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

He emphasized the value of the Volkssturm (to be provided, he declared, with 350,000 rifles before the end of the year). The Warsaw rising had shown—to Germany’s cost, he implied—that there was no better defensive position than a ruined city. The Volkssturm existed to mobilize the endless resources within the German people for patriotic defence. Fighting to the last bullet in the ruins to defend every German city had to be in deed, not just words. It is hard to imagine that his own words were greatly reassuring for his audience. He ended with a rhetorical flourish, perhaps heard with differing levels of conviction, evoking patriotic defence, a vision of the future and loyalty to Hitler. ‘We will defend our land, and are at the start of a great world empire. As the curve sometimes goes down, so one day it will go up again.’ He believed all present agreed that the difficulties, however great, could be mastered. ‘There are no difficulties that cannot be mastered by us all with dogged tenacity, optimism and humour. I believe all our concerns are small compared with those of one man in Germany, our Führer.’ All that was to be done was no more than duty towards ‘the man whom we have to thank for the resurrection of Germany, the essence of our existence, Adolf Hitler’.⁴⁸

Himmler had naturally been unable to offer any panacea and was in no position to meet the Gauleiter’s demands, given the scale of the transport crisis. The Gauleiter were far from satisfied. All they gained was the hope that sufficient aid would come from the Reich to tide over the worst of the crisis. For the rest, they had to resort to ‘self-help’ and passing on to the District Leaders responsibility for repairs to the railway in their own areas. The meeting, Goebbels concluded, had come to nothing.⁴⁹

If the Gauleiter were left to cope as best they could, Himmler’s address had nevertheless ruled out any alternative to retaining a positive and constructive approach to the worst difficulties. As high representatives of the regime, they were expected not to bow to problems—a sign of weakness and lack of resolve—but to show initiative in finding improvised solutions. Not least, Himmler appealed to their loyalty to Hitler, whose ‘charismatic authority’ rested ultimately on the personal bonds built into the Nazi system. And as arch-loyalists for many years, who owed their power entirely to Hitler, and who had nothing to lose, the Gauleiter were far from ready to contemplate deserting him. Their bonds to Hitler might have weakened. But they had not broken. The public face of the regime was still not flinching.

The notion of the power of will to overcome difficulties, central to the operation of ‘charismatic authority’ throughout the system, ran in its essence completely counter to impersonal bureaucratic administration—the basis of all modern states. The Party had always distinguished between the positive, desirable qualities of ‘leadership of people’ (Menschenführung) and the negative, arid attributes of mere ‘administration’. Leaders, at whatever level, ‘made things happen’. Bureaucrats simply administered rules and regulations which invariably, unless overridden by ‘will’, blocked initiative and sapped dynamism. Yet the Party, despite its unbureaucratic ethos, in seeking to implement the wishes and long-term goals of the Führer had, of course, in reality always been intensely bureaucratic as an organization. The tension in trying bureaucratically to work towards unbureaucratic ends had been there from the start, had increased greatly after the takeover of power and had intensified dramatically in conditions of total war.⁵⁰

In late 1944, when less and less could be achieved, the Party bureaucracy went into overdrive.⁵¹ Time and energy were expended by a bloated Party officialdom on the most trivial matters. The Party Chancellery squandered countless hours, for instance, drawing up regulations on the minutiae of Volkssturm service—stipulating duties, regulating training periods, laying down rules about clothing and equipment, dealing with exemptions and, among the most notable absurdities, designating letterheads and service seals and providing detailed descriptions of the insignia to be used by different ranks.⁵² Goebbels described the bureaucracy involved as ‘laughable’.⁵³ But it was unrelenting. When Bormann moved to Hitler’s new field headquarters at Ziegenberg, near Bad Nauheim in Hessen, prior to the start of the Ardennes offensive, he found ‘teleprinters were unsuitably installed, no teleprinter cables connected, neither typewriter desks nor shelves set up in the tiny room where my typists have to work’.⁵⁴ Even so, the bureaucratic output from his Party Chancellery continued unabated.