Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich

Chapter 1

WAITING FOR THE END 1

1 WAITING FOR THE END With German forces reeling back to the Reich in disarray following the hammer blows of the Normandy and Southern France campaigns , the end of the war in Europe seemed tantalizingly near in autumn 1944. Readers of the New York Times thus might be forgiven if, on November 12, they read with skepticism two items that suggested otherwise . In an article entitled “The Nazis Still Hope for a Miracle,” George Axelsson, the paper’s correspondent in Stockholm, noted that the Nazi leadership understood they could no longer win the war. While Axelsson had hinted in an earlier article that the Nazis might conduct a guerrilla war from the Bavarian Alps, he now stressed their determination to prolong the fighting in order to inflict maximum casualties on their enemies, as well as in the hope of splitting the “unnatural” Allied coalition. Despite the looming chaos and massive destruction visited on Germany, it could thus be expected that the Germans would continue to fight doggedly , trusting in yet another of Hitler’s miracles to save them. The other piece, “Hitler’s Hideaway” by London correspondent Harry Vosser, seemedto hint at what that miracle might be.Emphasizing that the Eagle’s Nest, the Führer’s retreat near Berchtesgaden, lay in a virtually impregnable area, Vosser underscored the probability of protracted guerrilla resistance by elite Schutzstaffel (SS) fanatics. Not only had the area been ENDKAMPF 2 cleared of civilian inhabitants, he claimed, but an elaborate series of tunnels and storage areas for food, water, arms, and ammunition had been carved out within the mountains. With a nicely apocalyptic touch, Vosser also alleged that the Berchtesgaden district, some fifteen miles in depth and twenty-one in length, had been wired in such a way that the push of a single button would suffice to blow up the entire area.1 Fantastic stuff, and likely not taken terribly seriously either by the casual reader or by any American official who happened to read the articles . Not, that is, until after the German counterattack in the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, provided a shocking demonstration of their continued ability to spring nasty surprises.Yet another in a distressingly long line of intelligence oversights—stretching back through the failureto note the defensivepotential of the hedgerow country in Normandy to the blunder at Kasserine Pass during the North African campaign—this latest fiasco put the Allied intelligence community on full alert. By its very nature an inexact science, intelligence assessment is a bit like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together without seeing the original picture. Forced to process a mixture of scattered and imperfect information,some rumor,some planted by the enemy, some accurate, analysts try to take the bits and pieces and create a credible assessment based on an appraisal of enemy intentions and capabilities. Stung by the Ardennes embarrassment and fearful that they had overlooked key evidence, American and British intelligence officials in early 1945 began reexamining information, focusing on three key areas: secret weapons, guerrilla activity, and prolonged resistance in an Alpenfestung (Alpine Fortress, or national redoubt).2 Of the three fears, the latter seemed most likely and threatening. Not only did the Alpine area of southern Germany, western Austria, and northern Italy, with its massive mountain ranges, narrow valleys, and winding roads, offer an ideal defensive terrain, but German forces in Italy had already demonstrated their skill at such fighting. Furthermore, the commander of the German forces in Italy that had so stymied and frustrated theAllies,Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,had just been appointed commander of all German troops in the south. In addition, Allied advantages such as superior air power and ground mobility would to a considerable extent be neutralized by the poor weather and cramped mountainous terrain. Moreover, underground factories in southern Germany were known to be producing the latest miracle weapon, jet airplanes , which might operate from airfields hidden in the mountains. WAITING FOR THE END 3 Finally, the human factor could not be ignored, especially since Hitler had already issued any number of “stand and die” orders. Headlines in the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party newspaper, seemed to confirm such a determination to fight to the last, repeatedly proclaiming, “We will never capitulate,” and “Relentless people’s war against all oppressors .” Indeed, to Churchill and others, the sustained and fanatical German resistance around Budapest and Lake...