Fallen Eagle: The last days of the Third Reich by Cross Robin

Fallen Eagle: The last days of the Third Reich by Cross Robin

Author:Cross, Robin [Cross, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-12-15T16:00:00+00:00


C hapter E ight

THE RACE TO BERLIN

‘You will see that in none of this do I mention Berlin. So far as I am concerned the place has become nothing but a geographical location. I have never been interested in these. My purpose is to destroy the enemy.’

Signal from General Eisenhower to Field Marshal Montgomery, 30 March 1945

On 4 February 1945, Ursula von Kardorff wrote in her diary:

I am no longer the only one who wants to leave [Berlin]. No one can bear to be alone any more. People are herding together like deer in a storm. Everyone talks of forged passports, a laissez-passer , a bogus duty trip, foreign workers’ identity cards and certificates of one kind or another. Everyone has a different plan, each more idiotic than the last. But our plans, bubbles though they are, do at least save us from lethargy. The new offices at Tempelhof are a madhouse. It takes two or three hours just to reach them. We all sit in an enormous room with glass walls, like parrots in the Zoo. We are robots, performing functions that everybody knows to be pointless. For example, we have to get out broadsheets every day filled with horror stories about the Russians and with asinine appeals and exhortations. ‘Hold fast’, because Goebbels says that were are on the brink of victory. ‘We shall win because we must win’ is typical of the convincing logic. Today one of the men in the office who is terribly stiff, always wears a tiepin with the old Imperial crown and never lets himself go, stood in the door, livid with rage, shouting ‘Even the bloody food is a load of shit!’ I couldn’t help laughing.

In another part of Berlin Hans-Georg von Studnitz noted: ‘The most desired possession is a car with petrol. Unlimited supplies of coffee, spirits are being offered on the black market in exchange for a private car and fuel … the newspapers now appear as single sheets with abbreviated headlines and subtitles.’ On 22 February Studnitz’s diary returned to the subject of the black market:

While the troops go short of fuel, the petrol black market in Berlin is doing a roaring trade. Thousands of private cars are still cruising about. A litre of ‘black’ petrol costs forty marks or twenty cigarettes. Twenty litres cost a pound of coffee or a kilo of butter. Tyres can be bought for two or three thousand marks. Small trailers are being offered at twenty thousand marks each, and even an old car cannot be had for less than fifteen or twenty thousand. There is also a brisk trade in false number plates and diplomatic CD plates. A complete set of false papers, consisting of a travel permit, a military pass, an employment card and a Home Guard Z-card costs eighty thousand marks. Recently a soldier was arrested while carrying a suitcase filled with bogus official rubber stamps. They were better cut than the official originals, and the SS department which arrested the man immediately confiscated them for their own use.



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