Hitler, 1936-45: Nemesis 0393049949, 9780393049947

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*ft •

HITLER NEMESIS

1936-1945

IAN

KERSHAW

ISBN 0-393-04994-9

"[W]ill

become

$35.00

the classic Hitler biography of

—Gordon

our time."

Summer

were

1936: the eyes of the world

elaborately decked out for the Olympic

Craig*

trained

on

Berlin,

Games. Aside from

the swastikas unfurled inside and outside the massive sta-

dium, visitors to the sive regime. Nazi

were on

Hitler,

games saw scant evidence

Germany and

its

their best behavior. Yet,

away from

an ominous war machine was

tacle

in Berlin,

large

segments of the German population

As

lan

Kershaw opens

bringing the nation out of

four pillars of the Nazi

regime—the civil

the spec-

the making.

in

monumental volume,

this

economic

the industrial cartels, and the

of a repres-

unchallenged leader, Adolf

idolize Hitler for

Supported by

despair.

the

Party,

armed

service— Hitler

is

forces,

poised

to realize his Mephistophelian vision: the subjugation of

Europe under the Thousand Year Reich and,

in

the process,

the annihilation of the Jews. Meanwhile, a continent

War

carrying the scars of the First World

—3

still

largely ignores his

blueprints for conquest.

Soon

Nazis,

Hitler

embarks on expansion. With

chilling effi-

he annexes Austria with the support of rabid

ciency,

and then,

after

local

hoodwinking European leaders

in

Munich, undertakes a lightning conquest of Czechoslovakia. His invasion of Poland plunges

clysmic war, a war that Hitler

genius to conduct.

In

Europe headlong

is

into a cata-

convinced he alone has the

unsparing prose, Kershaw describes

the slaughter of conquered troops and civilians alike as

German into

fanatical SS units,

sweep

For three years, Hitler's armies have the

upper

soldiers,

accompanied by

country after country.

hand. But once the tides of battle turn

no

Hitler,

the

longer

invincible

in

favor of the Allies,

warlord,

becomes an

increasingly desperate gambler. Rarely leaving his "Wolf's Lair"

he continues to mastermind the war,

appearances and radio broadcasts fervor

among

his

limited to

his

countrymen against Jews, "Bolsheviks,"

and others deemed enemies of the Aryan Drawing on

many

previously

race.

unutilized

sources,

Kershaw describes the Draconian measures taken by

henchmen— Himmler, ers—to

public

whipping up

Hitler's

Goebbels, Goring, Bormann, and oth-

tighten the Nazi grip

on the home front without

*New York Review of Books (continued on back

flap)

tft

:.,.._

HITLER 1936-45: NEMESIS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR 'The Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich

Popular Opinion and Political Dissent

The Nazi

Dictatorship: Problems

(Edited)

Weimar:

in the

Third Reich, Bavaria 1933-45

and Perspectives of Interpretation

Why Did German Democracy Fail? A Profile in Power

Hitler: (Edited, with

Moshe Lewin)

Stalinism

and Nazism: Dictatorships

Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

in

Comparison

HITLER I936-45: NEMESIS

Ian

Kershaw

S

NORTON & COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON

W. W.

•

AL BR

DD247 .H5

K463 2000k

© 2000 by Ian Kershaw American edition 2000

Copyright First

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

For information about permission to reproduce selections from Permissions,

W. W. Norton

The

&

Company,

Inc.,

500

Fifth

Avenue,

this

book, write to

New York, NY

and display of this book are composed in Sabon. Manufacturing by Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.

text

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-29569

ISBN 0-393-04994-9 W. W. Norton

& Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.

10110

www.wwnorton.com W. W. Norton

& Company Ltd.,

10 Coptic

Street,

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10110

CONTENTS

List

of Illustrations

List

of Maps

xiii

XV

Preface

Acknowledgements

Maps

1

Ceaseless Radicalization

2

The Drive

3

Marks of

for

Expansion

a Genocidal Mentality

4 Miscalculation 5

xix

XXV

1936: Hitler Triumphant

Going

vii

for

1

61

127 155

Broke

181

6 Licensing Barbarism 7 Zenith of

XXXV

Power

2.31

281

8

Designing a 'War of Annihilation'

339

9

Showdown

39i

10 Fulfilling the 'Prophecy' 11

Last Big

Throw

of the Dice

459 497

12 Beleaguered

559

Hoping

607

13

for Miracles

14 Luck of the Devil

653

No Way Out

685

15

16 Into the Abyss

749

17 Extinction

795

vi

HITLER 1936-1945

Epilogue

829

Glossary of Abbreviations

843

Notes List

of Works Cited

Index

847 1041

1079

LIST OF

ILLUSTRATIONS

Every effort has been made to contact will be glad to

make good

all

copyright holders.

in future editions

to their attention. (Photographic

i.

Adolf Hitler, September 1936

2.

Hitler discussing plans for

3.

The

The

publishers

any errors or omissions brought

acknowledgements are given

in brackets.)

(Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

Weimar, 1936 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch

Collection) Berlin Olympics, 1936 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

4. Hitler meets the

Duke and Duchess

of Windsor, 1937 (Corbis/

Hulton-Deutsch Collection) 5.

Werner von Blomberg (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch

6.

Werner von

7.

Hitler addresses

Fritsch (Bibliothek

crowds

ftir

Collection)

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

in the Heldenplatz,

Vienna, 1938

(AKG

London) 8.

Hitler, Mussolini

and Victor-Emmanuel

III,

1938 (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 9.

Hitler in Florence, 1938 (Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

'The Eternal Jew' exhibition, Munich, 1937 (AKG London) n. 'Jews in Berlin' poster, Berlin, 1938 (Corbis/Bettmann) 10.

12.

Synagogue on

13.

Jewish Community building, Kassel, 1938 (Ullstein Bilderdienst,

14.

Looted Jewish shop,

Berlin, 1938

15.

Joseph Goebbels and

his family,

16.

Goebbels broadcasting to the people, 1939 (Hulton Getty)

fire,

Berlin, 1938 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

Berlin)

(AKG London) 1936 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch

Collection)

viii

HITLER 1936— 1945 17.

Eva Braun, c.1938 (Hulton Getty)

18.

Wilhelm

Keitel greets Neville

Chamberlain (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 19.

German

troops, Prague, 1939 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

20. Hitler's study in the

Reich Chancellery (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart) zi.

Goring addresses Hitler

in the

New

Reich Chancellery, 1939

(Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich) 22. Hitler presented

with a model by Ferdinand Porsche, 1938 (Hulton

Getty) 23. Heinrich Himmler presents Hitler with a painting by Menzel, 1939

(Bundesarchiv, Koblenz) 24. Hitler

with Winifred Wagner, Bayreuth, 1939 (Bayerisches

Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich) 25.

Molotov

signs the

Non- Aggression Pact between

Soviet

Union and

Germany, 1939 (Corbis) 26. Hitler in

Poland with

his

Wehrmacht

adjutants (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 27. Hitler reviewing troops in

Warsaw, 1939

(Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 28. Hitler addresses the Party's 'Old

Munich, 1939 (Bibliothek 29.

Guard'

at the Biirgerbraukeller,

fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

Arthur Greiser (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

30. Albert Forster (Siiddeutscher Verlag, 31. Hitler reacting to

Munich)

news of France's request

for an armistice,

1940 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 32. Hitler visiting the

Maginot Line

in Alsace,

1940 (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 33. Hitler in Freudenstadt, 34.

Crowds

in the

1940 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

Wilhelmplatz, Berlin, 1940 (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 35. Hitler bids farewell to

Franco, Hendaye, 1940 (Ullstein Bilderdienst,

Berlin) 36. Hitler

meets Marshall Petain, 1940 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart) 37.

Ribbentrop talking to Molotov, Berlin, 1940 (Bildarchiv PreuEischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

38. Hitler

meets Matsuoka of Japan, 1941 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart)

LIST OF 39. Hitler talks to Alfred Jodl,

and

40. Hitler

ILLUSTRATIONS

1941 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

Keitel, en route to

Angerburg, 1941 (Ullstein Bilderdienst,

Berlin/Walter Frentz) 41. 'Europe's Victory

is

Your

Prosperity', anti-Bolshevik poster (Imperial

War Museum, London) 42.

Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Haider

(AKG London)

with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte,

43. Keitel

Stuttgart) 44.

Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich

45.

Nazi propaganda poster featuring

46.

1939 (The Wiener Library, London) Hitler salutes the coffin of Heydrich, 1942 (Bibliothek fur

Munich)

(Siiddeutscher Verlag,

Hitler's 'prophecy' of 30

January

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 47. Hitler comforts Heydrich's sons (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart) 48. Hitler addresses 12,000 officers at the Sportpalast, Berlin, 1942

(Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 49.

The crowd

50.

Fedor von Bock

51. Erich

reacting (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz)

von Manstein

(Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz)

52. Hitler speaks at 'Heroes'

Memorial Day'

at the Arsenal

on Unter den

Linden, Berlin, 1942 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 53.

Motorized troops pass a burning Russian

on the Eastern Front,

village

1942 (Hulton Getty) 54. Hitler greets

Dr Ante

Pavelic, 1943 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart) 55. Hitler

with Marshal Antonescu, 1942 (Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart) 56. Hitler greets

King Boris

III,

1942 (Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart) 57. Hitler greets

Monsignor Dr Josef Tiso, 1943 (Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 58. Hitler greets

Marshal Mannerheim, 1942 (Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 59.

Admiral Horthy speaks with Ribbentrop, Keitel and Martin Bormann (Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

60.

A

61.

Train-mounted cannon, Leningrad (Bibliothek

'Do

24' seaplane,

Stuttgart)

Norway

(Bibliothek

fiir

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) fiir

Zeitgeschichte,

IX

X

HITLER 1936— 1945 62.

German

63.

Hunting partisans, Bosnia (Bibliothek

64.

Exhausted German

tanks, Cyrenaica, Libya (Hulton Getty) fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

soldier, the Eastern

Front (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 65. Hitler reviewing the

Wehrmacht parade,

Berlin, 1943 (Ullstein

Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz) 66.

The

Party's 'Old

Guard' salute

Hitler,

Munich, 1943 (Bibliothek

fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 67.

Martin Bormann (Hulton Getty)

68. Hitler

and Goebbels on the Obsersalzberg, 1943

(Ullstein Bilderdienst,

Berlin/Walter Frentz) 69.

German

soldiers pushing vehicle through

mud,

the Eastern Front

(Corbis) 70.

Armoured

vehicles lodged in

snow, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 71.

Waffen-SS troops, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

72. French Jews being deported, 1942 (Bildarchiv Preuftischer Kulturbesitz,

Berlin)

73 Polish Jews dig their

own

grave, 1942 (Bildarchiv Preu&scher

Kulturbesitz, Berlin) 74. Incinerators at 75. Hitler

Majdanek, 1944

(Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

and Himmler walking on the Obersalzberg, 1944

(Ullstein

Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz) 76.

The 'White

77.

Heinz Guderian (Hulton Getty)

78.

Ludwig Beck (AKG London)

79.

Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg

80.

Henning von Tresckow (Siiddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

Rose', 1942 (Gedenkstatte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin)

(AKG London)

81. Hitler just after the assassination attempt,

1944 (Siiddeutscher Verlag,

Munich) 82. Hitler's trousers (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 83. Last

meeting of Hitler and Mussolini, 1944 (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 84. Karl

Donitz professes the loyalty of the Navy, 1944 (Bibliothek fur

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 85.

An

ageing Hitler at the Berghof, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/

Walter Frentz) 86.

Vi flying-bomb

(Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

LIST OF 87.

V2

88.

Messerschmidt

89.

The The

90.

ILLUSTRATIONS

rocket (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

Me 262

(Hulton Getty^

'Volkssturm', 1944 (Hulton Getty) last

'Heroes' Memorial Day', Berlin, 1945 (Bibliothek

ftir

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart) 91.

Women

and children

92. Hitler views a

fleeing Danzig, 1945

(AKG London)

model of Linz (National Archives and Records

Administration, Washington) 93. Hitler in the ruins of the

Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

Reich Chancellery, 1945 (Bibliothek fur

XI

LIST OF

World War

i.

The

2.

Poland under Nazi occupation

legacy of the First

MAPS

4.

The Western offensive, 1940: the Sichelschnitt attack The German Reich of 1942: the Nazi Party Gaue

5.

Nazi occupied Europe

6.

Limits of the

3.

7. 8.

German occupation of the USSR The Western and Eastern fronts, 1944-5 The Soviet drive to Berlin

xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii

xxx xxxi xxxii

xxxiv

PREFACE

The

first

part of this study, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, tried to

the people of a highly cultured, economically advanced,

modern

show how state

allow into power and entrust their fate to a political outsider with few,

beyond undoubted

special talents

By the time been able

any,

demagogue and propagandist.

was devised through the intrigues of Reich President von Hindenburg, Hitler had

his Chancellorship

influential individuals close to

of the

skills as a

could if

no more than a good third Another third - on the Left - stood implacably

in free elections to garner the votes of

German

electorate.

opposed, though internally

in disarray.

The remainder were

expectant, hesitant, and uncertain. By the end of the

first

often sceptical,

volume we had

power to the point where it had become opposition had been crushed. The doubters had

traced the consolidation of Hitler's

well-nigh absolute. Internal

been largely

won

over by the scale of an internal rebuilding and external

reassertion of strength which, almost

much

beyond imagination, had restored

of the lost national pride and sense of humiliation

World War. Authoritarianism was

the First

left

behind after

seen by most as a blessing;

repression of those politically out of step, disliked ethnic minorities, or social misfits rebirth.

approved of as a small price for what appeared to be a national

While the adulation of Hitler among the masses had grown ever

and opposition had been crushed and rendered inconsequential,

stronger,

powerful forces ranks of the

Whatever their

own

Hitler,

its

in the

civil

army, the landed aristocracy, industry, and high

service

had thrown

negative aspects,

it

their

was seen

weight behind the regime.

to offer

them much

in

advancing

interests.

by the time the

first

volume drew to

a close with the remilitarization

of the Rhineland in 1936, enjoyed the support of the overwhelming mass of

xvi

HITLER I936-1945 German people - even most of those who had not voted for him before he became Chancellor. From the depths of national degradation, most Germans were more than content to share the new-found national pride. The sense that Germany was well on its way to becoming the dominant the

power

in

Europe was widespread.

degradation,

felt in his

Hitler's

own profound

sense of personal

Vienna years, had long since been supplanted by a

gathering sense of political mission

-

that of

Germany's redeemer from

chaos and champion against the dark and menacing forces challenging the nation's very existence.

By 1936, his narcissistic self-glorification had swollen

immeasurably under the impact of the near-deification projected upon him by

his followers.

By

this time,

he thought himself

infallible; his self-image

had reached the stage of outright hubris.

The German people had shaped

this

personal hubris of the leader. They

were about to enter into nation's history

its full expression: the greatest gamble in the - to acquire complete dominance of the European continent.

They would have

to live with the consequences.

The

size of the

gamble

itself

implied an implicit willingness to court self-destruction, to invite the nemesis

which was seen by a prescient few In

Greek mythology, Nemesis

as likely to follow hubris

is

the punishment of the gods for the

on such

the goddess of retribution,

human

folly of

a scale.

who

exacts

overweening arrogance,

The English saying 'pride comes before a fall' reflects the commonamong the high and mighty, though 'nemesis' tends to be a more political than moral judgement. The meteoric rise of rulers, politicians, or domineering court favourites has so often been followed by an arrogance of power leading to an equally swift or hubris.

place occurrence. History has no shortage of examples

fall

from grace. Usually,

it

afflicts

an individual who,

like a

shooting

star,

prominence then fades rapidly into insignificance leaving the

flashes into

firmament essentially unchanged.

Very occasionally profound forces leon, arising

more Napo-

in history, the hubris of the individual reflects

in society

and

invites

more far-reaching

retribution.

from humble origins amid revolutionary upheavals, taking

power over

the French state, placing the imperial

conquering

much

crown upon

his

own head,

of Europe, and ending in defeat and exile with his empire

and discredited, provides a telling example. But Napoleon did not destroy France. And important strands of his legacy

displaced, dismantled,

remained

and

legal

intact.

A

national administrative structure, educational system,

code form three significant positive remnants. Not

opprobrium

is

attached to Napoleon.

He

can be, and often

with pride and admiration by modern-day Frenchmen.

least, is,

no moral

looked upon

PREFACE Hitler's legacy

- perhaps

was of

Hun and

Attila the

distant past

-

a totally different order. Uniquely in

this legacy

Ghengis Khan offer

was one of

modern times

faint parallels in the

utter destruction.

Not

in architectural

remains, in artistic creation, in political structures, or economic models, least of all in

commend ation,

moral stature was there anything from Hitler's Reich to

to future generations. Big

and technology generally

improvements

motorization, avi-

in

-

did, of course, take place

through the war. But these were occurring

in part forced

most

in all capitalist countries,

USA, and would undoubtedly have taken place in Germany, too, without a Hitler. Most significantly, unlike Napoleon, Hitler left behind evidently in the

him an immense moral trauma, such his

that

it is

impossible even decades after

death (other than for a residue of fringe support) to look back upon the

German

dictator

and

his

regime with approval or admiration -

in fact

with

anything other than detestation and condemnation.

Even

in the cases of Lenin, Stalin,

condemnation realized the

is

Mao,

Mussolini, or Franco the level of

not so unanimous or so morally freighted. Hitler,

when he

war was irrevocably lost, looked to his place in history, at the Germanic heroes. Instead, he stands uniquely

highest seat in the pantheon of

as the quintessential hate-figure of the twentieth century. His place in history

has certainly been secured - though in a

way he had not

embodiment of modern

However,

political evil.

philosophical, rather than a historical, concept.

be both true and morally satisfying. But in

condemnation

is

and explanation. As I

it

To

evil

anticipated: as the a theological or

is

may well And unanimity

call Hitler evil

explains nothing.

even potentially an outright barrier to understanding I

hope the following chapters make abundantly

personally find Hitler a detestable figure and despise

all

plain,

that his regime

me to understand why millions of German citizens who were mostly ordinary human beings, hardly

stood

for.

But that condemnation scarcely helps

innately evil, in general interested in the welfare

and

and daily cares of themselves

their families, like ordinary people everywhere,

and by no means wholly

brainwashed or hypnotized by spellbinding propaganda or terrorized into submission by ruthless repression, would find so for attractive

war

- or would be prepared

much

of

what

Hitler stood

end

in a terrible

to fight to the bitter

against the mighty coalition of the world's most powerful nations

arrayed against them.

My

task in this volume, as in the

first

part of this

study, has been, therefore, not to engage in moral disquisitions

problem of Hitler

evil in a historical personality,

had on the society which eventually paid such

support.

on the

but to try to explain the grip a high price for

its

XV11

HITLER 1936- 1945 For, ultimately, Hitler's nemesis as retribution for unparalleled hubris

would prove

to be not just a personal retribution, but the nemesis of the

Germany which had created him. His own country would be left in ruins much of Europe with it - and divided. What was formerly central Germany - 'Mitteldeutschland' - would experience for forty years the imposed values of the Soviet victor, while the western parts would eventually revive and thrive

A new Austria, having experienced AnschluE under

under a 'pax americana'. Hitler,

for

all

would prove

in its reconstituted

independence to have

lost

once and

any ambitions to be a part of Germany. The eastern provinces of the

Reich would have gone forever - and along with them dreams of eastern

The expulsion

conquest. inces

of the

would remove - if at

had plagued the inter-war

years.

basis of the influence of the

The Wehrmacht,

German The

big landed estates in those provinces,

the final representation of

of the economic and political it is

true,

- the irredentism which

Junker aristocracy, would also be swept away.

be discredited and disbanded. With

industry,

ethnic minorities from those prov-

a predictably harsh price

it

German

would go

power of

military might,

would

the state of Prussia, bulwark

the Reich since Bismarck's day. Big

would survive sufficiently intact to rebuild with renewed - though it would now be increasingly integrated into a

strength and vigour

west-European and Americanized

was

All this

how

had been permitted

bound

still

millions

state

to

to acquire;

and exceptional

down

how

the

in a

from the

modern

most mighty form of

will of

one

became complicitous

in genocidal

this

study

power which he

in the land

became

rule acclaimed by

state, until they

the road to destruction; and

mankind, resulting

structures.

