The Third Reich at War

by Richard J. Evans

  But Paulus, at the very end, finally turned against his master. On 31 January 1943, instead of committing suicide, he surrendered, along with all the remaining troops in the part of Stalingrad he still occupied. Rokossovskii arrived to take the formal surrender, accompanied by a photographer and an interpreter, secret policemen and army officers and Marshal Voronov from the Soviet Supreme General Staff. Paulus’s dark hair and incipient beard had begun to turn white under the strain of the past months, and he had developed a tic in his facial muscles. The Soviet generals asked him to order all his remaining troops to give themselves up, to prevent further bloodshed. In a last remnant of deference towards Hitler, Paulus refused to order the other pocket of resistance to cease fire. The remnants of six divisions were holed up in it; Hitler ordered them to fight to the end. But the Russians bombarded them mercilessly, and they surrendered on 2 February 1943. Altogether some 235,000 German and allied troops from all units, including Manstein’s ill-fated relief force, were captured during the battle; over 200,000 had been killed. Dressed in rags, filthy, unshaven, lice-ridden and often barely able to walk, the 91,000 German and allied troops left in Stalingrad were lined up and marched off into captivity. Already weak, starving and ill, demoralized and depressed, they died in their thousands on their way into prison camps. The Russians were unprepared for such large numbers of prisoners, food supplies were inadequate, and over 55,000 prisoners were dead by the middle of April 1943. Among their number was Helmuth Groscurth, whose diaries from 1939-40 gave later historians important insights into the early development of the military-conservative resistance to Hitler; captured in the pocket that surrendered on 2 January 1943, he succumbed to typhus and died on 7 April 1943. Altogether, fewer than 6,000 of the men taken prisoner at Stalingrad eventually found their way back to Germany.275

  IV

  It was impossible to explain away a defeat of these dimensions. The retreat from Moscow the previous year could be presented as a temporary measure, a tactical withdrawal that would be made good later on. But it was scarcely possible to take such a line in the case of Stalingrad. The complete encirclement and destruction of an entire German army could not be glossed over. In private, Hitler railed against the weakness of the Romanian and Italian troops, but most of all he was furious at what he saw as the cowardice of Paulus and his senior officers, who had preferred to lose their honour by surrendering rather than save it by killing themselves. Worse was to come, for, beginning almost immediately after the invasion, the Russians began attempts to ‘re-educate’ German prisoners of war as ‘anti-fascists’, starting with NCOs and then moving on to the officers. A judicious mixture of the carrot and the stick won over a growing number of prisoners to the cause, the majority of them going along with it because it was the easiest thing to do. A small number of convinced German nationalists among them were persuaded that Hitler was destroying Germany, and that joining his enemies was the quickest way to save their country. A few opportunists, many of them ex-Nazis, were particularly vocal in their support for ‘anti-fascism’. By July 1942 the Soviet secret police had met with sufficient success to start building an organization of converted prisoners, turning it the following year into a ‘National Committee “Free Germany” ’. The young pilot Friedrich von Einsiedel became one of its leading figures, gravitating towards the Communist wing of the organization along with a few others who had entertained serious doubts about the Nazi cause even before they had been taken prisoner. Most spectacularly, however, the National Committee was also joined by Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, who was persuaded by the Russians to make a series of propaganda broadcasts to Germany on their behalf. The broadcasts probably had little effect, but the mere fact that Paulus was making them was a deep embarrassment to the Nazi leadership, and provided further proof to Hitler, if he needed any, that the army leadership was not to be trusted.276

  Goebbels had already begun to prepare the German people for the bad news even before the final surrender at Stalingrad. From all the co-ordinated media there poured out the elements of a new myth: ‘They died so that Germany could live,’ as the Racial Observer put it on 4 February 1943. The self-sacrifice of the troops would be a model for all Germans of the future. Quite what their sacrifice had achieved was, however, difficult to say. The young student Lore Walb, for example, accepted the official propaganda image of the ‘heroism’ of the troops at Stalingrad, and the need for ‘holding out’. But this did not stop her from noting on 3 February 1943: ‘Today is the blackest day for Germany in the history of our war.’277 And many people derided the rhetoric emanating from the Propaganda Ministry.278 The Security Service of the SS reported a ‘general feeling of deep shock’ amongst Germans at home. People were talking about the huge losses, and arguing over whether the Soviet threat to the Sixth Army had been recognized soon enough:

