Endsieg: Germany's Final Plan to Win WW2 1943-45 | Animated History

Hi, I'm Griffin Johnson, the Armchair Historian. In this episode, we will attempt to plumb the depths of desperation and fanaticism that were the final days of the Second World War in the panic-stricken minds of both Hitler and his high command. The grinding days of 1943 to 1945 were a delusional period for Germany, a heady cocktail of crushing reality stirred in with ideological blindness steering an intoxicated Nazi leadership towards ever more extreme measures in their bid for Enzige, or ultimate victory. We will look at the dismal situation Nazi Germany faced at the end of the war, and examine the insidious ways that Hitler and his generals planned to achieve their Enzige, or else, to punish what they saw as the cowardly German population that dared to betray their Fuhrer. 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The failure of Operation Fall Blau, or Case Blue, was a major contributor to the eventual Axis defeat on the Eastern Front. Although many will argue that the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was doomed from the start. Launched in June of 1942, Case Blue was an attempt to simultaneously cut off Soviet access to resupply from the Black Sea and capture the oil fields located in the Caucasus. The oil wells of Baku were of paramount importance, as Germany had exhausted its pre-war petroleum reserves. Yet ironically, the operation designed to address this shortage only exacerbated it, as the marathon drive toward Caucasus and the scorched earth defense by Soviet forces stretched already fragile fuel lines, leaving their offensives in the East all but dead in the water. Case Blue culminated in the Battle of Stalingrad, which marked the deepest penetration of Nazi troops into the Soviet Union. But although they inflicted grievous losses on the Red Army, the offensive was ultimately turned back, along with practically all of the momentum on the Eastern Front. Germany went into the Caucasus for oil and triumph, but left with empty tanks and full graveyards. As bad as this situation was, Nazi officials had reason for some confidence. The Allied raid at Dieppe, France in August of 1942 was an embarrassing failure and a windfall for the German propaganda ministry, indicating that the Allies lacked the expertise to launch an amphibious invasion of Europe. The Luftwaffe also regularly inflicted heavy casualties on Allied bomber sorties, giving hope that they could still win the war in the air in the long term. This optimism was strengthened with the knowledge that cutting-edge jet fighters like the Me 262 might enter production within a year. But these dreams became increasingly far-fetched, as Germany's answer to its logistical challenges was the creation of ever more complex Wunderwaffe, or wonder weapons, that created more of the same challenges. V2 rocket systems to rain holy terror on petulant Londoners, STG-44s that would influence modern assault rifles, Maus tanks to grind the Judeo-Bolsheviks into dust, and other incredible inventions that were largely either too expensive, ineffective, or impractical. Fuel was a constant concern, with the Wehrmacht juggling supplies of petrol and synthetic gas to power its desperate operations. Far more sinisterly, the Germans relied on slave labor, from concentration camp inmates, who suffered both from the malice of their oppressors, as well as industrial accidents. All of these issues saw Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, and the man with his hands on the levers of German industry, playing an ever more challenging game of the floor-is-lava economic edition. Fritz Reinhardt, state secretary in the German finance ministry, reportedly said, This economic exploitation, one of the many schemes designed to remedy Germany's excessive spending, paradoxically worsened the German economic condition, in large part because the scheme was falsely predicated on a quick and decisive military conquest. But Hitler and his advisors hardly concerned themselves with these practical considerations. They had Nazi ideology, which elevated the war to an apocalyptic struggle between the superior Aryan race and the Untermensch, who stood between them and the mastery of Europe. Early success in Poland and France had taught the Nazi party that shortcomings in strategy or logistics could be overcome by raw Germanic prowess, encouraging blind belief in Nazi supremacy and downplaying objective analysis of defeats or strategic blunders. After all, as Hitler said regarding Operation Barbarossa, all the Germans had to do was kick the door in and the entire structure would come crashing down. That they kept having to find more doors to kick was another matter. Even after the failure of Case Blue, Hitler tried to keep the army on an offensive footing, but his plans were constantly postponed. Meanwhile, Soviet winter counter-offensives made inroads on Nazi-held territory, forming a salient around the city of Kursk. With summer approaching, Hitler