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

89. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2045.

90. Himmler had the names of those not present noted on a list—an indication that the purpose was to ensure knowledge of and complicity in what had taken place.—Irving, pp. 575–6.

91. BA/MA, N245/2, NL Reinhardt, fo. 40 (diary entry, 26.10.44).

92. Udo von Alvensleben, Lauter Abschiede: Tagebuch im Kriege, Frankfurt am Main, 1971, pp. 439–40 (12.2.45). Also quoted in Kunz, p. 253.

93. See the negative imagery in letters from the front in DRZW, 9/2 (Müller), pp. 80–89.

94. See DRZW, 9/1 (Förster), pp. 638–9.

95. Almost 10,000 death sentences in the Wehrmacht (most of them in the army) had been carried out by the end of 1944.—DRZW, 9/1 (Echternkamp), pp. 48–50.

96. Part of the title of Omer Bartov’s book, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare, New York, 1986.

97. Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009, p. 522.

98. TBJG, II/14, p. 199 (11.11.44)

99. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 179, pt. II, p. 8, letter from Johanna Ambross, Munich, 20.9.44. Text in English.

100. BA/MA, N6/4, NL Model, report (for US authorities) on Army Group B from mid-October 1944 to mid-April 1945 by Oberst im Generalstab a.D. Günther Reichhelm, compiled in 1946–7, fo. 1.

101. Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Hitlers Ansprache vor Generalen und Offizieren am 26. Mai 1944’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 2 (1976), pp. 123–70.

102. Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, London, 2007, pp. 615–19; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New Viewpoints edn., New York, 1973, p. 547.

103. Hilberg, p. 629.

104. Friedländer, p. 628.

105. Hilberg, pp. 630–31.

106. See Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, Cambridge, Mass., 2006, pp. 246–54.

107. Kulka and Jäckel, p. 544, no. 744.

108. Peter Longerich, ‘Davon haben wir nichts gewußt!’ Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945, Munich, 2006, pp. 304–11, where recorded criticism of such crude assessments of the bombing is also apparent.

109. Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol. 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 594–6 (27.9.44).

110. He remarked on how depressed an acquaintance was about the defeat of the British at Arnhem. Otherwise ‘they would now have the Ruhr District and the war would be over’.—Klemperer, p. 609 (30.10.44).

111. Klemperer, p. 605 (17.10.44).

112. Klemperer, pp. 609–10 (2.11.44, 12.11.44).

113. Klemperer, p. 616 (26.11.44).

114. Klemperer, p. 609 (30.10.44).

115. Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich, Cambridge, 1997, p. 298.

116. IWM, Memoirs of P. E. v0n Stemann (a Danish journalist based in Berlin from 1942 to the end of the war, compiled c. 1980), fo. 183.

117. See BAB, R55/601, fo. 124, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 18.9.44.

118. BAB, R55/601, fo. 119, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 11.9.44.

119. IWM, ‘Aus deutschen Urkunden, 1935–1945’, unpublished documentation, n.d. (c. 1945–6), p. 276.

120. BAB, R55/601, fo. 124, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report, 18.9.44. fos. 123–4.

121. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, pp. 2160–67.

122. Jung, p. 103 and p. 218 (Kreipe diary, entry for 16.9.44); Guderian, pp. 370–71.

123. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 423.

CHAPTER 4. HOPES RAISED—AND DASHED

1. Quoted DZW, 6, p. 125; KTB/OKW, vol. 4/I, p. 436, Jodl to Chief of the General Staff at OB West, 1.11.44. See also Bodo Scheurig, Alfred Jodl: Gehorsam und Verhängnis, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 303–6, for Jodl’s doubts about—though justification of—the Ardennes offensive. When he learnt from Speer that Hitler was about to play his last card, the leading industrialist Albert Vögler presumed, naturally enough, that it would be on the eastern front. ‘No one could be so mad as to expose the east in order to hold up the enemy in the west,’ he reasoned.—Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 423.