The last crimes of the Third Reich

The Third Reich unleashes an orgy of murder before its downfall

With the Red Army less than 90 miles from Berlin at the end of January 1945 and the German state close to collapse, few could doubt that the days of Hitler’s rule were numbered. The Third Reich responded with a frenzy of violence, unleashed not on the advancing armies but on defenceless prisoners and civilians. Although precise figures are unknown, the campaign claimed the lives of tens of thousands of victims, murdered by individuals and units of the SS, Gestapo, Wehrmacht, Volkssturm and the Hitler Youth. Civilians were shot and hanged for sedition, soldiers were sentenced to death for desertion and inmates of the death camps and labour camps near the oncoming front were forced to undertake gruelling “death marches”.

The killing reached its peak just a week before Hitler’s suicide and two weeks before the signing of Germany’s unconditional surrender on 23 April 1945. In Berlin, an SS unit shot 21 prisoners at Moabit prison. In the Treuenbrietzen massacre in Brandenburg, members of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS murdered 127 Italian soldiers who had been deployed as forced labourers. In Hamburg, SS men killed 13 women and 58 men, the majority of whom had been held in “protective custody”. In Regensburg, several demonstrators calling for a bloodless capitulation were arrested and two were hanged following a drumhead court-martial. Three days later, the Wehrmacht abandoned Regensburg.