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Ian Kershaw - The End

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Название:
The End
Автор:
Ian Kershaw
Издательство:
Penguin Press
Жанр:
nonf_military / История / на английском языке
Год:
2011
Город:
New York
ISBN:
978-1-59420-314-5
Рейтинг книги:
3 / 5. Голосов: 1
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The End: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The End»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II. Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did. The Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied. Even in the near-apocalyptic final months, when the war was plainly lost, the Nazis refused to sue for peace. Historically, this is extremely rare.
Drawing on original testimony from ordinary Germans and arch-Nazis alike, award-winning historian Ian Kershaw explores this fascinating question in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the German capitulation in May 1945. Hitler, desperate to avoid a repeat of the “disgraceful” German surrender in 1918, was of course critical to the Third Reich’s fanatical determination, but his power was sustained only because those below him were unable, or unwilling, to challenge it. Even as the military situation grew increasingly hopeless, Wehrmacht generals fought on, their orders largely obeyed, and the regime continued its ruthless persecution of Jews, prisoners, and foreign workers. Beneath the hail of allied bombing, German society maintained some semblance of normalcy in the very last months of the war. The Berlin Philharmonic even performed on April 12, 1945, less than three weeks before Hitler’s suicide.
As Kershaw shows, the structure of Hitler’s “charismatic rule” created a powerful negative bond between him and the Nazi leadership- they had no future without him, and so their fates were inextricably tied. Terror also helped the Third Reich maintain its grip on power as the regime began to wage war not only on its ideologically defined enemies but also on the German people themselves. Yet even as each month brought fresh horrors for civilians, popular support for the regime remained linked to a patriotic support of Germany and a terrible fear of the enemy closing in.
Based on prodigious new research, Kershaw’s
is a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.

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31. e.g. BAB, NS6/353, fo. 15, PK Rundschreiben 43/45, 30.1.45; fo. 49, PK Rundschreiben 86/45, 17.2.45; fo. 106, Anordnung 23/45, 21.1.45.

32. BAB, NS6/354, fo. 134, PK Anordnung 48/45g, 1.2.45.

33. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 121–2, PK Anordnung 98/45, 23.2.45.

34. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 65–66 v, PK Rundschreiben 113/45, ‘25. Jahrestag der Verkündung des Parteiprogramms’, 24.2.45.

35. BAB, NS6/353, fos. 157–8, PK Bekanntgabe 28/45, 26.1.45 and Anlage.

36. One of these, Feldjägerkommando II, based behind the lines of Army Group Centre, reported picking up 136,000 soldiers in February, leading to almost 200 facing trial and 46 death sentences. It regarded the ratio of those arrested to the number of troops fighting as unexceptional, given the military situation.— DRZW , 9/1 (Förster), p. 638.

37. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen 1942–1945 , pb. edn., Munich, 1981, p. 228 (25.1.45).

38. IfZ, Fa-91/5, fo. 1239, Aufruf Himmlers, 31.1.45; BAB, R55/610, fos. 161ff., RPÄ Danzig to State Secretary Dr Naumann, Propaganda Ministry, 31.1.45, attaching Himmler’s proclamation.

39. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 60–61 v, PK Rundschreiben 59/45g, ‘Erfassung von versprengten Wehrmachtangehörigen’, 6.2.45, and attached Anlage reproducing OKW order of 2.2.45. A month later, on 5 March, Field-Marshal Keitel passed on Hitler’s order that all financial support for the families of prisoners entering captivity without being wounded or having demonstrably fought to the last was to be halted.—Printed in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches , Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 163.

40. Andreas Kunz, ‘Die Wehrmacht in der Agonie der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944/45: Eine Gedankenskizze’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland , Munich, 2002, p. 103 n. 26.

41. BAB, NS19/3705, fos. 1–5, Bormann to Himmler, ‘Vorbereitungen für die bevorstehende Feindoffensive im Westen’, and attached Rundschreiben to the western Gauleiter, 8.2.45.

42. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 135–6, PK Anordnung 67/45g, 13.2.45.

43. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 81–4, PK Rundschreiben 92/45g, Rs., 20.2.45.

44. StAM, NSDAP 35, Gauleitung München-Oberbayern, Rundschreiben Nr. 5, 22.2.45.

45. BAB, NS19/2721, fo. 4–4 v, Oberbefehlshaber der Heeresgruppe Weichsel, 12.2.45.

46. TBJG , II/15, p. 459 (9.3.45). Bodies of uniformed German soldiers hanging from a bridge across the Oder near Frankurt in mid-February were said to have led to thousands of ‘stragglers’ reporting for further frontline service.—Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende , vol. 2, Buenos Aires, 1950, p. 246 (16.2.45).

