Thus ended our twenty months’ campaign. Our losses had been grievous, but those of the enemy, even before the final surrender, far heavier. The principal task of our armies had been to draw off and contain the greatest possible number of Germans. This had been admirably fulfilled. Except for a short period in the summer of 1944, the enemy had always outnumbered us. At the time of their crisis in August of that year no fewer than fifty-five German divisions were deployed along the Mediterranean fronts. Nor was this all. Our forces rounded off their task by devouring the larger army they had been ordered to contain. There have been few campaigns with a finer culmination.
For Mussolini also the end had come. Like Hitler he seems to have kept his illusions until almost the last moment. Late in March he had paid a final visit to his German partner, and returned to his headquarters on Lake Garda buoyed up with the thought of the secret weapons which could still lead to victory. But the rapid Allied advance from the Apennines made these hopes vain. There was hectic talk of a last stand in the mountainous areas of the Italo-Swiss frontier. But there was no will to fight left in the Italian Socialist Republic.
On April 25 Mussolini decided to disband the remnants of his armed forces and to ask the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan to arrange a meeting with the underground Military Committee of the Italian National Liberation Movement. That afternoon talks took place in the Archbishop’s palace, but with a last furious gesture of independence Mussolini walked out. In the evening, followed by a convoy of thirty vehicles, containing most of the surviving leaders of Italian Fascism, he drove to the prefecture at Como. He had no coherent plan, and as discussion became useless it was each man for himself. Accompanied by a handful of supporters, he attached himself to a small German convoy heading towards the Swiss frontier. The commander of the column was not anxious for trouble with Italian Partisans. The Duce was persuaded to put on a German great-coat and helmet. But the little party was stopped by Partisan patrols; Mussolini was recognised and taken into custody. Other members, including his mistress, Signorina Petacci, were also arrested. On Communist instructions the Duce and his mistress were taken out in a car next day and shot. Their bodies, together with others, were sent to Milan and strung up head downwards on meat-hooks in a petrol station on the Piazzale Loreto, where a group of Italian Partisans had lately been shot in public.
Such was the fate of the Italian dictator. A photograph of the final scene was sent to me, and I was profoundly shocked. But at least the world was spared an Italian Nuremberg.
In Germany the invading armies drove onwards in their might and the space between them narrowed daily. By early April Eisenhower was across the Rhine and thrusting deep into Germany and Central Europe against an enemy who in places resisted fiercely but was quite unable to stem our triumphant onrush. Many political and military prizes still hung in the balance. Poland was beyond our succour. So also was Vienna, where our opportunity of forestalling the Russians by an advance from Italy had been abandoned eight months earlier when Alexander’s forces had been stripped for the landing in the south of France. The Russians moved on the city from east and south, and by April 13 were in full possession. But there seemed nothing to stop the Western Allies from taking Berlin. The Russians were only thirty-five miles away, but the Germans were entrenched on the Oder and much hard fighting was to take place before they could force a crossing and resume their advance. The Ninth U.S. Army, on the other hand, had moved so speedily that on April 12 they had crossed the Elbe near Magdeburg and were about sixty miles from the capital. But here they halted. Four days later the Russians started their attack and surrounded Berlin on the 25th. Stalin had told Eisenhower that his main blow against Germany would be made in “approximately the second half of May”, but he was able to advance a whole month earlier. Perhaps our swift approach to the Elbe had something to do with it.
On this same 25th day of April, 1945, spearheads of the United States First Army from Leipzig met the Russians near Torgau, on the Elbe. Germany was cut in two. The German Army was disintegrating before our eyes. Over a million prisoners were taken in the first three weeks of April, but Eisenhower believed that fanatical Nazis would attempt to establish themselves in the mountains of Bavaria and Western Austria, and he swung the Third U.S. Army southwards. Its left penetrated into Czechoslovakia as far as Budĕjovice, Pilsen, and Karlsbad. Prague was still within our reach and there was no agreement to debar him from occupying it if it were militarily feasible. On April 30 I suggested to the President that he should do so, but Mr. Truman seemed adverse. A week later I also telegraphed personally to Eisenhower, but his plan was to halt his advance generally on the west bank of the Elbe and along the 1937 boundary of Czechoslovakia. If the situation warranted he would cross it to the general line Karlsbad-Pilsen-Budĕjovice. The Russians agreed to this and the movement was made. But on May 4 they reacted strongly to a fresh proposal to continue the advance of the Third U.S. Army to the river Vltava, which flows through Prague. This would not have suited them at all. So the Americans “halted while the Red Army cleared the east and west banks of the Moldau river and occupied Prague”.* The city fell on May 9, two days after the general surrender was signed at Rheims.
At this point a retrospect is necessary. The occupation of Germany by the principal Allies had long been studied. In the summer of 1943 a Cabinet Committee which I had set up under Mr. Attlee, in agreement with the Chiefs of Staff, recommended that the whole country should be occupied if Germany was to be effectively disarmed, and that our forces should be disposed in three main zones of roughly equal size the British in the north-west, the Americans in the south and south-west, and the Russians in the eastern zone. Berlin should be a separate joint zone, occupied by each of the three major Allies. These recommendations were approved and forwarded to the European Advisory Council, which then consisted of M. Gousev, the Soviet Ambassador, Mr. Winant, the American Ambassador, and Sir William Strang of the Foreign Office.
