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

28. The most forthright statement of this is in Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Der Nationalsozialismus: Bewegung, Führerherrschaft, Verbrechen, Munich, 2009, esp. chs. 2, 7, 11, 14, extracts assembled from his monumental Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4: 1914–1949, 3rd edn., Munich, 2008. The concept of ‘charismatic rule’ is, of course, drawn from Max Weber. See his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th rev. edn., Tübingen, 1980, pp. 140–47, 654–87. Although Ludolf Herbst, Hitlers Charisma: Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias, Frankfurt am Main, 2010, criticizes notions that Hitler began his ‘career’ with innate personal charismatic qualities—something few serious historians have claimed—and emphasizes the propagandistic manufacture of his charisma in the 1920s (in an argument that comes close to portraying the Germans as victims of techniques of sophisticated mass seduction), he appears nevertheless to accept that the Nazi regime was based upon ‘charismatic rule’.

CHAPTER 1. SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

1. Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels—the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, p. 147 (23.7.44). Semmler (real name Semler) was a press officer in the Reich Propaganda Ministry. The original German text of his diary entries appears to have been lost.

2. Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45, London, 2004, pp. xi, 15, 17.

3. MadR, 17, pp. 6645–58, reports for 14 and 22.7.44.

4. This sketch is based upon: Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär: Martin Bormann. Der Mann, der Hitler beherrschte, Frankfurt am Main, 1980; Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, Harmondsworth, 1972, pp. 191–206; and The Bormann Letters, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1954, pp. vi–xxiii.

5. For a full study of this obnoxious individual, see Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch—eine politische Biographie, Osnabrück, 2007. See also Ralf Meindl, ‘Erich Koch—Gauleiter von Ostpreußen’, in Christian Pletzing (ed.), Vorposten des Reichs? Ostpreußen 1933–1945, Munich, 2006, pp. 29–39.

6. BAB, R43II/684, fo. 61, Kritzinger to Lammers, 13.7.44. And see Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, pp. 82–3.

7. BAB, R43II/393a, fo. 47, Vermerk for Lammers, 11.6.44.

8. ‘Führer-Erlasse’ 1939–1945, ed. Martin Moll, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 432–3.

9. Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘Der starke Mann im Heimatkriegsgebiet’: Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm. Eine Biographie, Paderborn, 2005, pp. 670–73; Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, p. 720 (and now in general the most authoritative account of Himmler’s personality and career).

10. Eleanor Hancock, National Socialist Leadership and Total War 1941–45, New York, 1991, p. 127.

11. TBJG, II/12, p. 522 (22.6.44).

12. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 754.

13. e.g. MadR, 17, pp. 6657–8 (22.7.44).

14. BAB, R3/1522, fos. 4–16, Memorandum on ‘Total War’, 12.7.44. And see Wolfgang Bleyer, ‘Pläne der faschistischen Führung zum totalen Krieg im Sommer 1944’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 17 (1969), pp. 1312–29; also Gregor Janssen, Das Ministerium Speer: Deutschlands Rüstung im Krieg, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, 1968, pp. 271–2.

15. Peter Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter: Führung der Partei und Kontrolle des Staatsapparates durch den Stab Heß und die Partei-Kanzlei Bormann, Munich, 1992, p. 195. In his Nuremberg testimony, Speer suggested, presumably with his success in instigating the planned meeting in mind, that his letter had prompted Hitler to appoint Goebbels as Plenipotentiary for Total War (IWM, FO645/161, p. 10, 9.10.45).

16. Dieter Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1989, p. 514.

17. Peter Longerich, ‘Joseph Goebbels und der totale Krieg: Eine unbekannte Denkschrift des Propagandaministers vom 18. Juli 1944’, Vf Z, 35 (1987), pp. 289–314 (text pp. 305–14). And see Hancock, pp. 133–6.