The Allies had shown hesitation and made costly errors at crucial junctures. But the Germans had made their own major contribution to prolonging the war. For Germany, despite fierce and courageous fighting by the outnumbered forces of the Wehrmacht, the collapse in France had come as a dreadful shock. Within a little over three months, the Allies had liberated France and reached Germany’s borders. Soon, it was evident, the war would be fought on German soil. Under Model’s able command, however, they had survived the critical, but not fatal, defeat near Falaise. Since then, they had surprised the Allies with the tenacity, even fanaticism, of their fighting. Though outnumbered, they had shown energy and initiative. And they had some technically superior weaponry and tanks—if in insufficient quantities. The main weakness was not on the ground, but in the air, where the Luftwaffe was increasingly paralysed and Allied superiority immense.8 Even so, German defence was stubborn, and not easy to break down. Unlike the Russian army in 1917, the German army the following year, the Italian army in 1943, or other instances where heavy defeats had produced a collapse in morale with devastating political consequences, the German armed forces in late summer and autumn of 1944 were far removed from the point at which they were unwilling to fight on any further. What lay behind the extraordinary tenacity of the fighting front in the west?
II
Had the Allies seen reports that were reaching the German leadership at this time on the demoralization among the German civilian population on the western borders of the Reich and within the Wehrmacht produced by the disastrous military collapse in the west, they might have been encouraged in their ‘collapse theory’ based upon the events of 1918.9 Such reports certainly did not give the impression that Germany was capable of fighting on for a further eight months.
A sense of relief in Germany that the eastern front appeared to be stabilized was said to have been dissipated in mid-August through the depressing news of the Allied breakthrough in the west, for which the population had been completely unprepared.10 Optimists suggesting that the war could yet be won with a supreme effort had a hard time in the gathering gloom of opinion about the huge superiority of enemy forces, scepticism about the promised new ‘wonder weapons’, and feelings that the total-war effort, though generally welcome, had come too late and would, in any case, not be evenly spread in its burdens. Letters from loved ones at the front, and even official news bulletins from France, were cited as indicators that Germany could not compete with the Allied supremacy in men and weaponry. ‘I don’t believe we’ll be able to stop the storm of the enemy,’ one quoted letter home ran. ‘Their superiority is far too great, in the air and above all with tanks, tanks and still more tanks.’ ‘Where are the great reserves that have always been talked about?’ people were asking. In the depressed mood, the desire for an early end to the war was all the stronger, and with it the view that the consequences of defeat would be less dreadful than claimed. Scepticism and defeatism were becoming inseparable.11
By early September reports from propaganda offices across the country were indicating that the mood of the people had reached its lowest point during the entire war. Since the general tenor of such reports—more so than those of the SD—was to emphasize the pro-Nazi sentiments of the population, the clear indication of depression and hopelessness conveyed at this time is all the more striking. A sense of insecurity was widespread. Those with ‘negative’ attitudes were gaining in numbers and undermining morale through defeatist comments and ‘concealed criticism of the leadership’. Many were asking why the Allied landing had not been halted, why total war had not been proclaimed earlier, and why the ‘poison’ that had produced the uprising of 20 July had not been spotted earlier and destroyed. The criticism was aimed at the Führer himself, even if people were too wary to mention him directly.
Those holding such views could see no way to improve the situation and repel the enemy. The wounded soldiers and refugees streaming in from the west only bolstered their pessimism. Ordinary soldiers and the ‘homeland’ were not to blame, they were saying, if it all went wrong and Germany were to lose the war. It was not a matter of fate. The ability of the generals was called into question; and the leadership had not done everything necessary. Above all, the sense of powerlessness in the face of immense enemy superiority in numbers and equipment was dispiriting. Women with children were especially prone to anxiety about the future, it was said. Thoughts of suicide were increasingly common. Hopes in the new weapons were fading, particularly since it was felt that everything had been done too late to make a difference. People were saying that if Lorraine and the Saarland could not be held, the loss of centres of vital armaments production would force Germany to surrender. Few thought that the Westwall—the huge line of German fortifications that had been built in 1938, known to the western Allies as the ‘Siegfried Line’—would hold up the enemy advance any more than the French ‘Maginot Line’ had stopped the Wehrmacht’s march into France in 1940. With the enemy at the borders of the Reich, the desertion of Germany’s allies—Romania had sued for peace and joined the war against Germany on 25 August, Finland was on the verge of breaking off relations with Germany, other countries were about to follow suit—and exposure with no defence to intensified ‘terror from the skies’, it was difficult to avoid pessimism.12
Refugees from Rombach in Lorraine contributed to a worsening of the mood in factories in the border area with rumours that they had been shot at during their evacuation by train, that enemy parachutists had dropped near Metz, and that the German retreat had been a rout, with officers leaving their soldiers in the lurch as they fled eastwards in whatever vehicles they could find. On top of that, they were saying, the V1 was no longer being fired. Predictably, the report was dismissed in Berlin as mere exaggeration. That did not diminish, however, the damage that was being done by such rumours.13 A similar story was provided to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler by his friend from schooldays and now head of the SS sanatorium in Hohenlychen, north of Berlin, Professor Karl Gebhardt, during a visit to the western front in early September. The population of Trier, he reported, had been disturbed by the numerous rumours in circulation and by the ‘unpleasant sight’ of Wehrmacht vehicles streaming in from Aachen. The ordered evacuation of Eupen-Malmédy—a former enclave of Belgium, annexed by Germany in 1940—had turned into a panic flight of the German population, in the company of Party functionaries who evidently had no intention of returning.14
The Party’s evacuation of Aachen (the first major German city in Allied sight) and adjacent areas close to the Westwall on the approach of the Americans had been nothing less than a shambles. Evacuation plans had been laid, and on 11 September Hitler’s approval had been given. The evacuation began around midday on 12 September. It had scarcely begun, however, when, as it seemed amid the start of heavy artillery attacks and repeated air raids that the fall of the city was imminent, panic had broken out among the population. It was impossible, amid gathering chaos, to carry out an ordered evacuation. By mid-evening, some 10,000 frightened civilians were crowded onto Aachen’s stations, desperate to get away but with transport made extremely difficult by the bombs raining down on adjacent tracks. Thousands took matters into their own hands, rushing eastwards from the city on foot in long columns, jamming nearby roads. The Nazi authorities themselves estimated shortly afterwards that some 25,000 had managed to leave between 11 and 13 September, to add to the 20,000 who had left the previous week.