Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

To combat the unmistakably growing signs of demoralization and disintegration, improvised courts to mete out summary punishment were established not just within the Wehrmacht but also for the civilian population.⁴⁸ The slightest utterance that smacked of defeatism could result in immediate and draconian retribution.⁴⁹ The terror which had earlier been ‘exported’ to the subjugated peoples under the Nazi jackboot was now being directed by the regime, in its death throes, at the German people themselves. It was the surest sign that, apart from ever-dwindling numbers of fanatics and the desperadoes with nothing to lose, the regime had forfeited any basis of mass support.

Even the threat of summary execution was insufficient to halt the evident signs of demoralization and war-weariness — especially noticeable in the western parts of the Reich. Appeals to heroism, sacrifice, holding out to the last man, fell largely on deaf ears. Most people, soldiers as well as civilians, wanted nothing more than to survive, and to see an end to the bombing, fighting, and suffering. They would have agreed with the scornful comment of a Berlin journalist: ‘Hold out. Most stupid of all slogans. So, they’ll hold out until they’re all dead. There’s no other salvation.’⁵⁰ In contrast to the situation on the eastern front, many — boosted by rumours of good treatment in districts captured by the Americans — were by now prepared to take their chances under the western Allies rather than to continue the struggle. ‘The population is evidently waiting for the entry of the Americans,’ ran a Wehrmacht report from the area around Mayen, a small town between Rhine and Mosel, ‘and has sabotaged directly or indirectly all measures taken by German soldiers to defend places. As I observed myself, white flags were prepared, everything indicating Party membership was burned, and the fighting soldiers were urged to put on civilian clothing…’ Similar reports came in from other districts in the Rhineland.⁵¹

In the south of the country it was little different. People in the Augsburg region were said to be following ‘with horror the events in the east of the Reich, where the storm-flood of the Soviets surges over (umbrandet) the borders of the homeland.’⁵² War-weariness, deeply downcast mood, great anxiety, and loss of any hope for a favourable outcome to the war were registered generally. The constant fear of air-raids plagued the nerves. ‘Today was terrible with the planes (Fliegern)’, one woman from the Black Forest noted in her diary in February. ‘It’s never been as bad. Almost the whole day they were flying backwards and forwards. We were terribly afraid. It can’t go on like this for much longer.’⁵³ The despondency was maximized where devastating raids — such as the attack on Nuremberg on 2 January that destroyed 29,500 homes, killed 1,794 persons, and wiped out the medieval ‘Old town’ — caused massive damage and loss of life.⁵⁴ In Dresden, bodies of the tens of thousands killed in the raid on 13 — 14 February — men, women, and children — were piled high and loaded on to any available lorry or cart. Tractors dug mass graves, but the dead could not be buried fast enough and the stench of rotting corpses forced the authorities to turn to mass cremations on the old market square — an unforgettable experience for those forced to witness it.⁵⁵

One boy, deployed with others in the Deutsches Jungvolk — the preparatory organization for the Hitler Youth — to help in emergency clearance work after a raid on his small home-town in Thuringia, observed soldiers carrying out charcoaled corpses from a neighbouring burnt-out house. They were the first dead that he and his friends had seen in the war ‘and we were so shocked that we lost all our courage’.⁵⁶ Even so, the Hitler Youth probably contained, outside the dwindling ranks of Party fanatics, most of the remaining idealists — reared on myths of heroism, ready to follow the call to the last, tirelessly serving as helpers on flak units, tending refugees, looking after the wounded, clearing up after air-raids, and trying ultimately to fend off Soviet tanks with bazookas. One boy, injured in an air-raid, managed to stand to attention when an officer came by, asking him if he was in pain: ‘Yes, but that’s not important,’ he replied. ‘Germany must be victorious.’⁵⁷

Such voices were by now largely confined to the naïve and the blindly credulous. Fear of instant and ferocious reprisals made most people cautious in the extreme in their comments, other than to close friends and relatives. It was too early for inquests on the causes of the war, let alone for moral reflections. But, aware that the suffering and sacrifice demanded of them in the war had been immense, but in vain, they looked to assign blame. However camouflaged the language, it was obvious that this was directed at the Party leadership — and at Hitler himself.⁵⁸