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

Alongside critical letters back home from the front (which ran the danger of being picked up by the censors, with drastic consequences) were letters with a strongly pro-Nazi tone.⁴² Around a third of the Wehrmacht’s soldiers had experienced some ‘socialization’ in the Nazi Party or its affiliates (often greatly enhanced by wartime experience itself). Anyone born after 1913 and serving in the armed forces had been exposed to a degree of Nazified ‘education’, if only in the Reich Labour Service or compulsory military service (introduced in 1935).⁴³ It was not surprising, therefore, to find that Nazi mentalities still found expression.

An Allied report from 4 September on morale, based on the questioning of captured soldiers, painted a varied picture of attitudes. It found unmistakable signs of low morale among infantrymen. It nevertheless pointed to high morale among paratroopers, junior officers and SS men. Some representative comments were cited. ‘Victory must be ours…. One does one’s duty and it would be cowardice not to fight to the end.’ ‘We don’t give up hope. It is all up to the leaders. Something quite different will happen from what everybody expects.’ ‘If we don’t win, Germany ceases. Therefore we shall win.’ ‘Spirit against material. It has never yet happened that mere technology has conquered spirit.’ ‘I have done my part and have given my Führer, Adolf Hitler, that which can only be given once,’ ran one soldier’s last letter to his wife. ‘The Führer will do it, that I know…. I have fallen as a soldier of Adolf Hitler.’ Faith in German victory, the report concluded, was most strongly correlated with ‘devotion to Hitler personally, identification with National Socialist doctrine, [and] exoneration of Germany from war guilt’.⁴⁴

Another report, a week later, drew conclusions on the ideological sources of continued Wehrmacht fighting morale from observations during about a thousand interrogations carried out during August. Most prominent were: fear of return to a Germany dominated by Russia; conviction in the rightness of the German cause and belief that the Allies had attacked Germany rather than grant her just and necessary concessions; devotion to Hitler, who had only the welfare of Germany at heart; and feeling that the ‘unconditional surrender’ policy of the Allies meant that the German people could not expect the western powers to help in post-war reconstruction. About 15 per cent of captured soldiers, it was said, held such beliefs ‘with fanatical conviction’, and had an influence on doubters, while up to 50 per cent were ‘still devoted to Hitler’. There was a good deal of admiration among combat soldiers for the fighting capacity of the Waffen-SS.⁴⁵