The higher the rank, the less likely it was that perceived military failings would incur severe sanction. Generals might be dismissed, as Harpe, Reinhardt and Hoßbach had been on the eastern front in January. But they were not disgraced, let alone sentenced to death or subjected to other forms of severe punishment (though not a few voices in the public could be heard still talking darkly, in tones reminiscent of the aftermath of the July plot in 1944, of ‘traitors and saboteurs’ in high places51). Still, as the military situation worsened and the regime became increasingly ready in its mounting desperation to resort to violence within, even high officers needed to tread warily. Colonel Thilo von Trotha, in the Army General Staff, would have recognized the warning shot across the bows from a personal acquaintance, none other than Colonel-General Schörner, in late February. ‘Among ourselves, a frank word,’ wrote Schörner. ‘I received a hint yesterday, most confidentially, of course, that your attitude to the Party and its representatives is occasionally somewhat reserved. One could have the impression that you don’t place sufficient value in certain things such as the National Socialist leadership of the army….’ ‘Dear Trotha,’ he continued, ‘I trust you have understood me. Either we succeed in having fanatical supporters and unconditional loyalists of the Führer at the top, or things will go wrong again.’52
A few days later, in a lengthy and secret missive to the commanders-in-chief and generals in command, Schörner amplified this message in a broad attack on the failure of leadership in the staffs of some parts of the army. He praised the soldiers who had learnt to be brutal and fanatical in ‘almost four years of an Asiatic war’, and had recently in fighting on the river Neiße taken no prisoners. In contrast, he scourged the indifference, bourgeois lifestyles, lack of ‘soldier personalities’ and ‘defeatist tiredness of spirit’ of officers who were unable to stir the troops through fanaticism. ‘I am in agreement with the commanders-in-chief and generals in command and with every front soldier,’ he wrote, ‘that in the Asiatic war we need revolutionary and dynamic officers.’ Stalin, he added, would have got nowhere if he had waged war with bourgeois methods. Schörner demanded ‘clear and unambigous fanaticism, nothing else’.53
The scarcely veiled threat in Schörner’s letter to Trotha and his exhortation to leading generals is a further pointer to the lack of unity in the higher ranks of the army. Though many high-ranking officers had long since inwardly turned against the Nazi regime, the spectrum of attitudes reached at the opposite extreme as far as fanatics like Schörner. In such a climate of division, distrust and fear, any prospect of a common front against Hitler could be completely ruled out.
The divisions ran throughout society. Far from the united ‘community of fate’ trumpeted by Nazi propaganda, this was a riven society where individuals looked more and more to their own narrow interests—acquisition of the necessities of life and, above all else, survival. ‘Never have the German people lived in such inner division,’ was the verdict of one colonel in February 1945.54
Despite the flood of reports telling them they were fighting a losing battle, Goebbels’ propaganda chiefs intensified rather than lessened their efforts as Germany’s plight worsened. Newspapers were distributed in Ruhr cities even after the worst bombing raids (though a suggestion that they be dropped by aeroplane was rejected as absurdly impractical).55 But even Goebbels himself was sick of the empty pathos of repeated exhortations to ‘Believe and Fight’, or to stay ‘With the Führer to Final Victory’.56 In the absence of reliable information and in often frank disbelief of official reports, rumour inevitably spread like wildfire and was difficult to control, most of all when it related to evacuation of the population in areas close to the front.57 One suggestion (later adopted) was to dispatch special units of, in all, around 1,500 Political Leaders of the Party to key points on the eastern and western fronts to stiffen morale, notably in the west, given the expected hostilities there, to prevent ‘signs of crisis’ arising as had been the case in the east as areas had been evacuated and then fallen to the Red Army. The special propaganda units would not come under Wehrmacht command, but be directed by Bormann and Himmler, with the task of ‘organizing and mobilizing the entire strength of the people of the areas in question for total deployment and the war effort’.58
Directives for verbal propaganda issued in mid-February tried to do the near impossible in emphasizing the positives for Germany in the current war situation. The Soviet advance into German eastern territories had been at such a cost of men and matériel that the Bolshevik fighting strength was decisively weakened, it was claimed, opening ‘an extraordinary chance’ for German counter-attacks. The German leadership knew that attack was the best form of defence, and would act accordingly. In the west, the length of Allied supply lines was a weakness, whereas German lines were short, units more easily manoeuvrable and, through the addition of the People’s Grenadier divisions, the Wehrmacht was stronger than the previous summer in Normandy. Not least, the deep-echelon fortifications system, it was claimed, allowed reserves to be directed at the right moment to positions under pressure and at the same time force the enemy into a damaging war of attrition.59
Little of this sounded convincing. And rallying-cries such as Himmler’s to his divisional commanders in Army Group Vistula, passed on for wider circulation, that ‘strong hearts triumph over mass and matériel’, accompanied by examples of heroic action at the front, must have sounded empty to most people.60 Other than in reinforcing defiance among the already committed regime loyalists, propaganda was for the most part by now visibly failing in its objectives.
There was, however, one notable exception. Fear, all the more so after the traumatic events in January, was the prime motivator to hold out and fight on in the east. It formed a bond—even in a negative way forging a kind of integration as all else was falling apart. And in embellishing the already existing—and well-justified—anxieties of the consequences of Soviet conquest, propaganda still had a significant role to play, both among civilians and in the Wehrmacht. Troops were drilled with the need to combat the ‘Asiatic storm from the east’, and reminded through examples from distant history—such as the defeat of the Hungarians near Augsburg in 955 and of Ottoman forces besieging Vienna in 1683—that such attacks had always been repelled by fanatical defence when the enemy reached German soil.61 Even for some leading Nazis, playing on the fears of a population whose nerves were so stretched through the emphasis on Soviet atrocities went too far.62 But there could be no question of playing down one of the last effective propaganda weapons to hand. Already in mid-February propaganda preparations were being laid for the defence of Berlin. Leaflets were drafted, addressed to ‘The Defenders of Berlin’, urging ‘fanatical hatred’ in the fight to repel the Bolsheviks. ‘It’s about countless German women and children who place their trust in you,’ the draft proclamation ran. ‘Every house a fortress, every street passage a mass grave for the Red hordes.’ ‘Hatred against hatred! Fight to the last! Bloody revenge and thousandfold retaliation for the Bolshevik atrocities in our homeland!’63