  Above all, people are saying that the enemy’s strength must have been underestimated, otherwise the risk of continuing to occupy Stalingrad even after it was surrounded would not have been undertaken. National comrades cannot understand how it was not possible to relieve Stalingrad, and some of them are not precisely enough informed about the whole development in the southern sector of the Eastern Front to have the correct understanding of the strategic significance of these battles . . . There is a general conviction that Stalingrad signifies a turning-point in the war.279

  Some people, indeed, the report was forced to admit, saw in Stalingrad ‘the beginning of the end’, and in Berlin’s government offices there was said to be ‘to some degree a decided atmosphere of head-hanging despair’.280

  In Franconia, people were said to be directing ‘the most serious criticism against the army leadership’ and asking why the Sixth Army had not been withdrawn while there was still a chance. Moreover, ‘people are saying on the basis of letters [from the front] that many soldiers have died just of exhaustion, and that others again present such an appearance that you cannot recognize them because they have lost so much weight. Rumours are circulating,’ the report concluded, ‘which depress the morale of the population very deeply indeed.’281 Reports from other areas suggested a ‘visibly serious, if not yet desperate mood’ as a result of the defeat.282 In the rural district of Ebermannstadt, in Bavaria, where many people had sons, brothers or husbands in the Sixth Army, the criticism was said to be ‘to a degree very hard and strong, even if people are careful in their choice of words, so as not to become liable to criminal prosecution’. Thus people were criticizing Hitler without actually naming him, though the import of what they said was clear: he would not rest until everything had been destroyed, he had overestimated Germany’s strength, he should have tried to make peace.283 For the first time, as the disaffected diplomat Ulrich von Hassell noted in his diary on 14 February 1943, ‘critical rumours’ were being directed at Hitler himself.284 People were asking why he did not save the lives of the remaining men of the Sixth Army by ordering them to capitulate.285 Germany’s few remaining persecuted and battered Jews drew hope from the defeat. On 5 February 1943 Victor Klemperer learned that ‘the debacle in Russia is said to be a real and decisive one’. The public shock was so great, a non-Jewish acquaintance told him, that there was every possibility of an internal uprising against the Nazis.286

  The crisis in morale brought about by the defeat at Stalingrad did not end soon. ‘The popular mood is not good any more,’ reported one local official in Bavaria on 19 March 1943. ‘The word Stalingrad is still in the foreground.’287 Other reports observed ‘that many are now condemning the war’. Many wanted it brought to an end, and opined that the English and Americans would not let the Russians take Germany over; even if they did, it would only be the Party men who would suffer.288 By mid-April, the Security Service of the SS was reporting that people were demanding to see more of Hitler. ‘A picture of the Leader from which people could assure themselves that he has not - as rumour once had it - gone completely white-haired, would have a more positive effect on the attitude of national comrades t
han many aggressive slogans.’289

  Hitler’s charisma was beginning to fade. Regional Party officials reported that jokes were beginning to circulate about him. ‘What’s the difference between the sun and Hitler?’ went one, to which the answer was: ‘The sun rises in the east, Hitler goes down in the east.’290

  By July 1943 the Security Service of the SS was noting that ‘the most nonsensical and ill-intentioned rumours about leading men in the Party or the state are circulating very quickly and can last weeks and months’.291 Thus, for example, Baldur von Schirach was said, quite wrongly, to have fled to Switzerland with his family. Worse still:

  Telling jokes that are nasty and detrimental to the state, even jokes about the Leader’s person, has become much more common since Stalingrad. When national comrades talk in public houses, on the shop-floor, or in other places where they meet, they tell each other the ‘latest’ political jokes, and in doing so they often make no distinction between those that are relatively harmless in content and those that are clearly oppositional. Even national comrades who hardly know one another are exchanging political jokes. Clearly they are assuming that anyone can tell any joke today without having to reckon with being rebuffed, let alone being denounced to the police.292

