Endgame, 1945

Five things you didn't know about the last days of the Second World War:

1-The Allies (especially the Americans) were absolutely, totally convinced that Hitler planned a desperate last stand in the Alps, surrounded by the SS and elite "Werewolf" commando units. This would have resulted in Stalingrad-level casualties. Instead, "Onkel Adolf" stayed in der bunker and killed himself.

2- The Third World War nearly broke out before the Second was totally finished.  In Trieste, part of Italy but claimed by (soon-to-be Communist) Yugoslavia, allied soldiers stared down their Yugoslav counterparts - and a few shots were (probably) fired in anger. Stalin decided this wasn't the hill to die on.

3-As many realize, the Third Reich had two Fuhrers - Hitler, and Admiral Karl Doenitz, who took over after Hitler's suicide. What many don't realize is the Allies kinda sorta cooperated with Doenitz's government for a short time. Even after the fall of Berlin, the Germans were still entrenched and very much in control of northern German ports, Denmark and Norway. Stretched to the limit in manpower and resources, the allies left Doenitz in administrative control in Flensburg, a town near the Danish border. This lasted about a week. Wasn't popular, put it that way. 

4-It sounds like biased history, but by every account, shred of evidence and anecdotal record, occupying Allied troops were saints compared to their Soviet allies. While looting and occasional rough treatment were far from unknown, there were startlingly few accounts of rape. Unfortunately, murder and gang rape was systemic in lands liberated by the Red Army. Certainly German troops believed so, running day and night to have the opportunity to surrender to Canadian, British, or American soldiers.

5-It sounds like an urban legend, but recently unsealed evidence indicates the war ended just in time: Hitler's scientists were perilously close to developing truly advanced missiles and rockets, and possibly even atomic weapons.



It's always darkest before the dawn.

No match for bombers, tanks, and drunken Russians

Or so they say.

In April and May 1945, the 20th Century's long, dark night was coming to an end. Mussolini was dead, and Italy almost pacified. Hitler's Luftwaffe no longer existed in any meaningful or effective way, and his armies comprised of old men and terrified teenagers firing handguns at tanks. 

But still Hitler's opera - his crazed ode to gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods - wasn't quite played out.  In the keen retrospect of history, it's all too easy to look back at the end of the Second World War as the obvious and natural conclusion.

You know the story: with the Russians and Allies closing in from three directions, Hitler eventually offs himself, the good guys win, and then Harry Truman hands over Eastern Europe to Stalin on a silver platter. 

But at the time, it didn't seem like a foregone conclusion. David Stafford's gripping history tells the story of the war's final few weeks through the eyes of those who lived through it: a Canadian paratrooper, English and Kiwi war correspondents, English soldiers, and poignantly, a German mother of two separated from her two young children, and her desperate cross-continental search for them.

The End. But that wasn't a foregone conclusion.

But Stafford's history is more than just a series of revealing and often terrifying anecdotes.  He also describes the very real and plausible Allied fear that Hitler would abandon Berlin to fight on in the Alps, or perhaps Denmark and Norway.  He still had legions of fanatically loyal SS troops, and at least 300,000 troops in Norway. While we know now that by 1945, Hitler was a stammering, drug-addled wreck - but that didn't have to be the case. 

Stafford also describes - in heart-rendering detail - the sheer impossibility of the task facing Allied occupational armies. The entire continent was months away from starvation, they had millions of civilians and prisoners (of war and concentration camps) to feed (and often, restrain), and central Europe was plagued by roving gangs of recently-freed slave labourers who (a) had zero intention of returning to the Soviet Union, yet (b) didn't have many qualms about killing and raping their way from town to town.

Not a few - Winston Churchill chief among them - also believed there was a fourth (after Italy, Germany and Japan) menace to deal with - Russia. 

Nobody beloved by girls can be evil, right?

 The allies were well aware of their Soviet friends' penchant for installing local communists in power, removing absolutely everything of value back to Russia (literally including kitchen sinks), and - worst of all - raping and killing their way across the continent. 

Mother Russia was angry, and that was to be expected. But while the Allies were horrified by what they found in Nazi prison and death camps, it's not a stretch to say they were actually more frightened by reports trickling in from Soviet-occupied areas. 

How frightened? The Brits commissioned a quick report codenamed Operation Unthinkable - you can't make this stuff up - which basically asked what would happen if everyone stopped pretending to be friends and continued the war.

It was deemed hopeless (at best) for the allies, who would most likely lose, condemning most of Europe to a long, Stalinist stupor. 

Cold comfort for Poles and Hungarians, I know. But Allied restraint probably saved Austria, Italy and possibly even France from communism.

Oh yeah - the German who lost her kids. Despite all odds, she did find them. There were still some happy endings to be found.