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

19. Speer, pp. 463–4. General Westphal later pointed out that Kesselring, on taking over from Rundstedt as Commander in Chief West, replied sceptically to the attempt to provide him with a realistic briefing of the situation by stating that the Führer had given him a different account.—Siegfried Westphal, Erinnerungen, Mainz, 1975, p. 327.

20. The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, Greenhill Books edn., London, 1997, pp. 266, 269.

21. Joachim Ludewig, ‘Walter Model—Hitlers bester Feldmarschall?’ in Smelser and Syring, p. 368.

22. 1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht. Dokumente, ed. Gerhard Förster and Richard Lakowski, Berlin, 1975, p. 230 (18.3.45).

23. Quoted DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 332 (29.3.45); see also Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Krieg in der Trümmerlandschaft: “Pflichterfüllung” wofür?’ in Ulrich Borsdorf and Mathilde Jamin (eds.), Über Leben im Krieg: Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp. 171, 177.

24. Carlo D’Este, ‘Model’, in Barnett, p. 329; Kesselring, pp. 250–55, attributed much of the blame for the plight of Army Group B to Model’s operational decisions.

25. BAB, R3/1626, fos. 15–17, ‘Kapitulationsverhandlungen mit Generalfeldmarschall Model und Gauleiter Hoffmann’, notes compiled in internment in ‘Dustbin’, June 1945, by Rohland. And R3/1661, fo. 21, ‘Niederschrift über die Ereignisse vom 15.3. bis 15.4.1945’, no date, signed by Walther Rohland (entries for 31.3, 2.4, 8.4, 13.4.45); Walter Rohland, Bewegte Zeiten, Stuttgart, 1978, pp. 105–7. Model also refused to entertain the plea in a personal letter to him from US Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway on 17 April, declaring that his oath to the Führer meant he must fight to the end.—Hastings, p. 482; Messerschmidt, p. 177.

26. Ludewig, pp. 382–4; Rohland, p. 107; Walter Görlitz, Model: Strategie der Defensive, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 263–8; John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45, Paderborn, 2009, p. 2. The order to make families the guarantors of soldiers fighting to the last was signed by Keitel on Hitler’s behalf on 5 March.—1945: Das Jahr der endgültigen Niederlage der faschistischen Wehrmacht, p. 207. Strikingly, the initiative for this came from within the Wehrmacht.—Ulrike Hett and Johannes Tuchel, ‘Die Reaktionen des NS-Staates auf den Umsturzversuch vom 20. Juli 1944’, in Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Bonn, 1994, p. 387.

27. Cited DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), p. 327 (7.4.45).

28. DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 331–2.

29. IWM, EDS, F.3, AL2697, ‘Doenitz orders Resistance to the last. 3 Orders—7, 11, and 19 April 1945’.

30. KTB/SLK, part A, vol. 68, pp. 331–2A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45.

31. BA/MA, N265/112, NL Heinrici, fos. 1–17 (written during captivity, 1945–7 and incorporating memoirs of Colonel Eismann). Though entitled ‘Der Vortrag bei Hitler am 4.IV.1945’, the meeting appears in fact (see fo. 20) to have taken place not on the 4th but on 6 April. Heinrici had already composed a briefer, though in essentials similar, account of the meeting on 12 May 1945 (BA/MA, N265/108, fos. 3–9, where he dates it to ‘about ten days before the beginning of the battle for Berlin’).