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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
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3 / 5. Голосов: 1
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The End: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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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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166. KTB/SKL , part A, vol. 68, p. 416A, Beitrag zum Kriegstagebuch Skl. am 2. Mai 1945; Heereslage vom 1.5.45; Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende: Legenden und Dokumente , Munich, 1999, pp. 282–3.

CHAPTER 9. LIQUIDATION

1. Kathrin Orth, ‘Kampfmoral und Einsatzbereitschaft in der Kriegsmarine 1945’, in Jörg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland , Munich, 2002, p. 141.

2. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 2.5.45.

3. BA/MA, NL Schörner, N60/18, unfoliated, Tagesbefehl, 3.5.45.

4. Cited in Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace , London, 2009, p. 141.

5. BA/MA, N245/3, fo. 88, NL Reinhardt, Kalenderblätter for 1.5.45. The news of Hitler’s death also came as no surprise to Colonel-General Lothar Renduli´c when he heard it on 1 May in Austria. Discipline among his troops was unaffected, though Hitler’s death was seen to improve the prospects of a political way out through cooperation with the west.—Lothar Rendulic´, Gekämpft, Gesiegt, Geschlagen , Wels, 1952, p. 378.

6. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.

7. Sönke Neitzel, Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942–1945 , Berlin, 2005, pp. 210–12 (Eng. language edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45 , Barnsley, 2007, pp. 156–8).

8. Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen , Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1970, p. 582.

9. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Eveline B., 6.5.45. Erich Kästner, Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch , Berlin, 1961, p. 116 (2.5.45), remarked that people were greeting each other jokingly with ‘Heil Dönitz’. The accordion-player had changed, he commented, but the tune was the same.

10. Cited Bessel, p. 141.

11. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch , Munich, 1962, pp. 188–9 (2.5.45).

12. Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst—Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front , Paderborn, 2006, p. 252, letter from Gerda J., Hamburg/Altona, 7.7.45. This was only an inspired guess at what had happened. Precise details of Hitler’s suicide were not known at this time beyond the small circle of those directly involved in the last drama in the bunker.

13. Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945 , pb. edn., Munich, 2008, p. 143 (5.5.45).

14. Die Niederlage 1945: Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht , ed. Percy Ernst Schramm, Munich, 1962, p. 419.

15. Herbert Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches”’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches—Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Rückschau , Munich and Zurich, 1995, p. 11.

16. Herbert Kraus, ‘Großadmiral Karl Dönitz’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Hitlers militärische Elite , vol. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende , Darmstadt, 1998, p. 51.

17. Die Niederlage 1945 , p. 419.

18. DRZW , 10/1 (Rahn), p. 61.

19. Jürgen Förster, ‘Die Wehrmacht und das Ende des “Dritten Reichs”’, in Arnd Bauerkämper, Christoph Kleßmann and Hans Misselwitz (eds.), Der 8. Mai 1945 als historische Zäsur: Strukturen, Erfahrung, Deutungen , Potsdam, 1995, p. 57.

20. Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches”’, pp. 3–4, 8–11.

21. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Deutsche Menschen vor der Vernichtung durch den Bolschewismus zu retten”: Das Programm der Regierung Dönitz und der Beginn einer Legendenbildung’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 16.

22. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.

23. Quoted in DRZW , 10/1 (Rahn), p. 55; see also, for Dönitz’s unquestioning loyalty to Hitler and his fanatical exhortations to fight on, pp. 57–60, 67.

24. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62, 7.12.62.

25. KTB/SKL , part A, vol. 68, pp. 333–4-A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45. Dönitz had already a week earlier, at the Soviet breakthrough on the Oder front, provided naval forces for the fight on land.—Schwendemann, pp. 14–15.

26. BA/MA, RM7/851, Seekriegsleitung, fo. 169, Hitler to Dönitz, 29.4.45; Schwendemann, p. 15.

27. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945 , ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2237.

28. Major-General Dethleffsen recalled shortly after the war his own lack of surprise since he had heard hints earlier in April from the Chief of the General Staff, Hans Krebs, that Dönitz was being viewed by Hitler as his successor. Others, however, according to Dethleffsen, were more taken by surprise at the appointment.—BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.

29. IWM, FO645/155, interrogation of Karl Dönitz, 12.9.45, pp. 19–20.

30. Karl Dönitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days , Da Capo edn., New York, 1997, p. 442.

31. See Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstörung des Deutschen Reiches , Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 101 and Kraus, ‘Karl Dönitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches”’, pp. 9, 11. It has, however, been suggested—if without supporting evidence—that Dönitz’s presumption that Hitler wanted him to pave the way for a capitulation might have been gleaned before the Grand-Admiral left for Plön, or from conversations with Himmler.—Jörg Hillmann, ‘Die “Reichsregierung” in Flensburg’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 41. Hitler’s desperate comment, during his temporary breakdown on 22 April, that there was no more fighting to be done—a view he swiftly revised—and that should it come to negotiations Göring would be better than he was, can scarcely be regarded as evidence for a mandate to come to terms with the enemy at his death. See Reimer Hansen, Das Ende des Dritten Reiches: Die deutsche Kapitulation 1945 , Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 48–50; Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Regierung Dönitz: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches , 5th edn., Leoni am Starnberger See, 1981, p. 46; Marlis Steinert, Die 23 Tage der Regierung Dönitz , Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1967, p. 45.

32. DRZW , 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 469–70; DRZW , 9/1 (Förster), p. 626; Schwendemann, p. 15.

33. See Hitler’s Testament: Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen , p. 2237 (not, however, known to Dönitz at the time).

34. Schwendemann, pp. 27–8.

35. IWM, FO645/158, interrogation of Wilhelm Keitel, 10.10.45, p. 27.

36. IfZ, ZS 1810, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, Bd. II, fo. 55, interview for the Observer , 18.11.74.

37. One woman in Berlin wrote as late as 21 May that ‘there is still no certain news about Adolf’.— Anonyma , p. 221.

38. See Christian Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, Journal of Contemporary History , 41 (2006), pp. 153–73, and Goeschel’s monograph, Suicide in Nazi Germany , Oxford, 2009, ch. 5, for extensive analysis of the phenomenon. See also Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War , London, 2008, pp. 728–33.

39. Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany , pp. 153–4.

40. Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1945: Die letzten Aufzeichnungen , Hamburg, 1977, pp. 549, 556.

41. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen , p. 2237.

42. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 155.

43. MadR , 17, p. 6737.

44. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 158; Jacob Kronika, Der Untergang Berlins , Flensburg, 1946, p. 41 (6.3.45): ‘Alle Berliner wissen, daß die Russen in Kürze in Berlin eindringen werden—und nun sehen sie keine andere Möglichkeit, als sich Zyankali zu verschaffen.’