Hitler could exercise the absolute

further to a highly personalized

extricate themselves ingly

economic

outcome of what the second part of

to be the

attempts to grasp:

set of

were unable to

man who was taking them unerrhow the citizens of this modern

war of a character hitherto unknown

in state-sponsored

mass murder on

a scale never

previously witnessed, continent-wide devastation, and the final ruination of their

own

It is

of the

country.

an awesome story of national as well as individual self-destruction,

way

a people

and

their representatives engineered their

own

catas-

trophe - as part of a calamitous destruction of European civilization.

Though

the

outcome

sideration once more. ing,

I

is

known, how

If this

it

came about perhaps deserves con-

book contributes

a

little

to deepen understand-

will be well satisfied.

Ian

Kershaw

ManchesterI Sheffield, April 2000

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

with the greatest of pleasure that

It is

expressions of thanks which

I

I

use this opportunity to add to the

made on concluding

study. All

the debts of gratitude -

owed two

years ago apply

now

however,

new

if I

do not

in equal, or

them

list

first

institutional, intellectual,

all

volume of

this

and personal -

even greater, measure.

those mentioned there will accept on this occasion

thanks even

the

I

hope

my renewed, most sincere

once more by name. In some cases,

my gratitude has to be explicitly reinforced. And in other instances

debts have been incurred.

For help with archival material

most

specifically related to this

grateful to the Directors, archivists,

Hauptstaatsarchiv; the Berlin chichte (Stuttgart);

Document

and

volume,

I

am

staff of: the Bayerisches

Center; the Bibliothek fur Zeitges-

Birmingham University Library;

the Borthwick Institute

(York); the Bundesarchiv, Berlin (formerly Koblenz); the Bundesarchiv/ Militararchiv,

Duquesne

Potsdam (formerly Freiburg

University,

Pittsburgh;

the

i.B.);

former

the

Gumberg

Institut

Library,

Marxismus-

fur

Leninismus, Zentrales Parteiarchiv, East Berlin (GDR); the Library of Congress,

Washington DC; the National Archives, Washington DC; Princeton

University Library; the Public Record Office, London; the Franklin D.

Roosevelt Library, the

Hyde

Park,

New

York; the 'Special Archiv', Moscow;

Wiener Library, London; the former Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam

(GDR); and, not Laufen,

Frau Regnauer, Director of the Amtsgericht

least, to

who went beyond

the call of duty in giving

me

access to post-war

testimony of some of the key witnesses to the events in the bunker in 1945.

Above upon

all,

as with the previous

volume,

the indispensable expert assistance

Zeitgeschichte in Munich.

I

would

like

I

have been able to depend

from the renowned

once more to voice

Institut fur

my warmest

XX

HITLER I936-1945 thanks to the Director, Professor Dr Hoist Moller, to

all

friends at the Institut, and, quite especially, to the library

colleagues and

and archive

staff

who performed wonders in attending to my frequent and extensive requests. Singling out individuals

Hermann

Weif, as

and archival diaries,

is

invidious, but

with the

expertise.

And

first

I

must nevertheless mention that

volume, gave most generously of

his time

with her unrivalled knowledge of the Goebbels

Elke Frohlich was of great help, not least in dealing with a query

regarding one important but difficult point of transcription of Goebbels's

awful handwriting.

Numerous friends and

colleagues have supplied

with valuable archival material or allowed

work

me

me at one time or another

to see so far unpublished

they had written, as well as sharing views on evidence, scholarly

and points of interpretation. For

literature,

this regard,

their kindness

and assistance

in

am extremely grateful to: David Bankier, Omer Bartov, Yehuda

I

Bauer, Richard Bessel, John Breuilly, Christopher Browning, Michael Burleigh, Chris Clarke,

Francois Delpla, Richard Evans, Kent Fedorowich, Iring

Conan Fischer, Gerald Fleming, Norbert Frei, Mary Fulbrook, Dick Geary, Hermann Graml, Otto Gritschneder, Lothar Gruchmann, Fetscher,

Ulrich Herbert, Edouard Husson,

Otto

Dov

Kulka,

Moshe Lewin,

Anton Joachimsthaler, Michael Kater, Peter Longerich,

Dan Michmann,

Stig

Hornshoh-Moller, Martin Moll, Bob Moore, Stanislaw Nawrocki, Richard Overy, Alastair Parker, Karol Marian Pospieszalski, Fritz Redlich, Steven Sage, Stephen Salter, Karl Schleunes, Robert Service, Peter Stachura, Paul Stauffer,

Jill

Stephenson, Bernd Wegner, David Welch, Michael Wildt, Peter

Hans Woller, and Jonathan Wright. A special word of thanks is owing to Meir Michaelis for his repeated generosity in providing me with archival material drawn from his own

Witte,

researches. Gitta Sereny, likewise, not only offered friendly support, but also gave

me

access to valuable papers in her possession, related to her fine

A good friend, Laurence Rees, an exceptionally gifted BBC with whom have had the pleasure and privilege

study of Albert Speer.

producer from the

I

of cooperating on the

making of two

television series connected with

Nazism, and also Detlef Siebert and Tilman Remme, the able and knowledgeable heads of the research teams on the programmes, have helped greatly,

both with probing inquiries and with material derived from the

films they helped create.

Reich,

whose own

Two

outstanding

German

historians of the Third

interpretations of Hitler differ sharply, have been of

singular importance to this study. Eberhard Jackel has given great support as well as expert advice throughout,

and Hans Mommsen, friend of many

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS years, has been unstinting in his help, generosity,

and encouragement. Both

have also made unpublished work available to me. Finally,

two

grateful to

am most

I

on Nazi Germany, Ted Harrison and Jeremy

British experts

Noakes, for reading and commenting on the completed typescript (though, naturally, any errors remaining are

inspiration first

I

derived from Jeremy's

am

volume, and

In a different

my own work

was keen

to

would

I

like to express

particular

acknowledge

my

in the

thanks to David Smith,

York (where papers on Lord

Director of the Borthwick Institute in

sitting alongside archival deposits

shire correspond to

The

equally keen to underline on this occasion.

way,

meeting with Hitler

I

responsibility).

my

Halifax's

from medieval York-

intellectual schizophrenia as a historian of

Nazi

Germany who still dabbles in the history of monasticism in Yorkshire during the Middle Ages). Through the generous offer of his time and expertise, it has proved possible to see through the press our edition of the thirteenth-

and fourteenth-century account-book of Bolton Priory without interrupting

work needed to complete this volume. Without David's help and input, would not have been feasible. Given the need to accommodate the writing of this book to my normal duties at the University of Sheffield, I have had to make notable demands the

this

on the patience of fortunate in

my editors,

both

at

Penguin and abroad.

I

have been most

my editor at Penguin, Simon Winder, who has been an unfailing

source of cheerful encouragement and optimism, as well as a perceptive reader and

critic.

I

am

extremely grateful to Simon, also for his advice on

the photographic material and for searching out

would

also like

maps

for the book,

and to Cecilia Mackay

and assembling the photographs.

In this connection,

assistance provided by the Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart,

Director, friend)

,

I

to thank Joanne King of the BBC, and, for the notable

Dr Gerhard

Hirschfeld

(excellent

its

scholar and long-standing

and Irina Renz, who supervises its extensive photographic collection.

In preparing the lengthy text for the printers, as with the

indexing

first

skills

I

owe

a large debt of gratitude,

volume, to the expert copy-editing of Annie Lee, the superb of Diana LeCore, and the great help and support of

excellent publishing

team

all

the

at Penguin.

I am hugely indebted to Don Lamm, my editor at Norton USA, who never ceased to keep me on my toes with his extensive knowledge, his many insights, and his inexhaustible queries. To Ulrich Volz

Outside Britain,

in the

and Michael Neher

at

Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, and to

Flammarion, Spektrum, and Ediciones Peninsula, or concealed their panic from

me when

who

my

editors at

either did not panic

delivery of a lengthy typescript

still

XXI

HITLER 1936- 1945 needing translation became delayed,

and forbearance. And

I

offer

my

to the translators of the

and Spanish editions who worked miracles appearance of the book

German, French, Dutch,

to enable the simultaneous

my warm thanks for their efforts

in those languages,

combined with my utmost admiration

are

gratitude for their patience

for their skills.

As with the previous volume, much of the checking of the extensive references provided in the notes had to be undertaken in a highly concentrated spell at the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in to Penguin

and

D VA,

I

University of Tubingen);

time out from her

Oxford

make

use of invaluable assistance from Wenke own promising historical studies at the from my niece Charlotte Woodford (who took

could

Meteling (during a break

Munich. This time, thanks

in her

own doctoral research on early-modern German literature

was of great help also in subsequently locating a number of arcane works which I needed, and, not least, compiled so at

University,

thoroughly and meticulously the List of Works Cited); and from

who,

son, David,

from

as

two years

earlier,

my

elder

generously took a week's holiday

work in the airline business - somewhat to the amazement of his - to come to Munich to check references for me. I am deeply

his

colleagues

grateful to

three of them.

all

work

to complete the

Without them,

I

would have been

quite unable

in time.

As with the preparation of the

first

volume, the incomparable Alexander

in Bonn-Bad Godesberg offered to support the Munich while the references were checked. I would like to

von Humboldt-Stiftung month's stay

in

express

my sincere gratitude for this support, and for all the generosity from

which

have been privileged to benefit since

I

Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung I

would

Spat,

also like to thank

whose

in the

became

a Fellow of the

most warmly

a long-standing friend,

Traude

me on the path many years

in the history of her country,

and

provided not only hospitality but also continuing encouragement of

my work

when, during

In the flourishing

have

first

great skills as a language-teacher set

ago to research on the darkest chapter

who

I

mid-1970s.

at times

as well as

would

like to

time in Munich,

Department of History

had to

good

my

rely

more than

services of

I

I

was

able to stay at her home.

at the University of Sheffield,

would have wished on

my

colleagues and the patience of

all

most

thank them

my

students.

Departmental

Most

of

all

I

sincerely for their support, encourage-

ment, and forbearance, and some colleagues quite especially for easing path through taking on and

I

the tolerance

efficiently

my

carrying out sometimes quite onerous

duties. I

have to thank Beverley Eaton, whose

efficient help

and

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS encouragement

in ten years of

working

as

my

secretary

and personal

assis-

tant have been of immeasurable value in enabling the completion of this

book

in the face of

many

other pressing duties.

borne the brunt of the work -

in the

More

than anyone she has

day-to-day running of a busy Depart-

ment, in handling an extensive and mounting correspondence, and with a variety of other tasks - which spilled over from

combine writing

in

coping

attempts to

a biography of Hitler with being a professor at a university

system currently choking under the weight of

in a British

my its

own

bureau-

cracy. She has also been a constant source of support during the entire

period of the writing of this work.

on home ground

Finally,

SOFPIK,

the club of

which

in I

Manchester, the Convenor and Fellows of

am most proud

to be a

their friendship

and support for even longer than

two volumes on

Hitler.

I

can never forget, though

the sacrifices

made by my mother and

war, to give

me and my

university.

it

sister,

late father,

Anne, the

member, have shown

has taken to write these

it is

now many years

ago,

who lived through Hitler's

priceless opportunity to study at

just Betty, David, and Stephen, but now on Katie, Becky, and - though she is not yet aware of

And, meanwhile, not

also as the years roll

- Sophie have

shadow of a biography of Hitler for too long. I hope we can soon move out of this shadow and into the sunlight again. But it

I

would

ways

in

like to

lived in the

thank them

all

as

much as words can express for the different

which they have contributed

to the

making of

this

work. I.K.

April 2000

XX111

'

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Germany

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GREAT BRITAIN HOLLAND

London*

BELGIUM •":"

••

•'.'Brussels >

The

J.

CAL

Foreign Office thought direct involvement

too risky. Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the head of the

phoned Rudolf

I

a long civil

German

war was

in

would have damaging consequences

report raised the spectre of a Spanish soviet

regime closely bound into the French-Soviet alliance.* Goring had by 1

"'

this

time also had the opportunity to brief Hitler on the economic advantages to be gained

from supporting Franco, were the

rebel cause to succeed.

61

That, however, was far from a foregone conclusion. Bernhardt reinforced the message that Franco's struggle against

German

aid."

-

The

talk

moved on

Communism was

to the question of

lost

payment

without

for the aid.

Noticing that Hitler looked "somewhat shocked' when he mentioned purely

nominal sums. Bernhardt stressed the

'rich sources' to

be gained from

Andalusia, almost certainly going on to indicate benefits to increased still

raw material imports

hesitant.

monologue,

in

Germany from

exchange for armaments. 63 Hitler was

But once he had turned the audience into another lengthy

m

which he praised the idealism of Spanish nationalists and

ranted endlessly about the dangers of Bolshevism, the outcome was

little in

doubt. In contrast to the position of the Foreign Ministry, he had convinced himself that the dangers of being sandwiched between two Bolshevik blocs

outweighed the as

seemed

War

risks of

likely,

it

German involvement

in the

Spanish

crisis

should turn into full-blown and protracted

against the Soviet

Union - the

struggle for

Germany's

- even civil

if,

war.

'living space'

-

was, in his view, at some point inevitable. The prospect of a Bolshevik Spain

was

a

dangerous complication/"

requested.

It

was

self-confidence

He

decided to provide Franco with the aid

and of the weakened position

on international

own greatly increased of those who had advised him

an indication both of Hitler's

affairs that

he took the decision alone. Possibly, knowing

the reluctance of the Foreign Office to

become involved, and aware

that

I

l6

HITLER 1936— 1945 Goring, for

his interest in possible

all

reservations, Hitler

was keen

Possibly, too, Hitler

was

also

which he had come from

came

some of

gains, shared

its

under the influence of Wagner's Siegfried,

still

earlier in the evening.

At any

rate, the

operation

to be

dubbed 'JJnternehmen Feuerzauber' ('Operation

Fire'), recalling the

heroic music accompanying Siegfried's passage

to assist Franco

Magic

economic

to present doubters with a fait accompli. 65

through the ring of

fire

to free Brunnhilde.

66

Only after Hitler had taken the decision were Goring and Blomberg summoned. Goring, despite his hopes of economic gains from intervention, was initially 'horrified' about the risk of international complications through intervention in Spain. But faced with Hitler's usual intransigence, once he

had arrived at influence - not

Goring was soon won over. 67 Blomberg, his his nervousness over the Rhineland affair - now

a decision, least after

waning compared with the powerful position he had once along without objection.

68

Ribbentrop, too,

when he was

Bayreuth that Hitler intended to support Franco, involvement

in Spain.

But Hitler was adamant.

aircraft to be put at Franco's disposal. logical: 'If

arrival in

warned against

initially

He had

on

went

already ordered

crucial consideration

was

ideo-

Spain really goes communist, France in her present situation will

also be bolshevised in

due course, and then Germany

between the powerful Soviet bloc Franco-Spanish bloc chose to attack

us.'

in the

69

West,

in the East

we

is

finished.

Wedged

and a strong communist

could do hardly anything

Hitler brushed aside Ribbentrop's

fresh complications with Britain, in

The

told

held,

weak

if

Moscow

objections

-

and the strength of the French bourgeoisie

holding out against Bolshevism - and simply ended the conversation by

stating that he

had already made

his decision.

70

Twenty Junkers Ju-52 transport planes - ten more than Franco had asked for - supported by six Heinkel He 51 fighters were to be provided and were soon en route to Spanish Morocco and to Cadiz,

had rapidly

fallen to the insurgents.

a barter system of

of

in

southern Spain, which

Subsequent aid was to follow through

German equipment for Spanish raw

materials under cover

71 two export companies, one German and one Spanish. Despite

the

warnings he had received that Germany could be sucked into a military quagmire, and however strongly ideological considerations weighed with him, Hitler probably intervened only on the assumption that

would

tip the

German

aid

balance quickly and decisively in Franco's favour. 'We're

taking part a bit in Spain.

commented Goebbels

Not

clear.

laconically the

72 had been taken. Short-term

Who knows

day

what

it's

good

after the decision to help

gains, not long-term involvement,

for,'

Franco

were the

CEASELESS R A D

I

CALIZATION

premiss of Hitler's impulsive decision. Significant military and economic

involvement his role as

- was

in

Spain began only

in

October.

73

By then, Goring- spurred by

head of the new Four- Year Plan as well as chief of the Luftwaffe

the driving-force. Hitler agreed to substantial increases in

military assistance to Spain. Fighters, bombers,

German

and 6,500 military personnel

- the future Legion Condor (a mixed Luftwaffe unit assigned to support for the Spanish nationalists) - were dispatched to take part in what was rapidly

showdown between

developing into a rehearsal for a general

The

the forces of

Communism. 74

Fascism and

ideological impetus behind Hitler's readiness to involve

the Spanish maelstrom - his Bolshevism - was not a cover

so heavily with Goring.

75

Germany

in

intensified preoccupation with the threat of

for the

This

is

economic considerations that weighed

borne out by

his private as well as his

would Nurem-

public utterances. Publicly, as he had told Goebbels the previous day

be the case, in his opening proclamation to the Reich Party Rally in

berg on 9 September, he announced that the 'greatest world danger' of

which he warned for so long - the 'revolutionizing of the continent' through the

work

of 'Bolshevik wire-pullers' run by 'an international Jewish revolu-

tionary headquarters in tary rebuilding

Moscow' - was becoming

had been undertaken precisely

Germany's

mili-

what was turning

76

Out of the public eye, his when he addressed the cabinet for three

Spain into ruins from taking place in Germany. sentiments were hardly different

reality.

to prevent

hours. on the foreign-policy situation at the beginning of December.

He

concentrated on the danger of Bolshevism. Europe was divided into two

He

camps. There was no more going back. 'Reds'. Spain

had become the decisive

described the tactics of the

issue. France, ruled

by Prime Minister

Leon Blum — seen as an 'agent of the Soviets', a 'Zionist and world-destroyer' - would be the next victim. The victor in Spain would gain great prestige.

The consequences

for the rest of Europe,

for the remnants of

the reason, he

Communism

went on,

can only wish that the

'When lift

it

for

German

crisis is

in particular for

aid in

armaments

deferred until

Germany and

were major ones. This was

we

to Spain.

'Germany

are ready,' he declared.

comes, seize the opportunity (zugreifen). Get into the paternoster

at the right time.

can play no

role.'

77

But also get out again

Only two weeks or so

his diary: 'After dinner

I

at the right time.

earlier,

in

He

is

Rearmament

is

proceeding. We're sticking

fabulous sums. In 1938 we'll be completely ready.

Bolshevism

is

Rearm. Money

Goebbels had recorded

talked thoroughly with the Fuhrer alone.

very content with the situation. in

and

in the country,

coming. Then we want

The showdown with The army is now

to be prepared.

17

l8

HITLER 1936-1945 completely

won

over by us. Fuhrer untouchable

for us

good

as certain. Just let

is

as

.

no chance pass

.

.

Dominance

in

Europe

by. Therefore rearm.'