47. BAB, NS6/756, fos. 2–6, Bormann, ‘Verstärkung der kämpfenden Truppe’, 28.2.45.

48. Norbert Haase, ‘Justizterror in der Wehrmacht’, in Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum and Jörg Zedler (eds.), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges , Göttingen, 2006, pp. 84–5, reckons that half a million German soldiers might have been sentenced by military courts over the duration of the war, implying, therefore, that the numbers down to the end of 1944 doubled in the last four months. There were eighteen times as many death sentences as in the period from June 1941 to November 1944. Fritz Wullner, NS-Militärjustiz und das Elend der Geschichtsschreibung , Baden-Baden, 1991, p. 461, estimates a figure of around 300,000 deserters down to the end of 1944. For the organization of the terror apparatus within the Wehrmacht, including the extended use of the Geheime Feldpolizei , see John Zimmermann, Pflicht zum Untergang: Die deutsche Kriegführung im Westen des Reiches 1944/45 , Paderborn, 2009, pp. 139–65.

49. Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Fluchten aus dem Konsens zum Durchhalten: Ergebnisse, Probleme und Perspektiven der Erforschung soldatischer Verweigerungsformen in der Wehrmacht 1939–1945’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität , Munich, 1999, pp. 594–6, 599; Otto Hennicke, ‘Auszüge aus der Wehrmachtkriminalstatistik’, Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte , 5 (1966), pp. 442–50; Manfred Messerschmidt and Fritz Wullner, Die Wehrmachtjustiz , Baden-Baden, 1987, p. 91; Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace , London, 2009, p. 63. The figure of 35,000 underestimates the scale of desertion. One estimate places the figure at more than 100,000.—Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Deserteure im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Wolfram Wette (ed.), Deserteure der Wehrmacht , Essen, 1995, p. 62. A further 35,000 were sentenced for other contraventions of military law (Ziemann, p. 604). On the procedures for carrying out the death penalty in the Wehrmacht, see Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945 , Paderborn, 2005, pp. 393–400.

50. Messerschmidt, ‘Deserteure im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, p. 61; Haase, p. 85 and p. 100 n. 26; DRZW , 9/1 (Echternkamp), p. 50. While the western liberal democracies executed few soldiers, Germany was not alone among authoritarian regimes in its draconian punishment. Japan executed 22,253 soldiers; estimates (though detailed research remains to be carried out) suggest that as many as 150,000 may have been executed in the Soviet Union.—Ulrich Baumann and Markus Koch (eds.), ‘Was damals Recht war…’: Soldaten und Zivilisten vor Gerichten der Wehrmacht , Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008, p. 184.

51. e.g. BAB, R55/620, fo. 132, SD report to State Secretary Dr Naumann, Propaganda Ministry, ‘Stimmung und Haltung der Arbeiterschaft’ (reported opinion among workers in Mecklenburg), 1.3.45.

52. BA/MA, N60/17, NL Schörner, letter from Schörner to Oberst i.G. Thilo von Trotha, Generalstab des Heeres, Chef Operations-Abt., 22.2.45. Partially quoted also in Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945 , Munich, 2007, p. 113.

53. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 163–165 v, PK Bekanntgabe 149/45g, 19.3.45, attaching a copy of Schörner’s four-page message dated 27.2.45.

54. BA/MA, N712/15, NL Pollex, Colonel Curt Pollex, Auszüge aus Briefen, fo. 35, 18.2.45.

55. BAB, R55/610, fos. 156–9, correspondence related to propaganda in the Ruhr, 19.12.44–12.1.45.

56. Von Oven, Finale Furioso , p. 584 (22.2.45).

57. See Bormann’s attempt to check the spread of rumour, in BAB, NS6/353, fos. 16–17, ‘Bekämpfung beunruhigender Gerüchte über die Frontlage’, 1.2.45.

58. IfZ, Fa 91/2, fos. 278–81, ‘Vorlage: Sondereinsatz Politischer Leiter an Brennpunkten der Ost- und Westfront’, 17.2.45.

59. BAB, R55/608, fos. 35–6, Chef des Propagandastabes, Mundpropagandaanweisung, betr. Kriegslage, 17.2.45.

60. BHStA, Reichsstatthalter Epp 681/1–8, Reich Minister of the Interior to Reich Defence Commissars, etc., 28.2.45.

61. BA/MA, RH19/IV/228, fo. 10, Hinweis für die NS-Führung der Truppe, 4.2.45.

62. DZW , 6, p. 627, citing a letter to Bormann of Joachim Albrecht Eggeling, Gauleiter of Halle-Merseburg, 10.2.45.

63. BAB, NS6/137, fos. 40–41, Flugblatt (im Entwurf): ‘An die Verteidiger von Berlin’, 24.2.45.

64. Quoted in Steinert, p. 559.

65. TBJG , II/15, p. 352 (10.2.45).

66. BAB, NS6/354, fos. 137–138 v, PK Anordnung 79/45g, Standgerichte, 15.2.45, and ‘Verordnung über die Errichtung von Standgerichten vom 15. February 1945’, Reichsgesetzblatt , Teil 1, Nr. 6, 20.2.45, p. 30; printed in Müller and Ueberschär, pp. 161–2.

67. BAB, NS19/3705, fo. 4, Vorbereitungen auf Feindoffensive im Westen, Fernschreiben from Bormann to the western Gauleiter, undated appendix to his letter to Himmler, 8.2.45.