German soldiers had long fought from a complex mix of motives. The Nazis had been successful to a great extent in mixing traditional aspects of military life (obedience to orders, discipline, fulfillment of duty, camaraderie) with National Socialist notions of the ideal soldier (service to the Volksgemeinschaft, fighting on behalf of an ideal, the soldier as the kernel of a new society, obligations to comrades), so any precise separation of the lines of motivation is difficult. Traditional ideas of fighting to defend family and country mingled with the Nazi racial emphasis on protecting the Fatherland from the allegedly inferior hordes or the threatening Jewish conspiracy bent on destroying Germany (“Wir kämpfen für das Leben unserer Frauen und Kinder!”). In his propaganda, Goebbels appealed to the men’s sense of superiority as well as to the simple survival instinct (“Sieg oder Siberian”), while he even sought to use the logic of the hopeless situation in order to continue the fight: a common slogan among men at the end of the war was, “Enjoy the war because the peace is going to be hell.” The Nazis sought to reinfuse men with the original spirit of the movement, reminding them of Nazi accomplishments and that the Volksgemeinschaft was a revolutionary social-egalitarian society that had provided real benefits, both material and nonmaterial. As signs of demoralization and indiscipline increased, Nazi authorities tried other measures, such as active political indoctrination through National Socialist leadership officers. These proved not as effective as hoped, given the time demands on the officers and men, the weariness of the endless retreat, and the fact that propaganda was quickly overtaken by events. Most Landsers instead came to rely for support on trusted officers at the platoon and company level, with their willingness to continue the struggle decisive for many ordinary soldiers.22
To combat the unmistakable evidence of growing demoralization and disintegration among the troops, the Nazi regime used increasingly radical measures as the terror that until now had been visited on the subject peoples was directed against the Wehrmacht and the civilian population. Flying courts-martial and drumhead tribunals punished with death those suspected of any action or utterance deemed guilty of undermining the war effort or damaging the fighting spirit. Men in buildings flying white surrender flags were to be shot, while individual soldiers were authorized to take command of their squads if their nominal superior officer failed to obey orders to resist. Anyone suspected of being a deserter, even those luckless men whose units had simply been shattered by enemy attacks, was to be dealt with in the harshest manner. Such men were dismissed by General Otto Wöhler, the commander of Army Group South, as “cowards and shirkers and therefore war criminals who deserve no mercy since they left their comrades to bear the hardness of combat alone…. [They] are to be condemned by a court-martial and shot…. Who refuses to fight from cowardice will die in shame!” Not to be outdone, Guderian ordered that “cowards were to be shot ruthlessly.” The consequence of the Nazis’ furor directed against their own troops was plain for all to see. At Frankfurt on the Oder, German soldiers wearing signs that proclaimed, “I am a deserter,” hung from both sides of the bridge. Landsers in the final phase of the war grew accustomed to the sight of daily executions or comrades hanging from trees and bridges. In all during the war, Wehrmacht courts sentenced some 35,000 Landsers for desertion, of whom 22,750 received the death sentence, which in roughly 15,000 cases was carried out. In addition, up to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, were summarily executed in this final spasm of terror.23
Nor, in its death throes, did the regime neglect to deal with its perceived enemies. Even as it crumbled from both sides, it took its revenge on internal opponents. Hundreds of anti-Nazi resisters and those who had plotted Hitler’s assassination were now murdered, often in the cruelest fashion. As Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller told one, in that characteristic Nazi obsession with the earlier war, “We won’t make the same mistake as in 1918. We won’t leave our internal German enemies alive.” In addition, throughout Germany in the last weeks of the war, long, meandering columns of emaciated, starving prisoners became a common sight as the Nazis marched survivors of the camps back to Germany to suffer yet further in horribly overcrowded and disease-ridden facilities. Mortality rates were enormous, with those unable to continue the journey simply shot. “It was,” remembered one march participant, “as if they were shooting at stray dogs.” Although some Germans took pity and offered food to the wretched marchers, many others reacted with hostility and vindictiveness, not infrequently, in a sign of just how deeply Nazi propaganda had taken hold, lashing out at the Jews for their alleged responsibility in starting the war. Throughout Germany, the conquering Allies stumbled on camp after camp overflowing with the unburied dead and the miserable survivors clinging to life.24
By this last phase of the war, Hitler’s destructive rage was no longer directed at specific groups, however, but now encompassed the entire nation. In his determination to prevent a repetition of November 1918, no price, even self-destruction (his own and Germany’s), was too high to pay. Convinced that his enemies were determined to bring about the ruination of Germany in any case, drawing on his own rigid social Darwinism and, perhaps, as well on Stalin’s example, Hitler urged a scorched-earth policy that would deny the enemy the ability to profit from German industrial resources. The idea, of course, was ridiculous since the Allies could easily supply themselves from their own resources, but, if applied, it would have had far-reaching consequences for the German people, whose very existence would have been threatened. In yet another dreadful irony, Hitler, who had long warned that the Jewish conspiracy was out to destroy Germany, resolved himself to take measures that would ensure just such a result. Few in Germany were this fanatic, even those of his close associates who wanted to continue the struggle, and certainly not the mass of the German people, who primarily wondered why he did not end the war and stop, as one put it, “the senseless murder.” In yet another ironic invocation of 1918, Victor Klemperer recorded the bitter contrast noted by one man in late March: “It can’t go on much longer…, but how we shall suffer in the meantime! What decent people Hindenburg and Ludendorff were by comparison! When they saw the game was up, they brought it to an end and didn’t let us go on being murdered.”25