The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  The correspondent William L. Shirer: Miller, Ike the Soldier, 761 (“mystery writers”); memo, “Study of the German National Redoubt,” March 25, 1945, HQ, Seventh Army, G-2, NARA RG 226, M 1642, R-52, frames 253–59 (“Vast stores” and “Messerschmitt” and “imbued with the Nazi spirit”); Ryan, The Last Battle, 213 (long freight trains); AAR, The Seventh United States Army in France and Germany, vol. 3, 808–10; Minott, The Fortress That Never Was, 54 (hydro-powered).

  The truth was less flamboyant: Hinsley, 613; Hans [sic] Hofer, Lower Alps gauleiter, n.d., FMS #B-458, ETHINT, vol. 24, MHI, 9–11, 23 (wall map); Georg Ritter von Hengl, Apr. 25, 1946, FMS #B-459, 3–11, and #B-461, n.d., 1–3, ETHINT, vol. 24, MHI (not until spring); Kesselring, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, 277 (“make-believe”).

  Werewolf movement: Timothy Naftali, “Creating the Myth of the Alpenfestung,” in Bischof and Pelinka, eds., Austrian Memory & National Identity, 203–46; Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, 175 (“Werewolf is watching”); Whiting, The Home Front: Germany, 179–80 (mayor of Aachen); Brown, The Last Hero, 738–40 (Basque assassins).

  Yet at SHAEF the myth: press conference, W. B. Smith, Apr. 21, 1945, in “Operations of the Approach to the Rhine and Across the Rhine,” n.d., Sidney H. Negrotto papers, MHI; D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 696–98; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 536 (“We may be fighting”); Crosswell, Beetle, 90 (“possibly 100 to 125”); memo, “Location of Caves in Germany,” SHAEF G-2, Apr. 16, 1945, and memo, “Photographic Cover of National Redoubt,” SHAEF G-2, Apr. 14, 1945, NARA RG 331, E 240B, 6th Army Group, files 452.2 and “National Redoubt,” boxes 3 and 5 (two hundred caves); Jenkins, “The Battle of the National Redoubt,” Military Review (Dec. 1946): 3+ (ordered Devers’s army group); Hinsley, 613 (First Allied Airborne Army); LO, 422.

  “no less than 70 examples”: SHAEF weekly intelligence summary no. 57, Apr. 22, 1945, Robert D. Burhans papers, HIA, box 14; “Strategy of the Campaign in Western Europe, 1944–1945,” USFET General Board study no. 1, n.d., 102 (one hundred divisions); VW, vol. 2, 429–31 (“fanatical resistance”); Georg Ritter von Hengl, Apr. 25, 1946, FMS #B-459, ETHINT, vol. 24, MHI, 11 (“run its course”).

  Shortly after midnight on Friday: Ayer, Before the Colors Fade, 210 (“hot air”); PP, 694 (“a figment”); diary, Apr. 11, 1945, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 3, folder 11 (carbine by his cot); corr, GSP to Beatrice, Apr. 17, 1945, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 13 (“end of this life”); corr, March 16, 1945, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 74, folder 5 (“hot furnace”).

  “War for me”: corr, GSP to Robert Howe Fletcher, Apr. 25, 1945, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 13.

  Glancing at his wristwatch: diary, Third Army chief of staff, Feb. 9, 1945, Hobart Gay papers, MHI, box 2, 866–69. International News Service broke the story at 5:47 P.M. Washington time in a terse flash: “FDR DEAD.”

  Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man who: Goodman, ed., While You Were Gone, 116; Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 627 (transcendent cause); Taylor and Taylor, eds., The War Diaries, 159 (sob like a child); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 716–17 (“altered decisively”); Leahy, I Was There, 346 (“How could a man”).

