Eighty years ago the Third Reich enters its death throes

 

Hitler ordered an all out attack by Germany's remaining land and air forces under SS General Felix Steiner, who commanded the largely phantom 11th SS Panzer Army,  on the Soviet army which was on the point of taking Berlin. He threatened that  any unit commander who did not commit his troops fully to the attack would be killed. He constantly demanded news of the operation but as the military assets which it involved existed mainly on paper, this was fragmentary and confused. Finally he was told outright at his daily conference that the attack had not taken place. This inspired the furious rant, now the stuff of parody, which concluded with Hitler acknowledging that he had failed and and had nothing left but death. Anyone who wished to leave the Bunker could do so.

Two of the Reich's top leaders who had already left Berlin put their own seals on its dissolution. Goering sent a telegram to Hitler seeking permission to take charge, which the Fuehrer construed as treason. Secretly Himmler met Swedish representative Count Bernadotte, to whom he presented himself as the de facto head of the German regime. The discussion was insubstantial and restricted to points of detail;  Himmler never proposed surrender of any kind outright and Bernadotte did not take up the implicit invitation to act as Himmler's  intermediary to Eisenhower.

In its last major operation of the war 359 Lancasters of RAF Bomber Command attacked Obersalzberg and the mountain retreats of the Reich's leadership, above all Hitler's Berghof. In part the aim was to forestall its use as a command post for a final battle from the Reich from the Berghof, which was actively but inaccurately discussed. In part the attack was  symbolic; in part there were almost no worthwhile military targets left untouched. The attack was led by 617 Squadron dropping 4,000 lb Tallboy bombs. The Berghof itself was severely damaged and the houses of Goering and Bormann were wrecked.

 

BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby broadcast from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp which had just been liberated by British-led forces. His description of the tens of thousands of sick and emaciated prisoners and the huge mounds of corpses introduced the British people to the full horror of the Nazi regime. The liberation of other camps by the Red Army since the start of the year had been only sparsely reported.