78

Ill

The announcement

Nuremberg Party Rally in September had by then pushed rearmament policy on to a new plane. Priorities had been established. They meant in practice that balancing of the Four- Year Plan at the

consumer and rearmament spending could only be sustained period of time through a crash

Germany as rapidly as deemed inevitable and other

potential to prepare

which Hitler

thought probable,

Through cally

not highly

likely,

in the direction of

now

autarkic

possible for the confrontation

leading figures in the regime

within the following few years.

the introduction of the Four- Year Plan,

pushed

were by

if

for a limited

programme which maximized

Germany was economi-

expansion and war. Economics and ideology

thoroughly interwoven. Even

so, the decision to

move

to the

Four-Year Plan was ultimately an ideological one. Economic options were still

open - even

the policies of the previous three years

if

had already narrowed sharply. Schacht, Goerdeler, and

meant they backed by

others,

important sectors of industry, favoured a retreat from an armaments-led

economy

to a re-entry into international markets. Against this, the powerful

IG-Farben lobby, linked to the Luftwaffe, pushed for maximizing profuels. The stalemate persisted throughout the summer. The economic crisis which had dogged Germany during the previous winter and spring was unresolved. With no end to the dispute in sight, Hitler was pressed in late August to take sides. The preoccupation with Bolshevism,

duction of synthetic

which had weighed heavily with him throughout the summer, was decisive in his

own

The

inimitable approach to Germany's economic problems.

driving-force behind the creation of

the Four- Year Plan

was

what came

known

to be

as

not, however, Hitler but Goring. Following their

discussions in Berchtesgaden and Bayreuth in July, Hitler had requested reports

from Goring on the economic

to be overcome.

and how the problems were

At the beginning of August Goring had

memoranda from

different branches of the

rapidly as possible. ations, not

situation,

economy

in turn

demanded him as

to be sent to

The timing was determined by propaganda

economic

criteria: the

consider-

proximity of the Reich Party Rally

in early

September was what counted. The complex reports could not be put together as swiftly as

Goring had wanted. By the time he travelled

to Berchtesgaden

CEASELESS R A D beginning of the

at the his

Raw

last

week

in

CAL ZATION

I

I

August, he only had a survey from

Materials and Currency staff about the possibilities of synthetic

Germany

raw-material production within

to hand.

79

He had meanwhile

been encountering powerful opposition to his economic plans from Schacht,

who was voicing feelings in some important sectors of business and

industry,

such as those of one of the most important Ruhr industrialists, Albert Vogler,

who had strongly backed a Hitler Chancellorship in the final phase of the Weimar Republic. Carl Goerdeler, too, Lord Mayor of Leipzig, who had served head of the biggest

concern

steel

Hitler as Reich Price

in

Commissioner and would eventually become

opponent of the regime, joined month. 80 last

It

was

Europe, the Vereinigte Stahlwerke,

in these

in the criticism

a leading

towards the end of the

circumstances that Hitler was persuaded during the

week of August to dictate a lengthy memorandum on the future direction economy - one of the extremely rare occasions in the Third Reich

of the

(leaving aside formal laws, decrees,

views

and

forward

his

in writing.

Most

memorandum,

likely, the

containing neither

possibly completed only on 2 September,

government ministers, was compiled

most

chief stood to gain

for

directives) that he put

directly

at

from

nor signature and

title

two days before

it

was presented

Goring's suggestion. it

in the

81

to

The Luftwaffe

power-struggle with Schacht

dominance over the economy. 'The lack of understanding of the Reich

Economics Ministry and the resistance of German business (grofizugigeri) plans

to

all

large-scale

to compose this memorandum on the Armaments Minister Albert Speer, when 82 years later. The only two copies of the memo-

prompted him

Obersalzberg,' Hitler told his

handing him a copy eight

randum

originally distributed

Schacht,

shown

a

War

went to Goring himself, and

to his ally against

The Economics Minister himself was not memorandum, and in fact only heard as late as 2 intention to proclaim a new economic policy at the

Minister Blomberg.

copy of the

September of Hitler's Reich Party Rally.

83

The memorandum fell into two parts. The first, on 'the political situation', was pure Hitler. It was couched exclusively in ideological terms. The 'reasoning' was, as it had been in Mein Kampf and the Second Book, social-Darwinist and racially determinist. 'Politics are the conduct and

course of the historical struggle for these struggles a

new

is

life

of peoples,' he began. 'The aim of

the assertion of existence.'

conflict, centred

The world was moving towards

upon Bolshevism, 'whose essence and aim ... is mankind which have hitherto

solely the elimination of those strata of

provided the leadership and their replacement by world-wide Jewry'.

19

20

HITLER 1936— 1945 Germany would be is

'It

the focus of the inevitable

memorandum

not the aim of this

to

showdown with

untenable situation in Europe will become an open these lines, to set fail

down my

Bolshevism.

prophesy the time when the

conviction that this

crisis.

crisis

I

only want, in

cannot and will not

to arrive,' he asserted. 'A victory of Bolshevism over

Germany would

lead not to a Versailles Treaty but to the final destruction, indeed to the

German people

annihilation, of the

against this danger,

all

... In face of the necessity of defence

other considerations must recede into the background

as being completely irrelevant.'

The

defensive capacity of the

German

people had been greatly strengthened under National Socialism. The level

was unprecedented. But making

of ideological solidarity 'into the first

army

in the

the

German Army

world, in training, in the raising of units, in

armaments, and, above

all,

bungY was

did not happen, then 'Germany will be

declared.

vital. If this

in spiritual

education

(in

lost,'

he

84

The second part situation',

of the

and offering

memorandum,

a

'programme

dealing with 'Germany's economic

for a final solution of our vital need',

bore unmistakable signs of Goring's influence, resting

programmes drawn up by

material

der geistigen Erzie-

his

planning

in turn

on the raw

with significant input

staff,

8i

The resemblance to statements on the economy put forward by Goring earlier in the summer suggests that Hitler either had such statements before him when compiling his memorandum, or that his Raw Materials Commissar worked alongside him in preparing the memorandum. 86 The tone was nonetheless classically Hitlerian - down to the threat by IG Farben.

damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy', a threat put into practice some two years later. A temporary solution to the economic problems was to be found in partial autarky. Maximizing domestic production wherever possible would allow of a law 'making the whole of Jewry liable for

for the necessary food imports,

Fuel, iron,

which could not be

all

at the cost of rearmament.

and synthetic-rubber production had to be stepped up. Cost was - and the opposition voiced in the previous weeks -

irrelevant. Objections

were taken on board and brushed

economy; must

all

rather, 'finance

aside.

The nation

did not live for the

and the economy, economic leaders and theories

exclusively serve this struggle for self-assertion in

are engaged'.

economic

The Ministry of Economics had simply

to set the national

had

could not do so, the

tasks; private industry

National Socialist this task

on

which our people

its

to fulfil them. If

state, Hitler threatened,

it

would 'succeed

own'. In typical fashion, he couched

in carrying

out

his threat in stark

CEASELESS R A D alternatives:

I

C A L I Z AT O N I

'The German economy will either grasp the new economic

will prove itself quite incompetent to survive in this modern when a Soviet State is setting up a gigantic plan. But in that case it will not be Germany that will go under, but, at most, a few industrialists.' Though Germany's economic problems, the memorandum asserted, could

tasks or else

it

age

be temporarily eased through the measures laid down, they could only finally

be solved through the extension of 'living space'.

It

was

'the task of

was

the political leadership one day to solve this problem'. Again this

redolent of

Mein Kampf and

the Second Book. But

it

also

matched Goring's

aggressive tone in his economic statements earlier in the

summer. Only

nuances separated Goring's more pragmatic nationalist-imperialism from

Both variants implied war at some point - when economic mobilization, wrote Hitler, would become 'solely a question of will'. The memorandum closed by advocating a 'Several Years Plan' - the term 'Four- Year Plan' was not mentioned in the document - to maximize self-sufficiency in existing conditions and make it possible to Hitler's race-determined version. in the future

demand economic

sacrifices of the

German

people. Opportunities had been

missed during the previous four years; in the next four years, the

army had Even

to be

in the

made

operational, the

economic

organizational structure

second part were

in

sections,

was

laid

economy made ready

few concrete

down. The economic

for war.

mooted

plane, and established as the outright priority.

Hitler's

in the

to a

new

economic notions

an ideological imperative. The

as always, to

No

maximum autarky

rearmament drive was now taken on 88

87

were offered.

ideas

themselves not new. But the drive for

in the interests of a forced

were confined,

details

German

memorandum

was wholly programmatic. The more pragmatic expansionist notions of Goring and Blomberg both in the military and in the economic sphere were

accommodated within

way

of argumentation

the Hitlerian ideological vision. Moreover, Hitler's

was

characteristic.

The

premisses coupled with the very broadness of it

impossible for

critics to contest

it

inflexibility of its ideological

its

dogmatic generalities made

outright without rejection of Hitler

himself and his 'world-view'. This 'world-view', whatever tactical adjust-

ments had proved necessary, showed again central place assigned to the

which, as

we have

Hitler's

backing he was able to determine

suffered.

90

issue

seen, preoccupied Hitler throughout 1936.

of the armaments economy.

had

inner consistency in the

coming showdown with Bolshevism - an

Goring got what he wanted out of Hitler's

its

Hitler

was

89

his

memorandum. Armed with

supremacy

in the central

arena

Schacht recognized the scale of the defeat he

reluctant to drop

him because of

the standing he

21

22

HITLER 1936-1945 enjoyed abroad.

91

But

his star

was now waning

Alternative policies to

fast.

memorandum could now be condemned out of memorandum rejecting the autarkic programme and

that advanced in Hitler's

hand. Goerdeler's

arguing for curtailment of rearmament in favour of re-entry into the international market

economy was peremptorily dismissed by

ments supremo. The dictatorial

style in

the Prussian Ministerial Council

new arma-

the

which he conducted the meeting of

on 4 September was that of the

victor in

the power-struggle, basking in the certainty of control over the massive

economics empire

The growth

now opening up

before him.

domain did not

of this huge

92

from a

derive

clearly conceived

notion of economic planning. Hitler - in so far as he had given any consideration at that

to organizational matters

all

- had,

appears, simply imagined

it

Goring would work through only a small bureaucracy and function

an overlord

in coordinating

which would

economic policy with the relevant

retain their specific responsibilities.

93

Instead,

as

ministries,

Goring rapidly

improvised a panoply of 'special commissioners' {Sonderbeauftragte) each ,

backed by

their

own

bureaucratic apparatus, for different facets of the

Four- Year Plan, often without clear lines of control, not infrequently overlapping or interfering with the duties of the Ministry of Economics, and of course answerable to Goring himself.

It

was

all

a recipe for administrative

and economic anarchy.

momentum created by the Four- Year Plan was immense. All areas economy were affected in the following peacetime years. The resulting pressures on the economy as a whole were not sustainable indefinitely. The But the

of the

economic drive created ideological imperative.

its

own dynamic which

fed directly into Hitler's

The ambitious technocrats

in the offices

and sub-

organizations of the Four- Year Plan, not least the leaders of the rapidly

expanding chemicals giant IG Farben, were their direct

motivation -

in their

own way -

also 'working towards the

whatever

Fiihrer'. Territorial

expansion became necessary for economic as well as for ideological reasons.

And

was pushed on to a new plane as the spoils to be gained from a programme of 'aryanization' were eagerly seized upon as easy pickings in an economy starting to overheat under its own, selfracial policy, too,

manufactured pressures.

When

Hitler

drew up

in the future. Hitler

Nor was he

his

had no

memorandum

in late

clear notion himself of

August 1936

how

specially interested in such questions.

it

all this

would

all

was

unfold.

Propaganda concerned

him more immediately than economics in drawing up the memorandum. He needed the new economic programme as the cornerstone of the Party

CEASELESS R A D Rally. His big speech there

had

wanted

initially

word, on

on the economy - which,

to deliver

- was

C A L I Z AT I O N

we have seen, Goring occasionally word for

as

closely based,

August memorandum. 94

his

I

He now spoke

time of a 'new Four- Year Programme' (recalling his

publicly for the

initial

first

'four-year plan'

put forward immediately after his appointment as Chancellor in 1933).

planned economy sounded modern.

A

'Five- Year Plan'

taken up in the Bolshevik state at which

mately targeted. the

German

96

The

press.

It

German

95

A

had already been

preparations were

ulti-

designation 'Four- Year Plan' rapidly caught on in

became

officially so called

some weeks

later,

on 18

October, with Hitler's 'Decree for the Implementation of the Four- Year Plan'.

97

IV In the foreign-policy arena, the shifts crisis

which had begun during the Abyssinian

were hardening across the summer and autumn of 1936. Clearer

contours were beginning to emerge. Diplomatic, strategic, economic, and

- separable but often closely interwoven - were starting to take Germany into more dangerous, uncharted waters. The possibility of a new European conflagration - however unimaginable and ideological considerations

horrifying the prospect seemed to most of the generation that had lived

through the

last

one - was starting to appear a

real one.

The long-desired alliance with Britain, which had seemed a real possibility June 1935 at the signing of the Naval Pact, had remained elusive. It was still a distant dream. The Abyssinian crisis and the reoccupation of the in

Rhineland,

now

the Spanish Civil

relationship despite

and influence

War, had

German efforts

in Britain

and some

Ribbentrop, appointed in the

all

provided hurdles to a closer

to court those they imagined

had power

British sympathizers in high places.

summer an

unwilling Ambassador to

98

London

with a mandate from Hitler to bring Britain into an anti-Comintern pact,

had since

his

triumph with the Naval Treaty become increasingly

sioned about the prospects of a British alliance.

Mussolini

in

99

disillu-

Hitler pointed out to

September that Ribbentrop's appointment marked the

attempt to win over Great Britain.

100

last

But the new 'Ambassador Brickendrop',

was lampooned on account of the innumerable faux pas (such as saluting the King with the 'Hitler Greeting') for which he became renowned as he

in

London diplomatic

circles,

frequent absences, in any case

or 'Half-Time Ambassador' because of his

made

his

own

personal contribution to the

23

24

HITLER 1936-1945 growing alienation abdication on

n

felt in

Britain towards the Third Reich. 101 Hitler

December 1936 of King Edward

saw

the

VIII, in the face of

opposition in Britain to his proposed marriage to a twice-divorced American,

Mrs

Wallis Simpson, as a victory for those forces hostile to Germany. 102

Ribbentrop had encouraged him

in the

view that the King was pro-German

and anti-Jewish, and that he had been deposed by an anti-German conand powerful

spiracy linked to Jews, freemasons,

By the end of the year (according Hitler

some minor

may

total conviction

103

to a reported indication of his view),

had become more lukewarm about

whether with

political lobbies.

a British alliance, claiming

be doubted - that

colonial gains but would,

it

would

-

at best bring

on the other hand, hinder Germany's

plans for expansion in central and south-eastern Europe.

The reason he

gave was that Italy would, through an Anglo-German alliance which under-

mined

policy in the Mediterranean, be forced on to the side of France,

its

two countries on any attempt at a new order in south-eastern Europe. Germany, he concluded, had its interests better served

leading to a block by the

by close

with

ties

Italy.

104

The rapprochement with Italy - slow and tenuous in the first - had by then come to harden into a new alliance of the two militaristic dictatorships

Abyssinian

The

crisis, as

half of 1936 fascist-style

dominating central and southern Europe. The

we have

noted, had turned Italy towards Germany.

repercussions on Austria were not long in the waiting. Deprived de

facto of

Italian protector, Austria

its

German

1(b

slipstream.

was swept

Encouraged by the

inevitably further into the

Italians as well as

pressure by the Germans, Austria was ready by

n

put under

July 1936 to sign a

wide-ranging agreement with Germany, improving relations, ending tions placed activities

within

agreement

the

in reality

turned the Reich's eastern neighbour into an economic

and foreign-policy dependency. suited both

the

two

Germany and

107

Italy.

It 108

was

And

a development

which by

this

time

within weeks, the aid provided by

dictatorships to the nationalist rebels in Spain, and the rapidly

deepening commitment to the Spanish Civil War, brought

many

restric-

German press, and upon economic and cultural 106 Austria. Though recognizing Austrian independence, the

upon

still

closer together.

operating in unison.

109

The

German and

Italy

Italian pilots in Spain

and Ger-

were soon

annihilation of the small Basque market

town

of Guernica, leaving over 2,500 citizens dead or injured, in a devastating

three-hour bombing raid on the afternoon of 26 April 1937 by combined

German and

Italian forces,

immortalized in Picasso's famous painting,

would become an emblem of the horror of the Spanish

Civil

War, and of

CEASELESS R A D innocent civilians defenceless against the

C A L I Z AT I O N

of terror from the

110

skies.

The diplomatic Hitler's In his

own

benefits

from closer

ties

with

were reinforced

Italy

Italy

European country outside Germany capable of standing firm

against Bolshevism.

111

made overtures to Mussolini through Duce to visit Berlin the following year -

In September, he

envoy Hans Frank, inviting the

an invitation readily accepted.

Ciano -

in

eyes by the anti-Bolshevik credentials of Mussolini's regime.

August memorandum on the economy, Hitler had highlighted

as the only

his

new menace

I

112

Mussolini's son-in-law, the vain Count

- arranged matters with Neurath

the 'Ducellino'

There was agreement on a

common

in

mid-October.

Communism, rapid German recognition of the

struggle against

recognition of a Franco government in Spain,

annexation of Abyssinia, and Italian 'satisfaction' at the Austro-German agreement. Hitler

113

was

in effusive

mood when

he welcomed Ciano to Berchtesgaden

on 24 October. He described Mussolini as 'the leading statesman in the 114 world, to whom none may even remotely compare himself'. In a conversation of

two and

a quarter hours, Hitler, noted Ciano, 'talked slowly

and

when he spoke of Russia and Bolshevism. His way of expressing himself was slow and somewhat verbose. in a

low

voice',

with 'violent outbursts

Each question was the subject of

a

long exposition and each concept was

repeated by him several times in different words his conversation

drawn

.

The

principal topics of

115 Ciano had were Bolshevism and English encirclement.'

Hitler's attention to a telegram,

to the Foreign Office in

London from

Eric Phipps, stating that the Reich

which had

the British

fallen into Italian hands,

Ambassador

in Berlin, Sir

government was in the hands of dangerous

adventurers. Hitler's furious response

adventurers

.

.

was

that 'England, too,

was

led by

when she built the Empire. Today it is governed merely by Germany and Italy should 'go over to the attack', using the

incompetents.'

win support from countries suspicious of an

tactic of anti-Bolshevism to

Italo-German

alliance.

There was no clash of

interests

Germany, he declared. The Mediterranean was had

to have

between

freedom of action towards the East and the

convinced, he said, that England would attack

Italy

and

Germany 116 Baltic. He was

'an Italian sea'.

Italy,

Germany, or both,

given the opportunity and likely chances of success.

A common

anti-

Bolshevik front, including powers in the East, the Far East, and South

America, would however act as a deterrent, and probably even prompt Britain to seek an agreement.

time to rearm,

If

Germany and

Britain continued

Italy

its

offensive policy, seeking

had the advantage both

in material

and

25

2.6

HITLER I936-I945 Germany would be

psychological rearmament, he enthused. In three years,

more than

ready, in four years

ready; five years

In a speech in the cathedral square in

of the line between Berlin and

European

which are animated by

States

can revolve'.

A new

118

Milan

Rome

a

would be better still. 117 week later, Mussolini spoke

as 'an axis

round which

a desire for collaboration

term was coined: 'Axis' - whether

negative sense -caught the imagination. In Italian and it

all

those

and peace

in a positive or

German propaganda,

evoked the might and strength of two countries with kindred philosophies

joining forces against

common

raised the spectre of the sionist

enemies. For the western democracies,

combined threat

to

European peace by two expan-

powers under the leadership of dangerous

The menacing image became

dictators.

global when, within weeks of the formation

power outside

of the Axis, Hitler entered a further pact with the one

memorandum

he had singled out in his August Bolshevism: Japan. already

made

119

Hitler

had told Ciano

in

September that Germany had

considerable progress towards an agreement with Japan

The

anti-British thrust

German

had from the beginning been Ribbentrop, operating with

Hitler's

explicit.

