Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Fritz Stephen G.
Title : Endkampf Soldiers, civilians, and the death of the Third Reich
Year : 2004

Link download : Fritz_Stephen_G_-_Endkampf.zip

Preface. In assessing the dissolution of Hitler’s regime, the prominent German historian Hans Mommsen has claimed that from 1943 on, the Third Reich was in an accelerating process of internal dissolution, a situation that prompted the most radical members of the party, state, and military increasingly to assert control and assume new tasks. Further, Mommsen contends that in the last year of the war the Nazi Party embraced an “allencompassing ideological mobilization,” returning to the revolutionary ambitions of the Kampfzeit, the period of struggle leading to power. As part of this marshaling of support, the key goal was to cultivate “a fanatical will to hold on” and to demonstrate that the Volksgemeinschaft (national community) “possessed a massed will to action.” To Mommsen, the breakdown of the state opened for ardent Nazis the possibility of a revival of notions of a revolutionary makeover of German society, which not only required the total mobilization of the people but also mass terror directed against any recalcitrant members of the national community.1 As Mommsen noted, in Adolf Hitler’s last official proclamation, dated February 24, 1945, he stressed “our unshakeable will” to fight on, evoking a vision of protracted struggle on German soil, one in which the western Allies in particular would tire of fighting a desperate foe determined to defend every village and house to the last man. If defeat could not be averted, Hitler, Goebbels, and other top Nazis seemed intent on securing “the victory of the National Socialist idea” in the future. As part of this endeavor Goebbels struggled to create an effective Werwolf (Nazi guerrilla) movement, both to promote guerrilla war as well as guarantee the survival of Nazi ideology. ...