Generalleutnant von Heyking now saw room to manoeuvre for negotiations. One had to hold out, he said in December 1944, for ‘the Americans have no idea what they are fighting for.’ If they suffered very heavy casualties, one could get them to the negotiating table – or the enemy coalition would break up (Document 51).[169] The Ardennes offensive had fuelled these hopes (Document 52),[170] but General Ramcke was alone in his belief that the German divisions could drive the Allies back across France and into the sea. A negotiated peace seemed to many a possibility as the result of such a successful offensive, however (Document 75).
The optimists held on to their hopes for a happy outcome to the war while the realists were of the opinion that it was already decided long ago, and Germany’s only possibility was unconditional surrender. ‘We entered the New Year with awful morale’ wrote Generalmajor Paul von Felbert in his diary. ‘That Germany was totally beaten was totally clear to all of us with exception of the incorrigibles such as Ramcke and cronies’ (Felbert, diary, p. 71). The differences came clearly into the light in a long conversation between General Heinrich Eberbach and his son Oberleutnant zur See Heinz Eberbach on 20 and 21 September 1944 (Document 37). The 23-year-old U-boat commander was still convinced that ‘miracle weapons’ would turn the tide while his father considered the whole thing ‘hopeless’. He had reached the final stage of a long process of acceptance. In December 1943, the general was still believing it possible to ‘crush the Russians’, and in June 1944 he still would not admit that the war was lost. After beating off the invasion ‘we will have our heads above water,’ he hoped (Document 64).[171]
Once it had proved impossible to halt the Allied divisions, not to mention repel them, ‘there was no more point to it’, General Eberbach said in February 1945. Extracts from his letters from Normandy show this: ‘How can it go on without the V-2 or other miracle weapons?’ he asked on 11 July. Five days later he wrote: ‘Heavy fighting – spearhead not large – questions in the eyes of my soldiers – we still lack the great decision.’ And on 20 July: ‘Hold out! Hold out! 116 Panzer Div. not for another five days! No way out.’ Shortly afterwards the US 3rd Army broke through the German lines west of St Lo and near Avranches, and on 3 August 1944 broke out from the hard-fought bridgehead. The German defences were at the end of their strength, and now Hitler ordered an extravagant counter-attack which plunged the Western Army into catastrophe. On 5 August Eberbach wrote home: ‘Situation remains extremely tense. All commanders exhausted. I often think of Bismarck’s greatness.’ Finally, on the 17th: ‘No great decision. I can no longer see a way out.’[172]
Eberbach therefore had his road-to-Damascus experience at Normandy in the high summer of 1944.[173] By 1942 Thoma had had no illusions about the situation, other – perhaps not all – Afrika Korps generals followed in 1943. Even those prisoners with knowledge of strategy were obliged to acknowledge after the failure of the Ardennes offensive and the push into Reich territory by the Allied armies in January and February 1945 that the war was lost. In the early spring nobody believed in final victory or even a negotiated peace. Nevertheless the inferences drawn varied. Should one capitulate or fight to the bitter end? Even far from the tentacles of the regime the deeply anchored concept of military honour remained firm. The comparatively critical Generalmajor Wahle observed in February 1945 that ‘the most elementary military honour’ demanded that one should keep fighting (Document 64).[174] The German people must lose the war honourably by fighting to the last gasp, General Choltitz said in March 1945. The honourable struggle would prevent the people going under and having their spirit broken (Document 66). Ramcke, paratroop general and a convinced National Socialist, admitted it to be his heartfelt wish that the German people would have the strength to defend every bridge, every hill-ridge, every town, to the last. The victorious powers could then allow the Germans to quietly die out, but they would at least have gone down fighting (Document 38). In September 1944 Ramcke had defended the French port of Brest until out of ammunition, and his stubborn resistance must be the model for the Battle for Germany. That he had previously taken steps to ensure that he would be the only man to escape from Brest by air demonstrates the deceptiveness of such images of Götterdämmerung. That Ramcke actually believed the Allies were intent upon the biological extermination of the German people can be assumed. This kind of propaganda was mouthed by other pro-Nazi generals such as SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer and Luftwaffe-Generalleutnant Heyking (Document 51).
