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

45. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Pfarrer Heinrich M., 28.1.45, giving the example of the Blechhammer and Heydebreck synthetic fuel plant in Upper Silesia. The enormous industrial complex at Blechhammer, near Cosel, about 75 kilometres from Auschwitz, had in its heyday nearly 30,000 workers, nearly 4,000 of whom were, shortly before the evacuation in January 1945, prisoners in an outlying camp attached to Auschwitz III (Monowitz). On Blechhammer, see Ernest Koenig, ‘Auschwitz III—Blechhammer. Erinnerungen’, Dachauer Hefte, 15 (1999), pp. 134–52; and Andrea Rudorff, ‘Blechhammer (Blachownia)’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 5, Munich, 2007, pp. 186–91. A week earlier, Speer had reported to Hitler on the importance of the plant’s production of aircraft fuel, urging concentration of the entire Luftwaffe ‘in this decisive struggle’ for its defence, and seeking the Führer’s opinion. He had told the works the same day that he and Colonel-General Schörner would decide when the factory should be put out of action, though only in such a way that would render deployment by the Soviets impossible for two to three weeks.—BAB, R3/1545, fos. 3–7, Speer to von Below, for immediate presentation to the Führer; Speer to the Werke Blechhammer und Heydebreck, both 21.1.45.

46. Schwendemann, ‘Tod zwischen den Fronten’, p. 44.

47. Paul Peikert, ‘Festung Breslau’ in den Berichten eines Pfarrers 22. Januar bis 6. Mai 1945, ed. Karol Jonca and Alfred Konieczny, Wrocław, 1993, p. 29; BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Pfarrer Heinrich M., 28.1.45; Knopp, Die große Flucht, p. 158. Those who managed to find a place on a train then faced a long and grim journey through the bitter cold. Some refugees arrived in Dresden with children who had frozen to death on the way and had to ask railway personnel for cardboard boxes to serve as coffins.—Reinhold Maier, Ende und Wende: Das schwäbische Schicksal 1944–1946. Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen, Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1948, p. 172 (5.3.45).

48. Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 51E–59E, 405–77; Friedrich Grieger, Wie Breslau fiel…, Metzingen, 1948, pp. 7–8; Ernst Hornig, Breslau 1945: Erlebnisse in der eingeschlossenen Stadt, Munich, 1975, pp. 18–19; Peikert, pp. 29–31; Knopp, Die große Flucht, pp. 158–62; Noble, p. 202; Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942–49, London, 1994, pp. 60–61, 72–4 (where the number of those forced to march off in the direction of Kanth, 25 kilometres south-west of Breslau, is given as 60,000, of whom 18,000 were estimated to have perished, and the numbers of civilians in the city when it was cut off at 150,000–180,000).