Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea (42 page)

       
1. We must cling to this National Socialist state and our Führer with fanatical support and love. It is an absurdity in life not to do things with one’s whole soul, with one’s whole heart. It is obvious that, if there stands behind a person’s deeds, behind a person’s actions his complete desire, his utter conviction, then he will achieve more than if he acted half-heartedly. . . . One cannot swear an oath and then tolerate a modification in silence. Where this ultimately leads to, we experienced on the 20th of July. Ultimately to shameless treason. I am of the view that it is better, greater and more beautiful to go through life with fanatical adherence to one person, than to live indifferently and uncommitted, with a lukewarm heart. And upon whom else shall we then in this life wait, to whom else do we want to attach ourselves as soldiers with our entire soul, if not to this man who, favored by providence, joins together in unique greatness the fullness of humanity of a warm heart with tremendous skill, immense knowledge and an iron will: he who has written on his banner all that is sacred to every soldier, he who has returned to the German people their soul. Rightly the soldier stood on the side of the opposition in Marxist times, when the soldier’s honor was dragged through the mud and only he mattered who was rich or who attached himself to material things; when by the Jew everything that was honorable, willing and self-sacrificing was mocked, and every heroic thought was ridiculed as being stupid. For all these reasons it is our soldierly duty to be devoted with all our souls to the Führer. It is splendid when one knows that there is a person for whom one would let himself be hacked to pieces.

       
2. As soldiers we must know that our profession, our mission is to fight. . . .

I have the clear view that militarily we still have many possibilities in this war. I am of the opinion that in the end we will preserve Germany and our
people in this war, that we then will be the victors in Europe, and that it will be inevitable that Europe will rally around us as the strongest and most capable people. That will be the certain result of this war and the inevitable political development. . . .

              
The urgency of the times is so great and they are hard and serious enough that it is high time that each of us profess a yet more fanatical attitude. With the unique leadership we have in our country, we shall be showing the others that it is not so simple to knock us to the ground. Only this recognition alone will cause the host of our enemies’ political antagonisms to grow, since the aim to make Germany small is all that unites them and permits presently to retire into the background their manifold, diverse, political antagonisms. If the Allies realize, however, that their goal to force us to our knees is not attainable, or only after long and bloody additional fighting, then for them the question of the practicality of continuing the war will appear all the larger. . . . Our tough standing is therefore the dire necessity for our self-preservation, our tough standing is militarily the only correct thing, our hard standing is however, also politically that which alone makes possible to us the active exploitation of the change in the political world arena.
⁹⁴

Dönitz in this way reiterated the main elements of the
Durchhalt
strategy to his audience and advocated the absolute necessity of holding out long enough for Hitler to turn defeat into victory. Dönitz was not alone in his belief that Hitler would confound his enemies and once again emerge victorious. Goebbels had long since seized upon the
Durchhalt
slogan for his propaganda, and he apparently believed it until very near the end.
⁹⁵
In October 1944 Himmler declared that new weapons, especially jet fighters, were on the way and that the decisive thing was to hold on for another year. Jodl and Himmler both mentioned the new submarines in talks designed to raise morale and instill hope.
⁹⁶
Speer also gave several speeches urging his audience to hold out until the new weapons became available, and on several occasions he too referred specifically to the new submarines. He was somewhat more realistic, however, because he cautioned that it would take time before enough new weapons were deployed to be decisive. Nonetheless, Speer believed at least until the end of January 1945 that Hitler could end the war favorably, and so did many German generals.
⁹⁷
In early April 1945 General Reinhardt bitterly noted in his diary, “When, how, comes the salvation in which we still believe? And I am banished as a spectator!”
⁹⁸
Reinhardt had commanded Third Panzer Army during its almost complete annihilation in the summer of 1944 and led Army Group Center/North when the Soviets smashed his forces on their drive from the Vistula to the Oder. If he still believed in victory, anyone could have.

Goebbels attempted to strengthen soldiers’ will to fight by instilling confidence in Hitler and claiming that Germany’s enemies planned to destroy
the Reich and its inhabitants. Death would be preferable to living under the conditions imposed by the enemy. The navy’s die-hard propaganda also encouraged German soldiers to fight on, in the belief that their sacrifices would be rewarded by decisive victories at sea.
⁹⁹
This propaganda was effective with large segments of the German population. Until very near the end of the war many people, especially Germany’s youth and young soldiers, still had faith in Hitler, and many believed that he had withheld powerful weapons that he would unleash at the last moment.
¹⁰⁰
Speer related an account of having a flat tire in front of a miner’s house in the Ruhr in mid-March 1945. He had not been recognized in the darkness, and as he spoke with the local inhabitants he had been astonished at the common people’s faith that the enemy would be driven from Germany.
¹⁰¹
High-ranking Nazis and common laborers alike believed that Hitler would prevail, that the
Durchhalt
strategy would succeed. Moreover, Dönitz hardened Hitler’s conviction to hold out with assertions that the revived U-boat war would force Britain to its knees. He bears some of the responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians killed in the last months of the war.

