@literarypoland,
Newspapers controlled by the Nazis ( which was all of them in Germany from shortly after their accession to power) did not print defeatist reports about the Wehrmacht.
That said, even Hitler didn't know what the status of troops was half the time. On April 28, 1945, he radioed Field Marshal Keitel:
"I expect the relief of Berlin. What is Heinrici's army doing? Where is Wenck? What is happening to the Ninth Army?"
If Hitler didn't even know that the army groups he had ordered to relieve Berlin had been liquidated or were retreating so as to be captured by the Western Allies rather than the Soviets (per Shirer), what would the average German have known about the strength and disposition of Soviet forces moving forward? I suspect that many Germans expected the American and British forces to hasten to occupy Germany before the Soviets did; and by the time it became obvious that this wasn't the case, it was too late for anything but chaos.
Admiral Doenitz was in charge of the German government in the final days, first the military situation in northern Germany and subsequently the national government as Hitler's designated successor.
In his memoirs he wrote that by May 1st "communications had broken down completely"; also that millions of Germans were fleeing westward from the oncoming Russians.
He also writes:
"Between January 23 and May 8, 1945, 2,022,602 persons from Courland, East and West Prussia, and later from Pomerania and parts of Mecklenburg were safely transported by sea to the west. The evacuations had been carried out under constant attack by British, American and Russian aircraft, by Russian submarines and light coastal forces, and through waters repeatedly and heavily mined... painful as these losses were, they represented only 1 percent of the total brought out by sea; 99 percent succeeded in arriving safely at ports on the western Baltic... Owing to a lack of shipping and inadequate port facilities in Libau only a fraction of the army in Courland could be evacuated."
Note that the last sentence makes clear that some substantial portion of these "persons" were German military.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace