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

It was in the main a delusion. It is true that among the Party elite, those wielding power in the regions as well as at the centre of the regime, there were no signs that loyalty towards Hitler was starting to flake.⁸¹ And in enabling the regime to continue to function, this is what mattered. Among the civilian population, however, beyond Party diehards and sections of youth, it was in the main a different matter. By the end of November, propaganda reports were indicating ‘the danger of a crisis in confidence in the leadership’ which ‘can no longer be ignored’. The concern was seen as important and urgent.⁸² For the first time, Hitler had failed to speak in person—Himmler read out his proclamation—at the annual gathering in Munich of the Party ‘Old Guard’ for the Putsch commemoration on 8 November. Immediately, rumours flared up (mostly arising from foreign speculation) that he was dead, or seriously ill, had suffered a nervous breakdown, or had fled and that Himmler or Goebbels had taken over.⁸³ Still, popular belief in Hitler had not altogether vanished. And indeed, even at this late hour there were those who clung as a drowning man clings to a piece of wood to their long-held faith in the Führer, and in his ability to save Germany. But such people were in a dwindling minority. Hitler’s charisma, in the sense of its popular appeal, was by now fast fading.

On the eve of the Ardennes offensive, Goebbels recorded in his diary a somewhat sobering assessment of popular feeling on the basis of the reports—themselves inevitably tending to emphasize the positive wherever they could—sent in by the regional propaganda offices. ‘The scepticism in the German public continues,’ he noted. ‘There’s no proper faith in German powers of resistance… There have been too many military disappointments recently for the people to be easily able to build up hopes.’⁸⁴

Generalizations about attitudes among soldiers are hazardous. Rank, temperament and earlier approaches towards Nazism affected their mindset. There were reports, for instance, of poor morale among the new recruits of the People’s Grenadier divisions.⁸⁵ Among battle-hardened veterans, however, it was often a different story. Confidence instilled by generals such as Model was a further factor affecting morale. The situation on the different fronts—and parts of the fronts—produced widely varying experiences and perspectives.

In the late autumn of 1944, away from the continuing bitter fighting in Hungary, the eastern front was relatively quiet. A naval officer who had been based in Memel, then Gotenhafen (now Gdynia), on the Baltic near Danzig, was shocked in the autumn when he travelled through southern Germany. He felt as if he had been until now living on an isolated island as he encountered repeated bombing attacks from low-flying aircraft and constant controls by the military police in the overcrowded compartments of slow-moving, greatly delayed trains. The experience made him and his fellow officers ‘deeply pessimistic, in part even despairing’. During the return journey, when almost all in the train were en route to fight the Soviets, he was struck by the unequivocal criticism of the Party and its functionaries. These were blamed for the unstoppable partisan warfare in the east, seen to have been caused by their brutal treatment of the population.⁸⁶