19. For the above, see Guderian, 403–4, 414–15, 422.
20. ‘The Führer is very dissatisfied with him,’ Goebbels noted on 12 March 1945 (TBJG, II/15, 480). See also Below, 406.
21. For a description of conditions within Breslau in February 1945, see Siegfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw, Soldat. Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936–1949, New York, 1992, 299–312.
22. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 416.
23. Guderian, 402, 405, 417.
24. Orlow, ii.478. Goebbels, contemptuous of Greiser’s flight, after having misinformed Hitler about the imminence of the fall of Posen, recommended ruthless punishment (TBJG, II/15, 232 (26 January 1945). See also TBJG, II/15, 205, 210 (24 January 1945), 214, 219, 223 (25 January 1945), 241 (27 January 1945).) Hitler took no action. It transpired from what he told Goebbels, and from a conversation Goebbels had with Bormann, that Greiser had been instructed by Hitler to leave Posen — as it turned out quite prematurely. (Greiser claimed after the war that Hitler had ordered him to go to Frankfurt an der Oder as Reich Governor and that he left his post in the Warthegau on 20 January (NA, Washington, NND 871063: arrest report on Greiser, 17 May 1945; Special Interrogation Report, 1 June 1945)). The town remained for a further eight days in German hands, but the refugee columns fleeing from the Red Army received no support from the Party (TBJG, II/15, 190, 193 (23 January 1945), 261–2 (29 January 1945)). Greiser was to be put on trial after the war in Warsaw, sentenced to death, and publicly hanged in Poznan on 14 July 1946.
25. See BA, R55/622, Fols.181–2, a survey, dated 9 March 1945, of letters sent to Reich Propaganda Offices, which stated: ‘The “Greiser case” is doing the rounds and is supplemented by reports from refugees about the failure of the NSDAP in the evacuation of entire Gaue.’ (‘Der “Fall Greiser” macht überall die Runde und wird durch die Berichte der Flücbtlinge über das Versagen der NSDAP bei der Evakuierung ganzer Gaue ergänzt.’) One passage cited from an anonymous letter held to the old fable: ‘If the Führer knew how he is deceived everywhere, he would have swept through long ago.’ (‘Wenn der Führer wüβte, wie er überall hintergangen wird, hätte er längst dazwischengefegt.’)
26. Guderian, 412; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 417–18. See Speer’s description of the heated arguments between Hitler and Guderian over evacuating the troops from Courland (Speer, 428).
27. Parker, Struggle for Survival, 218; Weinberg III, 801; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 420.
28. The following passages are based on Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 420–25; Weinberg III, 811–13; Parker, Struggle for Survival, 219–20; DZW, vi. 537–58.
29. Weinberg III, 811.
30. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 423–4. Hitler told Kesselring that he was confident of holding the eastern front on which all depended. The urgent demand was to hold the western front until reinforcements from the east, new fighters and other new weapons could be employed in great numbers, and until Dönitz could make the new U-boats tell. ‘So it was,’ he concluded, ‘once again a battle for time!’ (Albert Kesselring, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, (1953), Greenhill Books edn, London, 1997, 237–9 (quotation, 239)). On Rundstedt’s dismissal, see Blumentritt, 277– 9; Messenger, 228–9.
31. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 422–3; John Toland, The Last 100 Days, London, 1966, 256; LB Darmstadt, 339 n.451.
32. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 424.
33. DZW, vi.583–5; Oxford Companion, 311 –12.
34. DZW, vi.586; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 280, 414. Postwar Allied estimates reckoned that a third of the German population suffered directly from the bombing, around 14 million people losing property, up to 20 million being deprived of electricity, gas, or water at some time, 5 million being forced to evacuate. A quarter of homes had been damaged. Some 305,000 people had been killed. (United States Strategic Bombing Survey, vol.4, New York/London, 1976, 7–10.)
35. Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiβe, repr. Munich, 1984, Bd.1, 28.
36. Hans Graf von Lehndorff, Ostpreuβisches Tagebuch. Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945–1947, Munich (1967), 15th edn, 1985, 18, 22.