authorized Operation Citadel, a massive attack on this salient by Army Group Center and Army Group South. What followed is often considered one of the largest tank battles in history. The Luftwaffe and Panzer divisions exhausting themselves, trying to break through the Soviet defenses and envelop the salient. Yet this salient would ultimately hold, and Operation Citadel represented everything wrong with the German war effort. It was a reactionary move based on vague strategic goals that even if successful, would merely delay the inevitable. After the failure at Kursk, the German disposition would permanently shift to the defensive. Even so, German morale endured the disaster at Kursk, and the Wehrmacht remained an effective fighting force throughout 1943. This was primarily due to the efforts of men like Walter Model and Albert Kesselring, who effectively transitioned the German army to a defensive posture. Hopes rested on a series of fortifications constructed along the Dnieper River, sometimes known as the Ostwall. Despite hurling up to 3 million Soviet soldiers at the Ostwall in August, the Red Army was unable to cross the Dnieper for nearly three months. Meanwhile in the West, the Allied invasion of Italy was brought to a standstill at the Gustav Line in December. As winter set in, Hitler hoped that Germany could hold out until the unholy alliance between the capitalist Western Allies and the communist USSR collapsed under its own ideological weight. Unfortunately for Germany, reality finally came knocking on Hitler's door in June of 1944, when the Normandy landings blew through the Atlantic Wall and cost Germany nearly half a million casualties, while Operation Bagration in the East shattered the Germans' precious battle lines at the cost of around 400,000 men. With Germany's forces being ground to a pulp by the Soviets, Romania and Bulgaria defected in 1944, and the panicked Germans occupied Hungary to prevent their defection, even as the Hungarian Prime Minister begged the Soviets for a separate peace. Though German ferocity delayed the Allied advance, they could not match their superiority in men, material, and air power. Hemorrhaging manpower, and with hardly any supplies or economic strength remaining, the Germans had to get creative to replace their mounting losses. In addition to raising 78 Volksgrenadier Divisions and moving extant regiments around to create new armies on paper, the Germans made a desperate attempt to augment their forces in the form of the Volkssturm, or People's Storm. On October 18, 1944, Hitler personally ordered that all civilian males aged 16 to 60 join a new force that would continue to protect the Reich. The Volkssturm was not an organ of the Wehrmacht, which Hitler was beginning to see as weak and incompetent, but rather a paramilitary militia controlled by the Nazi Party. Allied intelligence at the time estimated that at full strength, the Volkssturm could have mustered over 13 million fighters to oppose the march to Berlin. Less than half that number could put up an honest fight. The Volkssturm were initially issued whatever uniforms could be scrounged up, but as the logistical situation deteriorated, their only standard piece of equipment became a black and red armband, identifying them as members of the militia, which led to members fighting in everything from civilian business suits to hand-me-down imperial German kits from the First World War. The Volkssturm were armed with a hodgepodge of civilian hunting rifles, weapons captured from Allied and Scandinavian countries, and surprisingly ingenious last-ditch weapons. An example of this last category was the Eintausflammenwerfer, a portable single-shot flamethrower. The Eintaus was essentially an oversized aerosol bottle designed to fire a single half-second gout of flame before being discarded in the same vein as the single-shot Panzerfaust. Such a weapon would have been as simple as point and roast, making it perfect for civilian users. German resistance would not end at the front line, however. Josef Goebbels launched a massive propaganda push centered around a partisan network, which would, in theory, continue the war even in the event of a German defeat. People the foolish Allies would take for friendly civilians would in fact be hardened fighters, with National Socialism burning in their hearts and ready to transform at any moment into a fighting force to sow discord and strife among the Allies. Nazi partisans would, in reality, carry out or take credit for numerous assassinations and sabotage operations during the final years of the war. But the massive organization Goebbels wrote about was never a serious threat. With Wunderwaffe in hand, the Germans would win the war, maybe. The Führer realized that only a grand offensive could now conclude the war for Germany favorably. The question was where it stood the best chance of success, as action against the Soviets or in Italy bear little fruit. There was, however, one sector which had historically served the German army well. Hitler, no