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

86. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, London, 1956, p. 277 (12.3.45), and also p. 275 (2.3.45); and DZW, 6, p. 643 (where Himmler’s reference to a Führer order is dated 5.3.45). Himmler saw Kersten at the sanitorium in Hohenlychen every morning from 4 to 13 March (BAB, NS19/1793, Termine des Reichsführer-SS, fos. 5–15). No specific written order from Hitler for the murder of camp prisoners has come to light, though a general—almost certainly verbal—directive that prisoners were not to be left behind on approach of the enemy seems to have been known to high-ranking SS officers, and may well have been used as an implicit order to kill those in their charge if there was a danger of the camp falling into enemy hands. In practice, however, there were only a few cases of the murder of all prisoners before evacuation. The actual decisions over life and death for the prisoners were taken lower down the leadership ladder, at the local level.—Daniel Blatman, ‘Rückzug, Evakuierung und Todesmärsche 1944–1945’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 1, Munich, 2005, pp. 300–301.

87. Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte, Hamburg, 1999, pp. 272–3.

88. No explicit written order to this effect has been found (other than for prisons in the General Government of Poland).—Paul, pp. 550–51 and nn. 31–3; Gabriele Hammermann, ‘Die Todesmärsche aus den Konzentrationslagern 1944/45’, in Arendes, Wolfrum and Zedler, pp. 122–3, 125; Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, pp. 1068–70, 1086; Eberhard Kolb, ‘Die letzte Kriegsphase: Kommentierende Bemerkungen’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, p. 1131; DZW, 6, p. 643.

89. Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss, ed. Martin Broszat, pb. edn., Munich, 1963, p. 145 n. 1; Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, London, 2007, p. 648; Daniel Blatman, ‘The Death Marches, January–May 1945: Who Was Responsible for What?’, YVS, 28 (2000), pp. 168–71, 198–9.

90. Rudolf Höss gives a vivid impression of the chaos in Kommandant in Auschwitz, pp. 145–7.

91. Walter Schellenberg, Schellenberg, pb. edn., London, 1965, pp. 167–70; Peter R. Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich, Princeton, 1984, pp. 228–30; Friedländer, pp. 621–5, 647–8; Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 728–30; Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, London, 1972, pp. 524–5; Hammermann, p. 126; Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, New Haven, 1994, pp. 239–51; Simone Erpel, Zwischen Vernichtung und Befreiung: Das Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück in der letzten Kriegsphase, Berlin, 2005, pp. 97–154 (where the number of camp prisoners saved by such action by the end of the war, most notably through the Swedish initiative, is given as 15,345, of whom 7,795 were Scandinavians—a proportion which, however, as she points out, underrates the number of non-Scandinavians rescued). Intelligence reports to the western Allies claimed that the negotiations about the liberation of a number of Jews had caused a ‘sensation’ in Berlin, and had been condemned by leading Nazis, including Julius Streicher.—NAL, WO219/1587, fo. 734, SHAEF report, 25.2.45.

92. Blatman, ‘Die Todesmärsche’, pp. 1069–72; and Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944-printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 96–100, 127–31.

93. Orth, p. 279.

94. Wachsmann, pp. 324–5.

95. Wachsmann, pp. 325–33.

96. Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, London, 2005, p. 301, based upon figures supplied by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.

97. Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History, London, 2005, p. 124.

98. Andrzej Strzelecki, ‘Der Todesmarsch der Häftlinge aus dem KL Auschwitz’, in Herbert, Orth and Dieckmann, p. 1103; Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager-Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp. 966–7.