Rommel’s disobedience prevented German tank divisions in Africa from being completely destroyed in November 1942. He was subsequently transferred and thus did not witness their ultimate end in Tunisia in May 1943. Hitler strictly ruled out Rommel’s suggestion that Army Group Africa be withdrawn to Europe and instead ordered the troops to fight to the death. Knowing all too well what was being asked of him, the commander of the German Afrika Korps, Hans Cramer, relayed by radio on May 9, 1943: “Ammunition gone. Weapons and equipment destroyed. DAK [German Afrika Korps] fought until unable as per orders.”582 Cramer was taken prisoner by the British and interned in Trent Park. Because he suffered from serious asthma, the plan was to repatriate him in February 1944. But he soon began to wonder how, if he returned to Germany, he would explain to Hitler “why things collapsed so quickly.” What worried him the most was that the command to fight to the last bullet had not been carried out: “My division commanders asked me over and over whether this could be changed, and I said ‘No.’… But the end looked as though we had surrendered with bullets in our guns, in our machine guns and our tanks.” The idea of “to the last bullet,” Cramer told fellow POW General Crüwell, “is relative. You could just as well say ‘to the last tank-busting grenade.’”583 Cramer refused to enter into a fight “with pistols against tanks” or a “final infantry battle” that seemed to make no military sense. Once the battle had been decided from a tactical perspective, he had “handed over” his troops to the enemy—something he did not want to admit to the Führer. Crüwell advised him not to speak of “handing over,” but rather only of the “end.”584
If General Cramer suffered from pangs of conscience about not completely fulfilling his duty, Colonel Meyne was positively outraged about the form the “final battle” took in Tunisia. It was, he complained, unprecedented in German military history, a capitulation that was “depressing” in a way the German defeat at Stalingrad had not been. The demise of the 6th Army had been sad, Meyne opined, but “they fought to the last, allowed themselves to be fired on from all sides in the tightest space and held out for who knows how long. Only when nothing more was possible, did they capitulate.” The situation in Africa, Meyne said, was completely different. “It is shattering how many officers give up fighting,” Meyne complained. “They simply lose desire. They’ve had enough.” The Führer’s command to fight down to the last bullet had been passed on to the Wehrmacht’s African divisions, but they had only answered “Where is the ammunition?” In the end, on May 8, 1943, the supreme commander of the 5th Tank Army, Lieutenant General Gustav von Vaerst, had simply ordered: “Pleinouvoir—as long as you can, and then stop.”585
The POWs’ tales suggest that most officers interpreted the order to fight until the last bullet in terms of conventional military logic. Hitler, meanwhile, had divorced himself from traditional tactics. He wanted to see sacrifice for its own sake. Goebbels took a similar view in June 1944, when he wrote: “We are not fighting down to the last bullet for the sake of our own lives. We’re fighting down to the last drop of blood or breath…. There’s only one either- or situation, life or death.”586 The Wehrmacht adapted to this apocalyptic rhetoric. In summer 1944, officers in charge of the Atlantic bunkers had to swear an oath to defend their position to the last man.587 Excuses such as not having any ammunition or supplies would lead to them being “relieved [of command] in the sharpest fashion.”588 On July 21, 1944, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge reported to Hitler about the hopeless military situation in Normandy: “We will hold our positions, and if no support arrives to improve our situation, then we’ll have to die with honor.”589 These lines were no doubt intended to placate the Führer and conceal Kluge’s knowledge of two failed plans to assassinate Hitler. But Kluge’s report does show what the highest-ranking German military officers believed the Führer wanted to hear. As the Allies advanced to the borders of Germany proper in fall 1944, the Wehrmacht chiefs of staff officially introduced “a duty to go down fighting.”590 Field commanders were forbidden to capitulate even when the tactical situation was hopeless.591
