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

127. BAB, R43II/1648, fo. 20, Lammers to Highest Reich Authorities, 17.12.44.

128. TBJG, II/14, pp. 282 (27.11.44), 328–9 (2.12.44), 370–72 (7.12.44); David Irving, Göring: A Biography, London, 1989, pp. 447–8, 476.

129. Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, pb. edn., London, 1994, pp. 418–19.

130. Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, p. 291.

131. The Bormann Letters, pp. 152 (26.12.44), 158 (1.1.45)

132. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, London, 1956, pp. 238–9 (10.12.44); BAB, NS19/3912, fo. 115, Berger to Himmler, for rumours of Himmler’s disgrace (21.12.44). Himmler had been appointed in November to be Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine. As head of the Replacement Army, and Chief of Police, Himmler was seen to be in a good position to raise a makeshift army as a defence force to help the German 19th Army try to hold back the Allied drive into Alsace. The newly created Army Group Upper Rhine, stationed in an area between the Black Forest and the Swiss frontier, was heavily patched together from stragglers, Volksgrenadier and anti-aircraft units, border police, non-German battalions from the east, and Volkssturm men. Refusing to leave his Black Forest headquarters, Himmler created a vacuum which fostered intrigue at Führer Headquarters, possibly involving Bormann and some disaffected influential SS leaders.—Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, London, 1972, pp. 509–11; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 546, 554–6. Berger requested Himmler to cut short his activity as Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine and return to Führer Headquarters. His request, he said, ‘comes not only from the fabrication of rumours promoted by certain sides with all energy—Reichsführer-SS is in disgrace, the Wehrmacht lobby—Keitel—has indeed triumphed—but because I sense that if Reichsführer-SS is not at Headquarters our political work, as the basis of everything, suffers immeasurably’. Himmler replied (fo. 116), via his personal adjutant, SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Brandt, on 29 December, stating that it would only be a short time before he could place the command of Army Group Upper Rhine in other hands, and that he might have the opportunity to speak briefly about the matter to Berger. Letter and telephone, he added, cryptically, were ‘not suitable for this topic’. Himmler’s short-lived command of Army Group Upper Rhine, as part of the weak and brief German offensive in Alsace in January, ended in failure. But whatever rumours there had been, they had evidently not undermined his standing with Hitler. According to Goebbels, Hitler was ‘extraordinarily satisfied’ with the work of the Reichsführer.—Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 736–7.

133. TBJG, II/14, pp. 497–8 (31.12.44); von Oven, pp. 529–30 (26.12.44), 534–6 (28.12.44).

134. Speer, pp. 425–7.

135. NAL, WO204/6384, interview with SS-Obergruppenführer Wolff, fo. 2, 15.6.45.

136. Guderian, pp. 382–4. It has been adjudged that ‘the fatal role of the Ardennes offensive was indirectly to weaken the eastern front’ through binding forces needed for defence against the Red Army.—Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945, London, 1998, p. 264. However, as Jung, p. 201, points out, even had the Ardennes offensive proved more successful, the transfer of exhausted Wehrmacht units to the east would not have sufficed to hold off the Soviet offensive. See also Henke, p. 342.

137. DZW, 6, p. 135; Warlimont, pp. 491–4; IfZ, Nbg.-Dok., PS-1787, Jodl’s notes on Hitler’s briefings, 22.12.44 (not published in the Nuremberg Trial documentation).

138. Jung, p. 229 (Kreipe diary, 2.11.44).

139. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 398.

CHAPTER 5. CALAMITY IN THE EAST

1. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo edn., New York, 1996, p. 382.

2. Guderian, p. 382.

3. DZW, 6, pp. 498–9.

4. DZW, 6, pp. 503, 509; DRZW, 10/1 (Lakowski), pp. 498, 502–4, 531; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Cassell edn., London, 2003, p. 449.

5. Erickson, pp. 447–9.

6. See Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, pb. edn., Novato, Calif., n.d. (original Eng. language edn., London, 1964), pp. 212–19.

7. Jürgen Förster, ‘The Final Hour of the Third Reich: The Capitulation of the Wehrmacht’, Bulletin of the International Committee for the History of the Second World War, Montreal (1995), pp. 76–7.