121

encouragement.

The

The

professionals from the

interested in relations with China,

new body

as a

120

driving force behind the pact, from the

had been

more

Italy

as standing firm against

within the framework of an anti-Bolshevik front.

side,

it

German

Foreign Office, far

found themselves largely excluded

of 'amateurs' from the Dienststelle Ribbentrop (Ribbentrop

Bureau) - the agency for foreign affairs founded

in 1934,

by

now

with

around 160 persons working for it, upon which Hitler was placing increasing reliance

- made

the overtures to

the running.

Tokyo

122

Neurath was not alone

(once he had belatedly

come

in

disapproving of

to learn of them).

123

Schacht, Goring, and Blomberg, along with leading industrialists (including the

Ruhr armaments magnate Krupp von Bohlen), were

also

among

those

keen not to damage relations with China - a source of extensive deliveries of indispensable ese ore little

raw materials for the armaments industry, notably mangan124 In 'official' German foreign policy, Japan was still

and tungsten.

more than

a sideshow.

But

in the 'alternative' foreign policy being

conducted by Ribbentrop, keen to establish

man

in international affairs

his credentials as Hitler's spokes-

and attuned to

Hitler's ideological interest in a

symbolic anti-Bolshevik agreement, Japanese relations had a far higher profile.

Ribbentrop used

good connections

his intermediary,

Dr

Friedrich

to the Japanese military

to put out feelers in January 1935.

Wilhelm Hack, who had

and important

The Japanese

industrial circles,

military leaders

saw

in a

CEASELESS R A D rapprochement with Berlin the chance to weaken German

and to gain

a potential ally against the Soviet Union.

during the second half of 1935 appears,

Ribbentrop. in

126

C A L Z AT O N I

I

links with

The prime

China

initiative

have been taken by the

in fact, to

Japanese military authorities, through Hack,

125

I

in close collaboration

with

Proposals for an anti-Soviet neutrality pact were put forward

October by the Japanese Military Attache

in Berlin,

Hiroshi Oshima.

Ribbentrop took the proposals - couched as a pact against the Comintern, not directly against the Soviet Union - to Hitler in late November, and gained his approval. Internal upheaval in Japan in the revolt of February 1936,

wake

of a military

and the rapidly changing international

led to almost a year's delay before the pact finally

came

situation,

to fruition.

127

On 27

November 1936 Hitler approved what became known as the Anti-Comintern Pact (which Italy joined a year later), under whose main provision - in a secret protocol

the event of

it

important for

-

neither party

attacking either its

Though

the pact

powers

was

assist the Soviet

Germany

symbolism than

militaristic, expansionist

other.

would for

any way

in

or Japan.

actual provisions: the

ostensibly defensive,

prospects for peace on either side of the globe. In his Reichstag speech

in

The pact was more two most world had found their way to each

its

in the

Union

128

it

had hardly enhanced the

129

on 30 January 1937, celebrating the fourth anniverannounced that 'the time of the

sary of his takeover of power, Hitler so-called surprises'

was

fashion' as an equal partner

problems besetting Europe.

more

Germany wished 'from now on in loyal to work with other nations to overcome the

over.

130

This pronouncement was soon to prove even

it had appeared at the time. That further 'surprises' were - and not long postponed - was not solely owing to Hitler's

cynical than

inevitable

temperament and psychology. The forces unleashed in four years of Nazi rule - internal and external - were producing their own dynamic. Those in so

many

different

ways who were 'working towards the

ensuring, directly or indirectly, that Hitler's

own

served as the broad guidelines of policy initiatives. recklessness

- ingrained

were

Fiihrer'

ideological obsessions

The

restlessness

- and

in Hitler's personality reflected the pressures for

action emanating in different

ways from

the varied

components of the

regime, loosely held together by aims of national assertiveness and racial purity

embodied

and chronic

in the figure of the Leader. Internationally, the fragility

instability of the

post-war order had been brutally exposed.

Within Germany, the chimeric quest for racial purity, backed by a leadership for

which this was

a central tenet of belief, could,

if

circumstances demanded,

be contained temporarily, but would inevitably soon reassert

itself to

turn

27

28

HITLER 1936-1945 the screw of discrimination ever tighter. The Nazi regime could not stand

As

still.

Hitler himself

alternative to expansion

- was what he

lifeblood

was to comment before the end of the year, the - and to the restless energy which was the regime's called 'sterility', bringing in

its

wake,

after a while,

'tensions of a social kind', while failure to act in the near future could bring

and a 'weakening point of the regime'. 131 The bold forward move (Flucht nacb vorne), Hitler's trademark, was, therefore, intrinsic to

internal crisis

Nazism

itself.

To most observers,

both internal and external, after four years

and

Hitler regime looked stable, strong,

successful. Hitler's

in

power

own

the

position

was untouchable. The image of the great statesman and national leader of genius manufactured by propaganda matched the sentiments and expectations of

much

of the population.

and the national triumphs

The

internal rebuilding of the country

in foreign policy, all attributed to his 'genius',

had made him the most popular

political leader of

any nation

in

Most ordinary Germans - like most ordinary people anywhere and times - looked forward to peace and prosperity. Hitler appeared established the basis for these.

Law and order had

in the process.

was booming. What

at

most

to have

restored authority to government.

been re-established. Few were concerned

had been destroyed

if civil

liberties

There was work again. The economy

a contrast this

was

to the

mass unemployment and

Weimar democracy. Of course, there was still much to And many grievances remained. Not least, the conflict with the Churches

economic do.

He had

Europe.

was

failure of

the source of great bitterness. But Hitler

blame. Despite four years of Protestant

Church

thanking

Hitler,

'Church

was

'for every success

life,

was happening. Above all, even

From

more

a

strategy.

head of the

132

The

negative features

most imagined, were not of the Fuhrer's making. They were

the fault of his underlings,

pride.

exempted from

which, through your grace, you

have so far granted him for the good of our people'. of daily

largely

struggle', the

Bishop Meiser, publicly offered prayers for

in Bavaria,

God

fierce

its

critics

who

frequently kept

him

in the

dark about what

had to admit, Hitler had restored German national

post-war humiliation, Germany had risen to become once

major power. Defence through strength had proved a successful

He had

taken

risks.

There had been great fear that these would

CEASELESS RADICALIZATION lead to renewed war. But each time he had been proved right.

And Germany's

position had been inordinately strengthened as a consequence. Even so, there

was widespread

upon throughout

now

was

over. Hitler's

comment was

the land as a sign that consolidation

be the priorities.

to prove the

speech of 30 January

relief at the indication, in Hitler's

1937, that the period of 'surprises' 133

The

illusion

would not

and

last long.

stability

seized

would

The year 1937 was

calm before the storm. 134

Not only ordinary people were taken in by Hitler. And not only through was the impression created that the leader of the Third Reich was a man of unusual talent and vision. No less a figure than David Lloyd George - product of Welsh radical traditions, former the imagery of the mass media

Liberal Party leader, and British Prime Minister at the time of the Versailles

Treaty - came away from a three-hour meeting with Hitler at the Berghof at the

beginning of September 1936

which the old adversaries had

(at

World War) enormously impressed, con135 vinced that the German leader was 'a great man'. Even more remarkably, the British Labour Leader and famed pacifist George Lansbury - whose crumpled suit and woolly sweater prompted the introduction of a new dress-code for audiences with the Fuhrer - went away from his meeting with Hitler in mid-April 1937 firmly convinced that the latter was prepared 136 to do what was necessary to avoid war. He had been so enthused at the

exchanged memories of the

First

meeting that he had not noticed

vague and non-committal were Lansbury's

own

how

bored Hitler had been, and

his unusually

idealistic plans for peace.

137

how

monosyllabic responses to

Other eminent foreign

visitors

who met Hitler also took away positive impressions. 'He did not only spread fear or aversion,' recalled the French

attraction emanating

country.'

Ambassador Francois-Poncet. 'He

awakened sympathy;

excited curiosity; he

his prestige grew; the force of

from him had an impact beyond the borders of

Even for those within Germany known

to be critical of the regime, Hitler

could in a face-to-face meeting create a positive impression. at attuning to the sensitivities of his conversation-partner,

ing,

his

138

He was good

could be charm-

and often appeared reasonable and accommodating. As always, he was

a skilled dissembler.

On

a one-to-one basis, he could pull the

wool over the

eyes even of hardened critics. After a three-hour meeting with

Berghof

in early

November

man

of sharp acumen,

often courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on the Catholic that Hitler

at the

1936, the influential Catholic Archbishop of

Munich-Freising, Cardinal Faulhaber - a

away convinced

him

was deeply

religious.

who had

Church- went

'The Reich Chancellor

29

30

HITLER I936-1945 undoubtedly

God,' he nr>ted

lives in belief in

'He

in a confidential report.

recognizes Christianity as the builder of western culture.' 139

Few, even of those

who were daily in his company - the

regular entourage

- and those with frequent,

privileged access,

of adjutants and secretaries

could claim to 'know' Hitler, to get close to the of the Fuhrer figure. Hitler himself

masses need an

idol,'

was keen

he was later to say.

140

human

being inside the

shell

to maintain the distance. 'The

He

played the role not just to

the masses, but even to his closest entourage. Despite the torrents of

words

he poured out in public, and the lengthy monologues he inflicted upon those in his circle,

A

he was by temperament a very private, even secretive, individual.

deeply ingrained sense of distrust and cynicism meant he was unwilling

and unable to confide the personality

was

in others.

Behind the public figure known to millions,

Genuine personal relations were few. Most

a closed one.

who had been in his immediate company for years were kept length. He used the familiar 'Dw' form with a mere handful of

even of those at

arm's

people. Even

when

his

boyhood

friend

August Kubizek met him again the

following year, following the Anschlufs', Hitler used the formal 'S/V of address.

141

The conventional mode

mode

of addressing Hitler, which had set in

1933, 'Mein Fuhrer', emphasized the formality of relations. The authority of his position depended upon the preservation of the nimbus after

attached to him, as he well realized. This in turn

from those

the individual even Hitler's personality

in his

had important functional,

causes. Respect for his authority

demanded

the distance of

immediate familia. The 'mystery' of as well as

was more important

to

temperamental,

him than personal

warmth. Hitler's dealings with his personal staff

courteous.

He

usually passed a pleasant

when any engagements with them

in the

in the late

were formal,

correct, polite,

word or two with

morning were over, and often took

afternoons and at night.

142

He

and

his secretaries

tea

enjoyed the joking and

songs (accompanied on the accordion) of his chef and Hausintendant or

major-domo Arthur Kannenberg. 143 He could show sympathy and understanding, as when his new Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, had to his embarrassment - to ask to leave for his honeymoon immediately on joining Hitler's service.

presents

when

she

was

144

ill

He

sent Christa Schroeder,

and

visited her

one of

in hospital.

l4S

He

his secretaries,

enjoyed giving

presents to his staff on their birthdays and at Christmas, and paid personal attention to selecting appropriate

146

gifts.

But genuine warmth and affection were missing. The shows of kindness

and attentiveness were

superficial. Hitler's staff, like

most other human

CEASELESS R A D C A L I

beings, were of interest to

him only

lengthy and loyal their service,

be dispensed with. His they called him.

if

as long as they

their usefulness

staff, for their part,

They

were

was

admired

useful.

I

147

ZAT ON I

However

an end they would

at

'the Boss' (der

Chef) as

respected, at times feared, him. His authority

was

unquestioned and absolute. Their loyalty to him was equally beyond question.

was It

But whether they genuinely liked him as a person a certain stiffness

was

had

difficult to relax in his

secretaries

doubtful. There

company. He was demanding of

work long hours and

to

is

about the atmosphere whenever Hitler was present.

were often on duty

fit

work

into his eccentric

in the

his staff,

habits.

148

who His

mornings, but had to be prepared to

take dictation of lengthy speeches late at night or into the early hours.

them on some occasions, on others he

Patronizingly complimentary to

would

scarcely notice their existence.

the eyes of those around him, he

150

was

In his

own

He

misdemeanours when he was unaffected. But where he around him.

let

He was

more even than

eyes,

in

the only person that mattered. His

wishes, his feelings, his interests alone counted.

or that he had been

149

down, he could be harsh

could be lenient of felt

in his

a sense of affront,

treatment of those

brusque and insulting to the lady-friend, of

whom

he

disapproved, of his Chief Adjutant Wilhelm Bruckner, a massive figure, veteran of the

SA

Putsch of 1923.

A

in the party's early days,

few years

despite his lengthy

and

later

and participant

he was peremptorily to dismiss Bruckner,

dutiful service, following a

another occasion he dismissed his valet Karl Krause, for several years, again for a trivial matter.

manager, Arthur Kannenberg,

freedom of

a court jester,

who

had to tread

his standing, Hitler threatened

committed any mistakes

152

Even

minor dispute. 151

who had

served

On him

his jovial hospitality

generally enjoyed something of the carefully.

prospect of any embarrassment that would

damage

in the Becrhall

at receptions.

Always anxious

make him look

him with punishment

at the

foolish if

and

his staff

153

Hitler strongly disliked any change in the personnel of his immediate

entourage.

about him lifestyle

He

liked to see the

same

faces

around him.

He wanted

those

whom he was used to, and who were used to him. For one whose many respects so 'bohemian', he was remarkably inflexible in his habits, and highly reluctant to make

had always been

fixed in his routines,

in

alterations to his personal staff.

154

In 1937 he had four personal adjutants: SA-Gruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bruckner (the chief adjutant); Julius Schaub (formerly the head of his

bodyguard, a Putsch veteran

who had

been

in prison in

Landsberg with

Hitler and in his close attendance ever since, looking after his confidential

31

32

HITLER I936-I945 papers, carrying

money for the

'Chief's' use, acting as his personal secretary,

Wiedemann (who had been Hitler's and Albert Bormann (the brother of Martin,

general factotum, and 'notebook'); Fritz direct superior in the war);

with

whom, however,

adjutants

- Colonel

he was not on speaking terms). 155 Three military

Friedrich

HoEbach

for the army, Captain Karl-Jesko

Otto von Puttkamer for the navy, and Captain Nicolaus von Below for the Luftwaffe - were responsible for Hitler's links with the leaders of the armed forces. Secretaries, valets (one of

the day), his pilot

Hans Baur,

whom had to

the doctors

who,

call at all

moments

Kempka,

the head of

and long-standing Hitler

the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler Dietrich, the leaders of the

be on

his chauffeur Erich

attended upon him

all

formed part of

136

By 1937, Hitler's day followed a fairly regular pattern, at was in Berlin. Late in the morning, he received a knock from Krause,

who would

Sepp

bodyguard and criminal police attachments, and

at different times,

the additional personal staff.

his

trustee

of

least

when he

his valet, Karl

leave newspapers and any important messages outside

room. While Hitler took them

in to read,

Krause ran

his

bath and laid

out his clothes. Always concerned to avoid being seen naked, Hitler insisted

upon dressing

himself, without help

from

did he emerge from his private suite of

his valet.

rooms

137

Only towards midday - a

(or 'Fuhrer apartment')

lounge, library, bedroom, and bathroom, together with a small reserved for Eva Braun

—

in the

any necessary instructions

to,

renovated Reich Chancellery.

138

He

room gave

or received information from, his military

was given a press summary by Otto Dietrich, and was told by Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, of his various engageadjutants,

ments. Meetings and discussions, usually carried out while Hitler walked

backwards and forwards with his discussion partner in the Wintergarten' '

conservatory) looking out on the garden, generally

filled

(or

the next couple of

139 hours - sometimes longer - so that lunch was frequently delayed.

The spacious and chairs in the centre

light

dining-room had a large round table with a dozen

and four smaller

tables,

each with six chairs, around

it.

window, facing a picture 160 Some of the guests - among them Goddess. by Kaulbach, Entry of the Sun Goebbels, Goring, and Speer - were regulars. Others were newcomers or

Hitler sat at the large table with his back to the

was often of world affairs. But Hitler would tailor the discussion to those present. He was careful in what he said. He consciously set out to impress his opinion on his guests, perhaps at times to were seldom

invited.

The

talk

gauge their reaction. Sometimes he dominated the 'conversation' with a

monologue. At other times, he was content to

listen

while Goebbels sparred

CEASELESS R A D C A L I

I

ZAT ON I

with another guest, or a more general discussion unfolded. Sometimes the table talk

and

was interesting. New guests could find the occasion comments a 'revelation'. Frau Below, the wife of

Hitler's

exciting

the

Luftwaffe- Adjutant, found the atmosphere, and Hitler's company, at exhilarating and art.

161

was

midday meal was often

who had

staff

a tedious affair.

first

knowledge of history and

greatly impressed by his

But for the household

new

heard

it

many

all

times, the

162

After lunch there were usually further meetings in the

Music Salon with

ambassadors, generals, Reich Ministers, foreign dignitaries, or personal acquaintances such as the Wagners or Bruckmanns. Such meetings seldom lasted longer than

Hitler

withdrew to

an hour, and were arranged around his

own rooms

went

for a rest, or

park attached to the Reich Chancellery.

163

He

tea. Thereafter,

for a stroll

spent no time at

round the all

during

the day at his massive desk, other than hurriedly to attach his signature to

laws, letters of appointment, or other formal documents placed before

him. Beyond his major speeches,

letters to foreign

heads of

occasional formal note of thanks or condolence, he dictated to his secretaries.

164

Apart from

his

state,

little

and the

or nothing

temperamental aversion to bureaucracy,

he was anxious to avoid committing himself on paper. The consequence

was

and personal

that his adjutants

staff often

had the task of passing on

in

written form directives which were unclear, ill-thought-out, or spontaneous reactions.

The scope

for confusion, distortion,

and misunderstanding was

enormous. What Hitler had originally intended or stated was, by the time it

had passed through various hands, often open to different interpretation

and impossible to reconstruct with

The evening meal, around

certainty.

16j

8p.m., followed the

there were usually fewer present and talk focused topics, such as art

and

history.

by one of the servants (most of Leibstandarte) with a films at his

still

list

same pattern

more on

as lunch, but

Hitler's favourite

During the meal, Hitler would be presented

whom were drawn from

his

bodyguard, the

of films, including those from abroad and

unreleased, which Goebbels had provided. (Hitler

Christmas present from Goebbels

German

was delighted

in 1937: thirty feature films of the

Mouse cartoons.) 166 After the evening would be shown in the Music Salon.

previous four years, and eighteen Mickey meal, the film chosen for the

Any members of the household staff and the chauffeurs of any guests present could watch. Hitler's secretaries were, however, not present at the meals the Reich Chancellery, though they were included in the

atmosphere

at the Berghof.

The evening ended with conversation

usually to about 2 a.m. before Hitler retired.

167

in

more relaxed stretching

33

34

HITLER 1936-1945 world within the Reich Chancellery, with

In this

formalities,

where he was surrounded by

fixed routines

its

and

and otherwise met

his regular staff

most part official visitors or guests who were mainly in awe of him, was cocooned within the role and image of the Fuhrer which had elevated him to demi-god status. Few could behave naturally in his presence. for the

Hitler

The rough

'old fighters' of the Party's early days

Those attending the meals only

known him

to him.

168

The

since the

now came

less frequently.

Reich Chancellery had for the most part

in the

nimbus of the

'great leader'

had become attached

result only reinforced Hitler's self-belief that he

was

of destiny', treading his path 'with the certainty of a sleepwalker'.

same time, he was ever more cut his it

off

from

real

human

a

169

'man

At the

contact, isolated in

realm of increasing megalomania. Aways glad to get away from Berlin,

was only while staying with

Festival

and

Wagners during

the

at his alpine retreat 'on the

that Hitler relaxed

somewhat.

