At the end of the Second World War, why were there still so many groups of German soldiers that kept fighting?
There was no way that (insert stereotypical German name here) and his 15 closest buds were going to repel the entirety of the allied forces. That being said, for whatever reason, you always hear story after story of the remnants of SS divisions continuing to fight to the bitter end, attempting against all logic to offensively take objectives that even if by miracle were taken, they would have no hope of holding. Especially on the western front, why?
Anonymous2019-04-21T09:30:46Z
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Because:
One, they didn't know the state of things. Germany was still telling them they were winning. It's not like they'd just take the Allies word for it that Germany was losing.
Two, by the bitter end, Germany had already exhausted most of its experienced troops, so Germany drafted 12-, 13-, 14-year-old boys in its last ditch effort. If you've ever met a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old boy, you know that they each think they're invincible, and for their friends, for their team, they'll sooner die than give up, but they really don't think they're going to die. Boys that age haven't even developed their frontal lobes yet and so haven't developed the logic area of their brains, so expecting a logical response from them, one that has them giving up when for years they've been told they can't lose because they're the Master Race, that's just not in the cards, wasn't ever going to happen. It was actually quite difficult at the end because of this, because Allies were seeing through their guns' scopes kids, boys, boys often still prepubescent because of malnutrition, and were refusing to shoot them, so at the end, those boys actually fared fairly well as the Allies went about trying to capture and detain rather than kill kids who were perfectly willing to shoot and kill them.
Germans had been taught that the Allies were monsters and that they would be treated very badly if they were caught (there was actually some justification for this - Allied soldiers were not angels). The choice between fighting for your country and dying, or being caught and killed, is no choice.
Why especially in the Western Front? The Eastern Front was by far the bloodiest and cruelest. The Krauts preferred surrendering to the Americans and British, certainly not the Soviets.
Anyhow, that answers your question why the Krauts fought like hell against the Russians... fear of retribution if they were captured.
"You always hear story after story of ..." Perhaps I've been asleep on the job, but I've never heard of even one such story pertaining to German troops.