bormann, one of the Reich Marshal’s arch-enemies. Bormann himself was the loyal right hand of his master, turning Hitler’s tirades and outbursts into bureaucratic regulations and orders. Himmler was the strong arm of repression who, despite surreptitiously going his own way in the last months in an attempt to retain a position of power in a post-Hitler world, continued to recognize his dependency. The breach with Hitler came at the very last, and, as with Göring, seems to have followed a misunderstanding, when Himmler presumed reports of the Dictator’s breakdown on 22 April had meant his effective abdication. The most committed of all the top Nazi leaders, and among the most clear-sighted of Hitler’s acolytes, Joseph Goebbels, was one of the very few prepared to stay with him to the end and cast himself on the great funeral pyre of the Third Reich.

Beneath the top echelon of Party bosses, the Gauleiter still presented a phalanx of outright loyalists, whatever their private feelings, who had long since bound themselves irredeemably to Hitler, even though in the last weeks they started of necessity to take independent action as communications with Berlin broke down. Their last collective meeting with Hitler, on 24 February 1945, showed that Hitler’s authority was still intact among this important group.

Among military leaders, the stance of Grand-Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the navy and at Hitler’s death his nominated successor as head of state, is illustrative of the lasting bonds with Hitler. In contrast to his post-war reputation of a military professional who had simply done his duty, Dönitz had been one of the foremost fanatics in his support for Hitler’s orders to fight to the last, an outright Nazi in his attitude. But with Hitler gone, the chief and unyielding barrier to capitulation was removed. Given overall responsibility and feeling freed from his oath of loyalty to Hitler, Dönitz saw the need to bow to military and political reality and looked immediately to find a negotiated end to a lost war. This sudden reversal of his stance by Dönitz underlines as clearly as anything how much the fight to the end, down to complete defeat and destruction, was owing not just to Hitler in person, but to the character of his rule and the mentalities that had upheld his charismatic domination.