Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying (41 page)

There are many other examples of this sort illustrating the importance of military virtues in the stories told by navy POWs. Similar statements can be found among servicemen from other military branches, but there was good reason why they occurred so frequently among sailors. German navy men had rebelled against their commanders near the end of
World War I, and the navy was, from the beginning of World War II, the least important branch of the German military. On September 3, 1939, the commander in chief of the navy, Grand Admiral
Erich Raeder, deemed the coming struggle against Britain, a traditional sea power, to be so hopeless that all German sailors could do was “die
with honor.”
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Raeder’s mood soon improved, and at one point he even believed that a blockade could bring England to its
knees, but the navy leadership was also forced to try to bolster
morale in special ways. Displaying particularly good morale was the navy’s lone trump card, the one way it had of achieving recognition within the state and the Wehrmacht in general. Nonetheless, as of 1943, the
German navy descended into
military insignificance. German battleships and destroyers were far inferior
technologically to American and British warships, and the German navy lacked the necessary fuel to properly train sailors, so the Allies won almost all of the battles at sea. Notable successes failed to materialize. The Allies negated a slight German advantage in
E-boats and
U-boats with better
radar and sonar
technology. And the longer there was no positive news to report and the larger the enemy’s matériel and personnel advantage became, the more
fighting became a value for its own sake.
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The Nazi leadership respected the navy in this regard,
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and the alleged
extraordinary morale among German sailors was one of the main reasons Hitler chose Grand Admiral
Dönitz to succeed him as Reich president.

Especially in critical situations, military virtues were supposed to encourage soldiers to keep fighting to the very end. The model soldier was the one who battled, as the cliché had it, down to the very last bullet. Indeed, Wehrmacht regulation number 2 read: “It is expected of every German soldier that he prefers to die with a weapon in his hand to being captured. But in the vagaries of battles, even the bravest man may have the misfortune to be taken captive by the enemy.”
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In the first half of World War II, even if soldiers were made to swear an oath that they would sacrifice their lives for the Third Reich, the military leadership did not interpret this regulation literally.
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If a battle was lost from a tactical standpoint, soldiers were allowed to surrender. Fighting on was considered senseless, even if individual infantrymen still had ammunition in their belts.

Yet as the war turned for the worse, the German military leadership became more radical in its demands that soldiers fight on until the bitter end. In the final phase of the war, this trope became emblematic for the Wehrmacht as a whole. The German setbacks before
Moscow
in the winter of 1941–42 were the beginning of a transition whereby soldiers were no longer just supposed to fight until a battle had been decided, but to continue “fanatically” until they were killed.

