Hitler seeks Götterdämmerung

18th March 1945: Senior Nazis frustrate Hitler's apocalyptic vision of a destroyed nation where Germans live 'primitive' lives

Fighting in Pomerania, on what was then German soil, now Poland, March 1945.

As the war turned against Hitler, he began issuing orders for ‘scorched earth’ retreats. Everything that might be of value to the enemy in territory that they recovered was to be destroyed, either blown up or burnt. Large swathes of the Soviet Union suffered as a result. Warsaw …