Abstract
Why Germany irrationally fought on to the point of its own annihilation during the closing months of the Second World War in Europe is a phenomenon that has preoccupied manifold historical works. Ian Kershaw’s The End is not the first distinguished general examination of it: however, unlike Max Hastings’s Armageddon, The End focuses entirely upon the German side; unlike Richard Evans’s The Third Reich at War, it goes beyond a necessarily concise survey; unlike Kershaw’s own Hitler: Nemesis, it focuses upon the participation and motivations of all levels of German society; and unlike Richard Bessel’s Germany 1945, it focuses upon the months before capitulation and the question of why Germany fought on, rather than upon 1945 as a whole and the question of how the experience of defeat shaped the latter half of Germany’s twentieth century. As well as being a distinctive study, The End is also a formidable one, analytically rigorous and narratively compelling; among other things, it benefits from copious official and media sources, and vivid personal accounts by high-ranking Nazis and ordinary Germans alike.
The End commences in the aftermath of the failed bomb plot against Hitler in July 1944. Kershaw demonstrates how this aftermath was a watershed for Germany, buttressing its self-destructive continuation of the war immensely. It heralded a terroristic backlash against internal dissent real or imagined, intensification of the war economy’s demands upon the population, and further extension of the Nazi Party’s organizational tentacles into every sphere of national life. Kershaw then provides a month-by-month examination of the social, political, military, and economic processes of Germany’s self-destruction up to May 1945. Any repetition resulting from this approach is not excessive. This is thanks partly to the sheer pace of events which Kershaw examines. It is also because he situates each chapter’s examination within a distinctive overall theme, such as the collapse in the west in late summer 1944 or the crumbling of administration and infrastructure as the Allies entered Germany proper in early 1945.
Kershaw’s arguments re-evaluate numerous popular explanations for Germany’s ongoing defiance. For instance, the intensified terror the regime practised against ordinary soldiers and civilians certainly helped shore up the war effort where it had collapsed in 1918, but was not the most decisive factor. Nor was the popularity of Hitler and the Nazi Party. The former’s popularity was already waning by summer 1944, even if it did revive temporarily following the bomb plot; the latter’s was all but evaporating by the war’s final months, not least because of the cack-handedness and corruption of party officialdom. The hardening effect of Allied demands for unconditional surrender was less a credible explanation for continued German resistance than a convenient post-war rationale for it. The belief that holding out might buy time in which war-winning ‘miracle weapons’ might be brought to bear and/or the ‘unnatural’ enemy coalition might split was increasingly unsustainable after the failure of the Ardennes offensive. And popular fear of a vengeful Red Army was confined largely to eastern Germany.
For Kershaw it is the regime’s power structures, with their intensified control over German society during the war’s final months, which were most decisive – and not just because those structures were inhabited by men who, in large part, knew they had no future if Germany was defeated. The next level below Hitler comprised a quadrumvirate of Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler, and Speer; though immensely powerful and locked in bitter mutual rivalry, all felt strong personal bonds with Hitler and relied upon him for their legitimacy. The gauleiters and Kreisleiters within the regime’s regional and local power structures were animated by steadfast loyalty to Hitler, save at the very end when most tried to save their own skins, as well as by brutal self-interest. Parallel to the civilian power structures was a professionally and morally compromised military, supine towards Hitler or, in some cases, fanatically supportive of him. An effective challenge to Hitler’s determination to fight on until Germany’s utter devastation could, therefore, be expected from none of these quarters. Hitler’s central importance to the power structures’ resilience is demonstrated most pointedly by how speedily the regime’s pillars liquidated what remained of the war effort during the week following his suicide.
Kershaw’s is unlikely to be the final word on why Germany fought on as long as it did. There remains scope, for instance, for further investigation of what shaped the variations, which Kershaw regularly highlights, in societal attitudes towards the Nazi regime during its final months. Nevertheless, Kershaw’s is a thoroughly impressive, absorbing, nigh-on unputdownable work which sets the bar high.