The last weeks of the war inside Germany were a desperate time for all its citizens. Hitler held the view that it was the weakness of the German people that had brought defeat upon the nation. This is what he said in his final will and testament, dictated to his secretary, Traudl Junge, inside the bunker in Berlin the day before he shot himself. He ordered that every street and every building in the city should be defended ‘to the last man and the last bullet’. The SS, who regarded themselves as the ideological and racial warriors of the Third Reich, generally took the same view. Any sign of weakness or defeatism was to be sought out and destroyed.
Most sane Germans knew the game was up and defeat was certain. Millions of Soviet soldiers in the Red Army were advancing relentlessly from the east, killing Wehrmacht troops, laying waste to towns and villages, and raping upwards of two million German women as they moved across the east of the country. ‘The boys deserve their fun’, said Stalin, excusing the stories of mass abuse by his troops.
Having crossed the Rhine in March and early April 1945, the British and American armies were rapidly advancing across Germany from the west. Supreme Commander Dwight D Eisenhower was in command of seven Allied armies, a total of four million men. In the Ruhr pocket, 400,000 Wehrmacht troops were surrounded by 15 US divisions. Hitler called for a fanatical, Stalingrad-type last-ditch defence. But after just two weeks, Field Marshal Model ordered his youngest and oldest soldiers to return home. The rest surrendered, and Model walked into a wood and shot himself.
