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

The ‘war of annihilation’ on the eastern front had always been qualitatively different from the nature of the conflict in the west. The ideological confrontation in the east, the savagery of the fighting on both sides, the ‘barbarisation of warfare’⁹⁶ that openly targeted the wholesale destruction of civilian life, and, not least, the genocidal dimension present from the launch of ‘Operation Barbarossa’ in June 1941, had no real equivalents in the west, even though their impact was felt throughout the German-occupied parts of the European continent. This is not to underplay the severity of the bitter fighting in the west, such as in Normandy following the Allied landings, where German troops, certainly down to the collapse in mid-August, had fought tenaciously and with losses that for a time matched the rate of attrition in the east.⁹⁷ Nor is it to forget the harshness of civilian life under German occupation beyond eastern Europe, let alone the tentacles of genocidal policy that reached out into all corners of the Nazi empire. The subjugated peoples of the Balkans, Greece, Italy (in the last phase of the war) and other countries suffered grievously from mounting atrocities and merciless reprisals for any form of resistance as occupying German forces became more desperate. The Germans perpetrated atrocities in the west, too, most horrifically the massacre by the Waffen-SS of hundreds of villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane in France in June 1944. But what was rare in the west was the norm in the east. Awareness of the fundamentally different character of the war in east and west had been recognized throughout German society since the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The incursion of the Red Army onto German soil, and the terrible experiences for the civilian population that ensued, now sharpened the perceptions of that division between eastern and western fronts, both for soldiers and civilians.

For the latter, experiences of the war in the west were now almost entirely dominated by the wanton destruction and terror from the skies. Goebbels’ postbag was almost exclusively taken up with letters—which he thought ‘to some extent alarming’—about the effects of the air raids and the despair that there was no defence against them. What was the use of morale, the letter-writers were asking, if the bombing was wrecking the means to carry on the fight? The letters, Goebbels remarked, reflected a worrying level of apathy in continuing the struggle.⁹⁸ For most people in the western regions so badly afflicted by the bombing, the end of the war could not come soon enough. It would mean liberation from the misery. True, few preferred the prospect of life under an occupying force. But life would nevertheless go on. Propaganda claims that conquest by the western Allies would destroy German existence were widely disbelieved. There was little fear of the Americans or British. The fear here was of the bombers. ‘Fear, fear, fear, nothing else is known to me,’ wrote one mother in September 1944, worried sick about her daughter at school as bombers crossed the skies in broad daylight, and anxious too about her husband at the front. At least he was in the west, she wrote. ‘To fall into the hands of the Soviets would mean the end.’⁹⁹

In the eastern regions, fear of the Soviets was all-encompassing, and borne out by Nemmersdorf and what that signified. It encouraged the readiness among civilians to dig ditches, undergo any necessary privations and do all that was humanly possible to fend off the worst. It also produced mass panic when occupation was imminent. Naturally, people in these regions, too, desperately wanted the war to end. But for most of them, still largely unaffected by the bombing that was a daily scourge for the western population, the end of the war in any acceptable way had to entail release from the dreadful fear of a Soviet takeover and saving their families, possessions and homeland from occupation by a hated and feared enemy. So desire for a rapid end to the terrible conflict was mixed with the desire for the war to continue until those ends were attained. This meant that hopes had to be invested in the capacity of the Wehrmacht to continue the fight and to stave off the worst.