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

23. IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2837A, unfoliated, Kaltenbrunner to Himmler, 16.9.44, sending reports from 12–16.9.44. Few Party functionaries evidently had any intention of following Bormann’s instructions that, in areas falling to the enemy, they were to report voluntarily to the Wehrmacht and serve with the fighting troops.—BAB, NS6/167, fo. 100–100^v, Bormann to the Gauleiter, 16.9.44. A letter home from an officer stationed in the west spoke of the ‘purest panic’ after Gauleiter Josef Bürckel had ordered Germans to leave Lorraine on 1 September. No trains were available, and officials were at the forefront of the flight.—BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Lt. Otto F., Berghaupten, 13.9.44.

24. BAB, NS19/3809, fo. 16, wire to Standartenführer D’Alquen for immediate presentation to Himmler, signed Damrau, SS-Standarte ‘Kurt Eggers’, September, ?13.9.44. Gauleiter Simon, the head of the civilian administration in Luxemburg, moved his office to Koblenz, where he complained at the end of October that he had not received copies of edicts and ordinances, asking for these to be sent to him, including those for the period since the end of August.—BAB, R43II/583a, fo. 151, Der Chef der Zivilverwaltung in Luxemburg an den Reichminister der Finanzen, 31.10.44.

25. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, fos. 39–46, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, entries for 1–18.9.44.

26. For the revival of criticism of the Etappe—which had not featured in the early, successful, years of the war—in the wake of the collapse in France, see Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘ “Frontochsen” und “Etappenbullen”: Zur Ideologisierung militärischer Organisationsstrukturen im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Munich, 1999, pp. 380–84.

27. TBJG, II/13, pp. 394–5 (3.9.44).

28. DZW, 6, p. 106.

29. BAB, NS19/3911, fo. 5, Himmler to HSSPF in west, 23.8.44.

30. BAB, NS19/1864, fos. 7–13, Bormann to Himmler, 29.8.44, Holz to Bormann, 28.8.44, Himmler to Bormann, 1.9.44.

31. BAB, R55/620, fos. 101–3, report by Generalleutnant Dittmar, 26.9.44.

32. BA/MA, RH19/IV/14, Tätigkeitsbericht der Geh. Feldpolizei für September 1944 (27.10.44).

33. BAB, NS19/1858, fos. 1–7, Chef des NS-Führungsstabes des Heeres, Kurze Aktennotiz über Frontbesuch im Westen in der Zeit vom 22.9–3.10.1944, 5.10.44.

34. On 1 September, the OKW passed on an order from Hitler that troops retreating from the west and not needed for relocation to other theatres were to give up weaponry and equipment as they crossed the frontier into Germany, which could then be redeployed for the western front.—BAB, NS6/792, fo. 15–15^v, Oberbefehlsleiter Hellmuth Friedrichs, head of Abteilung II (Parteiangelegenheiten) in the Party Chancellery, to western Gauleiter, 1.9.44.

35. DZW, 6, p. 108; BA/MA, RW4/494, fo. 94, Chef des OKW, Maßnahmen gegen Auflösungserscheinungen in der Truppe, 23.9.44.

36. BA/MA, RW4/494, fo. 108, Jodl to Ob.West, etc., 16.9.44; DZW, 6, pp. 106–9, partial facsimile of Hitler’s order of 16.9.44, p. 109; Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Verbrannte Erde”? Hitlers “Nero-Befehl” vom 19. März 1945’, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 158.

37. DZW, 6, pp. 119–20; Groehler, pp. 331–2.

38. NAL, WO208/4364, pp. 2–6 (quotation, in English, p. 6) (26–8.10.44).

39. DZW, 6, p. 111. For examples of the fanaticism and belief in Hitler among wounded SS men in France, see Beevor, p. 324.

40. Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP 1920–1945, Cologne, 1981, pp. 369–70.

41. Bernd Wegner, Hitlers politische Soldaten, Paderborn, 1982, p. 306.

42. Examples from August and September 1944 in Ortwin Buchbender and Reinhold Sterz (eds.), Das andere Gesicht des Krieges: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe 1939–1945, Munich, 1982, pp. 154–61. A number of large samples of soldiers’ correspondence in August and September 1944 tested by the censors showed mixed results. Some indicated a slight rise in positive attitudes towards the regime and the war effort. Others pointed in the opposite direction, with a small increase in negative attitudes and trend towards war-weariness. Unsurprisingly, however, political views were expressed (or hinted at) in only a fraction of the correspondence. Most of the letters confined themselves to personal matters.—DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 631–3. The limited indoctrination with the ideals of National Socialism is a general hallmark of letters to and from the front, dominated above all by private concerns. See DRZW, 9/2 (Kilian), pp. 287–8. For an assessment of the value of the letters as a reflection of ordinary soldiers’ mentalities, see Klaus Latzel, ‘Wehrmachtsoldaten zwischen “Normalität” und NS-Ideologie, oder: Was sucht die Forschung in der Feldpost?’, in Müller and Volkmann, pp. 573–88.