doubt fueled by a sense of 1940 nostalgia, ordered a massive armored attack through the lightly defended Ardennes region. His goal was to drive onto Antwerp and isolate the Commonwealth forces in Holland, knocking them out of the war and forcing Britain into another Dunkirk to save what soldiers would be left, perhaps even triggering negotiations for peace and freeing up German troops to finally defeat the inferior Soviets in the east. Hitler was proven partly right in his predictions when the offensive, codenamed Operation Wacht am Rhein, took the American defenders by complete surprise, causing panic in their lines. However, in a characteristic display of hubris, Hitler and his high command had not only severely underestimated the fighting prowess of the American army, which after the initial shock continued to provide tenacious resistance on key crossroads and towns all over the Ardennes, but they had also failed to provide their army with enough fuel. Exhausted and undersupplied, the battered remnants were ultimately ordered to withdraw entirely when a strong Allied counterattack forced its way through their weakened lines. Hitler's final gamble had utterly failed, and with it Germany's last military reserves, so desperately needed to repel the forthcoming winter offensive on the Eastern Front, had been spent. Germany's remaining defenders now had their work cut out for them. In January 1945, the Soviets built on the momentum of Operation Begration to launch the Vistula-Oder offensive, a crushing drive into Poland that saw Germany lose their first conquest of the war. With renowned Field Marshal Georgi Zhukov at the head, the Soviets obliterated 45 divisions and claimed to have killed or captured 400,000 men stopping at the Oder River bordering the Fatherland. The propaganda minister recorded a feeling of utter terror sweeping through the capital of the Reich, as the citizens of Berlin worried that the Soviets had a clear path to the city. There is nothing between us, no anti-tank gun, no anti-tank obstacles, not a single soldier. This would not be true for long. The Luftwaffe's 1st Fliegerdivision, under noted tank hunter Hans Ulrich Rudel, was stationed in the defense of the city, and high command hoped to use the planes to pick off Soviet tanks crossing the frozen Oder. German engineers on the ground would blast the ice in non-combat areas. There would be bombers where the Soviets were, and a moat where the Soviets were not. But the blasting proved to be ineffective against the thick ice, with even power saws unable to inflict lasting damage. The Oder River was quick to heal its wounds with fresh ice. This state of affairs would continue through early February, when a warmer weather and the thawing of the Oder River enabled the Germans to launch a last-ditch defensive, with Rudel's planes sortying out from quickly assembled defenses on the German side to eliminate Soviet tanks. It was one such sortie that ended Rudel's flying career. After dive-bombing 12 Soviet tanks, the Panzerkraker moved on a 13th kill, only for his engine to blow, driving white-hot debris into his leg. Rudel limped back to his airstrip, barely alive. In a way, this episode is a metaphor. The Germans continued to fight against a superior foe, even as their own equipment and leadership betrayed them. Germany's soldiers had little choice in the matter. Numerous members of the High Command had so thoroughly bought into the party's propaganda that they either sincerely believed that the Third Reich would still prevail somehow, or that if they were going to lose the war, they should take as many Untermenschen as possible with them. Clearer heads were well aware of the war crimes and brutality Nazi Germany had inflicted upon the world, and feared summary execution by the Soviets, or a slower trial and execution from the Western Allies. Both situations bred an atmosphere of determination worthy of Bushido, creating a clique of leaders who were determined to die fighting for the Fuhrer, and the men under their command had little choice but to follow suit. The situation was equally dire for civilians, as those who refused conscription into the Volksdurm were summarily hanged and displayed as warnings to their neighbors. Even Germans in liberated regions weren't safe. In the city of Aachen, the Americans installed lawyer Franz Oppenhalf as governor. A Wehrwolf unit of SS and Hitler Youth members as young as 16 killed Oppenhalf not long thereafter. Germany held out far longer than many would suspect, partially out of ideological fervor, but primarily out of fear, either of Allied justice or of Soviet or Nazi reprisals. Even with this intoxicating mix of fear and zeal in the air, Hitler came to believe that the German people were not only weak, but had betrayed their Fuhrer and cost themselves the chance for racial domination. His paranoia reached its zenith in March 1945, when Albert Speer presented Hitler with a report stating the economy could hold out for another month, perhaps two. Speer's reports ended