After listening to Goebbels’s speech on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1945, one of the officers rose to his feet halfway through the playing of the national anthem and switched off the radio. Generalleutnant Kittel was outraged: how could one sink so low as not to stand for the national anthem, and leave the room while it was playing? They were riff-raff and cowards, he told the assembly. It was better to fall at the front than finish up at Trent Park.[181] Eight days previously he had considered it essential to report to Germany by secret code ‘how these people such as Bassenge, Thoma and Co. behave. I think the admirals [Schirmer and Kähler] have done something like that already’ (Extract from SR Draft 3137/45 (GG), 12.4.1945, TNA WO 208/5622).
One of the valets was appalled to see the generals drinking wine on 8 May 1945 as if celebrating their own funerals. This was not the German spirit, it was a disgrace, and it merely proved, as General Bodenschatz remarked,[182] that the Führer was quite right when he described the generals as a ‘pack of filthy swine’.[183]
Whilst a number of the Trent Park inmates, at least until the spring of 1945, were in favour of fighting to the last bullet, and remained loyal to Hitler, another group condemned any further bloodshed as senseless from the outset. ‘Something has to happen, one simply cannot fight to the last soldier,’ Generalleutnant von Schlieben said on 3 July 1944. The eradication of the German people by National Socialism must eventually be stopped, Oberst Wildermuth declared. The ‘Afrikaners’ at Trent Park were of the opinion that it was time to surrender. For Hitler, however, capitulation was unthinkable; it was all or nothing, and he was ready to accept the consequences. His willingness to drag Germany down into the abyss was the consequence of people upsetting his world view. If Hitler as Head of State could not see the writing on the wall after the defeat in Normandy, nor when the Ardennes offensive collapsed, nor even when the Allies had crossed the Rhine, how was the bloodshed to be brought to an end? Calls for responsible action by the commanders-in-chief, from a man like von Rundstedt for example, were heard repeatedly at Trent Park from the summer of 1944 onwards. The front in the West should be parted or – less striking – ‘a man like von Rundstedt’ had to transfer 20 divisions to the Eastern Front and so hasten the occupation of Western Germany (Document 64). Eberbach was of the opinion in February 1945 that the moment had come when Army commanders in the West had to convince themselves to lay down their arms for the common good. ‘I should spend the whole time thinking: “What can I do to bring about the fall of the Hitler clique? […] What can I do […] to bring about, somehow, the entry of the Western Powers in?”’ (Document 66). Eberbach spoke as a widely respected and known C-in-C – but what should a ranking general do? Broich suggested that as divisional commander one could simply leave gaps and so enable the Western Allies to break through along the front.
The protocols reveal that most generals declined such tactics on the basis that it did not accord with military honour: ‘that couldn’t be reconciled with their honour […] If I, as CO of a “Division” say to my men “tomorrow we surrender”, they’ll say the old boy has gone crazy overnight; he’s overworked; he’s ill.”’ Generalmajor Bruhn reflected in January 1945 (Document 56). Generalmajor Hans Schaefer agreed: ‘You can’t persuade an officer simply to say: “we’ll arrange with the Americans: ‘You attack and we won’t fire.’”’ (Document 57). Although he considered the war to be lost as commander of the Marseilles fortifications, he had not given in: he would not fight to the last round but resisted until orderly defence collapsed.[184]
As front commanders, Broich and Eberbach might have acted as they claimed they would from the security of captivity, but a glance at how the final battles were fought suggests it was mere dreaming. Responsible steps taken against Hitler’s orders were practically non-existent amongst the Army Group and Army C-in-Cs, except for isolated cases in the very last days of the war.
As regards the lower-ranking commanders of towns, battle groups or divisions, the failure to stick to the letter of instructions was a major exception. Generalleutnant Graf von Schwerin was the first general to have refused to participate in ‘an artificially lengthened war on German soil […] which would only destroy Germany’.[185] He returned from Aachen, was discharged immediately from the Wehrmacht but was not court-martialled because of his reputation and was later found reemployment. Oberst Wilck followed in Schwerin’s footsteps. As the old Kaiser town descended into chaos and destruction, he defended it until orderly resistance collapsed and then – as did Schaefer at Marseilles – sent out some heroic radio messages before accepting captivity.[186]
The example of Aachen shows that a number of factors were required to undermine Hitler’s final struggle fantasies: the correct assessment of the situation by the military commander of the district, the prudence of the Allied forces and often the courageous intervention of prominent civilian dignitaries. Withe the help of Swiss Consul-General Franz-Rudolph von Weiss and acting Bürgermeister Heinrich Ditz, Generalleutnant Richard Schimpf, CO 3 Fallschirmjäger-Division, succeeded in surrendering Bad Godesberg to the Americans on 8 March 1945 without a fight. This was done knowing it was contrary to the orders of Feldmarschall Model. Schimpf created a situation in which Army Group B could neither remove him nor take counter-measures.[187]
Such initiatives never came from the highest levels, however, and even the involvement of divisional commanders was a rare exception. It was mostly junior officers and even simple soldiers who would ignore orders from above to prevent the greater ill. ‘The troops are not insubordinate but they carry out what you might term “sit down strikes”,’ General Edwin Graf von Rothkirch and Trach reported in March 1945 (Document 67).
In all this the generals faced only a comparatively slight personal risk to themselves[188] while their orders to the men under their command meant death for thousands. In 1945, 1.2 million German soldiers fell – more than in 1942 and 1943 combined. Only very few generals were prepared to follow their troops to death or, as SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer nicely put it, ‘to peg out with the Führer’.[189] Model was one of the highest-ranking commanders to take his own life: Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf (Hitler’s Wehrmacht ADC) and Hans Krebs shot themselves on 1 May 1945 in the Führer bunker in Berlin, Generaladmiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg and Generalfeldmarschall Robert Ritter von Greim followed them a few weeks after the capitulation. Yet this attitude remained exceptional, and most preferred captivity to suicide.
The picture we have of the highest generals in the closing weeks and months of the war is not a flattering one: to avoid falling victim to a flying court martial for the premature laying down of arms, or not obeying orders to hold out (Document 76) was for many generals the foremost consideration in their planning. They would rather sacrifice their men than endanger their own lives by disobeying orders from the Führer. Oberstleutnant Josef Ross’s description of the fighting on the Wesel in March 1945 (Document 72) speaks a clear language in this regard.
182
General der Flieger Karl Heinrich Bodenschatz (1890–1979), Luftwaffe Liaison Officer at FHQ.
188
Of the 3,149 Wehrmacht generals, 372 fell in the field in WWII and another 171 died as PoWs, about 17 per cent. The total of all Wehrmacht dead was 34 per cent, twice as high. Searle, ‘Wehrmacht Generals’, p. 17f; Overmans, ‘Militärische Verluste’, p. 319. The full list of dead Wehrmacht generals appears in Foltmann/Möller-Witten, ‘Opfergang’.