  His passing came: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 808; Tully, F.D.R. My Boss, 359 (stamp collection); Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 332–35 (signed into law); Bruenn, “Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Annals of Internal Medicine 72, no. 4 (Apr. 1, 1970): 579+; Altman, “For F.D.R. Sleuths, New Focus on an Old Spot,” NYT, Jan. 5, 2010, D1 (blood pressure); Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, 527–33; Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 603, 611–12 (“that was it”); Reilly, Reilly of the White House, 234 (poison). The portrait artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff denied measuring Roosevelt’s nose and later wrote that the president said nothing before he collapsed (Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 115–18; Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center, http://www.fdrheritage.org/shoumatoff.htm).

  J. Austin Dillon: memo, J. Austin Dillon, n.d., Small Collections: FDRL Miscellaneous Documents: Roosevelt, Franklin D.—Health, FDR Lib.

  On Friday, the daily casualty list: MacDonald, The Mighty Endeavor, 484; Seventh Army war diary, Apr. 13, 1945, MHI, 653 (“mourning badges”); Toole, Battle Diary, 132 (“This is a shock”).

  Dragon Country

  To an American pilot: Ryan, The Last Battle, 127 (“very crust”); The Seventh United States Army in France and Germany, vol. 3, 820 (“molten mass”); corr, Waldo Heinrichs, Jr., May 8, 1945, Heinrichs papers, MHI, box 1 (“running to the rear”).

  This was Dragon Country: Thompson, Men Under Fire, 132–33; LO, 410 (“Sixty-one Roadblocks”), 386 (Hanover’s defenses), 404–5 (“a conglomeration”); The Seventh United States Army in France and Germany, vol. 3, 822 (wooden sticks); Marshall, A Ramble Through My War, 220; Holt, The Deceivers, 662 (geraniums); Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946, 244–47.

  “The shame of German defeat”: Carpenter, No Woman’s World, 261.

  “What right had they”: Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin, 146.

  Alfried Krupp, an industrialist: Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself, 265–70 (said to have wept); Manchester, The Arms of Krupp, 1587–1966, 521, 674–81. Arrested in April, Krupp would be formally charged in August; Manchester writes that he was dry-eyed upon being detained.

  “Brilliant spring sunshine”: Thompson, Men Under Fire, 132–33.

  “old men leaning on sticks”: White, Conquerors’ Road, 17.

  And yet dragons lurked: Murray and Millett, A War to Be Won, 480 (10,677 U.S. soldiers); Lubrich, ed., Travels in the Reich, 1933–1945, 328 (“plague bacteria”); Howarth, ed., Men of War, 205–6; Read and Fisher, The Fall of Berlin, 334; Germany IX, 459 (“If we lose the war”); Friedrich, The Fire, 306 (“Negro brothels”).

  Some Luftwaffe pilots: Rudolf Lusar, “The German Weapons and Secret Weapons of World War II and Their Subsequent Development,” 1956, CMH, 78; Ninth AF, intelligence summary no. 130, Apr. 30, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 116 (political indoctrination); “History of U.S. Strategic Air Force Europe vs. German Air Force,” Sept. 1945, NARA RG 457, E 9002, NSA, SRH-013, 342 (“staking your lives”); Muller, “Losing Air Superiority: A Case Study from the Second World War,” Air & Space Power Journal (winter 2003): 55+ (“total commitment missions”); Seventh Army, G-2 bulletin no. 63, May 22, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO G-3, Col. C. Hilldebrand, VI Corps, OR, box 1458 (several young boys); Lubrich, ed., Travels in the Reich, 1933–1945, 320 (“heartbreaking sight”).

  “women and children lined the rooftops”: Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 530; LO, 410.

  In Heilbronn, on the Neckar: LO, 417–18; “Attack on Heilbronn,” 100th ID, July 1945, Seventh Army narratives, MHI, 4, 33; Turner and Jackson, Destination Berchtesgaden, 160–61; Yeide and Stout, First to the Rhine, 357–59; Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946, 247 (“noticeable stench”).

  “Why don’t the silly bastards”: Arthur, Forgotten Voices of World War II, 414; Horst Boog, “Invasion to Surrender: The Defense of Germany,” in Brower, ed., World War II in Europe: The Final Year, 131.

