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

98. DZW, 6, pp. 261–3. See Herbert, pp. 327–31, for increasingly arbitrary and violent persecution of foreign workers as fears of a breakdown of order grew in the last months of the war.

99. DZW, 6, pp. 257–9; Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 4th edn., Munich, 1985, p. 635.

100. BAB, NS19/3911, fos. 66–7, Der Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Spree an den Gauen Berlin, Mark Brandenburg und im Wehrkreis III to Reichsführer-SS Persönlicher Stab and others, conveying Himmler’s decree of 20.8.44. Himmler later reinforced the full backing he had given to his HSSPFs as solely responsible for combating internal unrest, when commanders of Defence Districts sought to exert their own authority in this realm.—BAB, NS19/3912, fos. 17–26, correspondence relating to the competence dispute, 14.9.44 to 5.10.44.

101. DZW, 6, p. 233.

102. TBJG, II/13, pp. 389–90, 398, 408 (2, 3, 4.9.44).

103. BAB, NS19/751, fo. 3, Party Chancellery Rundschreiben 224/44, Erfassung von zurückführenden und versprengten einzelnen Wehrmachtsangehörigen, 4.9.44; NS6/792, fo. 16–16^v, Himmler to the western Gauleiter, 4.9.44. A repeated order to pick up individuals or units returning over the Reich border following the events in the west was issued on 22 September (NS19/751, fos. 10–12, Party Chancellery circular 258/44). Increased fears of enemy agents, saboteurs and spies led to the police being given the sole right to check papers of members of the Wehrmacht as well as the Waffen-SS and, where necessary, to make arrests.—BAB, R43II/692, fos. 1–2, directive by Keitel and Himmler, 20.9.44.

104. Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, p. 732.

105. DZW, 6, p. 108.

106. BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 96, Einsatz von Alarmeinheiten im Kampf um Ortschaften, Guderian’s directive, 27.8.44.

107. TBJG, II/13, p. 438 (8.9.44); David K. Yelton, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944–1945, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, pp. 39–40.

108. TBJG, II/13, p. 464 (12.9.44).

109. Yelton, pp. 7–18; Klaus Mammach, Der Volkssturm: Bestandteil des totalen Kriegseinsatzes der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45, Berlin, 1981, pp. 31–3; Hans Kissel, Der Deutsche Volkssturm 1944/45, Frankfurt am Main, 1962, pp. 15–23; Franz W. Seidler, ‘Deutscher Volkssturm’: Das letzte Aufgebot 1944/45, Munich and Berlin, 1989; BAB, R43II/692a, fos. 2–7, 14–20.9.44; DRZW, 9/1 (Nolzen), pp. 183–5; DZW, 6, pp. 237–8. Goebbels still spoke of the new organization by this name in his diary entry for 21 September 1944.—TBJG, II/13, pp. 534–5.

110. Mammach, p. 33. Two days earlier, Himmler had received a list of suggestions sent to him by SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Richard Hildebrandt, Chief of the Race and Settlement Head Office, to mobilize and organize the civilian population for ‘the people’s war’, a ‘German partisan war’, to be carried out as a ‘freedom struggle’ in the homeland.—BAB, NS19/2864, unfoliated, Hildebrandt to Himmler, 19.9.44.

111. BAB, R43II/692a, fos. 8–21; Mammach, pp. 32–3, 55–6 and 168–73 for facsimiles of Hitler’s decree and Bormann’s order for implementation.

112. Yelton, chs. 2–3. Longerich’s claim (Himmler, p. 733) that Himmler and Berger were successful against Bormann seems doubtful. Bormann’s personal success in his demarcation disputes with Himmler is underlined by Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär: Martin Bormann. Der Mann, der Hitler beherrschte, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, pp. 298–9. For the recruitment and organization of the Volkssturm, undertaken by the Party local leaders (Ortsgruppenleiter), see Carl-Wilhelm Reibel, Das Fundament der Diktatur: Die NSDAP-Ortsgruppen 1932–1945, Paderborn, 2002, pp. 377–81.

113. Kissel, p. 89; Mammach, p. 58; Yelton, pp. xv, 19–35.

114. TBJG, II/13, p. 535 (21.9.44).

115. Mammach, pp. 57–8. No figure for its actual size (which anyway fluctuated) at any one point appears to exist. Because of manpower shortage, exemptions, deferrals and bureaucratic inefficiency the target was never remotely reached in practice. Even so, the numbers drafted were large. The first levy of the Volkssturm amounted to 1.2 million men, formed into 1,850 battalions.—Alastair Noble, Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945: The Darkest Hour, Brighton and Portland, Ore., 2009, p. 149.

116. TBJG, II/13, p. 103 (13.7.44); Noble, pp. 100–101.