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By Root 998 0

” Afterwards Keitel, most despicable of Hitler’s military creatures, accosted Guderian and demanded: “How could you contradict the Führer in that way? Didn’t you see how excited he was getting? What would happen if as the result of such a scene he were to have a stroke?” After the Allies had seized Remagen, when Hitler demanded reinforcements, he was told that just five tank destroyers were available, under repair at Sennelager. The master of Germany, overlord of armies that once swept Europe, engrossed himself for some minutes in the deployment of five broken-down Jagdtiger. To the end, he maintained his determination that the German people should perish, rather than be permitted to save themselves by yielding. “No German town will be declared open,” asserted a signal from Berlin to Army Group Centre on 15 April. “Every village and every town will be defended and held by every possible man. Every German who contravenes his obvious natural duty will forfeit his honour and his life.”

Desperate shortages caused Hitler to strip weapons and equipment from units which seemed unwilling to fight, to arm and clothe those that would. Boots, uniforms, even underclothes were taken from customs and police departments and naval warehouses for issue to the Wehrmacht. Even among formations which still possessed substantial numbers of tanks and fuel to move them, many were immobilized by mechanical defects or lack of parts. The last available order of battle for the Eastern Front, which is dated 15 March, shows 2nd SS Panzer, for instance, with twenty-seven Panthers of which seventeen were operational, and twenty-six assault guns of which just seven were runners; likewise 9th SS Panzer, with twenty-five assault guns of which eleven were operational, along with twelve out of its thirty-five Panthers. The Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadier Division was reduced to two assault guns, neither operational; five Panthers, of which one was a runner; and six Tigers. This was the sum total of armoured support for a formation with an establishment of 16,000 men.

Hitler exploded when he heard that thousands of small arms were still in the hands of the Indian Legion, formed from prisoners taken while serving with the British. Their unit, he observed, is “a joke. These are Indians who couldn’t kill a louse, who’d rather be eaten themselves. They wouldn’t kill an Englishman.” He expressed similar scepticism about whether much could be expected from the Estonians in Wehrmacht uniform: “What are they still supposed to be fighting for, anyway? They’ve gone from their homeland.” General Wilhelm Burgdorf interjected apologetically: “If there are a lot of fainthearted people even with us, we really can’t demand it of those people.” It was ironic that amid crisis deficiencies of so many creations of twentieth-century technology for waging war, Germany’s generals in 1945 also found themselves protesting the shortage of horses. One of the last signals to OKH from General von Hoffman of 10th Parachute Division, on 16 April, complained that he lacked 60 per cent of the animals essential for his formation: “My parachutists have been obliged to drag their artillery 12 miles, for lack of horses to pull the guns.”

Lieutenant Tony Saurma of the Grossdeutschland Division was among those brought back from the beleaguered garrison of Samland on the Baltic by submarine, to train men for the defence of Berlin. He was horrified to be appointed to command a troop of Mark IV tanks dug in near the Larterbahnhof station. “I found myself commanding men of sixty, even seventy. And the Russians were only thirty miles away!” After a few days, Saurma said to the grateful old men: “Go home. We don’t need you. And if anybody wants to report me, they can do so.” The lieutenant was profoundly relieved when he was reposted to Schleswig-Holstein before the Berlin battle began.

In one of Hitler’s rare moments of realism, he dismissed suggestions that he should leave the capital, to maintain his defence of the Reich from the south: “As an inglorious refugee from Berlin, I would have no authority