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

It would be a mistake to presume that the brash propaganda trumpeting of the fortification effort had no effect at all. Conceivably, it did help to solidify patriotic feeling in eastern Germany. And it conveyed a sense that the actions of ordinary Germans mattered in the fight to hold off the Red Army. But at most it boosted a readiness—from fear, if nothing else—to defend the homeland that was already present. Outside the eastern regions, and perhaps within them, too, people were as likely to see the frenetic entrenchments less as a heroic achievement than as a panic move, a sign that the situation was indeed extremely grave.³⁹ As for faith in the Party, this was so sharply on the wane in the summer and autumn of 1944—whatever the lingering reserves of hope in Hitler himself—that it was as good as impossible for the fortifications programme to alter the trend, apart, perhaps, from impressing a few gullible waverers in the eastern regions by the energetic actions of Koch and other Gauleiter. Finally, while soldiers were doubtless gratified to hear of solidarity at home, it is questionable whether their fighting morale drew much inspiration from news of a huge digging programme carried out by the young, the old, and female labour on fortifications about whose defensive qualities against the might of the Red Army a level of scepticism was only too understandable.

Whatever the dubious propaganda value of the fortification drive, it was overshadowed by its objective function in providing a further vehicle for control of the population. This is not to say that many of the workers were not idealistic patriots, and not a few of them enthusiastic backers of the Party’s efforts to mobilize all that remained of the population for the task. But after the first, short-lived surge of enthusiasm, not many, it could with some justification be surmised, were true volunteers who would have come forward without being conscripted. The digging programme quite literally wore the population out, ground them down into compliance, showed them again that there was no alternative, that the Party controlled all facets of civilian life. It was a further means of trying to inculcate into the population the spirit of the ‘last stand’—with the classic Hitlerian choice of ‘hold out’ or ‘go under’. Reluctant compliance rather than a readiness to swallow such imperatives was the stance of most ordinary citizens. Few were prepared to go under. But as the threat to the eastern frontiers of the Reich mounted, they had little choice but to fall in line with the diktats of those in power who were determining their fate.

This was the case, too, with service in the Volkssturm, launched in a fanfare of publicity on 18 October by a speech given by Himmler at Bartenstein in East Prussia and broadcast to the nation. Keitel, Guderian and Koch were present as Himmler addressed thirteen assembled companies of Volkssturm men. The date had been carefully chosen as the anniversary of the highly symbolic ‘Battle of the Nations’ in Leipzig in 1813, the clash which had brought Napoleon’s defeat on Prussian soil. The date was a crucial one in propaganda depictions, resonating in German history and evoking the legendary defence of the homeland by the Landsturm, as, faced with slavery at the hands of the French, an entire people rose up to repel the invaders. Reading out Hitler’s proclamation of the Volkssturm and reminding his audience of the significance of the anniversary, Himmler announced that the Führer had called on the people to defend the soil of their homeland. ‘We have heard from their own mouths’, he declared, ‘that we have to expect from our enemies the destruction of our country, the cutting down of our woods, the break-up of our economy, the destruction of our towns, the burning down of our villages and the extirpation of our people.’ Of course, the Jews were as ever portrayed as the root of the intended horror. Men of the Volkssturm, stated Himmler, pointing out that East Prussians had formed its first battalions, must therefore never capitulate.⁴⁰