After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe
Read After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe Online
Authors: Michael Jones
Also by Michael Jones
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AFTER HITLER
The Last Days of the Second World War in Europe
Michael Jones
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by John Murray (Publishers)
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Michael Jones 2015
The right of Michael Jones to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Maps drawn by Rodney Paull
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Ebook ISBN 978-1-84854-497-0
John Murray (Publishers)
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
To all those – from East and West –
who fought to rid Europe of fascism
Contents
1. The Funeral Pyre, 30 April 1945
List of Illustrations
1
. The spell breaks: the Nazi eagle and swastika above the damaged grandstand of their rally site at Nuremberg
2
. East meets West: Lieutenants William Robertson and Alexander Sylvashko embrace at Torgau on the Elbe (25 April 1945)
3
. US infantrymen move down a street in Waldenburg, south central Germany, April 1945
4
. Berlin falls to the Red Army: Marshal Georgi Zhukov on the steps of the Reichstag, 2 May
5
. British tanks race towards Lübeck, 2 May
6
. The horror: sign erected by British forces outside Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, May 1945
7
. The British arrive at Hamburg: a Cromwell tank guards the bridge over the Elbe
8
. German soldiers – some using horse-drawn transport – make their way towards British forces to surrender
9
. British and Russian troops meet at Wismar, 3 May
10
. A Russian tanker and British sapper drink to victory
11
. Monty’s triumph: the British field marshal receives the German delegation at Lüneburg Heath, 3 May
12
. A day later the formal surrender of Denmark, Holland and north-western Germany is signed in Montgomery’s tent
13
. The American field command – seated (
left to right
) are Generals William Simpson, George Patton, Carl Spaatz, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Courtney Hodges and Leonard Gerow. Standing (
centre
) is Eisenhower’s chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith
14
. High-ranking American and Russian officers meet on the Elbe, 5 May (from the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Corps and the US Third Army)
15
. Confronting the truth: a German woman walks past bodies of murdered slave workers exhumed by US troops near Nammering, Germany
16
. Prisoners of Mauthausen concentration camp (Austria) liberated by US soldiers on 5 May
17
. The anguish: refugees on the road trying to return home
18
. ‘Displaced Persons’ – one of the great humanitarian challenges faced by the Allies
19
. ‘Calling all Czechs!’ Barricades go up in Prague at the beginning of the uprising, 5 May
20
. US troops enter western Czechoslovakia, 6 May
21
. Operation Manna: loading supplies to be airdropped to the starving Dutch population
22
. Unlikely rescuers: troops from the 1st Division Russian Liberation Army (Vlasov Army) arrive outside the Militia HQ, Prague, 6 May
23
. Field Marshal Montgomery meets his Russian counterpart, Field Marshal Rokossovsky, at Wismar on the Baltic
24
. General Alfred Jodl signs the first unconditional surrender at SHAEF headquarters, Rheims, 7 May
25
. False alarm: a special edition of
Stars and Stripes
prematurely announces ‘Germany Quits!’ on 7 May
26
. VE-Day in London, 8 May: a huge crowd gathers at Whitehall to hear Churchill’s speech
27
. ‘The German war is … at an end’: Churchill broadcasts to the nation
28
. ‘The day of death’: SS units fight for the centre of Prague with Czech insurgents, 8 May
29
. The second signing at Karlshorst: the German delegation now headed by Field Marshal Keitel
30
.The Allied delegation now headed by Russia’s supreme commander, Georgi Zhukov
31
.Russian troops liberate Prague
32
.VE-Day in Moscow, 9 May
33
. The celebratory fireworks that night
Illustration Credits
© Imperial War Museums: 1 above/IWM CL3092, 3 above/IWM BU4972, 3 below/IWM BU6955, 4 above/IWM BU5077, 4 below/IWM CL2538, 5 above/IWM BU5230, 5 below/IWM BU5238, 6 above/IWM BU5145, 6 below/IWM BU5207, 12 above left/IWM BU5523, 12 above right/IWM EA65715, 12 below/IWM EA65948, 13 above/IWM D24586, 13 below/IWM H41846, 14 below/IWM FRA203385. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): 1 below/NARA 111-SC-204516, 2 above/NARA 111-SC-205778, 7 above/NARA 280-YE-182, 8 above/NARA 111-SC-264895. Prague Military Institute: 10, 11. RIA Novosti: 2 below/RIA Novosti 608394, 7 below/RIA Novosti 362876, 8 below/RIA Novosti 369161, 9 above/RIA Novosti 608790, 9 below/RIA Novosti 355, 14 above/RIA Novosti 677390, 15 above/RIA Novosti 574539, 15 below/RIA Novosti 881134, 16 above/RIA Novosti 594370, 16 below/RIA Novosti 583984.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if there are any errors or omissions, John Murray will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgements in any subsequent printings or editions.
List of Maps
1
. General situation map showing Allied advance to May 1945
2
. The British advance to the Baltic, 2 May 1945
3
. The Prague uprising, 5–9 May 1945
Preface
M
AY
2015
WILL
be the seventieth anniversary of VE-Day in Europe. For many, in the Allied armed forces and among the civilians who supported the war effort, it will be a last opportunity to connect with a vitally important achievement – the overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi regime. We remember those who sacrificed their lives so that we might see this day. All of us are in their debt.
