Especially in critical situations, military virtues were supposed to encourage soldiers to keep fighting to the very end. The model soldier was the one who battled, as the cliché had it, down to the very last bullet. Indeed, Wehrmacht regulation number 2 read: “It is expected of every German soldier that he prefers to die with a weapon in his hand to being captured. But in the vagaries of battles, even the bravest man may have the misfortune to be taken captive by the enemy.”574 In the first half of World War II, even if soldiers were made to swear an oath that they would sacrifice their lives for the Third Reich, the military leadership did not interpret this regulation literally.575 If a battle was lost from a tactical standpoint, soldiers were allowed to surrender. Fighting on was considered senseless, even if individual infantrymen still had ammunition in their belts.
Yet as the war turned for the worse, the German military leadership became more radical in its demands that soldiers fight on until the bitter end. In the final phase of the war, this trope became emblematic for the Wehrmacht as a whole. The German setbacks before Moscow in the winter of 1941–42 were the beginning of a transition whereby soldiers were no longer just supposed to fight until a battle had been decided, but to continue “fanatically” until they were killed.
On December 16, 1941, Hitler reacted to the deteriorating situation of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front by ordering: “Commanders, unit leaders and officers are to take personal steps to force troops to engage in fanatic resistance in holding their positions, without regard to enemy breakthroughs on the flanks or from the rear.”576 Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel added ten days later: “Every foot of territory is to be fought for with every ounce of energy.”577 Military commanders on the ground initially welcomed these general orders in the belief that they would help quell panic among exhausted soldiers. But opposition quickly arose when the orders were put into concrete practice. Colonel Erich Hoepner remarked: “Fanatic will alone isn’t enough…. The fanatic resistance that’s being demanded only leads to the sacrificing of defenseless troops.”578 German generals refused to accept stand-and-die commands because the death of their soldiers on the battlefield, under the conditions the army was facing, did not promise to yield any military advantages. Hitler remained adamant, however, and replaced those commanders who did not submit to his dictates. Hitler credited his uncompromising order for the fact that the Soviet counteroffensive before Moscow was halted in February 1942. That counterstrike was the first crisis faced by the Wehrmacht, and Hitler was convinced that it made military sense to sacrifice troops in precarious situations.579 Henceforth, he demanded that soldiers fight fanatically, down to the last bullet, no matter how critical their situation, and he insisted that his commands be carried out to the letter. On November 3, 1942, when Field Marshal Erwin Rommel wanted to withdraw from El Alamein in Egypt, the dictator explicitly forbade any sort of retreat. “Strength of will shall win out over the stronger battalion,” Hitler wrote. “There’s no other path to show your troops other than victory or death.”580 With support from his superior, Albert Kesselring, Rommel refused to follow this suicide command and ordered his troops to retreat. He was not principally concerned with saving the lives of individual soldiers. In other situations, Rommel had no scruples about sending men to their certain deaths. In April and May 1941, he had ordered part of his forces to launch a militarily irrational attack on the stronghold of Tobruk in Libya and accused Lieutenant General Heinrich Kirchheim of being a coward for refusing to sacrifice his men. But by November 1942, Rommel could see no military sense in having his divisions hold out in their current positions. Hitler had a different opinion. His command that German troops hold their ground in Africa had a narrow military goal and a larger aim. On the one hand, the dictator believed that sheer force of will could hold back the British 8th Army. And on the other hand, he saw a deeper meaning in soldiers sacrificing their lives. In Hitler’s mind, the willingness to do so was a precondition of national unity.581
