Dopilsya posted:

If nobody minds, I'm not near the expert that the OP is, but I know a little about the situation and thought I might chime in:


I don't think any of them actually believed that it was winnable in the late war (in fact, lots of people believed that it wasn't winnable in the early part of the war). I actually got a chance to talk to a former SS soldier about 5-6 years ago and the way he made it sound was that it was a practically nihilistic, going down with the ship, sort of mindset.

Interestingly enough, he said that when he heard that Hitler died, he literally sat down and cried imagining Hitler going out in a blaze of glory against the forces of Bolshevism. When he found out that Hitler killed himself and left them to pick up the pieces, he realised that he'd been had by the Nazis. He also claimed not to have participated in any war crimes and I didn't press the issue.