Inferno - Max Hastings [386]
The commentator Hans Fritsche asserted that the enemy’s objective was “total destruction,” and that defeat “would signal the end of civilisation.” He claimed that Germans now had the advantages of short lines of communication and their “impassioned determination to defend their homeland.” Germany, he said, had become “Europe’s bulwark against the barbarian hordes descending from the eastern steppes.” He expressed dismay at the failure of the British to align themselves with the German people against the Bolsheviks; far from dismissing the threat of defeat, as so often in the past, the Nazis called on their people for a desperate resistance in an admittedly desperate situation. “Germany’s leadership is now faced with the most serious crisis of the war,” declared Berlin Radio on 22 January. “Withdrawals and disengagements are no longer possible, because our armies are disputing territory of vital importance to German war industry … The utmost effort is required from every German. The German people are responding willingly to this call, because they know that our leadership has always in the past been able to restore situations in spite of all difficulties.”
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If Hitler’s people were gripped by despair, those of Stalin were exultant: the war correspondent Vasily Grossman expressed a sense of “fierce joy” as he, who had seen so many battles since 1941, witnessed the crossing of the Vistula. He wrote a little later: “I wanted to shout, to call to all our brothers, our soldiers, who are lying in the Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Polish earth, who sleep forever on our battlefields, ‘Comrades, can you hear us? We’ve done it.’ ” The casualties of the Vistula offensive were staggering, even by the standards of the Eastern Front: the Russians inflicted slaughter on every formation in their path. In January alone, 450,000 Germans died; in each of the ensuing three months, more than 280,000, a figure that included victims of the Anglo-American bombings of Dresden, Leipzig and other eastern cities. During the last four months of the war, more Germans perished than in the whole of 1942–43. Such numbers emphasise the price paid by the German people for their army leadership’s failure to depose the Nazis and quit the war before its last terrible act.
Early in February, the C-in-C of Army Group Vistula wrote: “In the Wehrmacht we find ourselves in a leadership crisis of the gravest magnitude. The officer corps no longer has firm control of the troops. Among soldiers there are the most serious manifestations of disintegration. Examples of soldiers removing their uniforms and exploiting every possible means to acquire civilian clothing in order to escape are far from isolated.” Further humiliations were heaped upon Germany’s generals: Guderian was interrogated by security chiefs Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Heinrich Müller about his role in the evacuation of Warsaw against Hitler’s orders.
The chief impediment to the Soviet advance was the weather. A sudden thaw slowed to a crawl armoured movement through slush and mud. By 3 February, Zhukov’s and Konev’s armies held a line along the Oder from Kustrin, thirty-five miles east of Berlin, to the Czech border, with bridgeheads on the western bank. On the fifth, Hitler’s commander in Hungary reported: “Amid all these stresses and strains, no improvement in morale or performance is visible. The numerical superiority of the enemy, combined with knowledge that the battle is now being fought on German soil, has proved very demoralising for the men. Their only nourishment is a slice of bread and some horsemeat. Movement of any kind is hampered by their physical weakness. In spite of all this and six weeks’ unfulfilled promises of relief, they fight tenaciously and obey orders.” The Russians acknowledged this with grudging respect in a 2 March intelligence report: “Most German soldiers realise the hopelessness of their country’s situation after the January advances, though