To a certain extent, the Wehrmacht recovered some of its morale in fall 1944 after fleeing in panic across the German border.470 There, they had at least been able to regroup and form a coherent front, and no longer were tens of thousands of soldiers being taken prisoner. But there was a major difference between a willingness to fight on and faith in victory. Members of the German armed forces still functioned fairly well as soldiers, but the surveillance protocols make it clear that the stabilization of the front on Germany’s borders did little to improve German soldiers’ expectations for the future. The Ardennes Offensive also raised only a flicker of hope—and solely among the soldiers who participated in it.471
By August 1944, a qualitative shift in evaluations of the war had taken place. One good example is the reflections of Colonel Gerhard Wilck, fortress commander in the German city of Aachen, after being taken prisoner in October 1944:
WILCK: The people are so war weary and so minded to make an end at any cost that I fear that that feeling will spread all over GERMANY. Hopelessness is spreading strongly everywhere—I mean hopelessness in that no one believes that a turn of the tide can come. You catch the feeling yourself. Even if we have something in that background, a V-2 or something of the sort, it cannot possibly ever be decisive now.472
Wilck talked here of “the people,” but what he meant more specifically was himself, together with his men and the population of Aachen. Wilck was the first commander ordered by Hitler to defend a German city. But having been beaten down in a hopeless fight, Wilck no longer saw any way out.
In early 1945, there was a further decline in morale, as can be traced in the American surveillance protocols.473 And official army reports described units openly talking about being “sick and tired” of the war.474 The reluctant insight that the war was in fact lost also affected German soldiers’ behavior, particularly in the West, where many tried to get captured.
However, indications of a general decline in morale should not obscure the fact that there was a small group who believed in final victory right up until the very end. They tended to be higher officers or members of special units, for example, veteran fighter pilots. On March 18, 1945, First Lieutenant Hans Hartigs, who had already been imprisoned for two and a half months, asked newly arrived POW Lieutenant Antonius Wöffen from Luftwaffe Fighter Wing 27:
HARTIGS: What was the morale of the officers and men like?
WÖFFEN: On the whole, our morale is still quite good. It’s obvious that the present situation is lousy but there still exists the great hope that things still won’t turn out as bad as they look. On the other hand, one can’t speak of belief any more.475
German soldiers’ interpretations of how the war was going generally followed the major milestones: the Blitzkrieg victories, the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43, and the Allied landing at Normandy in 1944. Yet interestingly, different branches of the military arrived at different interpretations. Put in simple terms: the Luftwaffe was more optimistic than the navy, while the army was, at least by 1944, the most pessimistic.
Luftwaffe pilots were a relatively small group of elite fighters who went to battle convinced of their superiority over the enemy. Despite all the difficulties of their mission, they led a pretty good life. Particularly in France, pilots enjoyed amenities foot soldiers could only dream of. Moreover, even if the qualitative and quantitative advantages of the Allies began to show as of 1943, Luftwaffe pilots could still celebrate individual triumphs in 1944–45. Fighter pilots still shot down enemy aircraft, and crews aboard bombers still dropped their deadly payloads on cities, ships, and troops. Navy men necessarily viewed the war more skeptically because they had been fighting a far stronger enemy ever since September 1939.