  Similarly, the report continued, people were now openly criticizing the regime, declaring it to be inefficient, poorly organized and corrupt. It was clear, too, ‘that listening to foreign radio stations has obviously become a lot more common in the last months’. The Security Service of the SS found in this fact an explanation for the widespread pessimism people were showing about the eventual outcome of the war. As a clear symbolic sign of the growing distance of people from the regime, ‘The use of the German greeting, as shopkeepers and officials who deal with the public are reporting, has declined strikingly in the past months. It must also be confirmed that many Party members no longer wear their Party badge.’293

  V

  Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was acutely aware of the need to do something dramatic to raise morale and turn the situation around. He knew, as did everyone else in the Nazi leadership, that the decisive underlying factor in the downward turn in Germany’s military and naval fortunes was the failure of the economy to produce enough equipment, enough tanks, enough guns, enough planes, enough submarines, enough ammunition. Even before the full extent of the catastrophe at Stalingrad had become clear, he was beginning to declare ‘that only a more radical civil prosecution of the war will put us in a position to win military victories. Every day provides further proof,’ he told his ministerial conference on 4 January 1943, ‘that we are confronted in the east with a brutal opponent who can only be defeated by the most brutal methods. In order to achieve this, the total commitment of all our resources and reserves is necessary.’294 Goebbels now repeatedly pressed Hitler to declare ‘total war’, including the mobilization of women for work, the closing of ‘luxury shops’ and ‘luxury cafe’s’, and much more besides. Dissatisfied with the slow progress being made following Hitler’s initial decision to back the idea, he decided to turn up the pressure with a major public demonstration.

  On 18 February 1943 Goebbels delivered a major, nationally broadcast speech in the Berlin Sports Palace before a hand-picked audience of 14,000 Nazi fanatics representing, as he said, ‘a cross-section of the whole German nation, at the front and at home. Am I right? [loud shouts of “Yes!” Lengthy applause] But Jews are not represented here! [Wild applause, shouts]’295 After outlining the measures that had been taken against luxuries and amusements, he declared that Germans now wanted ‘a Spartan way of life for everybody’, the kind of life, indeed, lived by the Leader himself. Everyone had to redouble his efforts to achieve victory. At the climax of his speech, he put a series of ten rhetorical questions to his by now thoroughly roused audience. They included the following exchanges:

  Are you and the German people determined, if the Leader orders it, to work ten, twelve and, if necessary, fourteen and sixteen hours a day and to give your utmost for victory? [Loud shouts of ‘Yes!’ and lengthy applause] . . . I ask you: Do you want total war? [Loud cries of “Yes!’ Loud applause] Do you want it, if necessary, more total and more radical than we can even imagine it today? [Loud cries of ‘Yes!’ Applause]

  Linking the idea of total war to loyalty to Hitler, the Propaganda Minister had the crowd shouting enthusiastically for the mobilization of every last resource, including women workers, in the final struggle for victory. He was interrupted more than 200 times with wild shouts and choruses, slogans (‘Hail, Victory!’, ‘Leader command - we follow you!’), and hysterical applause. The whole event was subsequently described as ‘a feat of mass hypnosis’. The speech was listened to by millions of people who had been waiting for some kind of lead from the regime. To underline its importance, it was printed in the daily papers the following morning and broadcast again the following Sunday. It was presented as an imposing demonstration of the German people’s will to fight to the end.296