30*
OCCUPATION ZONES IN GERMANY. AS AGREED AT QUEBEC. SEPT 1944
At this time the subject seemed to be purely theoretical. No one could foresee when or how the end of the war would come. The German armies held immense areas of European Russia. A year was yet to pass before British or American troops set foot in Western Europe, and nearly two years before they entered Germany. The proposals of the European Advisory Council were not thought sufficiently pressing or practical to be brought before the War Cabinet. Like many praiseworthy efforts to make plans for the future, they lay upon the shelves while the war crashed on. In those days a common opinion about Russia was that she would not continue the war once she had regained her frontiers, and that when the time came the Western Allies might well have to try to persuade her not to relax her efforts. The question of the Russian zone of occupation in Germany therefore did not bulk in our thoughts or in Anglo-American discussions, nor was it raised by any of the leaders at Teheran.
When we met in Cairo on the way home in November 1943 the United States Chiefs of Staff brought it forward, but not on account of any Russian request. The Russian zone of Germany remained an academic conception, if anything too good to be true. I was however told that President Roosevelt wished the British and American zones to be reversed. He wanted the lines of communication of any American force in Germany to rest directly on the sea and not to run through France. This issue involved a lot of detailed technical argument and had a bearing at many points upon the plans for “Overlord”. No decision was reached at Cairo, but later a considerable correspondence began between the President and myself. The British Staff thought the original plan the better, and also saw many inconveniences and complications in making the change. I had the impression that their American colleagues rather shared their view. At the Quebec Conference in September 1944 we reached a firm agreement between us.
The President, evidently convinced by the military view, had a large map unfolded on his knees. One afternoon, most of the Combined Chiefs of Staff being present, he agre
ed verbally with me that the existing arrangement should stand subject to the United States armies having a near-by direct outlet to the sea across the British zone. Bremen and its subsidiary Bremerhaven seemed to meet the American needs, and their control over this zone was adopted. This decision is illustrated on the accompanying map. We all felt it was too early as yet to provide for a French zone in Germany, and no one as much as mentioned Russia.
At Yalta in February 1945 the Quebec plan was accepted without further consideration as the working basis for the inconclusive discussions about the future eastern frontier of Germany. This was reserved for the Peace Treaty. The Soviet armies were at this very moment swarming over the pre-war frontiers, and we wished them all success. We proposed an agreement about the zones of occupation in Austria. Stalin, after some persuasion, agreed to my strong appeal that the French should be allotted part of the American and British zones and given a seat on the Allied Control Commission. It was well understood by everyone that the agreed occupational zones must not hamper the operational movements of the armies. Berlin, Prague, and Vienna could be taken by whoever got there first. We separated in the Crimea not only as Allies but as friends facing a still mighty foe with whom all our armies were struggling in fierce and ceaseless battle.
The two months that had passed since then had seen tremendous changes cutting to the very roots of thought. Hitler’s Germany was doomed and he himself about to perish. The Russians were fighting in Berlin. Vienna and most of Austria was in their hands. The whole relationship of Russia with the Western Allies was in flux. Every question about the future was unsettled between us. The agreements and understandings of Yalta, such as they were, had already been broken or brushed aside by the triumphant Kremlin. New perils, perhaps as terrible as those we had surmounted, loomed and glared upon the torn and harassed world.
My concern at these ominous developments was apparent even before the President’s death. He himself, as we have seen, was also anxious and disturbed. His anger at Molotov’s accusations over the Berne affair has been recorded. In spite of the victorious advance of Eisenhower’s armies, President Truman found himself faced in the last half of April with a formidable crisis. I had for some time past tried my utmost to impress the United States Government with the vast changes which were taking place both in the military and political spheres. Our Western armies would soon be carried well beyond the boundaries of our occupation zones, as both the Western and Eastern Allied fronts approached one another, penning the Germans between them.
Telegrams which I have published elsewhere show that I never suggested going back on our word over the agreed zones provided other agreements were also respected. I became convinced however that before we halted, or still more withdrew, our troops, we ought to seek a meeting with Stalin face to face and make sure that an agreement was reached about the whole front. It would indeed be a disaster if we kept all our agreements in strict good faith while the Soviets laid their hands upon all they could get without the slightest regard for the obligations into which they had entered.
General Eisenhower had proposed that while the armies in the west and the east should advance irrespective of demarcation lines, in any area where the armies had made contact either side should be free to suggest that the other should withdraw behind the boundaries of their occupation zone. Discretion to request and to order such withdrawals would rest with Army Group commanders. Subject to the dictates of operational necessity, the retirement would then take place. I considered that this proposal was premature and that it exceeded the immediate military needs. Action was taken accordingly, and on April 18 I addressed myself to the new President. Mr. Truman was of course only newly aware at second hand of all the complications that faced us, and had to lean heavily on his advisers. The purely military view therefore received an emphasis beyond its proper proportion. I cabled him as follows:
… I am quite prepared to adhere to the occupational zones, but I do not wish our Allied troops or your American troops to be hustled back at any point by some crude assertion of a local Russian general. This must be provided against by an agreement between Governments so as to give Eisenhower a fair chance to settle on the spot in his own admirable way.