1

But even

°

the annual Bayreuth

mountain' above Berchtesgaden at the Berghof, rituals

were

preserved. Hitler dominated the entire existence of his guests there too. Real

informality

was

as

good

as impossible in his presence.

numbers of people

the large

remained impoverished when ingful personal relationship

it

came

to real contact, cut off

impossible to be sure of what,

if

when, then aged seventeen, she worked It

was

closeted in her

attended

official

all

other

his

human beings.

(whom

he had

met

first

in the office of his

in

1929

photographer,

could not have been much. For prestige reasons, he

kept her away from the public eye. she

from any mean-

any, emotional satisfaction Hitler

gained from his relationship with Eva Braun

Heinrich Hoffmann).

Hitler, for all

through the shallowness of his emotions and

profoundly egocentric, exploitative attitude towards It is

And

attendance on him and paying court to him,

in

little

On

room

functions or

the rare occasions she

in the 'Fuhrer

was

in Berlin,

Apartment' while Hitler

was otherwise engaged.

1

l

Even

in his close

was not permitted to be present for meals if any important guests were there. She did not accompany Hitler on his numerous journeys, and had to stay for the most part either in his flat in Munich or at the Berghof, circle she

the only place

Even

there,

guests.

173

where she could emerge

'family'.

172

however, she was hidden away during receptions for important 14

when she was present, frequently The contrast with the olde-worlde

kissing hands, linking arms, cupping elbows

showed towards wounds.

one of the extended

Hitler often treated her abysmally

humiliating her in front of others.

charm -

as

175

pretty

women

in his presence

That Eva had long suffered from

from her plaintive diary

entries

-

that he habitually

merely rubbed

salt in the

Hitler's neglect of her

two years

earlier, in

l

193 5.

is

evident

Her deep

CEASELESS R A D unhappiness had culminated that year

- an overdose of

in her

second suicide attempt

in the

May

sleeping tablets that amounted, like her

attempt (with a revolver) in 1932, to a effort to kill herself.

C A L I Z AT I O N

I

cri

177

Probably the closest that Hitler came to friendship was

favourite, Albert Speer,

rebuilding of Berlin.

178

whom

in his relations

with them. The Goebbels

and

their wives

home was

families,

involvement

in politics.

of a father-son relationship.

company,

and could

liked

feel at

ease

a frequent refuge in Berlin. Lengthy

about the rebuilding of the capital

welcome

nearest thing Hitler had to a hobby, a total

new

January 1937 he made responsible for the

in

Hitler frequently sought out their

was fond of

talks with Speer

first

de cceur rather than a serious

with Joseph Goebbels and, increasingly, with his court architect and

their presence,

of

At

least in

179

A

city

respite

amounted

from

to the

his otherwise

Goebbels's case there were elements

rare flicker of

human concern

could be

glimpsed when Hitler asked Goebbels to stay for an extra day in Nuremberg after the Rally in

September 1937, since (according to the Propaganda him flying at night. 180 Hitler was the dominant

Minister) he did not like figure

of his

- the

father figure. But he

two proteges - the

may have

brilliant

seen something of himself in each

propagandist

in

Goebbels, the gifted

architect in Speer. In the case of Speer, the fascination for architecture provided

an obvious

bond. Both had a liking for neo-classical buildings on a monumental Hitler

was impressed by

organizational

skill.

own

could put his

Speer's taste in architecture, his energy,

He had

come

to see

him

and

as the architect

his

who

grandiose building schemes, envisaged as the represen-

tation of Teutonic might practice.

rapidly

scale.

and glory that would

last for centuries, into

But other architects, some better than Speer, were available. The

went beyond the building mania that linked Nothing homoerotic was involved - at least

attractiveness of Speer to Hitler

them

closely to each other.

not consciously. But Hitler perhaps found in the handsome, burningly ambitious, talented, and successful architect an unconsciously idealized self-image.

181

What

is

plain

is

that both Goebbels and Speer worshipped

Hitler. Goebbels's adoration of the father-figure Hitler

since the mid-i920s.

'He

is

a fabulous

of sentiment in 1937 about the figure universe.

182

For Speer, as he himself

was undiminished

man' was merely one of

who was

his effusions

the centre-point of his

later recognized, his love of Hitler

transcended the power-ambitions that his protector and role-model was able to satisfy

- even

if it

originally arose out of

completely separated from them.

183

them and could never be

35

}6

HITLER 1936-1945 had invariably spoken of

In earlier years, Hitler

mere beginning of Germany's passage

would take generations

process

own

his

'mission' as the

world domination. The whole

to

to complete.

184

But, flushed with scarcely

imaginable triumphs since 1933 and falling ever more victim to the myth of

own

his

greatness, he

became increasingly impatient

to see his 'mission'

fulfilled in his lifetime.

Partly, this in

was

incipient

He spoke on numerous occasions

megalomania.

18:> At midnight 1937 about building plans of staggering monumentally.

on his birthday, he, Goebbels, and Speer stood in front of plans for rebuilding Berlin, fantasizing

of creating a

new

186

about a glorious future.

capital city

Hitler even thought for a while

on the Miiritzsee

in

Mecklenburg, eighty miles

or so north-west of Berlin, but eventually dropped an idea which patently absurd.

187

'The Fuhrer won't speak of money. Build, build!

somehow be paid for!' Goebbels has him saying. 188 ask about money when he built Sanssouci.' In part, too,

own

it

was prompted by

It

was will

'Frederick the Great didn't

growing preoccupation with

Hitler's

his

what he could in his lifetime. health had generally been good - astonishingly so

mortality and impatience to achieve

Before the mid-i93os, his

given his lack of exercise, poor diet (even before his cranky vegetarianism

following the death in 193 1 of his niece, Geli Raubal), and high expenditure of nervous energy. However, he already suffered from chronic stomach

pains which, at times of stress, became acute spasms.

he took - an old trench remedy with a base

in

189

A

gun-cleaning

patent medicine oil

- turned out

to be mildly poisonous, causing headaches, double vision, dizziness,

ringing in the ears. (eventually

190

removed

to be harmless.

He had in the

legs,

severe,

and Hitler

also developed

in bandages.

asked Dr Theodor Morell, a physician

photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, to

new

1935 that a polyp in his throat 191

It

turned out

a year of almost continual tension, the

which had to be covered

vitamins and a

in

May of that year) was cancerous.

During 1936,

cramps were frequently

been worried

and

192

stomach

eczema on both

At Christmas 1936, Hitler

who had

successfully treated his

try to cure him.

Morell gave him

patent remedy for intestinal problems.

193

Goebbels

194 August 1937, that Hitler was unwell. But by September, Morell's treatment had apparently made a difference. At any

mentioned

in June,

and again

in

was impressed. He felt fit again, his weight was back to normal, 195 eczema had vanished. His belief in Morell would last down to the

rate, Hitler

and

his

bunker

in 1945.

him ever more

From

late

reliant

fear of cancer (which

1937 onwards, his increasing hypochondria made

on Morell's

had caused

pills,

his

drugs, and injections.

mother's death) never

left

196

And

the

him. At the

CEASELESS R A D C A L I

I

Z AT O N I

end of October, he told a meeting of propaganda leaders that both parents had died young, and that he probably did not have long to

was necessary,

therefore, to solve the

(living-space) as

his

person was

Hitler

was seldom out of

missed to drive

home

scarcely credible

umphs'

this

would no longer be

in the position to

bring

it

live. 'It

problems that had to be solved

soon as possible, so that

lifetime. Later generations

his

could

still

take place in his

able to accomplish

about.'

it.

Only

197

the public eye in 1937.

No

opportunity was

German public an apparently endless array of 'achievements' at home and the glories of his major 'trito the

in foreign policy.

Flushed with success and certain of the adulation

The bonds between the Fiihrer and the people the cement of the regime, and dependent upon recurring success and achievement - were thereby reinforced. And for Hitler the ecstasy of of the masses, he

wanted

to be seen.

his

mass audiences provided each time a new injection of the drug to feed

his

egomania.

A

constant round of engagements ensured that he was ever visible. By

1937 the Nazi calendar, revolving around Hitler's major speeches and

appearance place.

A

at

parades and

rallies,

was well

established, the rituals firmly in

speech to the Reichstag on 30 January (the anniversary of his

appointment

as Chancellor), speeches to the Party's 'Old Fighters'

on 24

February (the anniversary of the promulgation of the 1920 Party Programme)

and

8

November

(the anniversary of the 1923 putsch), taking the salute at

big military parades on his birthday on 20 April, a speech at the huge

gathering (estimated at 1,200,000 in 1937) in Berlin's Lustgarten on the 'National

Day of Celebration of the German People' (1 May), and, of course, at Nuremberg in the first half of September

the

week of the Reich Party Rally

all

formed

fixed points of the year.

Other public appearances

in

1937

included: the opening of the International Car Exhibition in Berlin on 20

February, next day laying

a

wreath

at the Berlin

cenotaph and reviewing

troops on 'Heroes' Memorial Day', the launch of the 'Strength Through Joy' ship Wilhelm Gustloff (intended as a cruise-ship for

on

5

German workers)

May, the opening of the Reich Food Estate's Agricultural Exhibition

Munich on 30 May, a speech to 200,000 people at the Gau Party Rally of the Bayerische Ostmark (Bavarian Eastern Marches) in Regensburg on 6

in

June, and to a further mass rally of the

Gau Unterfranken (Lower Franconia)

on 27 June, a speech at the festive opening of the 'House of German Art' (the imposing new art gallery designed by one of Hitler's early favourite architects, Paul

Ludwig Troost)

in

Munich on 19 July, an address to half a German Singers in Breslau

million attending the Festival of the League of

37

38

HITLER I936-I945 on

1

August,

five

days of Mussolini's state

visit to

Germany between

25 and

29 September, speeches in early October at the harvest festival on the

Buckeberg, near Hanover, and in Berlin at the opening of the 'Winter Aid'

campaign

(the

annual collection,

initially established in

unemployed over the winter months), Augsburg on 21 November, and

1933 to help the

a speech to the Party faithful in

a speech at the laying of the foundation

stone of the Military Technical Faculty of Berlin's Technical University on

27 November. In

all,

Hitler held

some twenty-six major speeches during the Nuremberg Rally), apart from lesser

course of the year (thirteen alone at the addresses,

speak.

and appearances

parades and other meetings where he did not

at

198

As always, the

effect of his speeches

depended heavily upon the atmos-

phere in which they were held. The content was repetitive and monotonous.

The themes were

the familiar ones. Past achievements were lauded, grandi-

ose future plans proclaimed, the horrors and menace of Bolshevism emphasized.

But there was no conflict between propaganda and ideology. Hitler

believed

The

what he was

saying.

'nationalization of the masses'

-

the prerequisite for

German power

and expansion, which he had posited since the early 1920s - he thought well

on the way to being accomplished. At

his three-hour speech to the Reichstag

on 30 January 1937, the anniversary of the takeover of power, giving account of his first four years in office, he claimed he had restored German honour through the reintroduction of conscription, the creation of the Luftwaffe, the rebuilding of the navy, and the reoccupation of the Rhineland, and

announced that he was solemnly withdrawing the German signature from the admission of war-guilt in the Versailles Treaty, 'wrung out of a then

weak government'. 199 On where individuals from through their

own

May, he lauded Germany

1

as a classless society

backgrounds had a chance to

all

rise to the

top

achievements - as long as they were in the collective

interest of the nation,

and

as long as the total subservience such as he

himself practised for almost six years as a soldier was forthcoming.

detached from the practical considerations of day-to-day

German

out a breathtaking vision of

200

politics,

had

Wholly he held

grandeur, power, and dominance

enshrined in heroic art and architecture which would monumentalize Teutonic cultural achievements for 1,000 years. 'The building of a temple' for 'a

true

and eternal German

Art' at

its

opening

art'

in July.

201

was how he described Presenting

'a

thousand-year historical and cultural past' with a city'

was what he foresaw

in

November

the 'House of

German

thousand-year people with a fitting

'thousand-year

as the task of turning Berlin into

CEASELESS RADICAL IZATION the world-capital 'Germania'.

202

At the Reich Party Rally

early September, the themes of great national

and

Nuremberg

at

the past years were coupled with the aims of a racial revolution

profound consequences would

new man' (Mens c hen).

'create the

in

social achievements in

whose 103

His

lengthy concluding speech to the Party Congress was an onslaught on

'Jewish Bolshevism'.

and

204

them

on the Jews for many months, he portrayed

as the force behind Bolshevism

day social order', and spoke of

and

Europe, from Moscow'. it

was

far

when

his

came

it

on the present-

an uncivilized Jewish-Bolshevik

Germany,

as an old cultural land of

This is what the Party more than window-dressing. Even

red-faced and eyes blazing,

volume

'general attack

205

speeches to his secretary,

full

its

'the claim of

international guild of criminals to rule

But

Mein Kampf,

In passages at times reminiscent of

in his fiercest public attack

faithful

to passages

would work himself

wanted

to hear.

in private, dictating the

on Bolshevism

Hitler,

to a frenzy, bellowing at

thunderous denunciations. 206

VI Away from

the continual

propaganda

activity revolving

and public appearances, Hitler was largely preoccupied a watchful eye

on the changing

gigantic building plans.

situation in

The continuing

Protestant Churches, radical though his recurrent irritation, especially in the

conflict

own

first

world

in

around speeches

1937 with keeping

affairs

and with

his

with both the Catholic and

instincts were,

months of the

amounted

to a

year, rather than a

it was with Goebbels, Rosenberg, and many of the Party With regard to the 'Jewish Question' - to go from the many private discussions with Goebbels which the Propaganda Minister reported in his diary notes - Hitler, unchanged though his views were, showed little

priority concern (as

rank-and-file).

active interest

and seldom spoke

directly

on the

subject.

But however

uninvolved Hitler was, the radicalization of the regime continued unabated, forced on in a variety of ways by Party activists, ministerial bureaucracy,

economic opportunists, and, not In February 1937 Hitler

want

a

'Church struggle'

made

least, it

by an ideologically driven police.

plain to his inner circle that he did not

The time was not ripe for it. He If Germany lost one 207 The implication was clear: calm should end.

at this juncture.

expected 'the great world struggle in a few years' time'.

more war,

it

would mean

the

be restored for the time being in relations with the Churches. Instead, the conflict

with the Christian Churches intensified. The anti-clericalism and

39

40

HITLER 1936-1945 anti-Church sentiments of the grass-roots Party

activists

simply could not

be eradicated. Provincial Nazi leaders such as the Gauleiter of Upper Bavaria

Wagner were often The eagerness of Party disproportionate number of whom were

(and Bavarian Education and Interior Minister) Adolf only too keen to keep the conflict on the boil. 208 activists

and

local leaders

(a

teachers) to break the Christian influence reinforced through

momentum

national schools sustained the

by determined

(if

at grass-roots level.

It

denomi-

was met

ultimately unsuccessful) rearguard action of the clergy

and churchgoing population. 209 The stranglehold that the Churches maintained over the values and mentalities of large sections of the population

was an obvious thorn

in the side of a

intolerant 'world-view',

which saw

well as body.

The

assault

on the

Churches was deeply embedded

Church was

the hold of the

Movement with

itself as

practices

in the

making

and

own

highly

on soul

as

institutions of the Christian

psyche of National Socialism. Where

strong, as in the backwaters of rural Bavaria,

the conflict raged in villages and small towns with high.

its

a total claim

little

prompting from on

210

At the same time, the

activists

could draw on the verbal violence of

Party leaders towards the Churches for their encouragement. Goebbels's orchestrated attacks on the clergy through the staged 'immorality

Franciscans in

1937 - following

ammunition.

And,

in the

'Church

- provided

further

however much Hitler on some occasions

in turn,

claimed to want a respite in the conflict, his

gave his immediate underlings

of

usually trumped-up or grossly exaggerated

allegations of sexual impropriety in the religious orders 211

trials'

all

own

inflammatory comments

the licence they needed to turn

struggle', confident that they

up the heat

were 'working towards the

Fuhrer'. Hitler's impatience with the

Churches prompted frequent outbursts of

hostility. In early 1937,

he was declaring that 'Christianity was ripe for

destruction' {Untergang) ,

and that the Churches must yield to the 'primacy of

compromise with 'the most horrible institution two conferences he summoned in February to try to end damaging consequences of the conflict which Church Minister Kerrl had

the state', railing against any

imaginable'. the

212

In

done nothing to elections

-

state

he eagerly seized upon Goebbels's suggestion for new

213

move of the Fuhrer in the Church at some point in the future Church

However, he indicated that would be separated, the Concordat of 1933 between

Question'.

and

solve,

to be publicized as 'the peace

the Reich and

the Vatican dissolved (to provide the regime with a free hand), and the entire force of the Party turned to 'the destruction of the clerics (Pfaffen)\

CEASELESS R A D For the time being

it

was necessary

to wait, see

what

be tactically clever. Everything was a means to

He

people'.

expected in

(AuseinandersetzungY In .

- the

of Westphalia the

German

states,

or six years' time

five

and

'the life of the

showdown

great world

he would have liquidated the Peace

fifteen years,

which had brought

treaty of 1648

C A L I Z AT I O N

the opponents did,

an end -

'a

I

religious accord in

ending the Thirty Years War. 'A grandiose outlook for 214

the future,' Goebbels called

Addressing the Gauleiter

it.

in

mid-March, Hitler announced that he wanted

'no ordinary victory' over the Churches. Either one should keep quiet about

an opponent {totsckweigen), or slay him (totschlagen), was In April,

more

Goebbels reported with satisfaction that the Fiihrer was becoming

radical in the 'Church Question',

'immorality

trials'

on the clergy and

against clergy.

216

and had approved the

was probably

at Goebbels's

Goebbels noted Hitler's verbal attacks 217

Goebbels himself

was

'to

fully

of the ranting

In as divisive an issue

recognized that what must be avoided at

send the Fiihrer into the

in the glare of

Much

prompting. But Hitler was happy to leave the

Propaganda Minister and others to make the running. as this,

start of the

with the propaganda campaign on several

his satisfaction

subsequent occasions over the following few weeks.

costs

how he put it. 21j

218

field'.

Hitler

was

world publicity about the persecution of the clergy when,

early July, Pastor

all

nevertheless again in

Martin Niemoller, the leading voice of the 'Confessing

Church', was arrested as part of an assault on 'disloyal' Protestant church-

men. 219 But,

if

Goebbels's diary entries are a guide, Hitler's interest and

direct involvement in the

'Church struggle' declined during the second half

now occupying

of the year. Other matters were by

his attention.

The 'Jewish Question' does not appear to have figured prominently among them. Goebbels, who saw Hitler almost on a daily basis at this time and who noted the topics of many private conversations they had together, recorded no more than a couple of instances where the 'Jewish Question' was discussed. On the first day of the Party Rally in Nuremberg, Hitler talked in his hotel to Goebbels about 'race questions'. 'There too there's a

commented

to be clarified,'

lot

still

of

November, among

the 'Jewish Question'.

'a

the

Propaganda Minister. 220 At the end

thousand things talked about' over lunch was

The

discussion appears to have been

prompted by

Goebbels's preparations for legislation to ban Jews from attending theatres

and cultural events. 'My new law is

will

soon be ready,' he wrote. 221 'But that

not the goal. The Jews must get out of Germany, yes out of the whole of

Europe. That will Fiihrer

is

still

firmly decided

take

some

on

222 it.'

It

time. But

was

it

will

and must happen. The

a statement of belief, not a political

41

42

HITLER 1936-1945 on

decision resting

we

clearly thought-out strategy. Anti-Jewish policy, as

have seen, had gathered pace since 1933 without frequent or coherent central direction.

It

was no

Goebbels makes

different in 1937. Hitler's views, as his

clear,

remained unchanged since

He

'Jewish Question' back in September 1919.

comment

to

on the

his first statement

gave a clear indication to a

gathering of some 800 district leaders (Kreisleiter) in April 1937 of his tactical caution but ideological consistency in the 'Jewish Question'.

made

he

had

and over

to be conducted cleverly,

the

blow

to the heart.

