The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

An important debt of gratitude for their valuable suggestions on the typescript is also owing to splendid editors at Penguin—Simon Winder in London, and Laura Stickney in New York—while Andrew Wylie has been, as before, a wonderfully supportive agent. I would also like to thank all at Penguin who have helped to produce the book, Elizabeth Stratford for her excellent copy-editing and Cecilia Mackay for researching the photographs.

Finally, there are the personal debts of gratitude. Traude and Uli Spät have, as on so many occasions in the past, been extraordinarily generous in their hospitality during my stays in Munich, and taken a keen interest in my work over many years. Throughout this project Beverley Eaton, my long-serving secretary, has continued to provide excellent support, even now that I have left the University of Sheffield, and I am particularly grateful to her for undertaking so efficiently the laborious task of compiling the List of Works Cited. Last of all, my family remain the foundation on which all is built. My thanks and love to Betty, to David, Katie, Joe and Ella, and to Stephen, Becky, Sophie, Olivia and now Henry—the latest wonderful addition to the family roster.

Ian Kershaw

Manchester, November 2010

Preface

As disastrous defeat loomed in early 1945, Germans were sometimes heard to say they would prefer ‘an end with horror, to a horror without end’. An ‘end with horror’ was certainly what they experienced, in ways and dimensions unprecedented in history. The end brought destruction and human loss on an immense scale. Much of this could have been avoided had Germany been prepared to bow to Allied terms. The refusal to contemplate capitulation before May 1945 was, therefore, for the Reich and the Nazi regime not just destructive, but also self-destructive.

A country defeated in war almost always at some point seeks terms. Self-destruction by continuing to fight on to the last, down to almost total devastation and complete enemy occupation, is extremely rare. Yet that is what the Germans did in 1945. Why? It is tempting to give a simple answer: their leader, Hitler, persistently refused to entertain any thought of surrender, so there was no option but to fight on. But this simply poses other questions. Why were Hitler’s self-destructive orders still obeyed? What mechanisms of rule enabled him to determine Germany’s fate when it was obvious to all with eyes to see that the war was lost and the country was being utterly laid waste? How far were Germans prepared to support Hitler to the end, even though they knew he was driving the country to destruction? Were they in fact still giving him their willing backing? Or were they merely terrorized into doing so? How and why did the armed forces continue fighting and the government machine keep on functioning to the end? What alternatives did Germans, civilians and soldiers, have in the last phase of the war? These and other questions soon arise, then, from what seems at first to be a straightforward query inviting a simple answer. They can only be tackled by examining structures of rule and mentalities as the catastrophe inexorably engulfed Germany in 1944–5. That is what this book seeks to do.