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

115. Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, pp. 177–8; Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, pb. edn., London, 1997, p. 364; Greiser, pp. 136, 140, concludes that, as regards Buchenwald prisoners, non-Jews were no less exposed to the torment than Jews were.

116. ITS, Tote 80, fo. 00044a, Celle, (1946–7), estimates the death toll from the bombing raid at a thousand prisoners. Later estimates have varied wildly, but the most likely assessments seem to be 400–500.—Bernhard Strebel, Celle April 1945 Revisited, Bielefeld, 2008, pp. 114–15.

117. Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944–printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 282–8 (quotation, p. 286). Strebel (whose book offers a careful assessment of the available evidence for the dire events in Celle) estimates (p. 115) around 200 victims of the massacre. See also ‘Hasenjagd’ in Celle: Das Massaker am 8. April 1945, Celle, 2005, for eyewitness accounts and an assessment of how the town subsequently dealt with the memory of the massacre.

118. Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, pp. 318–61; Joachim Neander, Das Konzentrationslager ‘Mittelbau’ in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, 1997, pp. 466–77; Joachim Neander, Gardelegen 1945: Das Ende der Häftlingstransporte aus dem Konzentrationslager ‘Mittelbau’, Magdeburg, 1998, pp. 27–35, 40–45; Diana Gring, ‘Das Massaker von Gardelegen’, Dachauer Hefte, 20 (2004), pp. 112–26; Goldhagen, pp. 367–8; Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2001, p. 246; DZW, 6, p. 648.

119. Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg, IV 409 AR-Z/ 78/72, fos. 1192, 1234; IV 409 AR-Z/105/72 1 fo. 96. I am grateful for these references to Dr Simone Erpel.

120. Both quotations in Greiser, p. 258. A fourteen-year-old boy on the march from Flossenbürg in mid-April recalled that ‘most Germans regard us prisoners as criminals’.—Heinrich Demerer, ‘Erinnerungen an den Todesmarsch aus dem KZ Flossenbürg’, Dachauer Hefte, 25 (2009), p. 154.

121. Goldhagen, p. 365, and p. 587 n. 23; Simone Erpel, Zwischen Vernichtung und Befreiung: Das Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück in der letzten Kriegsphase, Berlin, 2005, pp. 176–7.

122. Cited Blatman, Les Marches de la mort, p. 286.

123. ITS, Tote 83, Hütten, fo. 00011a–b (1.4.46, though the evidence is weakened by the fact that the former mayor and Wehrmacht officer were signatories to the report).

124. ITS, Tote 4, Altendorf, fos. 00088a–00099b (July 1947).

125. Some instances are presented in Greiser, pp. 259–75, and in Delia Müller and Madlen Lepschies, Tage der Angst und der Hoffnung: Erinnerungen an die Todesmärsche aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück Ende April 1945, Berlin, n.d., pp. 56–7, 87, 89–90. Heinrich Demerer recalled sympathetic faces among civilians watching the marching prisoners and frequently being given bread by civilians, though he thought it was because he was so small, since the other prisoners received virtually nothing as they passed by.—Demerer, pp. 152, 154. Memories of the Ravensbrück death marches provide instances where children at the time recollected their parents putting water and boiled potatoes on the streets for prisoners. The former prisoners themselves, on the other hand, recall, not such instances of aid, but the rejection of the bystanders.—Simone Erpel, ‘Machtverhältnisse im Zerfall: Todesmärsche der Häftlinge des Frauen-Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrück im April 1945’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, p. 198.

126. Blatman, ‘The Death-Marches and the Final Phase of Nazi Genocide’, p. 180; and see Goldhagen, p. 365.

127. Ardsley Microfilms, Irving Collection, Reel 1, R97481, Göring interrogation, 24.5.45.