This book tells the story of the last ten days of the war, from the death of Hitler on 30 April to the celebration of VE-Day in Moscow on 9 May, a day after it is held in the West.
In its structure, it follows a countdown formula from day to day – but within this framework it also takes a thematic approach, bringing out the complex international politics and diplomacy that underlay these military events. It also addresses a wider concern – the humanitarian catastrophe that was engulfing Europe and the psychological impact this had on those caught up in it.
Its central aim is to show why we celebrate two VE-Days – 8 May in the West, 9 May in the East (although the Channel Islands also celebrate their liberation on 9 May): how this came about and what its real significance is. These separate days tell a story of the common cause between allies, but also of the divisions that nearly caused a rift between them in the days after Hitler’s death. It was a crisis largely hidden from public view and in the event it was successfully mastered. All those involved in the behind-the-scenes diplomacy deserve credit for that.
I have tried to present a view that is fair to all the members of the Grand Alliance, and in particular the Soviet Union – whose motives in May 1945 (and indeed throughout the war) were sometimes viewed with considerable suspicion in the West – recognising its major contribution to the victory against Nazi Germany and that it had legitimate concerns of its own. In a final reckoning, we will never know whether the descent into the Cold War was inevitable. I look at the pernicious influence of the administration of Hitler’s successor, Admiral Dönitz, whose shadowy role in the days after the Führer’s death is often underestimated – and the fears of both sides as the post-war map of Europe began to unfold. In such circumstances, I believe it was a real achievement that the Alliance held firm at the war’s very end.
I also try to acknowledge those issues that were not resolved as this terrible war drew to its close. I counterpoint the victory celebrations in the West with the course of the little-known but important uprising in Prague in the East. On 8 May 1945, while London was
en fête
with all the joys of VE-Day, the Czech capital was fighting for its very life. By a quite miraculous series of events Prague was saved – but the Russian Liberation Army, which played a crucial part in rescuing the city, would be less lucky. Amid the euphoria, the war’s end involved awkward and sometimes unjust political compromises. But in the final defeat of the Third Reich and all that it stood for there was also real reason for hope.
In the summer of 2008 I visited Berlin with the instructions of two veterans fresh in my mind. One, Armin Lehmann, had been a member of the Hitler Youth and a courier to the Führer in the last terrible days of fighting in the city, as the war drew to its close. He had been in the Führer Bunker on the morning of Hitler’s death, on 30 April 1945. A day later, Armin had made a hellish breakout through the burning rubble of Berlin – eventually reaching the safety of American lines on the River Elbe. The other, Red Army lieutenant Vasily Ustyugov, had on the same day – 30 April – been only a few hundred metres away from Armin, fighting inside the Reichstag – which, despite lying in ruins for most of Hitler’s rule, became a symbol for the Russians of the hated Nazi regime. For Armin, the beginning of May 1945 was the collapse of everything he believed in; for Vasily, it was a triumphant vindication of a patriotic cause. As I visited some of the places seared in their memories and powerfully recounted in their stories, the genesis of this book emerged – the story of the last days of the Second World War, the days after Hitler’s death.
The concept grew the following autumn when I embarked on a cruise of the Black Sea under the banner of the BBC History Magazine Team
,
alongside fellow lecturers Greg Neale and Martin Folly. It was a powerful experience to visit Yalta and the site of the great summit in February 1945 that decisively shaped post-war Europe, and to hear Dr Folly’s ideas on the three-power diplomacy between Britain, America and the Soviet Union that was its anvil. Since then, many have helped in this book’s evolution. Alongside Martin, I would like to thank Professor Geoffrey Roberts of the University of Cork, Dr Elke Scherstjanoi of Berlin’s Institut für Zeitgeschichte, and particularly Richard Hargreaves – who shared his knowledge of the siege of Breslau and German archives in general – and Tomas Jakl of Prague’s Military Institute, who guided my work on the uprising of May 1945.
Many veterans have given generously of their time. I would especially like to thank Antonin Sticha of the Czech House of Veterans in Prague for sharing his own memories of the uprising there and facilitating other interviews. Alexander Ivanov of the Russian Council of War Veterans in Moscow also arranged a number of important meetings. And Julie Chervinsky of the Blavatnik Foundation Archive has drawn my attention to a number of moving veteran accounts. Further acknowledgements are to be found in the endnotes.
I am grateful to the staff of the collections of the Imperial War Museum and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London, the National Archives at Kew, the Churchill Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, the East Sussex Record Office (where the Mass Observation Archive is now housed) and the Second World War Experience Centre near Leeds. Foreign documentary material has also been drawn from the Prague City Archives, the Bundesarchiv at Freiburg, the Russian Ministry of Defence Archive at Podolsk and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington. Ralph Gibson of RIA Novosti kindly helped me with some of the illustrative material and also located some eyewitness accounts of Moscow on 9 May 1945.
