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

104. TBJG, II/15, pp. 630 (30.3.45), 647 (31.3.45). For Ley’s extreme radicalism in advocating a fight to the last, see Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, 1988, pp. 291–2.

105. Biddiscombe, pp. 266–8; Henke, pp. 837–45.

106. Biddiscombe, p. 276, and ch. 5 for many instances of minor, uncoordinated and sporadic resistance to the Allied occupiers by former Hitler Youth members, former SS men and other Nazi diehards that punctuated the late spring and summer of 1945 and beyond, though they were only tangentially related to the Werwolf groups that had been established in the last weeks of the war.

107. Biddiscombe, p. 282, uses Allied assessments to suggest that 10–15 per cent of Germans supported the partisan movement, though this probably conflates general backing for continued resistance to the Allies and support for the regime with specific support for Werwolf activities. See Henke, pp. 948–9, for a more dismissive appraisal of support.

108. TBJG, II/15, pp. 422, 424 (5.3.45). Hitler had also thought the Mosel could be defended.—TBJG, II/15, p. 533 (18.3.45).

109. As suggested by Bernd Wegner, ‘Hitler, der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Choreographie des Untergangs’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 26 (2000), pp. 493–518; also in DRZW, 8, pp. 1192–1209.

110. TBJG, II/15, p. 479 (12.3.45).

111. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2212.

112. TBJG, II/15, pp. 422–3 (5.3.45).

113. TBJG, II/15, p. 425 (5.3.45). For Goebbels’ fantasies of heroism as the end approached and his wife’s reluctant determination to stay in Berlin and accept not only her own death, but that of her children, see Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels, Munich and Zurich, 1990, pp. 587–8. Magda had apparently accepted both the certainty of Germany’s defeat and that death ‘by our own hand, not the enemy’s’ was the only choice left.—David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, London, 1996, p. 506 (though based on recollections, reproduced in an article on Magda in a periodical in 1952 (Irving, p. 564 n. 9), of her sister-in-law Eleanor (Ello) Quandt, whose testimony as Irving acknowledges (p. 564 n. 19) was not always reliable).

114. TBJG, II/15, pp. 426–7 (5.3.45), 525 (17.3.45), 532–3 (18.3.45); and see Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, pb. edn., London, 1994, p. 422; Reimer Hansen, ‘Ribbentrops Friedensfühler im Frühjahr 1945’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 18 (1967), pp. 716–30; and Hansjakob Stehle, ‘Deutsche Friedensfühler bei den Westmächten im Februar/März 1945’, VfZ, 30 (1982), pp. 538–55; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 783–4.

115. IfZ, ZS 1953, ‘Iden des März. Ein zeitgeschichtliches Fragment über den letzten Kontaktversuch Ribbentrops mit Moskau in der Zeit vom 11.–16. März 1945’, fos. 1–13 (no date, probably early 1950s). For a description of Mme Kollontay, ‘the grand old lady of Soviet diplomacy’, and for Ribbentrop’s vain attempts to instigate some form of negotiated peace with the Soviet Union in early 1945, see Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Die Chance des Sonderfriedens: Deutsch-sowjetische Geheimgespräche 1941–1945, Berlin, 1986, pp. 58–61, 268–75.

116. TBJG, II/15, pp. 450–51 (8.3.45).

117. BA/MA, RH21/3/420, fos. 34, 40, post-war account (1950) by Colonel-General Erhard Raus (former Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd Panzer Army in East Prussia, who had taken command in Pomerania of remaining forces of the 11th SS-Panzer Army) of his meetings with Himmler on 13.2.45 and 7.3.45, and his report to Hitler on 8.3.45.

118. Guderian, p. 426.

119. The above paragraph is based on: Folke Bernadotte, The Fall of the Curtain, London, 1945, pp. 19–47; Walter Schellenberg, Schellenberg, pb. edn., London, 1965, pp. 171–5; Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs 1940–1945, London, 1956, pp. 271–83; Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS, London, 1990, pp. 565–6, 578–9; and Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich, 2008, pp. 742–8, 967–8 nn. 131–2. In a post-war interrogation, Schellenberg—who was keen to assert both his own importance and his attempts to influence a negotiated settlement—claimed that in December 1944, in the Reichführer’s presence, he even touched on the possibility of the elimination of Hitler.—IWM, FO645/161, interrogation 13.11.45, p. 15 (1945–6).

120. DZW, 6, p. 152.