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

Elsewhere in the eastern provinces, the danger of Soviet occupation was not so imminent. But the fears were little different from those of the people of East Prussia. The Nazi Party had gained some of its greatest electoral successes before 1933 in the eastern regions of Germany—largely, apart from the Silesian industrial belt, Protestant and rural. Border issues, resentment at the territorial losses in the Versailles Treaty, and revanchist feelings had contributed to making these regions disproportionately stalwart in their backing for Hitler’s regime after 1933. The early war years, sheltered by German occupation of Poland and the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939, had been relatively calm for eastern Germany. But the start of the war against the Soviet Union in June 1941 brought the regions far closer to the fighting front. Some compensation derived from the new military importance of the eastern provinces; the location of government and army bases close to Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, for instance, produced some economic benefits for the region. Following the rapid conquests by the Wehrmacht, the reality of war, even in the east, seemed at first far away. The area was also free from the heavy bombing—East Prussia suffered from some light Soviet bombing sorties in June 1941, but little more—that increasingly beset the western parts of Germany from 1942 onwards. In fact, one of its main roles was as a reception area, forced to take in large numbers of evacuees sent from the bomb-threatened towns and cities of western Germany. By early 1944 about 825,000 evacuees were housed in eastern regions.¹⁷ They were often seen as a burden, providing a real test for the solidarity of the much-vaunted ‘people’s community’. The presence of the refugees, in such numbers, was a clear sign that the war was close to home. The east had so far been spared the worst. That was now to alter rapidly.

Unsurprisingly, panic had spread like a bush fire through the east in the wake of the Wehrmacht’s collapse.¹⁸ As the Red Army’s advance then slowed and the German front gained some semblance of stability, the initial panic had subsided. But the population remained subdued, depressed and acutely worried. A general nervousness prevailed. Any negative news had a pronounced impact on people. ‘The unfavourable and dangerous military situation in the east has such a depressing effect on the mood of the great proportion of the population’, the SD reported in early August, ‘that the same anxious fears about the further development of the war can be heard in all strata.’¹⁹ Influenced by letters home from the front, and from the stories of evacuees from formerly occupied parts of Poland, people were sceptical about the capacity of the German forces to halt the Soviet advance completely and were not convinced that the danger for East Prussia had subsided.²⁰ The fears were that the Soviets would eventually succeed. And everyone, it was said, was aware of the threat of Bolshevism. What that meant in concrete terms was left unstated.²¹ But the implications of dire consequences should the Soviets break through were plain enough. By early October, following the defection of Germany’s eastern allies, the destruction of the 6th Army in Romania and the penning in of Army Group North in the Courland, the mood in the German east sank to ‘zero point’.²²

Fear was also a prime motivating factor for many frontline soldiers. Aware, at least in general terms if not always specifically, of at least some of what German troops had done in the occupied Soviet Union, fear of falling into the hands of the Red Army was intense, and highly understandable. Whatever the feelings towards the British and American enemies in the west, nothing there equated to this. Alongside it went the fear of being one of the growing, countless victims of the eastern war. While fear of dying and hopes of survival were common to all soldiers, of whatever army, on whatever front, the reported casualties and intensity of the battles in the east sent a special shiver of anxiety down the backs of those learning that they had been called up to serve on the eastern front. Not surprisingly, though official reports were loath to admit it, there was growing anxiety about the call-up.²³ And anyone summoned to serve fervently hoped it would be in the west, not in the east.