On December 16, 1941, Hitler reacted to the deteriorating situation of
Army Group Center on the Eastern Front by ordering: “Commanders, unit leaders and officers are to take personal steps to force troops to engage in fanatic resistance in holding their positions, without regard to enemy breakthroughs on the flanks or from the rear.”
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Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel added ten days later: “Every foot of territory is to be fought for with every ounce of energy.”
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Military commanders on the ground initially welcomed these general orders in the belief that they would help quell panic among exhausted soldiers. But opposition quickly arose when the orders were put into concrete practice. Colonel
Erich Hoepner remarked: “Fanatic will alone isn’t enough.… The fanatic resistance that’s being demanded only leads to the sacrificing of defenseless troops.”
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German generals refused to accept stand-and-die commands because the death of their soldiers on the battlefield, under the conditions the army was facing, did not promise to yield any military advantages. Hitler remained adamant, however, and replaced those commanders who did not submit to his dictates. Hitler credited his uncompromising order for the fact that the Soviet counteroffensive before Moscow was halted in February 1942. That counterstrike was the first crisis faced by the Wehrmacht, and Hitler was convinced that it made military sense to sacrifice troops in precarious situations.
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Henceforth, he demanded that soldiers fight fanatically, down to the last bullet, no matter how critical their situation, and he insisted that his commands be carried out to the letter. On November 3, 1942, when Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel wanted to withdraw from
El Alamein in
Egypt, the dictator explicitly forbade any sort of retreat. “Strength of will shall win out over the stronger battalion,” Hitler wrote. “There’s no other path to show your troops other than victory or death.”
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With support from his superior,
Albert Kesselring, Rommel refused to follow this suicide command and ordered his troops to retreat. He was not principally concerned with saving the lives of individual soldiers. In other situations, Rommel had no scruples about sending men to their certain deaths. In April and May 1941, he had ordered part of his forces to launch a militarily irrational attack on the stronghold of
Tobruk in
Libya and accused Lieutenant General
Heinrich Kirchheim of being a coward for refusing to
sacrifice his men. But by November 1942, Rommel could see no
military sense in having his divisions hold out in their current positions. Hitler had a different opinion. His command that German troops hold their ground
in Africa had a narrow military goal and a larger aim. On the one hand, the dictator believed that sheer force of will could hold back the
British 8th Army. And on the other hand, he saw a deeper meaning in soldiers sacrificing their lives. In Hitler’s mind, the
willingness to do so was a precondition of national unity.
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Rommel’s disobedience prevented German tank divisions in Africa from being completely destroyed in November 1942. He was subsequently transferred and thus did not witness their ultimate end in
Tunisia in May 1943. Hitler strictly ruled out Rommel’s suggestion that
Army Group Africa be withdrawn to Europe and instead ordered the troops to fight to the death. Knowing all too well what was being asked of him, the commander of the
German Afrika Korps,
Hans Cramer, relayed by
radio on May 9, 1943: “Ammunition gone. Weapons and equipment destroyed. DAK [German Afrika Korps] fought until unable as per orders.”
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Cramer was taken prisoner by the British and interned in
Trent Park. Because he suffered from serious asthma, the plan was to repatriate him in February 1944. But he soon began to wonder how, if he returned to Germany, he would explain to Hitler “why things collapsed so quickly.” What worried him the most was that the command to fight to the last bullet had not been carried out: “My division commanders asked me over and over whether this could be changed, and I said ‘No.’ … But the end looked as though we had surrendered with bullets in our guns, in our machine guns and our
tanks.” The idea of “to the last bullet,” Cramer told fellow POW General
Crüwell, “is relative. You could just as well say ‘to the last tank-busting grenade.’ ”
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Cramer refused to enter into a fight “with pistols against tanks” or a “final infantry battle” that seemed to make no military sense. Once the battle had been decided from a tactical perspective, he had “handed over” his troops to the enemy—something he did not want to admit to the Führer. Crüwell advised him not to speak of “handing over,” but rather only of the “end.”
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If General Cramer suffered from pangs of conscience about not completely fulfilling his duty,
Colonel Meyne was positively outraged about the form the “final battle” took in Tunisia. It was, he complained, unprecedented in German military history, a capitulation that was “depressing” in a way the
German defeat at Stalingrad had not
been. The demise of the
6th Army had been sad, Meyne opined, but “they fought to the last, allowed themselves to be fired on from all sides in the tightest space and held out for who knows how long. Only when nothing more was possible, did they capitulate.” The situation in Africa, Meyne said, was completely different. “It is shattering how many officers give up fighting,” Meyne complained. “They simply lose desire. They’ve had enough.” The Führer’s command to fight down to the last bullet had been passed on to the Wehrmacht’s African divisions, but they had only answered “Where is the ammunition?” In the end, on May 8, 1943, the supreme commander of the
5th Tank Army, Lieutenant General
Gustav von Vaerst, had simply ordered: “Pleinouvoir—as long as you can, and then stop.”
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The POWs’ tales suggest that most officers interpreted the order to fight until the last bullet in terms of conventional
military logic. Hitler, meanwhile, had divorced himself from traditional tactics. He wanted to see sacrifice for its own sake.
Goebbels took a similar view in June 1944, when he wrote: “We are not fighting down to the last bullet for the sake of our own lives. We’re fighting down to the last drop of blood or breath.… There’s only one either- or situation, life or death.”
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The Wehrmacht adapted to this apocalyptic rhetoric. In summer 1944, officers in charge of the
Atlantic bunkers had to swear an oath to defend their position to the last man.
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Excuses such as not having any ammunition or supplies would lead to them being “relieved [of command] in the sharpest fashion.”
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On July 21, 1944, Field Marshal Günther von
Kluge reported to Hitler about the hopeless military situation in Normandy: “We will hold our positions, and if no support arrives to improve our situation, then we’ll have to die with honor.”
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These lines were no doubt intended to placate the Führer and conceal Kluge’s knowledge of two failed plans to
assassinate Hitler. But Kluge’s report does show what the highest-ranking German military officers believed the Führer wanted to hear. As the Allies advanced to the borders of Germany proper in fall 1944, the Wehrmacht chiefs of staff officially introduced “a duty to go down fighting.”
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Field commanders were forbidden to capitulate even when the tactical situation was hopeless.
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It remains to be seen whether the idea of truly fighting down to the bitter end really was anchored in the frame of reference of mid-level officers and ordinary soldiers. Regulations governed nearly everything in soldiers’ lives, from the cut of their uniforms to the use of
weapons and conduct in
battle. But there were no regulations governing capitulation. No rules stated when and how one was allowed to surrender. The ideas of the military leadership remained largely abstract to low-ranking soldiers in the heat of battle. Defeat on the battlefield was a moment of disorientation, in which group behavior became especially important. Soldiers fought as one, and mostly they were captured in groups.

First Sergeant Renner of Luftwaffe Reconnaissance Regiment 7, for instance, was unwilling to fight down to the last bullet in the Battle of Cherbourg in June 1944:

Renner repeatedly returned to German lines and saved the lives of 282 men, who became POWs. This case is a perfect example of how soldiers oriented themselves around how their comrades behaved. Renner had enough authority to assert himself against those who wanted to defend their positions to the last man. As soon as the first soldiers began to follow him, the ice was broken, and more and more began surrendering. Because the commanding officer was hiding in his bunker, Renner could exploit his men’s lack of orientation and show them a way out. This story would no doubt have turned out differently had a charismatic officer taken the lead and ordered the men to fight down to the last bullet.

Soldiers’ will to survive and the group dynamic of combat situations explain why, even during the early victorious phase of World War II, units of up to two hundred men sometimes surrendered, refusing, much to the dismay of the Nazi leadership, to fight to the last.
Yet soldiers’ occasional violation of a
military norm does not mean that the “last bullet” trope failed to establish itself.
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The surveillance protocols show that it was anchored as a central point of orientation in German soldiers’ frame of reference and did influence their behavior.

For example, a
Captain Gundlach from the
716th Infantry Division reported the following about soldiers defending their positions in the village of
Ouistreham
in Normandy on June 6, 1944: