How much did ordinary Germans know about the situation on the Eastern Front?

Newspapers were published regularly even in early 1945.
But I understand that they didn't carry reports from concentration camps.
Although... the existence of such camps for opposition members must have been known. I remember watching a clip, one of few still existing, of a Nazi TV broadcast. You know, Heil Hitler at the start and then the anchor said sth about "those who can't sing in tune and will have to be taught how to".
And when Germans started to retreat - was it presented as "tactical withdrawal"? When newspapers published reports of the Nemmensdorf massacre by Soviet troops, civilian population in Eastern Prussia started to escape westwards in panic.
I also watched a Nazi chronicle which showed prostheses for legless veterans of war. So the fact that there were victims was not hidden. Anyway, families must have been receiving notices of their kin's deaths.
When the panic started in early 1945, it was like a typhoon. Gauleiter Koch told the people in Pomeranian ports that party members had the right to board the ships first. Many large ships were sunk by Soviet aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wilhelm_Gustloff
Some Germans escaped to Denmark and were put into a concentration camp there.
Soviet planes targeted the escaping population, then millions of rapes happened in Allenstein, Gdansk, Berlin.
So was this chaos partly caused by lack of proper information to civilians?