  In all likelihood, Hitler had given his approval to Goebbels’s initiative in general terms beforehand. But he had not been consulted about the detailed contents of the speech, so he immediately had a copy sent to him and declared his complete approval.297 But what did ‘total war’ actually mean in concrete terms? Within the Nazi leadership, it was seen first and foremost as a bid by Goebbels, aided and abetted by Speer, to seize control of the home front. Hitler’s initial response to the crisis had been to create a ‘Committee of Three’, consisting of Martin Bormann, Hans-Heinrich Lammers and Wilhelm Keitel to initiate ‘total war’ measures; Goebbels’s speech was among other things an attempt to sideline this group, and he followed it up by intriguing with Hermann G̈ring to claim back the management of the ‘total war’ from it. But G̈ring by this time had lost much of his earlier energy, weakened by heavy doses of morphine, to which he had now become addicted. Hitler refused to give either Goebbels and Speer or the Lammers group the authority over the home front that they were competing for. By the autumn of 1943 the Committee of Three had effectively ceased to function. Its initiatives to simplify the civil administration of the Reich by reducing duplication, for example between the Reich and Prussian Finance Ministries (it advocated abolishing the latter), ran into the sands, and it spent much time arguing over trivialities such as whether or not to ban horse-racing.298 As for the economic realities of ‘total war’, it was difficult to see what could be done. The problem, as was evident across the whole range of defeats and setbacks in the war during 1943, was not that people were not working hard enough, it was that raw materials were lacking. There was no point in demanding a boost in production if there was not enough coal and steel to build planes and tanks, or enough petrol to fuel them. And the labour shortage, as we have seen, could only be dealt with to a very limited degree by the mobilization of women; in the event, it was tackled by the ruthless expansion of foreign labour. In purely practical terms, ‘total war’ boiled down to an attempt to suppress domestic consumption in order to divert resources to war production. Here too the possibilities were limited.

  A series of decrees issued early in 1943 did, to be sure, crack down on non-war-related production and consumption. On 30 January 1943 the Committee of Three ordered the closure of non-essential businesses. This measure led to the shutting-down of 9,000 mostly small businesses in the Brandenburg region alone, causing widespread resentment in the lower middle class as independent workshop-owners were now forced to become wage-labourers in arms factories. Many were worried that they would not be able to reopen after the war. Within a few months, the implementation of the policy had to be stopped, at the insistence of the Propaganda Ministry, because of widespread resistance and evasion. 299 In Berlin it was reported that the Melody Bar on the Kurf̈rstendamm had closed down, only to reopen immediately as a restaurant, with the same waiters. The Gong Bar renamed itself the Caf’ Gong and carried on business with coffee and cakes instead of beer and cocktails. The measure also created problems f
or munitions and other war-related workers who were forced to spend the week away from their families and so depended on restaurants for their evening meal. Many bars and small restaurants were by this time run by people who had reached retiring age and could scarcely be expected to be drafted in to munitions factories. While working-class bars were being closed down, widespread resentment was aroused by the fact that top hotels like the Four Seasons in Hamburg, with its expensive grill-room, and classy restaurants like Schumann’s Oyster Cellar in the same city remained in business.300 The crackdown on conspicuous consumption was in any case only symbolic. It was all very well saying that Germans had to live like Spartans, but in 1943 many thought they were already doing so.

  The shift from consumer to war-related production and investment had in fact already begun in the 1930s, but when the war broke out it accelerated even further. By the end of the first year of the war, military expenditure had increased from a fifth of national output to over a third. Hoping to avoid giving the German public the feeling that they were being bled dry to feed the military machine, the Reich Economics Ministry dropped its initial thoughts of imposing a hefty tax hike, and opted for controlling consumer expenditure by rationing instead. By the end of August 1939, per capita consumption had fallen by 11 per cent; it dropped another 7 per cent in the following year.301 Almost as soon as the war broke out, food and clothing were rationed. Of course, this was nothing new in principle. Already in the 1930s, some foodstuffs and other items in short supply had been rationed.302 In October 1939 an official food ration of 2,570 calories a day was set for civilians, with 3,600 calories allocated to each member of the armed forces and 4,652 to labourers engaged in particularly heavy physical work. Civilians had to present their ration cards in shops, colour-coded for each different item (red for bread, for example) and their purchases were marked so that they would not get more than the prescribed maximum. These ration cards lasted for a month, so that new ones could be issued with different maxima if necessary.303