The
Durchhalt
strategy was not an admission of defeat but a reflection of Hitler’s unwavering will for victory. He had so thoroughly convinced himself that Germany had lost World War I solely because it had given up too quickly that he believed he had only to persevere to achieve victory this time around. Hitler repeatedly claimed that the inherent contradictions of the coalition opposing him were too great for it to hold together indefinitely.
¹⁰²
He also increasingly recalled Frederick the Great’s last-minute salvation in the Seven Years’ War.
¹⁰³
In mid-April 1945 he informed Hilpert, Army Group Courland’s commander, that he “would have to hold out until the turn that has occurred in every war has taken place.”
¹⁰⁴
Obviously Hitler did not wish to consider the possibility that the turn had already occurred. Nazi Germany’s last foreign minister, Schwerin von Krosigk, radioed Tokyo on 7 May 1945 that until the last moment Hitler had believed a military victory in the decisive Battle of Berlin could turn of the tide of the war.
¹⁰⁵

As Germany’s defeat drew nearer, Hitler increasingly sought out the company of his old Party comrades from the
Kampfzeit,
the time of struggle before he had gained power.
¹⁰⁶
Goebbels also harkened back to the
Kampfzeit
for inspiration, sensing that he must conduct his propaganda campaign as he had in those dark days.
¹⁰⁷
Both Hitler and Goebbels recalled earlier times when victory had seemed impossible, yet Hitler had refused to give in and had ultimately triumphed. Hitler also repeatedly compared his situation in Berlin to that of Stalin in the winter of 1941 at Moscow. Stalin had been in
an even worse situation, and he had recovered.
¹⁰⁸
Hitler’s insistence on continuing the war arose not so much because he feared defeat but mainly because he could not conceive of defeat. As Eberhard Jäckel has concisely demonstrated, Hitler was one of the few people in history to construct a complete worldview, a new way of looking at the world and explaining human history. If his ideology was correct, the supposedly racially superior Germans simply
had
to defeat the supposedly subhuman Russians. Jodl summed up this concept well in a speech in November 1943: “We will win, because we must win—because otherwise world history will have lost its meaning.”
¹⁰⁹

Although people today understandably shake their heads and wonder how Hitler possibly could have thought in 1944 and 1945 that he still could win the war, this was not so irrational. The
irreversible
turn of the tide against Germany did not occur until the summer of 1944. This was quite late in the war, and although the initiative certainly passed to the Allies between November 1942 and May 1943, it was not necessarily an irreversible shift. The advantage could have shifted yet again—had changes within Nazi Germany been made—but developments from June to mid-October 1944 virtually ensured that this would not occur.

In those months Germany experienced one military and diplomatic disaster after another. The Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded and German troops were driven from virtually all of France, Rome fell, the Eastern Front collapsed, and Germany lost Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, and Hungary as allies. Over one-third of Germany’s total casualties up to October 1944 came in the period from June through September, a number estimated at between one and one and a half million troops killed, wounded, or missing.
¹¹⁰
In other words, in those four months the Germans suffered one casualty for every two sustained in the previous fifty-seven months of the war. Along with these human casualties came enormous losses in weapons and materiél.

Hitler, however, believed that he still had a chance to reverse the situation. Nineteen forty-four was the year of the “armaments miracle,” as Speer managed to increase production through August–September of that year.
¹¹¹
Hitler had a whole array of new technologically advanced weapons already coming off the production lines—jet aircraft, unmanned rockets, and new models of submarines. Hitler recognized that technological developments were decisive in warfare, although he overestimated the impact a small number of advanced weapons could have. To his closest associates Hitler repeatedly emphasized the importance of technology in general, calling frequently for realization of technical developments for the U-boat war. Throughout the final year of the war Hitler often spoke of the decisive results he expected from the electro-submarines and jet aircraft.
¹¹²

In addition to holding out for these new miracle weapons, in the last months of the conflict Hitler and his trusted advisers instituted a variety of measures in a desperate effort to turn the tide of the war. Himmler assumed command of the Replacement Army following the failed assassination attempt of 20 July. In the late summer and fall of 1944 Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler adopted total-war policies designed to mobilize German resources more effectively. Between August and December 1944 this effort released nearly one million men from the home front. Rather than send these troops to replenish existing divisions, Hitler used many to set up new
Volksgrenadier
(people’s grenadier) divisions. Hitler intended these new divisions to help halt enemy advances and conduct major offensives planned for the summer of 1945.
¹¹³
The
Volkssturm,
founded at the end of September 1944 and placed safely under Nazi Party control rather than under the army, would also help stabilize the front and buy time. Hitler believed that this combination of steps would be decisive in permitting Germany to hold on either until the new weapons turned the tide or the enemy coalition fell apart. Although neither the
Volksgrenadier
divisions nor the
Volkssturm
proved particularly effective, their creation reflected Hitler’s belief that determination and an infusion of National Socialist ideology could help turn things around.
¹¹⁴
With ideologically inspired soldiers fanatically defending every inch of the homeland, enemy casualties would reach politically unacceptable levels, and America and Britain would come to terms. Germany would be saved as it had under Frederick the Great. What Hitler called for, then, was not entirely unprecedented. Seen from Hitler’s perspective the
Durchhalt
strategy probably offered his best chance to win the war and was not as delusional as it seems at first glance.

A
N ANALYSIS OF GERMAN STRATEGY
on land and at sea in the final eighteen months of World War II brings to light the decisive importance of the Baltic theater. When the Soviets began to force Army Group North back from Leningrad in January 1944, Hitler repeatedly insisted upon the defense of coastal sectors, first along the Gulf of Finland and then on the Baltic. By forbidding a retreat from the Narva area he permitted the Soviets temporarily to isolate the army group in Estonia and eastern Latvia in the summer of 1944. Hitler’s refusal to withdraw Schörner’s forces from the Riga area then enabled the Russians again to sever the army group’s land contact with the Reich, this time for good, through their attack to the coast near Memel at the beginning of October. This process of isolation was later repeated with Army Group Center/North and Army Group Vistula in East and West Prussia. Of all the bridgeheads German troops defended along the Baltic in the final seven months of the war, only those in Courland, on the Hela Peninsula, and at the mouth of Vistula River held out until Germany’s surrender. Over one million German soldiers fought in the Baltic bridgeheads, and most of these troops therefore could not participate in the defense of areas previously considered to be the most decisive to Nazi Germany’s survival, namely the Ruhr and Silesian industrial areas, and the Reich capital, Berlin.