  “Mother, you asked me”: “Jack’s Letters,” March 22, March 24, and April 3, 1945, a.p., courtesy of Rick Perry.

  “Half the nationalities of Europe”: Moorehead, Eclipse, 254–55; Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 64 (“moving frieze”); “Civil Affairs and Military Government Organizations and Operations,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, USFET General Board study no. 32, 97-USF5-0.3.0 (4.2 million); Abraham J. Peck, “A Continent in Chaos,” in Liberation 1945, 101 (eleven million unmoored).

  Some were on forced marches: diary, Darrell William Coates, Apr. 1945, HIA; http://www.b24.net/pow/stalag17.htm.

  “Everyone is yelling”: Vining, ed., American Diaries of World War II, 417–18.

  “Smaller wounds were covered”: Wandrey, Bedpan Commando, 181–82; Moorehead, Eclipse, 256 (“jeep looks like”); “After WWII, Economist Devoted Life,” obit, WP, Ju
ly 8, 2009, B4 (cheered wildly).

  Of the shambling millions: “Activities and Organization of COMZ,” June 11, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #89, 11; Foreign Workers Programs, Apr. 25, 1945, Radio Luxembourg collection, HIA, box 1 (SHAEF broadcasts).

  “tractable, grateful, and powerless”: “Displaced Persons, Refugees, and Recovered Allied Military Personnel,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, USFET General Board study no. 35, 97-USF5-0.3.0.

  Freed laborers plundered houses: Zumbro, Battle for the Ruhr, 329–30; “Concentration Camp Train,” G-2 Periodic Report No. 304, 30th ID, Apr. 17, 1945, NARA RG 407, ETO G-3 OR (licked flour); Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War, 79, 86 (“rampageous” and Hanover cellar); Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich, 26.

  Thousands of refugees carried: “History of Medical Service in the European Theater,” tape transcript, Oct. 1962, MHI, II-69; OH, Philip Carlquist, Sept. 1, 1978, Emory University; “The Disease Potential in Germany,” in OH, Albert W. Kenner, SHAEF chief medical officer, May 27, 1948, FCP, MHI; “Displaced Persons, Refugees, and Recovered Allied Military Personnel,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, USFET General Board study no. 35, 97-USF5-0.3.0 (roadblocks); Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich, 29 (“Alleluia!).

  Some went barefoot: White, Conquerors’ Road, 100–103.

  “One died taking a drink”: Leonard C. Barney, 315th Medical Bn, 90th ID, “Inmates of Concentration Camps,” 1985, Columbus WWII Round Table Collection, MHI, 3–4.

  “It’s too big”: Leh, “World War II from One Enlisted Man’s Point of View,” Proceedings of the Lehigh County Historical Society 39 (1990): 89+.

  “a kind of dull satisfaction”: Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, 504–6.

  “If the heavens were paper”: Collier, Fighting Words, 188.

  Nordhausen was overrun: OH, Col. D. B. Hardin, VII Corps, “Concentration Camp at Nordhausen,” Apr. 14, 1944, NARA RG 407, ETO ML #1028, box 19152, 1–4; LO, 391–92 (“Men lay”); Kessler, The Battle of the Ruhr Pocket, 156–57 (beat up a captured German scientist); Collins, Lightning Joe, 324; Carpenter, No Woman’s World, 293–95 (“no greater shame”).

  “There was no fat”: Ingersoll, Top Secret, 333.

  At the Wöbbelin camp: Nordyke, All American All the Way, 756; “Wöbbelin,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006160; McNally, As Ever, John, 65–67 (“Each body was pulled”); Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 294 (never failed to weep); Stafford, Endgame 1945, 311 (“defining moment”).