… The occupational zones were decided rather hastily at Quebec in September 1944, when it was not foreseen that General Eisenhower’s armies would make such a mighty inroad into Germany. The zones cannot be altered except by agreement with the Russians. But the moment V.E. Day [Victory in Europe Day] has occurred we should try to set up the Allied Control Commission in Berlin and should insist upon a fair distribution of the food produced in Germany between all parts of Germany. As it stands at present the Russian occupational zone has the smallest proportion of people and grows by far the largest proportion of food, the Americans have a not very satisfactory proportion of food to conquered population, and we poor British are to take over all the ruined Ruhr and large manufacturing districts, which are, like ourselves, in normal times large importers of food.…
Mr. Eden was in Washington, and fully agreed with the views I telegraphed to him, but Mr. Truman’s reply carried us little further. He proposed that the Allied troops should retire to their agreed zones in Germany and Austria as soon as the military situation allowed.
Hitler had meanwhile pondered where to make his last stand. As late as April 20 he still thought of leaving Berlin for the “Southern Redoubt” in the Bavarian Alps. That day he held a meeting of the principal Nazi leaders. As the German double front, East and West, was in imminent danger of being cut in twain by the spearpoint thrust of the Allies, he agreed to set up two separate commands. Admiral Doenitz was to take charge in the North both of the military and civil authorities, with the particular task of bringing back to German soil nearly two million refugees from the East. In the South General Kesselring was to command the remaining German armies. These arrangements were to take effect if Berlin fell.
Two days later, on April 22, Hitler made his final and supreme decision to stay in Berlin to the end. The capital was soon completely encircled by the Russians and the Fuehrer had lost all power to control events. It remained for him to organise his own death amid the ruins of the city. He announced to the Nazi leaders who remained with him that he would die in Berlin. Goering and Himmler had both left after the conference of the 20th, with thoughts of peace negotiations in their minds. Goering, who had gone south, assumed that Hitler had in fact abdicated by his resolve to stay in Berlin, and asked for confirmation that he should act formally as the successor to the Fuehrer. The reply was his instant dismissal from all his offices. In a remote mountain village of the Tyrol he and nearly a hundred of the more senior officers of the Luftwaffe were taken prisoner by the Americans. Retribution had come at last.
The last scenes at Hitler’s headquarters have been described elsewhere in much detail. Of the personalities of his régime only Goebbels and Bormann remained with him to the end. The Russian troops were now fighting in the streets of Berlin. In the early hours of April 29 Hitler made his will. The day opened with the normal routine of work in the air-raid shelter under the Chancellery. News arrived of Mussolini’s end. The timing was grimly appropriate. On the 30th Hitler lunched quietly with his suite, and at the end of the meal shook hands with those present and retired to his private room. At half-past three a shot was heard, and members of his personal staff entered the room to find him lying on the sofa with a revolver by his side. He had shot himself through the mouth. Eva Braun, whom he had married secretly during these last days, lay dead beside him. She had taken poison. The bodies were burnt in the courtyard, and Hitler’s funeral pyre, with the din of the Russian guns growing ever louder, made a lurid end to the Third Reich.
The leaders who were left held a final conference. Last-minute attempts were made to negotiate with the Russians, but Zhukov demanded unconditional surrender. Bormann tried to break through the Russian lines, and disappeared without trace. Goebbels poisoned his six children and then ordered an S.S. gua
rd to shoot his wife and himself. The remaining staff of Hitler’s headquarters fell into Russian hands.
That evening a telegram reached Admiral Doenitz at his headquarters in Holstein:
In place of the former Reich-Marshal Goering the Fuehrer appoints you, Herr Grand Admiral, as his successor. Written authority is on its way. You will immediately take all such measures as the situation requires. BORMANN.
Chaos descended. Doenitz had been in touch with Himmler, who, he assumed, would be nominated as Hitler’s successor if Berlin fell, and now supreme authority was suddenly thrust upon him without warning and he faced the task of organising the surrender.
For Himmler a less spectacular end was reserved. He had gone to the Eastern Front and for some months had been urged to make personal contact with the Western Allies on his own initiative in the hope of negotiating a separate surrender. He now tried to do so through Count Bernadotte, the head of the Swedish Red Cross, but we repulsed his offers. No more was heard of him till May 21, when he was arrested by a British control post at Bremervörde. He was disguised and was not recognised, but his papers made the sentries suspicious and he was taken to a camp near Second Army Headquarters. He then told the commandant who he was. He was put under armed guard, stripped, and searched for poison by a doctor. During the final stage of the examination he bit open a phial of cyanide, which he had apparently hidden in his mouth for some hours. He died almost instantly, just after eleven o’clock at night on Wednesday, May 23.
The Second World War Page 119