223

It

was

Though

to destroy them, the struggle

a period of time, he told his avid

would help him manoeuvre them

listeners. Skill

come

wanted

plain to his enemies that he

into a corner.

Then would

with these precepts that he

in line

now

sanctioned, following the prompting in June 1937 of the Reich Doctors'

Leader Gerhard Wagner, measures (eventually coming into to

ban

all

inopportune when the issue had been raised

But the

this

most

was

in late 1933.

a rare instance of direct involvement

part, he

was content

to

more was needed than

all

that

After

two

this time.

required.

For

in the

And no

his tirade against 'Jewish Bolshevism' at the Party

new

antisemitic

wave

225 than that of 1935 - that was to unfold throughout 1938.

relatively quiet years, discrimination against the

intensified. Increasingly radical steps

the

around

was

Rally in September to act as a green light inviting the fiercer

224

remain for the time being inactive

'Jewish Question'. His tacit approval was

- even

effect in 1938)

Jewish doctors from medical practice - a step he had regarded as

were

Jews again

initiated to eliminate

economy, and from more and more spheres of

them from

social activity.

The

whose 'Jewish Section' (Judenrehad in fact since the start of the year been advocating renewed pressure on the Jews to force them 226 The out of the economy and speed up their emigration from Germany. Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD),

ferat)

was run by

the ambitious Adolf Eichmann,

illegal 'excesses'

- mob

were recommended.

227

mood

and the deployment of violence, which was seen as particularly effective -

manufacture of a 'popular

hostile to Jews'

By autumn, the climate was becoming more

than ever for the Jewish population. his departure

228

Schacht's loss of influence,

and

hostile finally

from the Economics Ministry on 27 November, now removed

an obstacle to the 'aryanization' of the economy. Pressure to

fulfil this

aspect

229

Programme mounted. Goring, by this time in effect in charge was more than ready to push forward the 'aryanization'. The upswing of the economy made big business, losing the uncertainties of of the Party's

of the economy,

the

first

years of Nazi rule, willing partners, eager to profit from the takeover

of Jewish firms at

knock-down

prices.

230

By April 1938 more than 60 per

CEASELESS R A D cent of Jewish firms had been liquidated or 'aryanized'.

231

I

CALIZAT ON I

From

late

1937 onwards, individual Jews also faced an expanding array of discriminatory measures, initiated without central coordination by a variety of ministries

and

offices

- all

in their

way 'working towards

immeasurably the screw of persecution. usual,

had

the Fiihrer'

Hitler's

largely consisted of setting the tone

and legitimation for the actions of world

In

232

affairs, events

- which tightened

own

contribution, as

and providing the sanction

others.

beyond

Hitler's control

were causing him to

speculate on the timing and circumstances in which the great

would occur. By

showdown

the end of 1937, the signs were that radicalization

was

gathering pace not just in anti-Jewish policy (and, largely instigated by the Gestapo, in the persecution

and repression of other ethnic and

minorities), but also in foreign policy.

Hitler began the year by expressing his that he

still

had

social

233

hope to those

six years to prepare for the

at his

lunch table

coming showdown.

'But,

if

a

commented Goebbels, 'he also doesn't want to miss it.' Hitler stressed Russian strength and warned against underestimating the British because of their weak political leadership. He saw very favourable chance comes along,'

opportunities of winning

allies in

eastern Europe (particularly Poland) and

the Balkans as a consequence of Russia's drive for world revolution. Hitler's in the

remarks followed

War

a long briefing

its

for 'Case X'

fascist allies against Russia,

question of

earlier that

morning

Ministry about the rapid expansion of rearmament and the

Wehrmacht's preparations with

by Blomberg

234

German occupation was

and Blomberg discussed the Commissars. Hitler was

- taken

to be

Germany, together

Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. The evidently raised. Hitler, Goebbels,

installation of senior Gauleiter as Civilian

satisfied

with what he had heard.

23 ^

A foretaste of what might be expected from the German leadership in war followed the dropping of two 'red bombs' on the battleship Deutschland, stationed off Ibiza, by a Spanish Republican plane on the evening of 29

May, killing twenty-three and injuring over seventy sailors. Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, was dispatched by Blomberg to Munich to bear the brunt of Hitler's fury. Hitler's rage', as

Goebbels put

it,

immediate reaction, 'fuming with

was to bomb Valencia in

reprisal.

But after a hastily

arranged conference with Blomberg, Raeder, Goring, and von Neurath, he ordered instead the cruiser Admiral Scheer to

fire

on the southern Spanish

harbour town of Almeria. Hitler, seething but nervous paced up and in the

down

his

room

in the

at the

outcome,

Reich Chancellery until three o'clock

morning. The shelling of Almeria for an hour

left

twenty-one

civilians

43

44

HITLER 1936-1945 dead, fifty-three injured, and destroyed thirty-nine houses. Hitler was

satis-

He had seen it as a prestige question. Prestige had now been restored. 236 He had by this time lost faith in Spain becoming a genuinely fascist country. He saw Franco as a Spanish variant of General Seeckt (the former 'strong man' in the German army in the 1920s) - a military man without any fied.

mass movement behind him. 237 Despite

had no

regrets

his worries

about Spain, however, he

about ordering German intervention, and pointed to the many

advantages which Germany had drawn from

its

involvement.

238

Goebbels's

diary notes reflect Hitler's wider perceptions of world affairs during the

and

latter half of 1937,

expansion.

The

watchful eye on opportunities for

his

with Austria and then the Sudeten

foreshadowed

in Hitler's

crisis in

German

which brought the Anschluf^

radicalization in foreign policy

Czechoslovakia

in

1938 were

musings on future developments during these

months.

The arch-enemy, by

its

He was

was

the Soviet Union,

internal turmoils

weakened both war against China. 239

in Hitler's eyes

and by Japanese triumphs

puzzled by the Stalinist purges. 'Stalin

is

in the

probably sick

in the brain

him

as saying. 'His

bloody regime can

otherwise not be explained. But Russia

knows nothing

other than Bolshev-

(gehirnkrank),' Goebbels reported

ism. That's the danger later,

we have

to

smash down some

day.'

240

A few

months

he was repeating the view that Stalin and his followers were mad. 'Must

be exterminated (Mm/? ausgerottet werden) was his sinister conclusion. '

was

He

anticipating that the opportunity might arise following a Japanese

victory over China.

turn

241

its

attention to

Once China was smashed, he guessed, Tokyo would Moscow. 'That is then our great hour,' he predicted. 242

an alliance with Britain had by

Hitler's belief in

now

almost evaporated.

His attitude towards Britain had come to resemble that of a lover spurned.

Contemptuous of the

ened as a world power. anti-British, line that

government, he also saw Britain greatly weak-

British 244

Egged on by Ribbentrop, by now aggressively

and diverging sharply from the more cautious Foreign Office

looked to a negotiated settlement

territorial revision

and concession of

strongly for Goebbels's liking

Nothing was spared conceivable

243

pomp and

Duce during his

- on

in

time with Britain (involving

colonies), his hopes

his

new

now

friend Mussolini.

rested

- too

245

in the preparations for a huge extravaganza with

all

make the maximum impact on the Germany between 25 and 29 September. Hitler

circumstance to

state visit to

even had an aeroplane dispatched to fetch ripe pears for the Duce, concerned that there

was not

southern Europe.

a sufficiently

246

Not even

wide choice of

fruit to offer his guest

from

the torrential rain that drenched the hundreds

CEASELESS R A D of thousands assembled at

from the two prepared

German

the Duce.

247

He

- together with

text,

Tempelhof on 28 September

and made

dictators,

could damage the impression that the

home with him an image

took

growing sense that

a

to hear speeches

Mussolini to read his

difficult for

it

C A L I Z AT I O N

I

of

visit

made on

German power and might Axis was destined to

Italy's role in the

be that of junior partner. Hitler was also overjoyed at the outcome. There

had been agreement on cooperation

war

since Italy

and on attitudes towards the

in Spain,

Far East. Hitler was certain that Italian friendship was assured,

in the

had

any case

in

alternative.

little

Only the 'Austrian Question',

on which Mussolini would not be drawn, remained open. 'Well, wait and

commented Goebbels. 248 From remarks recorded by Goebbels, it is clear that Hitler was already by summer 1937 beginning to turn his eyes towards Austria and Czechoslovakia, though as yet there was no indication of when and how Germany might move against either state. Nor were ideological or military-strategic see,'

motives, however important for Hitler himself, the only ones influencing

notions of expansion in central Europe. Continuing economic difficulties,

Wehrmacht's demands

especially in fulfilling the

been the main stimulus to increased successful visit by

Goring

reserves, labour supplies,

of a

German takeover

the office of the

German

raw

249

Gold and foreign-currency

and important raw materials were among the

of the alpine Republic.

as possible.

had

materials,

pressure on Austria since the

to Italy in January.

Four Year Plan was

AnschluE as soon

for

2^

Not

at the forefront of

The economic

lure

surprisingly, therefore,

demands

for an

significance of the 'Austrian

Question' was further underlined by Hitler's appointment in July 1937 of

Wilhelm Keppler, who had served before 1933

as

an important link with

business leaders, to coordinate Party affairs regarding Vienna.

2M

Further

concessions to follow on those of the 1936 agreement - including the ending of censorship on

Mein Kampf- were forced on

July. 'Perhaps we're again

Austria, the Fiihrer will

coming

the Austrian

a step further,'

some time make

government

mused Goebbels. 2i2

a tabula rasa,' the

in

'In

Propaganda

Minister noted, after a conversation with Hitler at the beginning of August. 'Let's

hope we can

(Er gebt

to us his

all still

experience

dann aufs Ganze.) This

and

will

come

to us.

proudest triumph.'

later, Hitler told

253

The

state

it,'

is

he went on. 'He'll go for

not a state at

Fiihrer's entry into

all. Its

Vienna

it

then.

people belong

will

At the end of the Nuremberg Rally,

a

one day be

few weeks

Goebbels that the issue of Austria would some time be

resolved 'with force'.

254

Before the end of the year, Papen was unfolding to

2 Hitler plans to topple the Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg. " Goring and

45

'

46

HITLER I936-I945 Keppler were by then both convinced that Hitler would tackle the question of Austria during the spring or

summer

of 1938.

256

In the case of Czechoslovakia, too, Hitler's intentions to Goebbels. 'Czechia (die Tscbecbei) in

August.

'It

will

is

one day be overrun.

2j7

from the Sudeten area

to allow children

also

no

The

to

were unmistakable

state,'

he noted in his diary

refusal

by Czech authorities

go for holidays to Germany was

used by Goebbels as the pretext to launch the beginning of a

campaign against the Czechs.

238

the British Ambassador, Nevile

accommodating

German

to

Goring had by

this

vitriolic press

time been stressing to

Henderson - who gave the

air of

being more

claims than his predecessor Sir Eric Phipps,

whom he had replaced in April, had been - Germany's rights to Austria and the Sudetenland (in due course also to revision of the Polish border).

long-standing British acquaintance, the former air attache in Berlin,

To

a

Group

Captain Christie, he went further: Germany must have not simply the Sudetenland, but the whole of Bohemia and Moravia, Goring asserted.

2^ 9

By mid-October, following the demands of Konrad Henlein, the Sudeten

German leader, for autonomy, Goebbels was predicting that Czechoslovakia would

On

in the future 'have

nothing to laugh about'.

260

November 1937 the Propaganda Minister lunched, as usual, with Hitler. The general situation was discussed. The Czech question was to be toned down for the time being because Germany was still not in a position to take any action. The issue of colonies was also to be taken more slowly, so as not to awaken false expectations among the population. In the run-up 5

to Christmas, the heat had, too, to be turned

down on the 'Church struggle'.

The long-running saga of Schacht was nearing its denouement. Schacht had to go, it was agreed. But the Fiihrer wanted to wait until after the Party's ritual Putsch commemoration on 9 November before taking any action. In the afternoon, Goebbels went home to continue work. The Fiihrer, he noted, had 'General

Staff talks'.

261

VII In the

gloom of

late afternoon, the chiefs of the

navy, together with

War

Minister Blomberg,

made

army, Luftwaffe, and their

way

to the Reich

Chancellery for a meeting, as they thought, to establish the allocation of steel supplies to the

late

October,

when

allocation of steel

armed

forces.

The reason

for the meeting dated

back to

Admiral Raeder, increasingly concerned about Goring's

and the preferential treatment of the Luftwaffe, had posed

CEASELESS RADICALIZATION an ultimatum to Blomberg indicating that no expansion of the navy was

was unwilling

possible without additional steel supplies. Raeder

He

concessions. sary.

262

to

make

thought an immediate decision by the Fiihrer was neces-

With the dispute among the branches of the armed

forces simmering

and the prospect of the arms drive stagnating, Blomberg pressed Hitler clarification. Eventually, Hitler

sent out the invitations to discuss 'the

demands' to the

had

leaders

chiefs of the three

a surprise

when

armaments situation and raw materials

armed

forces' branches.

263

The

military

they reached the Reich Chancellery at 4p.m. to

find present, alongside Hitler

also the Foreign Minister

for

agreed to the meeting. Blomberg, not Hitler,

and

his military adjutant,

Colonel HoEbach,

von Neurath. Another surprise was waiting

them when, instead of dealing with the

issue of

raw materials

for

allocation

(which was discussed relatively briefly only towards the end of the lengthy meeting), Hitler, speaking from prepared notes, launched into a

two hours on Germany's need

lasting over

the following few years.

He began by wanted, he his death,

legacy'.

HoEbach,

emphasizing the importance of what he had to

what he had

to say

on foreign

ought to be viewed as

sitting opposite Hitler at the table,

was

be interested.

set in

He

his 'testamentary

moment and

decided that what he was

started to scribble notes in his

sure his mentor, the increasingly critical General Beck,

would

265

expand German

'living

leading to social disorder,

would

Hitler launched into a familiar theme: the need to space'.

say.

policy. In the event of

arrangements had been made for minutes to be taken, but

about to hear might be of some diary.. He

monologue

expand by use of force within

264

said, to explain his thinking

No

to

Without

this

- an argument

and ever new

expansion,

'sterility',

reflecting Hitler's premiss that

goals, foreign

permanent mobilization

and domestic, were necessary to ensure the

popular support of the regime. In characteristic vein, he raised alternatives to expansion of 'living space', only to dismiss them.

Only limited autarky

could be achieved. Food supplies could not be ensured by this route. Depen-

dence on the world economy could never bring economic security, and

would

leave

Germany weak and exposed. Here,

Hitler

was attacking

the

views associated with Schacht, whose departure as Economics Minister had already been decided. Schacht had also been a strong proponent of a colonial policy. Hitler dismissed the 'liberal capitalist notions in the exploitation of

The return of colonies would only come about, argued once Britain was seriously weakened and Germany more powerful.

colonies'.

space', he asserted,

meant

Hitler,

'Living

territory for agricultural production in Europe,

47

48

HITLER 1936— 1945 not acquisition of overseas colonies. Britain and France, both implacably hostile,

stood in Germany's way. But Britain and

And France

its

Empire were weakened.

faced internal difficulties. His conclusion to the

part of his

first

address was that Germany's problem could only be solved by the use of force,

which was always accompanied by

Only the questions 'when?'

risks.

and 'how?' remained to be answered.

He went on

to outline three scenarios. Typically, he

time was not on Germany's side, that

1943-5

at

^e

latest.

The

first

argued that

would be imperative

it

to act

by

armaments would decrease.

relative strength in

Other powers would be prepared for a German offensive. Alluding to the problems of 1935-6, he raised the prospect of economic ing a

new food

crisis

difficulties

without the foreign exchange to master

it

-

produc-

a potential

'weakening-point {Schwacbungsmoment) of the regime'. Declining birthrates, falling living standards,

leaders were

added points

and the ageing of the Movement and

to underline

determination to solve the

what he declared was his

German problem

its

'unalterable

of space by 1943-5 at the

latest'.

two

In the other

would be necessary by internal

strife,

scenarios, Hitler outlined circumstances in to strike before 1943-5:

or embroiled in

if

war with another power,

that

incapable of military action against Germany. In either case the

would have arrived

to attack Czechoslovakia.

against Italy he

saw

conflict in Spain

(whose prolongation was

A war

it

it

was

moment

of France and Britain

as a distinct possibility arising in

which

France became so enveloped

from the protracted

Germany's

interest). In

such

an eventuality, Germany must be prepared to take advantage of the circumstances to attack the Czechs and Austria without delay 1938.

The

first

objective in any

- even

as early as

war involving Germany would be

throw Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously

to over-

to protect the eastern

flank for any possible military operation in the west. Hitler conjectured that Britain,

and probably France

vakia. Problems within the

as well,

in a

in India

in mind here primarily the - and reluctance to become

long European war would, he thought, prove decisive

deterring Britain from involvement in a

war

against

unlikely to act without British support. Italy

elimination of Czechoslovakia.

moment

off Czechoslo-

Empire - Hitler had

growing pressure for independence embroiled

had already written

Its

attitude

in

Germany. France was

would not

object to the

towards Austria could not

at the

would depend on whether Mussolini were still argument for avoiding delay. Poland would be too another implied alive concerned about Russia to attack Germany. Russia would be preoccupied be determined.

It

CEASELESS RADICALIZATION with the threat from Japan. The incorporation of Austria and Czechoslovakia would improve the security of Germany's borders, freeing up forces for other uses,

and would allow the creation of

a further twelve divisions.

Assuming the expulsion of 3 million from the two countries, their annexation

would mean

the acquisition of foodstuffs for

to 6 million people. Hitler

5

ended by stating that when the moment arrived the attack upon the Czechs

would have

to be carried out 'lightning fast' {'blitzartig schneW).

comments

Hitler's

were

to his chiefs of staff

in line

with what he had

He wanted

been saying for weeks to Goebbels and other Party leaders. use the occasion of the meeting about similar arguments

upon

affair

chiefs of staff

forward.

267

It

had increased

would

his

to

allocation to impress

His disdain for the caution of

his military leaders.

had grown alongside

the military leadership

Deutscbland

raw materials

166

own self-confidence. The He wanted to see how the

his

contempt.

react to the bold ideas for expansion that he put

would have been

surprising had the military high

command

not got wind of Hitler's heavy hints of expansion directed at Austria and Czechoslovakia, been aware of his disillusionment with Britain and his

views that the weakness of the Empire

made

Italy a preferable ally,

known

of his opinion that the threat from Russia (mentioned only in passing at the

meeting on

5

November) had receded, and

that sustained conflict in the

Mediterranean involving the major powers was But the meeting on

had been

5

November was

the

first

explicitly told of Hitler's thoughts

stances of Hitler's

German expansion

into Austria

Germany's

likely

and Czechoslovakia. 269

at the negative response to his

he had jotted particular

HoEbach had

down

constructed

at the time.

were alarmed

at

2 /l

his small audience.

comments.

270

It

was perhaps

It

of

days later out of the notes

five

Blomberg, Fritsch, and Neurath

what they heard.

familiar racial interpretation of

He was

memorandum

was not

the

Lebensraum had

in

aim of expansion

There was no disagreement here with

that concerned them.

268

timing and circum-

out of pique that he more than once refused to read the the meeting that

interest.

time that the chiefs of staff

on the

arguments did not convince most of

under no illusion

in

Hitler.

His

a different emphasis, but

accorded well enough with military-strategic interests in German supremacy in central

Europe, and with Goring's aims of economic dominance

south-eastern Europe.

tion of Czechoslovakia

was by

late

in

Nor did talk of the annexation of Austria and destrucworry them. That both would happen

1937 largely taken for granted.

criticism of Hitler's statement,

when he

272

at

some point

Even General Beck's sharp

read an account some days

later,

did not dispute 'the expediency of clearing up (bereinigen) the case of

49

r

5

But he

was, as usual, content to keep his options open and await developments.

