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

63. BA/MA, RH20/4/593, unfoliated, report of Hauptmann Fricke, to Armeeoberkommando 4, 26.10.44, enumerated 45 corpses, 26 found in Nemmersdorf and 19 in nearby Tutteln (together with several more uncounted charcoaled corpses in a burnt-out byre there). Most of the dead in Nemmersdorf were not inhabitants of the village but had been on treks overtaken by the Red Army. Two further reports (BA/MA, RH2/2684, fos. 2, 5) indicated one woman probably raped then murdered by being beaten with an axe or spade in Schweizerau on 22 October and 11 civilians, including 4 women who had been raped, found in the dairy at Bahnfelde, near Schulzenwalde. A list of victims later compiled recorded 90 in a number of places in East Prussia (the largest number, 26, in Nemmersdorf), with numerous cases of rape and including the murder of 5 childen whose tongues, it was claimed, had been nailed to tables.—BA/MA, RH2/2685, fo. 168. Karl-Heinz Frieser in DRZW, 8, p. 620 n. 77, gives a probable figure of 46 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself, not counting adjacent localities, though he provides no basis for the figure, which is probably a marginal miscounting of those in Nemmersdorf and Tutteln together. As he points out (n. 76), Fisch’s findings were reliant almost entirely upon answers to the questions he had posed to survivors still alive in the 1990s. In his attempt to reveal the propaganda as largely mendacious, he appeared to verge on occasion towards an over-sympathetic image of the Red Army soldiers. Pöllmann, p. 214, indicates 26 civilian victims in Nemmersdorf itself and a further 28 in the immediate vicinity.

64. BA/MA, N245/2, fo. 40. NL Reinhardt, letter to his wife, 26.10.44.

65. TBJG, II/14, p. 110 (26.10.44). And see Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 170 (27.10.44). Hitler himself had responded to the news of the atrocities by demanding their propaganda exploitation within the Wehrmacht, and expressed impatience at the slowness to act in distributing photographs and eyewitness accounts.—IfZ, Nbg.-Dok. PS-1787. See also David Irving, Hitler’s War, London, 1977, p. 893, n. to p. 726.

66. Quoted Steinert, pp. 521–2.

67. Fisch, Nemmersdorf, pp. 144, 153 n. 8.

68. Schwendemann, p. 240 n. 41.

69. Some, along similar lines, were monitored by British intelligence services: NAL, FO898/187, PWE, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, fos. 439, 457–8 (reports for 23–9.10.44 and 30.10–5.11.44).

70. Fisch, Nemmersdorf, pp. 146–7.

71. VB, 1.11.44.

72. BAB, R55/601, fo. 181, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 23.10.44. See also Meindl, p. 434.

73. Steinert, p. 522.

74. TBJG, II/14, p. 69 (10.10.44).

75. See IfZ, Fa-93, Vorlage for Bormann, 12.10.44, in which Werner Naumann, State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, informed him that Germans in western occupied areas were not behaving in compliance with ‘national honour’; and Himmler to HSSPF West, 18.10.44 (also in BAB, NS19/751, fo. 21), indicating that enemy press reports revealed ‘dishonourable’ conduct by German citizens under enemy occupation in the west. See also Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, p. 172.

76. TBJG, II/14, pp. 176 (8.11.44), 189 (10.11.44).

77. BAB, R55/601, fo. 204, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44; TBJG, II/14, p. 192 (10.11.44).

78. BHStA, MA 106696, report of RPvOF/MF, 8.11.44.

79. BAB, R55/601, fo. 210, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 7.11.44.

80. BAB, R55/608, fo. 29, Mundpropagandaparole Nr. 4, 7.11.44.

81. TBJG, II/14, pp. 192–3 (10.11.44).

82. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel (eds.), Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, Düsseldorf, 2004, p. 546, no. 749, report from SD-Leitabschnitt Stuttgart, 6.11.44; also in IWM, ‘Aus deutschen Urkunden, 1935–1945’, unpublished documentation, n.d. (c. 1945–6), pp. 275–6; and quoted by Steinert, pp. 522–3.

83. BAB, R55/601, fo. 215, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.11.44.

84. BAB, R55/608, fo. 30, Mundpropagandaparole Nr. 5, 8.11.44.

85. TBJG, II/14, p. 169 (7.11.44).

86. BAB, R55/601, fo. 223, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 14.11.44. Goebbels had concluded earlier in November that ‘the publication of the atrocities of Nemmersdorf has already been sufficient to make clear to every soldier what is at stake’. At Führer Headquarters it was thought that there was no need at present to fire up the morale of the troops by publishing details of Bolshevik atrocities against German soldiers.—TBJG, II/14, p. 159 (5.11.44).

87. Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary, London, 2002, p. 145.

88. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 340.