Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich (review)

Stephen Fritz's book explores how the closing chapter of World War II in Middle Franconia shaped attitudes among Germans, Displaced Persons (DPs), and American soldiers there during the immediate postwar months. Fritz's general conclusion is that the unnecessary resistance, destruction, and terror fomented by the collapsing Third Reich in spring 1945 worked to discredit Nazism among Franconians. He also asserts that lawlessness among Displaced Persons (primarily former slave laborers and concentration camp inmates) after VE-Day generated a commonality of interest between the occupying Americans and German inhabitants that smoothed the path towards future cooperation.

Fritz's conclusions are interesting, useful, and probably sound; but they are not always conclusively proven. His section on combat operations is well researched and presents a valuable discussion of the series of small but often very violent engagements between the advancing Americans and the remnants of the German Wehrmacht. Certainly, he shows that there was much senseless death and destruction, but the German motivations that he claims to illuminate remain murky. While Fritz accurately portrays some German troops as fighting out of habit, he also claims they fought to protect the Alpine Redoubt—which he himself debunks as a creation of Allied intelligence officers rather than a real German strategy. Also, aside from noting the natural desire to survive the war with minimal damage, German civilian attitudes are not deeply investigated. Thus his assertion that the war's closing phase discredited Nazism in the minds of average Franconians remains an intriguing, but unproven, hypothesis.

Fritz's argument that Nazi terror directed against Germans also contributed to discrediting the NSDAP is likewise probably correct but not clearly proven. Certainly, Fritz documents acts of Nazi terror against Germans; but using force to intimidate those favoring surrender was not the monopoly of the Party or SS. Examples from nearby Aschaffenburg and elsewhere corroborate that Wehrmacht officers could be just as brutal. Moreover, Fritz does not address whether support for Nazism remained stronger in towns that avoided combat and Nazi coercion nor does he investigate other factors (e.g., prior war weariness) that might explain why Franconians abandoned the NSDAP.

Likewise, Fritz's discussion of the postwar era is full of interesting information, but again his conclusions are more plausible than proven. He extensively addresses how fraternization sparked genuine tension between Germans—particularly men—and the American occupiers. Yet, he concludes that Germans and Americans quickly set this aside and moved to cooperate with one another as DP unruliness increased. But because Fritz does not explore the full spectrum of issues that might have led to German-American cooperation, this issue is not fully clarified.

There are other problems. Fritz never explains why he selected Middle Franconia nor demonstrates whether events and experiences here were representative or unique. Nor is his geographic focus consistent. The fighting for Nuremberg (the biggest single battle in this area and where the acting Gauleiter Karl Holz actually died in combat) is barely mentioned, yet postwar events in the city appear prominently. The author did considerable archival research, yet did not consult some readily available and relevant microfilmed material (e.g., T-580 Party Chancellery, T-81 NSDAP, and T-84 Miscellaneous Records collections). Fritz's efforts to incorporate the Nibelungenlied, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, and chaos theory were, in this reviewer's opinion, more distracting than illuminating. There is interesting material on Jewish revenge movements, yet how these issues fit into the Franconians' experience is not well explained.

The overall result of all this is that Endkampf has very interesting components, but it suffers from a lack of conceptual focus and analytical depth. As such it will be a useful source for specific information on the era and region and it will hopefully inspire others to test and fully investigate the book's intriguing hypotheses. Unfortunately, however, like the German forces fighting in Franconia in...