The one

certainty

the opportunity for

was

that developments

German

would occur, thus providing

expansion. For there was no agency of power

or influence in the Third Reich advocating drawing a line under the torial gains already

sion

terri-

made. All power-groups were looking to further expan-

- with or without war.

Military, strategic,

and power-political arguments for expansion were

underpinned by economic considerations. By

late 1938, the pressures of the

programme were making themselves acutely felt. The whatever the cost' was now plainly showing itself to be

forced rearmament policy of 'rearm,

sustainable only in the short term. Bottlenecks were building up in crucial

areas of the economy.

26

Lack of coherent and comprehensive economic

planning exacerbated them. Expansion into Austria, with industrial areas

its

well developed

around Vienna and Linz, and the Sudetenland,

a relatively

well industrialized part of Czechoslovakia, had eased matters somewhat.

MISCALCULATION The unemployed from

New

these additions to the Reich were swiftly put to work.

sources of skilled labour became available. Existing industrial plant

could be extended into armaments factories, as in the huge erected at Linz by the state-run Reichswerke

from Austria and high-quality

lignite

Hermann

steel

complex

Goring. Iron ore

from the Sudetenland were valuable

The Sudeten area also yielded stocks of 27 tungsten and uranium ore, which Germany had not previously possessed. In economic terms, expansion in 1938 had given German industry a significant boost. But further expansion was necessary if the tensions built into the overheated armaments-driven economy were not to reach explosion point. The Four- Year Plan had been implicitly directed at offloading the costs of German rearmament on to the areas of Europe to be exploited 28 By 1938—9, it was absolutely evident that further after a successful war. for synthetic fuel production.

expansion could not be postponed indefinitely

if

economic impasses

the

were to be surmounted.

When Goring met the members teidigungsrat) at

its

first

of the Reich Defence Council (Reichsver-

meeting on 18 November 1938, he told them:

'Gentlemen, the financial situation looks very

month, Goebbels noted catastrophic.

wise

we

We

in his diary:

must look

will be faced

for

with

inflation.'

commensurate expansion

inflationary.

31

Price controls

of

a submission,

30

It

cannot go on

is

Other-

Indeed, the massive rearmament full

employment, but with-

consumer goods,

far.

was

intrinsically

But they could not be kept in check

supported by eight signatories, demanding financial restraint

danger of

inflation'.

mutiny!' Twelve days later, Schacht

Reichsbank.

like this.

January 1939, the Reichsbank Directorate sent Hitler

to avoid the 'threatening is

The following

and the threat of draconian punishment had

contained inflationary pressures so indefinitely. In early

29

'The financial situation of the Reich

new ways.

programme, stimulating increased demand from out

critical.'

32

Hitler's reaction was: 'That

was sacked

as President of the

33

Nor would the problem go away by sacking Schacht. The insatiable demand for raw materials at the same time that consumer demand in the wake of the armaments boom But the Cassandra voices were not exaggerating.

was

rising

had

left

public finances in a desolate state. By the time of Schacht's

had tripled since Hitler's takeover of power. The Ministry of Economics concluded that it would simply have to be written off after the war. Hitler was aware of the problem, even if he did not understand its technicalities. He ordered a reduction in the Wehrmacht's expenditure in the first quarter of 1939 - an order which the army simply

dismissal, the national debt

l6l

l6z

HITLER 1936— 1945 ignored.

34

A way

fiscal policies

of addressing the problem through

economy could

not, of course, be entertained.

course had been taken in 1936. There was

Beyond the

more conventional

and a reversal to an export-led re-entry into the international

crisis in

The

now no

decision to reject such a

turning back.

public finances, the labour shortage which had been

growing rapidly since 1937 was by this time posing a real threat both to agriculture and to industry. The repeated plaintive reports of the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture, Richard Walther Darre, of the severity of the difficulties facing farming. cent drop in the

number

35

left

no doubt

There had been a 16 per

of agricultural workers between 1933 and 1938 as

the 'flight from the land' to better-paid jobs in industry intensified.

36

No

amount of compulsion or propaganda could prevent the drain of labour. Nor was mechanization the answer: scarce foreign exchange was needed for tanks, guns, falling

and planes, not tractors and combine-harvesters. Signs of

production were noted. That meant further demands on highly

squeezed imports.

37

hold, were already

Women, many of them members employed

in great

numbers

of the farmer's house-

in agricultural

work.

Girls'

labour service on the land and drafting the Hitler Youth in to help with the harvest could help only at the margins. future bring.

back

was It

The only remedy for the foreseeable war and expansion would

the use of 'foreign labourers' that

was

little

wonder that when

after the Polish

initially

38

the

first

'foreign workers'

campaign and put mainly

into

were brought

farm work, they were

regarded as 'saviours in a time of need' ('Retter in der Not').

Industry

was

faring

no

39

better than agriculture, despite the influx of labour

from the land. By 1938, reports were regularly pouring in from all sectors about mounting labour shortages, with serious implications for the productive capacity of even the most crucial armaments-related industries.

A

overworked, and - despite increased surveillance and tough,

sullen,

state-backed, managerial controls

outcome.

40

41

One

indication

-

often recalcitrant work-force

among many

the regime of the labour shortage in deliveries to the railways in

was

was

the

of the dangerous consequences for

the halt

on coal exports and reduction

January 1939 on account of a shortage of

30,000 miners in the Ruhr. By that time, the overall shortage of labour in

Germany was an estimated had

risen

still

further.

1

million workers.

By the outbreak of war,

Economic pressures did not force

Hitler into war.

determine the timing of the war. 43 They were, as

They did not even

we have

noted, an inexor-

able consequence of the political decisions in earlier years: the as Hitler

this

42

had become Chancellor -

first,

as

soon

naturally, with the enthusiastic backing

MISCALCULATION of the

armed

forces

-

to

make rearmament an

and even more

the second,

of those pressing for a return to a

involvement

absolute spending priority;

crucial one, in 1936 to override the objections

in international

more balanced economy and revived

markets

in

maximum

favour of a striving for

autarky within an armaments-driven economy focused on war preparation.

The mounting economic problems

fed into the military

and

strategic pres-

sures for expansion. But they did not bring about those pressures in the place.

And

for Hitler,' they merely confirmed his diagnosis that

first

Germany's

position could never be strengthened without territorial conquest.

II

Hitler's regrets over the

Munich Agreement and

feeling that a chance

been lost to occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia at one rather than diminished during the last

fell

months of 1938. ^ His impatience

had mounted accordingly. He was determined not

act

the western powers.

He was more

had

swoop had grown

to be

hemmed

in

to

by

than ever convinced that they would not

have fought for Czechoslovakia, and that they would and could do nothing to prevent

On

Germany extending

its

dominance

in central

and eastern Europe.

had indicated to Goebbels in October, he was would not concede German hegemony in Europe without

the other hand, as he

certain that Britain

4j

The setback which Munich had been in his eyes confirmed his view that war against the West was coming, probably sooner than he had once envisaged, and that there was no time to lose if Germany a fight at

some

were to retain

time.

its

advantage.

46

Already on 21 October 1938, only three weeks after the Munich ment, Hitler had given the Wehrmacht a 'following eventualities':

'1.

Czech

state; 3. the

2.

Treaty.

On

smash

at

occupation of Memelland.' The third point referred to

Memel,

a seaport

on the

Baltic with a largely

Germany by

the key second point, the directive added:

'It

policy.'

in fact

47

German

the Versailles

must be possible

any time the remainder of the Czech State should

anti-German Czechs

German Reich and

liquidation of remainder of the

population, which had been removed from

to

settle-

directive to prepare for the

securing the frontiers of the

protection against surprise air attacks;

the district of

new

it

pursue an

Recognizing the perilous plight they were

bent over backwards to accommodate

German

in,

the

interests. In

extremis, rather than end their existence as a country, the Czechs were

prepared to turn themselves into a

German

satellite.

48

Why,

then,

was

Hitler

163

164

HITLER 1936— 1945 so insistent

on smashing the remnants-of the Czech

not necessary. Indeed, the

German

state? Politically

leadership cannot

fail

to

have recognized

up the Munich Agreement and

that an invasion of Czechoslovakia, tearing

breaking solemn promises given only such a short time inevitably have the

was

it

would

earlier,

most serious international repercussions.

Part of the answer

own

doubtless to be found in Hitler's

is

and psychology. His Austrian background and persecution of the Czechs

was by no means

Czechs since

dislike of

youth was almost certainly a significant element. Yet

personality his

after occupation, the

as harsh as that later

meted

out to the conquered Poles. 'They must always have something to

commented Goebbels. 49 And, following his victorious entry Hitler showed remarkably little interest in the Czechs. More important, certainly, was the feeling that he had been

lose,'

into Prague,

'cheated' out

of his triumph, his 'unalterable wish' altered by western politicians. 'That fellow Chamberlain has spoiled

my

was overheard Munich the previous

entry into Prague,' he

saying on his return to Berlin after the agreement at

autumn. 30 His 'sheer bloodymindedness' - his determination not to be denied Prague

- probably

also has to be regarded as part of the explanation.

Goebbels diary

the

to the western

powers

gobble up the rest of Czechoslovakia in due course, and

at that point, but

that the acquisition of the Sudetenland 32

And yet,

which we have noted, indicate plainly that Hitler

entries,

had decided before Munich that he would concede

easier.

31

That was

been manoeuvred

would make

that second stage

Hitler's rationalization at the time of the position he into.

But

it

had

does indicate the acceptance by that date of a

two-stage plan to acquire the whole of Czechoslovakia, and does not highlight vengeance as a motive.

There were other reasons for occupying the rump of Czechoslovakia that

went beyond

Hitler's personal motivation.

Economic considerations were

However

were prepared to

of obvious importance.

pliant the Czechs

be, the

October 1938, which brought major raw material deposits to the Reich, immense resources remained in

fact

remained that even

Czecho-Slovakia

(as the

after the transfer of

country, the meaningful hyphen inserted, was

German

officially called)

and outside

industrial wealth

and resources of the country

of

direct

Bohemia and Moravia, not

control.

33

The

lay in the old

Czech heartlands

in the largely agricultural Slovakia.

estimated four-fifths of engineering, machine-tool construction, and cal industries

and the

remained

glass industry

in the

now

vast bulk of the

An

electri-

hands of the Czechs. Textiles, chemicals,

were other

significant industries that

beckoned the

MISCALCULATION Germans. Not

least, the

as well as arms.

Skoda works produced locomotives and machinery

Czecho-Slovakia also possessed large quantities of gold and

some of the shortages of amount of equipment could be taken over advantage of the German army. The Czech arsenal

foreign currency that could certainly help relieve the Four-Year Plan/

4

And

and redeployed to the

was

easily the greatest

Czech machine-guns, better than the

among the

German

built at the

further twenty divisions/

autumn

7

importance for

its

in

taken over by the Reich, It

was subsequently

fallen into Hitler's possession to equip a

had refused the previous

occupy the area of Moravska-Ostrava, of

minerals and industries.

Germans

all

The

guns were thought to be

Skoda factories/ 6

Significantly, Hitler

to allow the Poles to

over by the

anti-aircraft

They were

equivalents.

enough arms had

estimated that

smaller countries of central Europe."

and

field-guns,

heavy guns

as well as the

a vast

It

was the

first

area to be taken

March 1939/ 8

But of even greater importance than direct economic gain and exploitation

was the

military-strategic position of

what remained of Czecho-Slovakia.

Czechs retained some autonomy, and possession of extensive

As long

as the

military

equipment and industrial resources, potential

More important

hostilities.

rimmed

territories of

still:

difficulties

from that

German involvement

quarter could not be ruled out in the event of

in

possession of the rectangular, mountain-

Bohemia and Moravia on

the south-eastern edge of

the Reich offered a recognizable platform for further eastward expansion

and military domination. The road to the Balkans was now open. Germany's position against Poland

was strengthened. And

the west, the defences in the east

in the event of conflict in

were consolidated/ 9

By the winter of 1938-9, the Polish Question, all

the time,

was of

its

significance

direct relevance to considerations of

how

growing

to handle

Czecho-Slovakia. According to Below, Hitler regretted not occupying the

whole of Czecho-Slovakia the previous autumn because the starting-point for negotiations with the Poles over

routes through the Corridor

As we have

seen,

Danzig and the

would then have been

German hopes

extra-territorial transit-

far

more advantageous. 60

of a peaceful revisionism to acquire Danzig

and access through the Corridor while bringing Poland into the German orbit

were already running into the sand. The future of the rump

Czecho-Slovakia featured

in the

diplomatic manoeuvrings.

seen the possibility blocked of detaching Ruthenia

The

state of

Poles had

from the Czech heartlands

through cession to Hungary (which from the Polish point of view would have undermined the Ukrainian nationalist movement within Ruthenia, with

its

obvious dangers for inciting trouble

among

the sizeable Ukrainian

165

1 66

HITLER I936-I945 minority within Poland). They had consequently turned their attention to

autonomy from Prague would,

Slovakia. Slovakian

so the Poles reasoned,

Ruthenia from Bohemia and thereby attain the same

isolate

effect as

would

have been achieved by the Hungarian takeover. 61 Goring, keen to defend what he could of his waning influence in foreign policy by

making the most of

his extensive contacts in eastern

Europe, was

able to persuade Hitler of the advantages of a separate Slovakian state.

Goring himself wanted to use Slovakia for German in eastern

air bases for

operations

Europe, especially targeting the Balkans. But the Slovakian solu-

tion to Poland's worries about Ukrainian nationalism in Ruthenia could in his

view be used as a bargaining-counter to persuade Poland to accept

some

territorial

adjustments in return for former

back to the Reich. 62 And

if

As

areas

coming

the Poles remained intransigent, a Slovakia under

German tutelage pursuing an minds.

German

anti-Polish policy could help concentrate their

63

late as

December

1938, there

was no indication

that Hitler

was

preparing an imminent strike against the Czechs. There were hints, however, that the next

moves

German

in foreign policy

would not be long delayed.

Hitler

Memel, Ernst Neumann, on 17 December that annexation of Memelland would take place in the following March or April,

told the

leader in

and that he wanted no

Memel, in

as

we

crisis in

the area before then.

64

Occupation of the

noted, had been mentioned in the same military directive

October as the preparations for a

strike against Czecho-Slovakia. In

mid-January, Hitler indicated to the Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Istvan

Csaky that no military action was possible between the previous

October and March. 6j

On

13 February, Hitler

let it

be

known

associates that he intended to take action against the Czechs in

German propaganda was

Hitler's

66

67

about

six

at the

Berghof with the Polish Foreign Minister and

in

meeting

few

The French had already German action against Prague

adjusted accordingly.

gleaned intelligence in early February that

would take place

to a

mid-March.

weeks.

man in the government, Joseph Beck, on 5 January had proved, from the German point of view, disappointing. Hitler had tried to appear accommodating in laying down the need for Danzig to return to Germany, strong

and

for access routes across the Corridor to East Prussia.

public opinion in Poland

Ribbentrop returned empty-handed from indicating that the Poles were not to be

changed markedly.

69

Beck implied that

would prevent any concessions on Danzig. his visit to

moved,

68

When

Warsaw on 26 January,

Hitler's

approach to Poland

MISCALCULATION From

friendly overtures, the policy

excluded from any share

moved

in the spoils

to pressure. Poland

was

to be

from the destruction of the Czech

(though Hungary, having been denied benefits the previous autumn,

state

would

due course be granted Ruthenia). And turning Slovakia into a

in

German puppet-state intensified the threat to Poland's southern border. Once the demolition of Czecho-Slovakia had taken place, therefore, the Germans hoped and expected the Poles to prove more cooperative. 70 The failure of negotiations

to destroy the In

Czech

with the Poles had probably accelerated the decision

state.

71

January and February 1939, Hitler gave three addresses - not intended

consumption -

for general public

Blomberg-Fritsch tality

On

to groups of officers. Partly, he

hoped

to

poor relations with the army that had prevailed since the

repair the

in the

ahead.

in face of the conflicts

January,

18

assembled

he wanted to emphasize the type of men-

affair. Partly,

he expected

before

promoted younger

recently

3,600

Mosaic Hall of Speer's

New

officers

Reich Chancellery, opened

only a few days earlier, in a paean to the virtues of belief, optimism, and

heroism

demanded

in soldiers, Hitler

Germany, our German Reich,

The

Europe'.

size

and

our

'the unconditional belief that

one day be the dominant power

will

racial stock of the

German

overcoming of the 'decomposition' of people and

Now

in

population, and the

state that

had prevailed

new spirit in Germany, 'the spirit of the world-view which dominates Germany today a deeply soldierly spirit'. The new Wehrmacht had arisen as the guarantor of after 191 8,

provided the basis for

this.

was

there

a

.

the military strength of the state. 'that the

It

was

his

'unshakable

German Wehrmacht should become

the entire world',

constructing

72 it.

and

it

was

the task of the

The responsiveness

will',

the strongest

.

.

he declared,

armed

force of

young

officers to help in

-

frequently breaking

of his audience

into applause, in contrast to the usual military tradition of listening to his

- pleased him. Afterwards, he

speeches in silence, which he did not like spent

some time

sitting

meeting had gone well.

and talking with groups of

He

did not even

drunken

officers,

vomited

in the corners of his

A week generals

later,

unable to find the

show

toilets in the

and admirals, underlining

He

felt

the

brand new building, had

new splendrous Mosaic

on 25 January, he spoke

officers.

displeasure at reports that

Hall.

73

to 217 officers, including top

his vision of a glorious future,

now

within reach, built on a return to the heroic values of the past. These had

embraced also

'brutality,

meaning the sword,

meant the elimination of

if all

other methods

fail'.

They

'the principles of democratic, parliamentary,

167

l68

HITLER 1936-1945 pacifistic, defeatist mentality'

which had characterized the catastrophe of

191 8 and the Republic which had followed Germany's defeat.

Empire was put forward

The

British

an example, too, of how empires

as a model; but as

were destroyed by pacifism. Hitler concluded by holding out an enticing prospect to the young officers listening:

new

was consolidated

society

elite,

'then the people that in

stake

its

the

work

of constructing the

100 years or so, producing a

in

my

when

conviction

claim to the domination of Europe'.

In a third address, in the Kroll

the

is

first

new

ruling

to take this path will

74

Opera House on 10 February

to a large

gathering of senior commanders, Hitler forcefully restated his belief that

Germany's future could only be secured by the acquisition of

He

'living space'.

expressed disappointment at the attitude of some officers during the

and sought

crises of 1938,

to convince his audience that

all his

steps in

foreign policy (though not their precise timing) had followed a carefully

preconceived plan. The events of 1938 had formed part of a chain, reaching

back to 193 3 and forwards as a step on a long path. 'Understand, gentlemen,' ,

he declared, towards the end of his lengthy speech, 'that the recent great successes have only

have taken

it

that as long as too, that,

come about because

upon myself live this

I

when

I

think

I

perceived the opportunities ...

German problem

... to solve the

thought will dominate it

I

of space. Note

my entire being. Be convinced,

possible to advance a step at

some moment,

I

will

take action at once and never draw back from the most extreme measures (vor

dem Aufiersten) ... So don't be surprised if in coming years, too, the attempt will be made to attain some German goal or other at every opportunity, and place yourselves then,

Around

this time,

I

urge you, in most fervent trust behind me.'

75

according to Goebbels, Hitler spoke practically of

nothing else but foreign policy. 'He's always pondering new plans,' Goebbels 76

The Propaganda Minister had already guessed what was in store when Hitler told him at the end of January he was going 'to the mountain' - to the Obersalzberg - to think about his next noted. 'A Napoleonic nature!'

steps in foreign policy. 'Perhaps Czechia (die Tscbecbei)

The problem

is

after all only half solved,' he wrote.

is

up

for

it

again.

