Armageddon - Max Hastings [17]
[It] is tolerably certain that the enemy has not kept at home a reserve which is well enough trained or equipped to hold an invading force at bay for long, particularly if the latter includes armour . . . But invasion of Germany is different to invasion of France. The population will not be friendly . . . pockets left may be more than a nuisance, and sniping, minor attacks on single vehicles, staff cars etc. may be prevalent. Even if a breakthrough proves relatively easy, the enemy left behind will have to be cleaned up. The population, which may be provided with small arms, will need to be disarmed.
American commanders shared this mood. Bradley’s aide recorded on 5 September: “Brad believes the Germans may either fold up with our crossing of the Rhine, or . . . as long as the SS has its hold, we may be forced into a guerrilla clean-up of the entire country, a costly and troublesome process.” Nor did the enemy seem to dissent. Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt told Hitler on 7 September that it would be six weeks before the West Wall could be manned and made defensible. Meanwhile, Army Group B—the principal German force in the west—possessed just a hundred tanks with which to confront the Allies’ 2,000. Ludwig Seyffert, a general commanding the German 348th Division, told interrogators after his capture on 6 September: “The Allies should be in the heart of Germany in less than two months.” On 4 September, Corporal Joseph Kolb wrote home from the beleaguered German garrison at Calais: “I am still alive, but perhaps this will be my last letter of all to you. How we shall end up I don’t know—either dead or in captivity.” Likewise Private Fritz Gerber: “Our only hope is to be taken prisoner. Now, my dear ones, I send you my last greetings from the West, and should we not see each other again in this world, we must hope to be reunited in another one above.” Sergeant Helmut Günther, serving with the ruins of 17th SS Panzergrenadiers on the Moselle, said: “We were amazed that it took the Allies so long to engage us. We were utterly exhausted. Yet we were given the chance to catch our breath and regroup at Metz. It seemed extraordinary.”
Inside the Third Reich, among informed people with no connection to Hitler’s regime, there was a desperate impatience for the end. Only peace could bring a halt to relentless death. Allied victory would mean a chance of life for millions of captives, not least those who had dared to oppose Nazi tyranny. “For the thousands locked up by the Gestapo and for those who were still waiting to be picked up,” wrote Paul von Stemann, a Danish journalist who spent the war in Berlin, “it seemed to be a race with their lives at stake. ‘If they can only hold on till October,’ somebody said, ‘the Allies will be here and they will be safe.’ Somebody else said: ‘The war cannot last till Christmas—it is only a matter of perseverance.’ ” Von Stemann was startled to hear Germany’s official military spokesman, Major Sommerfeldt, observe casually one day in September that he expected the Allies to break through the Siegfried Line at any time, “and then the war will be over in 14 days.” Off the record or not, Sommerfeldt’s words seemed to the journalist a revelation of despair within the Wehrmacht.
Throughout Germany, by an order of 24 August Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels closed theatres, cabarets and drama schools, and disbanded all orchestras except those essential for radio broadcasting. Only scientific and technical literature, school books and “certain standard political works” continued to be published. The working week