  “We came into a smell”: Stafford, Endgame 1945, 83; Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 300–302 (“simian throng”), 341 (watery soup); “Early Measures at Belsen,” lecture, June 4, 1945, Royal Society of Medicine, UK NA, WO 219/3944A (designed for eight thousand); Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 252–55 (hearts, livers, and kidneys), 264 (“woman squatting”); “What the Army Did at Belsen Concentration Camp,” n.d., UK NA, WO 219/3944A, 3 (“continuous carpet”), 16–17; “Bergen-Belsen,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224; Collier, Fighting Words, 188 (“peeping through fingers”).

  The living resembled “polished skeletons”: Stafford, Endgame 1945, 83; “What the Army Did at Belsen Concentration Camp,” n.d., UK NA, WO 219/3944A, 20–23 (medics tallied); Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 535–36 (“he fell dead”); Robert H. Abzug, “The Liberation of the Concentration Camps,” in Liberation 1945, 33–34, 43; Arthur, Forgotten Voices of World War II, 419–21 (clubbed with rifle butts).

  An estimated quarter-million: Blatman, The Death Marches, 11–12, 278, 310–21, 332–47; Margry, “The Gardelegen Massacre,” AB, no. 111 (2001): 2+; “Gardelegen Massacre 13 April 1945,” www.scrapbookpages.com/GerhardThiele*.

  For the U.S. Army, the camp at Buchenwald: investigative papers, “Buchenwald KZ,” Donald McClure papers, HIA, box 1; Hackett, ed., The Buchenwald Report, 330–33.

  An hour later, outriders: Brig. Gen. Eric F. Wood et al., “Inspection of German Concentration Camp for Political Prisoners Located at Buckenwal [sic],” Apr. 16, 1945, Frank J. McSherry papers, MHI, box 53; Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946, 236–38; “Civil Affairs and Military Government Organizations and Operations,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, USFET General Board study no. 32, 97-USF5-0.3.0 (six hundred calories).

  “They were so thin”: Robert H. Abzug, “The Liberation of the Concentration Camps,” in Liberation 1945, 40.

  An intricate, awful world: Brig. Gen. Eric F. Wood et al., “Inspection of German Concentration Camp for Political Prisoners Located at Buckenwal [sic],” Apr. 16, 1945, Frank J. McSherry papers, MHI, box 53; investigative papers, “Buchenwald KZ,” Donald McClure papers, HIA, box 1.

  The SS had murdered: “Buchenwald,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005198; Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946, 236–38 (brick ovens).

  A verse in gold and black: White, Conquerors’ Road, 82.

  Patton marched the burghers: PP, 687, 692; Edward R. Murrow, CBS radio broadcast, Apr. 15, 1945, in Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 681–85 (“The stink was beyond”).

  Shocking evidence of German torture: Kimball, Forged in War, 278 (Breedonck); Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946, 220 (“legacy of skepticism”); Robert H. Abzug, “The Liberation of the Concentration Camps,” in Liberation 1945, 56 (barely one-third), 66; Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 17.

  “What kind of people”: Tapert, ed., Lines of Battle, 269.

  “Hardly any boy infantryman”: Fussell, The Boys’ Crusade, 157.

  “I’ve been in the Army”: “History, 157th Inf Regt, Apr 1945,” NARA RG 405, E 427, WWII Ops Reports, 345-INF (157)-0.3.

  Berliners received an extra allocation: Ryan, The Last Battle, 409–10, 417–18 (Karstadt); Klemperer, To the Bitter End, 209 (“We are defending Europe”); Read and Fisher, The Fall of Berlin, 335 (birthday salute).

  “All transportation is at a standstill”: Moorhouse, Berlin at War, 359–60, 371–72 (“pastor shot himself”).

  “Lift our banners”: ibid., 359–60.

  The man himself took the passing: Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis, 798; “Hitler’s Höllenfahrt,” Der Spiegel (Apr. 10, 1995): 172+ (thirty-seven steps).

  Back behind three steel doors: Fest, Hitler, 764–65; Read and Fisher, The Fall of Berlin, 340 (“I shall fight”); Moorhouse, Berlin at War, 358–59 (“birthday atmosphere”); Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis, 801 (Blutrote Rosen).

