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

44. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Uffz. Werner F., 1.4.45. Most soldiers’ letters, and those they received, were unpolitical in content and dealt in the main with inconsequential family or private matters. A report from one censors’ office for March stated on the basis of intercepted and controlled mail that 91.8 per cent of letters checked over the month were ‘colourless’, 4.7 per cent positively disposed towards the regime and 3.5 per cent negative (the last figure certainly underplaying true sentiments, given the dangers of expressing criticism). A separate control, under slightly different criteria, for the last eight days of March gave results of 77.08 per cent ‘colourless’, 8.82 per cent ‘positive’, 6.64 per cent ‘negative’ and 7.46 per cent ‘neutral’. The report included 113 varied extracts from the letters.—BA/MA, RH20/19/245, fos. 31–43, Feldpostprüfstelle bei AOK.19, Monatsbericht für März 1945, 3.4.45. For the organization of post to and from the front, see Richard Lakowski and Hans-Joachim Büll, Lebenszeichen 1945: Feldpost aus den letzten Kriegstagen, Leipzig, 2002, pp. 18–29.

45. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 10.4.45.

46. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 12.4.45.

47. Fritz, pp. 90–91.

48. LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 319, pt. II, pp. 8–9 (18.4.45). The fate of the officer is not known.

49. TBJG, II/15, pp. 658 (1.4.45), 684, 687 (8.4.45), 692 (9.4.45); DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), pp. 830–83; Christian Hartmann and Johannes Hürter, Die letzten 100 Tage des Zweiten Weltkriegs, Munich, 2005, entry for Day 33, 7 April 1945. Hartmann and Hürter give the figure of 23 bombers destroyed. This seems close to the actual American figure of 17 bombers and 5 fighters destroyed in the air-battle, though most of these losses were apparently not directly caused by ramming. Some months earlier, a young man, a journalism student whose brother had fallen on the eastern front, and evidently a keen Nazi, expressed his disappointment to the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, at being rejected for suicidal service as a one-man torpedo because there had been too many applicants. Love of Germany, he said, was his motive.—BAB, NS19/2936, handwritten letter, no date (end of 1944 or beginning of 1945).

50. Fritz, pp. 72, 78–9, 88–9, 92.

51. Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, Munich, 2007, p. 254.

52. BA/MA, MSg2/2697, diary of Lieutenant Julius Dufner, fos. 154–61, entries for 13–20.4.45. Goebbels referred earlier in the month to the demoralization of the troops in Gau Weser-Ems, similar, he said, to reports that had until then come in from western parts of the Reich, as soldiers went about in loose groups, some throwing away their weapons, and engaging in looting.—TBJG, II/15, p. 673 (4.4.45).

53. TBJG, II/15, pp. 654–5, 659–60 (1.4.45). According to the diary notes of Goebbels’ aide, Rudolf Semmler, reports were emerging in early April from every town or village where American or British troops were approaching ‘that large numbers of the population are showing white flags and sheets’.—Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels—the Man Next to Hitler, London, 1947, p. 190 (5.4.45). See the diary entries reproduced in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Irina Renz, ‘Vormittags die ersten Amerikaner’: Stimmen und Bilder vom Kriegsende 1945, Stuttgart, 2005, pp. 119, 125, 133, for examples of joy or relief at the arrival of American troops.

54. IWM, EDS, F.2, AL2682, Bormann to Kaltenbrunner, 4.4.45.

55. StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/28, fo. 328839, Schulz to Gauleitung Schwaben, 8.4.45, with handwritten note by Wahl at foot.

56. StAA, Kreisleitung Günzburg 1/43, fos. 00991, 00999, Kreisleiter to all Bürgermeister, Ortsgruppenleiter and Ortsamsleiter der NSV, 18.4.45, and (undated) order of Kreisleiter.

57. TBJG, II/15, pp. 612–13 (28.3.45), a comment also related to Hitler’s orders for the destruction of industry.

58. TBJG, II/15, p. 684 (8.4.45). The difficulties of feeding refugees sent to the Allgäu in the Alpine region of southern Bavaria led to demands for the influx to be halted.—StAA, Gauleitung Schwaben, 1/29, fos. 328886–7, report of Landesbauernführer Pg. Deininger on ‘Ernährungslage’, 14.4.45.