74. Based on Czech, 966–95; Herbert et al., Konzentrationslager, ii.1063–1138 (contributions by Blatman, Strzelecki, Sprenger, and Kolb); Eberhard Kolb, ‘Bergen-Belsen’, in Martin Broszat (ed.), Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Stuttgart, 1970, 130–53, here 147ff.; and Eberhard Kolb, Vom ‘Aufenthaltslager’ zum Konzentrationslager 1943 bis 1945, Göttingen, 1985, 39ff. See also Hilberg, Destruction, 631–3; Goldhagen, ch.13; Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust. The Jewish Tragedy, London, 1987, chs.40–41; Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust, London, 1982, 215ff.
75. Hilberg, 632.
76. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 123; Pierre Galante and Eugen Silianoff, Last Witnesses in the Bunker, London, 1989,137 (testimony of Traudl Junge); Below, 400; Domarus, 2189.
77. Hitler blamed the eastern offensive for the failure of his own offensive in the west (TBJG, II/15, 197 (23 January 1945), 217 (25 January 1945)).
78. Guderian, 392–3.
79. Boldt, 36, for description of Reich Chancellery; IfZ, ZS 2235, Traudl Junge, Fol.2 (Interview with David Irving, 29 June 1968), comments that the blinds were down on the train, and the route for the cars from the station to the Reich Chancellery passed through streets which had been relatively little destroyed. Awareness that Hitler was back in the capital might have given citizens further cause for anxiety about the likelihood of intensified air-raids, as soon as the Allies knew of his presence there.
80. Boldt, 36–7.
81. Guderian, 409.
82. Guderian, 401–2.
83. Guderian, 404–5.
84. Speer, 431.
85. Hansjakob Stehle, ‘Deutsche Friedensfühler bei den Westmächten im Februar/März 1945’, VfZ, 30 (1982), 538–55; Reimer Hansen, ‘Ribbentrops Friedensfühler im Frühjahr 1945’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 18 (1967), 716–30; Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Die Chance des Sonderfriedens. Deutsch-sowjetische Geheimgespräche 1941–1945, Berlin, 1986, 267–75; Werner von Schmieden, ‘Notiz betreffend den deutschen Friedensfühler in der Schweiz Anfang 1945’, IfZ, ZS 604 (30 June 1947); Weinberg III, 783–4.
86. Schmidt, 587. According to Goebbels, in mid-January, Ribbentrop wanted to put out feelers to the British, but Hitler prohibited him from doing so (TBJG, II/15, 199 (23 January 1945)). Hitler did not give Ribbentrop ‘official authorization’ for his soundings (IMG, x.218; Hansen, ‘Ribbentrops Friedensfühler’, 718–19).
87. Schmidt, 587. According to Schmidt, Ribbentrop’s own interest diminished immediately when he learnt that his removal from office was also a precondition.
88. The Ribbentrop Memoirs, 170, 173. Speer pointed to Hitler’s vague hints at peace-feelers in early 1945. He had the impression, however, that Hitler ‘was far more concerned to create an atmosphere of the utmost irreconcilability, leaving no way open’ (Speer, 433). The secret dealings which Karl Wolff, head of the police in northern Italy and formerly the chief of Himmler’s personal staff, opened up in Zürich in February 1945 with Allen W. Dulles, head of the United States’ Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe, were aimed primarily at saving Wolff’s skin (ultimately, in this, proving successful) but, beyond that, at offering to deliver surrender of German forces in Italy — which did eventually capitulate prematurely, on 2 May 1945 — as part of a ploy to split the western Allies from the Soviet Union. The feelers were almost certainly put out with Himmler’s knowledge, looking to an ‘arrangement’ which would bypass Hitler’s implacable hostility to a negotiated end to the war by dispensing with the Führer in an attempt to rescue what was possible of the SS’s power by linking forces with the West in the fight against Bolshevism. (See Padfield, Himmler, 572–7.)
89. TBJG, II/15, 251–2 (28 January 1945).
90. TBJG, II/15, 232 (26 January 1945).
91. TBJG, II/15, 255 (28 January 1945).
92. LB Stuttgart, 860–61 (27 January 1945). See TBJG, II/15, 259 (29 January 1945) for Goebbels’s summary of the tenor of reports from British newspapers, asking whether British war aims had been upturned by the mounting Soviet threat.
93. TBJG, II/15, 253 (28 January 1945).
94. TBJG, II/15, 254–5 (28 January 1945); also TBJG, II/15, 220 (25 January 1945).
95. TBJG, II/15, 264–5 (29 January 1945). As so often, Goebbels had a few days earlier compared Hitler with Frederick the Great during the Seven Years War (TBJG, II/15, 221 (25 January 1945)).
96. TBJG, II/15, 273 (30 January 1945).
97. TBJG, II/15, 275 (30 January 1945).
98. TBJG, II/15, 256 (28 January 1945).