  The U.S. Seventh Army marked the day: Stafford, Endgame 1945, 27; AAR, XV Corps, June 1, 1945, Wade H. Haislip papers, HIA, box 1; LO, 425; Yeide and Stout, First to the Rhine, 359 (two thousand last-ditch soldiers).

  “alluvial fans of rubble”: Wyant, Sandy Patch, 191; Taggart, ed., History of the Third Infantry Division, 354–62 (“Dog-Faced Soldier”); White, From Fedala to Berchtesgaden, 265–66 (“Casablanca. Palermo”).

  A quieter commemoration: White, From Fedala to Berchtesgaden, 265–66; Even, The Tenth Engineers, 49 (wreath); Palmer and Zaid, eds., The GI’s Rabbi, 173–74; Stafford, Endgame 1945, 28 (“Stars and Stripes Forever”).

  “God, Where Are You?”

  War correspondents had begun offering odds: Heinz, When We Were One, 188–89 (“GIvans”); LO, 446–48 (welcome signs and recognition signals); Forrest C. Pogue, “The Meeting with the Russians,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, ML #2249, box 19185, 1 (brigands in Cossack attire); OH, 69th ID, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI 136-A, box 19050, folder #137 (grassy hummock).

  East of Leipzig: LO, 446–48; Ryan, The Last Battle, 472; OH, 69th ID, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder #137 (confused Strehla with Groba).

  Twenty miles north and two hours later: OH, 69th ID, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder #137; LO, 455–56; Margry, “The U.S.-Soviet Link-Up,” AB, no. 88 (1995): 1+.

  After a brief, unnerving riposte: OH, William D. Robertson, 69th ID, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI 136-A, b
ox 19050, folder #137; LO, 455–56 (carrying four soldiers). After the war Robertson became a neurosurgeon in California.

  Thursday morning brought the full, overwrought merger: Forrest C. Pogue, “The Meeting with the Russians,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, ML #2249, box 19185, 2–3; narrative, Thor Smith, n.d., Thor Smith papers, HIA, box 1 (“Iowa picnic”); Heinz, When We Were One, 189–92 (varnished shells); Pogue, Pogue’s War, 368–70 (black bread and apples).

  “The Russians all looked”: Martha Gellhorn, “The Russians,” Collier’s, June 30, 1945, in Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 701–6; Heinz, When We Were One, 189–92 (GIs traded).

  “Get that woman off”: Heinz, When We Were One, 189–92; Pogue, Pogue’s War, 372–73 (Soviet general).

  An unbroken Allied line: Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 260 (last bombing raid); Bessel, Germany 1945, 112 (met at Ketzin).

  Nothing now could thwart: Bessel, Germany 1945, 104–5, 405 (two and a half million troops); Erickson, The Road to Berlin, 539–41, 622 (three hundred thousand casualties); “Hitler’s Höllenfahrt,” Der Spiegel (Apr. 4, 1995): 170+; Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, 123, 410–13 (typhus); Steinhoff et al., Voices from the Third Reich, 454–57; interview, Rosemarie Meitzner, Apr. 1995, author, Berlin; Ryan, The Last Battle, 494 (lightbulbs), 371 (“Bleib übrig”); Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 43 (“hilly landscape”).

  In the south, the Reich: LO, 454, 425–26 (bridge over the Danube); Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946, 249 (twenty-eight towns).

  “We are constantly suffering”: memo, F. E. Morgan to G-1, Feb. 10, 1945, NARA RG 331, E 1, SHAEF SGS, file 211, box 20; LO, 427–30; De Lattre de Tassigny, The History of the French First Army, 458–59; OH, JLD, Aug. 1971, Thomas E. Griess, YCHT, box 110, 26–27.

  General de Gaulle had other ideas: De Gaulle, The Complete Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 860; Clayton, Three Marshals of France, 114–15 (Holding a large tract).