The first chapter explains the US decision to abandon the drive towards Berlin but it is not the common explanation of avoiding US losses in conquering a city assigned the Soviet zone.
By March 1945 the majority of allied leaders believed in an alpine redoubt ("Alpenfestung"). Its biggest potential danger was the genesis of an "undefeated Nazi" myth, similar to the 1918 "undefeated KaiserHeer" myth. The Allies did not want to repeat the mistake of 1918 (hence the policy of total unconditional surrender). By March 28, Eisenhower informed Stalin, Marshall and Montgomery that they would drive towards the South/Southeast instead of Berlin, a decision bitterly protested by the British.
The next five chapters describe what happened in Franconia during April 1945 but are so detailed that they may loose the reader's interest (which is why I did not rate the book higher, despite the very interesting first and last two chapters, but that is subjective).
Those chapters give a glimpse into the nature of life in that crumbling Nazi regime when soldiers and civilians were terrorized and executed by party functionaries and SS commanders ("Goetterdaemmerung"). They also document the hard battles faced there by the GIs who, hoping to survive the final stage of the war, made full use of their artillery at the first sign of resistance, prompting the civilians to beg the Wehrmacht and SS not to put up a defense point in their villages, which led to numerous conflicts between civilians and SS/Nazi officials (e.g. the "Weibersturm" of Windsheim).
The last two chapters, the more interesting ones in my opinion, document and explain the tensions and violence between GIs, Jewish and other DPs (displaced persons), German civilians and returning POWs, and the German resistance ("Wehrwolf").
The formation of the Wehrwolf was announced on the "Deutschlandsender" on April 1st. By late November US troops had arrested 3000 Germans and seized large stores of ammo. A large national and organized Wehrwolf did not develop in part because of the vigilance of US forces but small local Wehrwolf activities occurred until early 1947 and caused several thousand deaths.
The fraternization between GIs and German females was resented by returning German POWs ("the German soldier fought for six years, the German woman for only five minutes", p208) and led to some violence against fraternizing GIs in 46/47.
Another source of tension was the perceived criminality of Jewish DPs which led to a strong rise in anti-Semitism and pro-Nazism. There were 6 to 8 million DPs (surviving Jews, POWs and slave laborers) wandering and looting in the countryside of the western zones at war's end, creating more violence than the Wehrwolf. After being housed in DP camps, they became the brokers in the black-market triangle between GIs (suppliers) and Germans (buyers). The black-market was the only way for Germans to avert slow starvation given their meager 900 to 1500 cal/day rations. The minority of Jewish DPs (145,000 in the American zone) was a special and explosive situation: they were still housed in camps with poor food and sanitation. After the Harrison commission, their food rations were raised to 2500 cal/day (double that of the Germans) and they were housed in requisitioned German homes. That understandably created German-Jewish tensions and rekindled anti-Semitism. The Germans blamed the Jewish DPs for the black-market, for the shortages of food and housing, and the international Jewry for their misery (p241). There was also a high level of anti-Semitism among the GIs and even among US officers, as best illustrated by Patton who in September 1945 characterized the Jews as "lower than animals"(p243). Open hostilities broke out between GIs and Jewish DPs in the first half of 1946 during crackdown operations on the black-market and all violence lasted until the DP camps were closed.
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Ölmüller
Best book I read about these times
Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on October 16, 2017