with an uncharacteristically humanitarian plea, urging his Fuhrer to consider the safety and survival of the German people and to make provisions for them in the post-war world. Hitler's alleged response displayed the ruthlessness he perceived his subjects lacked. He exclaimed, If the war is lost, the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. If the German economy would not hold, if the people could not rally behind him to be led to Enzig, and if Germany was to fall to the Allies, then the foes of fascism would not inherit a nation. They would inherit a ruin. It was around this time that the Holocaust was rapidly intensified. As resources were depleted and territory was lost, the Nazis saw an imperative to accelerate their extermination of the lesser races before it was too late. Jewish ghettos across Poland and occupied Europe were emptied. Their occupants shipped off to extermination camps by the tens of thousands. This was the Nazis' last grasp at implementing their final solution to their Jewish question. On March 19, 1945, Hitler issued the Decree Concerning Demolitions in the Reich Territory, or as history would remember it, the Nero Decree, ordering the total destruction of all communications, manufacturing, and transportation infrastructure in Germany. Just days after, Goebbels gave a rousing address known as the Werwolf Speech, exhorting every man and woman to join the semi-mythical resistance network and fight to the last. The Allies would conquer a barren hellscape of destruction and misery. A misery visited upon the cowardly German people by their own ineptitude and inability to follow the glorious vision of Adolf Hitler. Speer was placed in charge of implementing the Nero Decree, yet understandably sat on his hands as far as enacting the wholesale destruction of Germany's infrastructure as an act of naked defiance that would have seen him put against a wall in previous years. He would not have to endure for long. The Soviet drive across the Oder paid increasing dividends, with the Soviets encircling and destroying army groups and divisions all along their offensive line and driving on Berlin. Hitler had now well and truly separated himself from reality, as the Soviets closed in on Berlin. The remnants of Army Group Center, under command of Field Marshal Ferdinand Schomer, launched an offensive intended to break through the Soviet lines and reinforce the capital. The 4th Panzer Army found some small success, and Hitler saw an opportunity to launch a general counterattack, ordering the repositioning of forces to link up with Schörner's men and form pincers that would envelop Zhukov's entire army. Hitler was sure the plan would work, but when he unveiled this plan to his generals, he was met with the reality that such a bold offensive action was impossible. In a scene that has been comedically mistranslated in countless YouTube videos, Hitler raged at his generals, lamenting their cowardice and declaring the war lost. The Soviets encircled Berlin the next day, and the fight for the capital began. But Hitler, in a final fit of vindictive madness, was set upon making the Communists swim to victory in their own blood. The Soviet forces stormed the city, and brutal house-to-house fighting raged, culminating in the storming of the Reichstag on April 25th. Since January, Hitler had withdrawn underground to a complex called the Führerbunker. It was from here he intended to oversee the final destruction of his enemies, or of Germany. If the Soviets captured Hitler, the propaganda value would be enormous, so his final plan was simple. With cyanide and a pistol shot, Adolf Hitler left the world he had been so keen to conquer, and in which he had caused such unnecessary suffering and death. The last hope of German victory had died long before, but Adolf Hitler no doubt imagined that it in fact died with him. With their Führer gone, hordes of his followers decided that they couldn't live in a world without National Socialism, and ardent Nazis from Goebbels to even the mayor of Leipzig would kill themselves, and in many cases, their entire families, as Nazi Germany crumbled around them. On May 7th, 1945, Germany surrendered. The German plan to win in the final years of the Second World War was entirely contingent on what was happening in the moment. Hitler and high command spent the end of the war in a reactionary state, constantly shifting strategic priorities to ensure the completion of short-term objectives, most of which failed to materialize. Whether it was driving for the Caucasian oil fields in 1942, or raising millions of old men and boys to fight hardened Allied soldiers in 1944, Germany's harebrained schemes to snatch victory from a whirling maelstrom of annihilation show a dictatorial regime at the end of its rope. Hitler was not a military mastermind, but a vain tyrant with exceptional public speaking abilities who wished to inflict his vision upon the world. And when the world didn't accept his vision, he sought to punish it, starting with his own people.