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

According to Günther Schulze-Fielitz, head of the Energy Department, the total capacity of Germany’s power stations had expanded during each year of the war. Electricity supplies held up well until November but then declined sharply as coal deliveries became seriously impaired. By November, coal stocks at power stations were down by 30 per cent compared with the previous year. Many had sufficient coal for only a week.²⁷ As most of the reports acknowledged, the impact of the incessant air raids on transport installations was uppermost in the production problems by late 1944. By the end of the autumn the difficulties were becoming impossible to surmount.

Without the constant improvisation in all production areas by Speer’s capable subordinates, the decline would undoubtedly have set in earlier and been more steep. Richard Fiebig, head of the main committee for railway vehicles, pointed out, for instance, that through efficiencies his department ‘not only succeeded in balancing the losses of workshops through bombing and loss of territory, but we actually increased the output’. From September, 1,100 to 1,200 locomotives per month were being lost to enemy raids, but 6,800 were being repaired each month during the autumn, in spite of decreasing repair capacity.²⁸ Extraordinarily rapid, though inevitably piecemeal, repairs were also made in towns and cities, in factories and workshops, after bombing raids, thanks in no small part to the surplus of manpower through inactive production that the raids themselves had made available. From autumn onwards, between 1 and 1.5 million people were at any one time engaged on work resulting from air-raid damage.²⁹

Perhaps most remarkably, according to Saur, owing to long gestation periods in production the total output of weapons increased continuously throughout 1944, reaching its absolute peak for practically all weapon types in December 1944.³⁰ Saur was prone to excessive optimism (and invariably ready to convey this to Hitler). He went so far as to claim, as ‘one of the best informed men in Germany as to the war situation’, that, on a purely statistical basis, Germany’s situation on the eve of the Ardennes offensive ‘looked good’. He pointed out that Germany’s total number of soldiers under arms was greater than ever before, as was production of guns, tanks and U-boats in that month and the quantity of weapons and ammunition in the hands of the fighting troops. Of course, as he acknowledged, when it came to the quality of the troops, which had certainly fallen as increasingly the young, ill-trained or battle-weary were conscripted, it was a different matter. Saur’s final point, emphasizing the great numerical strength of the Volkssturm, whose fighting capabilities were widely derided within both the Wehrmacht and in the civilian population, is sufficient indication of the spurious grounds for his apparently optimistic outlook. Nevertheless, it is striking that, far from being resigned to inevitable defeat, Saur still felt that at the outset of the Ardennes offensive ‘Germany held many good cards’.³¹

Speer certainly did all he could during the deepening transport and production crisis that autumn to sustain the faltering German war economy. His efforts included a visit to the Ruhr and three to the western front to inspect the extent of the crisis and assess what improvised measures could be taken to improve the dire situation. Each time he reported directly to Hitler, enabling him to put specific proposals in his briefings in the full expectation of gaining Hitler’s approval.³²