At Clinton Camp, USA, there was an internal court martial of Generalmajor Botho Elster for surrendering to the Americans with 20,000 men,[175] but he was able to get the charge dropped. Generalmajor Paul von Felbert was sentenced to death in his absence on 3 January 1945 for capitulating in a parallel situation in September 1944. His family was arrested. ‘Nevertheless I am shocked’, Generalleutnant Menny noted in his diary at the end of 1944,
how few of the more than forty generals I have known in captivity personally fought to the end. It is of course simply right that every soldier and naturally a general should try everything, even the impossible. Even the impossible can be achieved by the general who has luck. How often have I escaped encirclements and other hopeless situations with my men after we had all long since abandoned hope of surviving.[176]
Not until the Allies had crossed the Rhine on a broad front did the majority think again about the ‘honourable’ struggle to the end. ‘I always used to consider it wrong to surrender, our people might have cracked badly and that might perhaps have proved disastrous in the future. But now we must give in, it’s simply madness,’ Ferdinand Heim acknowledged in March 1945 (Document 69). Two weeks previously he had received news that his wife and youngest son had been killed at Ulm on 17 December 1944 during a British air raid.[177] New arrivals provided the Trent Park community with ever-gloomier reports about the fighting, and reinforced the pessimists. ‘The bloody stupidity surrounding the German defeat is revealing itself as ever more grotesque and miserable,’ noted Eberhard Wildermuth in his diary on 18 May 1945 after listening to Generalleutnant Holste’s account of the fighting on the Elbe.[178]
General Kirchheim, who arrived in mid-March (Document 77), provided some interesting ideas on laying down arms. General Höhne had confided to him in the spring of 1945 that he considered all further resistance useless. Since the German people did not have a clear picture of the causes of the defeat, it was necessary to fight on to prevent another ‘stab in the back’ legend taking root – only in that way would the scale of the defeat and the failure of the National Socialist system become blatantly obvious to most Germans.[179]
Whatever insight they may have had into the approaching defeat, or lack of enthusiasm for a fight to the last, nevertheless the pro-Nazi generals maintained their morale. In mid-March 1945 several of them expressed indignation at a report by Oberstleutnant Kogler describing the devastating course of the air war and especially the defence of the Reich. As Wing Commander JG6, Kogler knew what he was talking about, but an Oberstleutnant did not have the competence to deliver such a wide-ranging criticism, or so Ramcke, Vaterrodt and Kittel believed.[180]
170
Fuller reactions to the Ardennes Offensive in GRGG 235, 16–18.12.1944, TNA WO 208/4364.
173
Eberbach recognised at Normandy ‘that the people upstairs are crazy’. GRGG 277, 28–29.3.1945 TNA WO 208/4177. In 1979 he wrote that at the end of 1944 he had ignored the OKW order to destroy all civilian food depots in France and deport the male population for forced labour in Germany ‘because it would show us up as barbarians before the world’. BA/MA MSg1 1/1079. In a report made when Cdr, 3.Pz.Korps on the Eastern Front in October/November 1943, he had stated ‘During our retreat we had destroyed
174
Wahle said that in August 1943 he and Olbricht discussed the whole situation and what should be done. ‘I told Olbricht there was nothing left for us but honourable defeat. He replied, “What do you want then, a people of 80 million simply cannot just go down.” Then I saw that Olbricht no longer had much hope.’ SRGG 1038, 10.9.1944, TNA WO 208/4168.
175
Elster reported fully on his capture to General Ramcke. SRGG 1061(c), 24.9.1944, TNA WO 208/4169. General Graf von Schwerin was accused in 1946 at the generals’ camp at Neu-Ulm of having capitulated too quickly in April 1945. Searle, ‘Wehrmacht Generals’, p. 26f.
177
Wildermuth Diary, 11.3.1945, BA/MA, NL 251/73. In mid-November 1944, Heim said, ‘Therefore the only thing to do is carry on fighting, hold out to the last, even if that means we lose everything. A people which fights to the last moment finds the moral strength to rise again, a people which throws its weapons into the cornfield is finished for ever, history proves it.’ GRGG 221, 10–12.11.1944, TNA WO 208/4364. SS-Brigadeführer Meyer spoke out similarly, but later changed his opinion. GRGG 229, 27.11.1944–1.12.1944, TNA WO 208/4364.
180
GRGG 273, 16–19 March 1945, TNA WO 208/4177. The address appears in SRGG 1140, 15.3.1945, TNA WO 208/4169.