77

Ill

By the beginning of March,

in the light of

clamour (abetted by Germany) for break-up of what was

left

full

mounting Slovakian

nationalist

independence from Prague, the

of the state of Czecho-Slovakia looked to close

MISCALCULATION German propaganda

observers of the scene to be a matter of time.

Prague was

now becoming

governments were

tense.

But for

all

their pressure the

independence and

When in to

German

the Prague

Germans were unable

immediate proclamation of

to prise out of the Slovakian leaders the

request for

was

aid that

urgently wanted.

to

occupy government

and placed the former Prime

offices in Bratislava,

moment.

10 March, he told Goebbels, Ribbentrop, and Keitel that he had decided

march

was

full

78

government deposed the Slovakian cabinet, sent police

Minister, Father Jozef Tiso, under house arrest, Hitler spotted his

On

against

Relations between the Czech and Slovak

shrill.

in,

smash the rump Czech

to take place five days later;

it

state,

and occupy Prague. The invasion

would be

March. 'Our borders

the Ides of

must stretch to the Carpathians,' noted Goebbels. 'The Fuhrer shouts for joy.

This game

dead

is

certain.'

79

Goring, on holiday on the Riviera enjoying the luxury comforts of San Remo, was sent a message telling him not to leave before German troops entered Czecho-Slovakia in order not to

March

orders were given to the

suspicions abroad.

stir

army and Luftwaffe

80

On

12

to be ready to enter

Czecho-Slovakia at 6a.m. on the 15th, but before then not to approach within ten kilometres of the border. stage so obvious that

it

81

German

mobilization was by that

seemed impossible that the Czechs were unaware of

what was happening. 82 The propaganda campaign against the Czechs had meanwhile been sharply stepped up.

83

Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Hitler

discussed foreign-policy issues until deep into the night. Ribbentrop argued

England

that conflict with to Goebbels,

Goebbels for sure.'

criticized

due course was inevitable.

in

was preparing

for

Ribbentrop's

it,

but did not regard

inflexibility. 'But the

as unavoidable.

Fuhrer corrects him,

84

That evening, 12 March, Tiso had been invited to Berlin.

of the Slovaks

The next day he met

had

up by Hungary. back

Hitler, according it

8i

visited

Hitler.

He was

officials

and

told the historic hour

would be swallowed following noon, 14 March,

arrived. If they did nothing, they

Tiso got the message. By the

in Bratislava,

by German

he had the Slovak Assembly proclaim independence. The

desired request for 'protection' was, however, only forthcoming a day later, after

German warships on

Danube had

the

Slovakian government offices.

Goebbels listened again to Hitler unfolding

would be over within

eight days.

within a day, their planes within

'Then the Fuhrer wants to

trained their sights on the

86

fit

his plans.

The

entire 'action'

The Germans would already be two hours. No bloodshed was

in

Prague

expected.

in (einlegen) a lengthy period of political

169

170

HITLER 1936— 1945 calm,' wrote Goebbels, adding that he did not believe

A

the prospect.

nerves aren

however enticing

,07

.

,

it,

period of calm, he thought, was necessary. 'Gradually, the

coping.

t

On the

morning of 14 March, the anticipated request came from Prague, seeking an audience of the Czech State President Dr Emil Hacha with Hitler. Hacha,

somewhat unworldly, and also rather sickly man, in November, was unable to fly because of a heart

a small, shy,

office since the previous

complaint.

88

He

arrived in Berlin during the course of the evening, after a

five-hour train journey, accompanied only by Foreign Minister Chvalkov-

and

sky, his secretary,

the

Adlon Hotel

tested

Hitler

It

tactics', as

amused himself watching

The first

his daughter. Hitler

kept him nervously waiting in

midnight to increase the pressure upon him -

methods of political

Hopeless Case).

When

until

Goebbels put it.

89

While Hacha

'the old fretted,

a film called Ein hoffnungsloser Fall (A

30

fiction of

normal courtesies

he arrived at the

New

to a visiting

head of

Reich Chancellery

state

was

retained.

Hacha was

at midnight,

put through the grotesque ceremonial of inspecting the guard of honour.

was around ia.m. when,

his face red

from nervousness and anxiety, the

Czech President was eventually ushered into the intimidating surrounds of Hitler's grandiose 'study' in the

New

Reich Chancellery.

91

A

sizeable

gathering, including Ribbentrop, the head of his personal staff Walther

Hewel,

Keitel, Weizsacker, State Secretary

Otto Meissner, Press Chief Otto

and interpreter Paul Schmidt, were present. Goring, summoned

Dietrich,

back from holiday, was also of Chvalkovsky and

was

Hitler

at his

Hacha's only support was the presence

there.

Dr Voytech Mastny,

the Czech

Ambassador

most intimidating. He launched into

was necessary

in

92

a violent tirade

against the Czechs and the 'spirit of Benes' that, he claimed, It

in Berlin.

still

lived on.

order to safeguard the Reich, he continued, to impose a

Hacha and ChvalkovGerman troops was 'irre-

protectorate over the remainder of Czecho-Slovakia.

sky sat stony-faced and motionless. versible',

The

entry of

ranted Hitler. Keitel would confirm that they were already

marching towards the Czech border, and would cross 'guests'

knew

that

some had

Hacha should phone Prague resistance,

if

in fact

at

it

at 6a.m.

93

His Czech

already crossed the border in one place.

once and give orders that there was to be no

bloodshed were to be avoided. Hacha said he wanted no

bloodshed, and asked Hitler to halt the military build-up. Hitler refused:

was impossible; add that

his

94

the troops were already mobilized.

95

Luftwaffe would be over Prague by dawn, and

hands whether bombs

fell

on the beautiful

it

Goring intervened to

city. In fact,

it

was

in

Hacha's

the 7th Airborne

MISCALCULATION was grounded by snow. 96 But at the If anything happened to Hacha, thought

Division detailed for the operation

Czech President

threat, the

fainted.

Paul Schmidt, the entire world

Reich Chancellery.

97

would think he had been murdered

in the

But Hacha recovered, revived by an injection from

Hitler's personal physician,

Dr Morell.

Meanwhile, Prague could not be reached by telephone. Ribbentrop was beside himself with fury at the failings of the

was established

it

that any difficulty

contact with Prague

Post Office (though

Prague end). Eventually,

at the

was made. The browbeaten President went immediately

to the telephone and,

on

troops were not to open

Hacha signed

was

German

a crackly line, passed fire

on

Czech

his orders that

on the invading Germans. Just before 4a.m.,

the declaration, placing the fate of his people in the hands of

the Leader of the

German

Reich.

98

Overjoyed, Hitler went in to see his two secretaries, Christa Schroeder

and Gerda Daranowski,

who had

been on duty that night.

burst out, pointing to his cheeks, 'each of .

.

.

This

is

centuries,

the happiest day of

I

my

life.

you give me

What

'So, children,'

a kiss there

and there

has been striven for in vain for

have been fortunate enough to bring about.

I

have achieved the

union of Czechia with the Reich. Hacha has signed the agreement.

down

he

German in history.' 99 Hacha had signed, the German army

I

will

go

as the greatest

Two

hours after

crossed the Czech

borders and marched, on schedule, on Prague. By 9a.m. the forward units entered the Czech capital,

making slow progress on ice-bound roads,

through mist and snow, the wintry weather providing an appropriate backcloth to the

end of central Europe's

last,

betrayed, democracy.

troops, as ordered, remained in their barracks

weapons. Hitler

some fleet

The Czech

and handed over

their

100

left

Berlin at midday, travelling in his special train as far as Leipa,

sixty miles north of Prague,

of Mercedes

was waiting

where he arrived during the afternoon.

to take

him and

his

A

entourage the remainder

It was snowing heavily, but he stood for much of arm outstretched to salute the unending columns of German

of the journey to Prague. the

way,

his

soldiers they overtook. Unlike his

triumphal entries into Austria and the

Sudetenland, only a thin smattering of the population watched sullenly and helplessly

from the

as Hitler's car

side of the road.

A few dared to greet with clenched

fists

passed by. But the streets were almost deserted by the time

he arrived in Prague in the early evening and drove up to the Hradschin Castle, the ancient residence of the Kings of for his arrival.

The

Bohemia.

101

Little

great iron gates to the castle were locked.

was ready

No

food was

171

172.

HITLER 1936-1945 on hand

for the

new

the Interior Frick initiating the

occupiers as Hkler sat

and

German

Protectorate.

early hours to find bread, beer.

He

down

with Reich Minister of

his Secretary of State Stuckart to finalize the decree

ham, and

The

military escort were sent out in the

Pilsner. Hitler, too,

He tasted it, pulled a face, and put it down.

dictated the preamble to the decree.

It

was given

was too

stated that 'the

It

a glass of

bitter for

him.

102

Bohemian and

Moravian lands had belonged

to the living space of the German people for The terminology, sounding alien to Prussian ears, hinted at his Austrian origins; the name of the Protectorate was derived from the designations of the old Habsburg imperial crown lands. He spent the night in the Hradschin. When the people of Prague awoke next morning, they saw Hitler's standard fluttering on the castle. Twenty-four hours later he was gone. 104 He showed little further interest in Prague, or the Protectorate.

1,000 years'.

103

For the Czechs,

six

long years of subjugation had begun.

on 19 March,

Hitler returned to Berlin, via Vienna,

now

by

to the inevitable,

and

customary, triumphator's reception. Despite the freezing tempera-

tures,

huge numbers turned out to welcome the hero.

from

his train at the Gorlitzer

When Hitler descended

Bahnhof, Goring, tears

in his eyes, greeted

him with an address embarrassing even by the prevailing standards of sycophancy. Thousands cheered wildly as Hitler was driven to the Reich Chancellery.

The experienced hand

of

Dr Goebbels had organized another

massive spectacular. Searchlights formed a 'tunnel of Linden.

A

the balcony of the Reich Chancellery,

adoring subjects below.

The

light'

along Unter den

brilliant display of fireworks followed. Hitler then

real response

waving

to the ecstatic

appeared on

crowd of

his

105

among

German people

the

to the rape of

Czecho-

slovakia was, however, more mixed - in any event less euphoric - than that of the cheering multitudes, many of them galvanized by Party activists, in Berlin. This time there had been no 'home-coming' of ethnic Germans into the Reich. the

The vague notion

'German

certainly

that

living-space' for a

Bohemia and Moravia had belonged

thousand years

most north Germans who had

tion with the

Leader put

it,

traditionally

Czech lands. 106 For many, whatever the joy

as

very quickly gloomy again'.

scepticism,

and

had

little

in the Fiihrer's 'great deeds'

107

to

most people cold or no connec-

one report from a Nazi District

placed in him, 'the needs and cares of daily is

left

life

and the

are so great that the

trust

mood

There was a good deal of indifference,

war was a big step many people asked. They remembered Hitler's Munich Agreement, that the Sudetenland had

criticism, together with worries that

closer.

'Was that necessary?'

precise

words following the

:

MISCALCULATION been his

'last territorial

demand'.

108

In the industrial belt of Rhineland-

Westphalia, according to a report from the Social Democrat underground

movement, there was

good deal of condemnation of the invasion while

a

sympathy for the Czechs was openly expressed rooms, and on the

way

workers' wash-

in coal-pits,

The Nazi regime was

streets.

criticized;

but there was

let Hitler do what he commonplace among those who detested the Nazis. 'No shot fired. Nowhere a protest,' noted one woman in her diary - adding to her comment the forecast of a friend: 'I bet they now get

also contempt for the

wanted.

109

Similar sentiments were

Danzig and Poland Ukraine.'

110

still

without war

summer

.

.

.

and

if

they're lucky, even the

murmured the mother of a

'Can't he get enough?'

old girl in Paderborn.

previous

France and Britain had

The young

who had

girl herself,

fourteen-year-

been appalled the

at the 'outrages' allegedly perpetrated against the

minority in the Sudetenland,

now found

Czechs, and at the same time asking what the territory of 'an entirely alien people'

German

herself sympathizing with the

Germany was doing

who

in

annexing

could under no circumstances

be 'germanized'. She consoled herself with the thought that no blood had

been shed, that

could even be an advantage for a small country to be

it

under the protection of a great power, and that the

more generous,

be 'much people'.

111

It

was

a reflection of the

fair'

German people would

protectors than 'some Slavic

widespread latent

hostility

towards Slavs,

propaganda, and of the confused sentiments that continued to

the impact of

accompany

and

tolerant,

Even opponents of Hitler recognized that

Hitler's expansionism.

moral scruples carried cess. 'Internal

little

weight

opponents, too, are

a report sent to the exiled Social

in the face of

now

another major prestige suc-

declaring that he's a great man,' ran

Democrat leadership

in Paris. It indicated

the difficulty in challenging those lauding his 'achievements'. Counter-

arguments,

it

was

said,

were pointless - not

least 'the

argument that Czecho-

slovakia has been invaded and Hitler has done something wrong'. Hitler

had been contemptuous of the western powers before the taking

of Prague.

nothing.

He

correctly judged that once

However, everything points

the response of Britain

The

112

initial

and France

more they would

protest, but

to the conclusion that he miscalculated

after the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia.

London was one of shock and dismay at Munich Agreement, despite the warnings

reaction in

demolition of the

government had received. Appeasement policy lay shattered the Czecho-Slovakian state. Hitler

further territorial

had destroyed the

demands

to

do

had broken

his

the cynical the British

in the ruins of

promise that he had no

make. And the conquest of Czecho-Slovakia

fiction that Hitler's policies

were aimed

at the uniting of

173

174

HITLER 1936— 1945 German

peoples in a single

state. Hitler,

was now abundantly clear - a - could not be trusted. He would

it

recognition at last and very late in the day

stop at nothing. Chamberlain's speech in Birmingham on 17

new

at a

policy.

c

Is this

the last attack

followed by others?' he asked.

upon

March

a small State, or

attempt to dominate the world by force?'

113

was

British public opinion

necessary. Recruitment for the

had

an

in

no

On

all

were saying that war with Germany was both inevitable and

sides people

was now

to be

in fact, a step in the direction of

'Is this,

doubt. Hitler had united a country deeply divided over Munich.

It

hinted

is it

clear both to the

armed

forces increased almost overnight.

man in the

street

and

114

to the government: Hitler

to be tackled.

The following day, 18 March, amid rumours circulating that Germany was threatening Romania, the British cabinet endorsed the Prime Minister's recommendation of

a

fundamental change

No

in policy.

reliance could any

longer be placed on the assurances of the Nazi leaders, Chamberlain stated.

The

old policy of trying to

come

to terms with the dictatorships

on the

assumption that they had limited aims was no longer possible. Chamberlain regarded his Birmingham speech, he told the cabinet,

'as a

challenge to

Germany on the issue whether or not Germany intended to dominate Europe by force. It followed that if Germany took another step in the direction of dominating Europe, she would be accepting the challenge.' Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, underlined the view that 'the real issue

attempt to obtain world domination, which countries to

resist'.

it

was

was Germany's

in the interest of all

Britain alone, he argued, could organize such resistance

- though he admitted that it was hard to see how Britain could effectively attack Germany - if the Germans invaded Romania or whether they turned on Holland. 'The attitude of the German government was either bluff, in which case

was not meet

it,

it

would be stopped by

bluff, in

which case

it

a public declaration

was necessary

and the sooner we united the

better.

that

on our

part; or

it

we should all unite to we might see one

Otherwise

country after another absorbed by Germany.' The policy had shifted from trying to appease Hitler to attempting to deter him. In any

Germany would be

or going to war. As the Foreign Secretary's

geographical thrust of any strategy.

next .

.

.

new move by

But the Prime Minister had

flare up.

new

aggression,

faced at the outset with the choice of pulling back

Hitler

little

doubt as to where trouble might

'He thought that Poland was very

The time had now come

for those

comments made clear, the was immaterial to this new

likely the

who were

key to the situation

threatened by

aggression (whether immediately or ultimately) to get together.

German

We

should

'

MISCALCULATION enquire

how

far

Poland was prepared to go alone these

Guarantee to Poland and the genesis of the summer

would end

in

war were foreshadowed

in

sion.

would speed up rearmament and

The Americans were

crisis

The

which,

British

this time,

Chamberlain's remarks. let

Chamberlain know

resist

any further aggres-

Similar reactions were registered in Paris. Daladier that the French

115

lines.

told that Daladier

was determined

to go to

war

should the Germans act against Danzig or Poland. Even strong advocates of appeasement were

another Munich.

now

saying enough was enough: there would not be

116

IV Before the Polish

crisis

unfolded, Hitler had one other triumph to register

though compared with what had gone before,

it

was

a

-

minor one. As we

noted, Hitler had referred in his directive of 21 October 1938 to preparation for 'the occupation of

Memelland'.

117

The incorporation

Memelland

of

in

German Reich was now to prove the last annexation without bloodshed. its removal from Germany in 1919, the Memel district, with a mainly German population but a sizeable Lithuanian minority, had been placed under French administration. The Lithuanians had marched in, forcing the withdrawal of the French occupying force there in January 1923. The following year, under international agreement, the Memel had gained a level of independence, but remained in effect a German enclave under Lithuanian tutelage. Trouble had flared briefly in 1935 when the Lithuanians the

After

put 128 Memelland National Socialists on

trial,

sentencing four of them to

death. But other than launch a fierce verbal onslaught

on the Lithuanians,

done nothing. The matter died down as quickly as it The Memel question was not raised again for another four years. But in March 1938, the German army had prepared plans to occupy the Memel in the event of war between Poland and Lithuania. Then in October Hitler

had

had

at the time

arisen.

Hitler

had included the recovery of the Memel

in the directive for taking

over Czecho-Slovakia. By the end of the year, interested in agreement with

Poland, Hitler had insisted that there should be no agitation from the restless

Nazis in the Memel. Early in 1939, anxious to avoid any action which might

provoke German intervention, the Lithuanians had yielded to of the

now

largely nazified

Memel

population.

Politically, the return of the territory to

cance.

Even symbolically,

it

Germany was

was of relatively

all

the wishes

118

little

of no great signifi-

importance.

Few ordinary

175

Ij6

HITLER I936-I945 Germans took more than

a passing interest in the incorporation of such a

remote

fleck of territory into the Reich.

Baltic,

with the possibility that Lithuania, too, might be turned into a

German German

satellite,

strategic relevance. Alongside the subordination to

on the southern borders of Poland,

influence of Slovakia

further edge to

On

had

But the acquisition of a port on the

German

pressure on the Poles.

it

gave a

119

20 March, Ribbentrop subjected the Lithuanian Foreign Minister,

Joseph Urbsys, to the usual bullying threatened,

Germany's demand

if

tactics.

Kowno would

be bombed, he

immediate return of the Memel

for the

were not met. 120 Urbsys returned the next day, 21 March, to Kowno. The Lithuanians were in no It

mood

for a fight.

They

sent in a draft

communique.

did not suffice and had to be redrafted in Berlin. By then the Lithuanian

ministers had gone to bed and dor,

had

to be

awakened by

the

German ambassa-

who had been told, figuratively, to put a pistol to their chest.

remarked Goebbels. 121 At 3a.m. everything was

communique

arrived about three hours later.

sent to Berlin to arrange the details.

'If

left

Berlin that afternoon, 22

A

'Either-or,'

The

revised

Lithuanian delegation was

you apply

happen,' noted Goebbels, with satisfaction. Hitler

finally accepted.

a bit of pressure, things

122

March,

for

Swinemunde, where,

along with Raeder, he boarded the cruiser Deutscbland. Late that evening,

Ribbentrop and Urbsys agreed terms for the formal transfer of the Memel district to

German

Germany.

Hitler's decree

was signed

the next morning, 23

March.

troops crossed the bridge near Tilsit and entered the Memel.

Squadrons of the Luftwaffe landed

at the

same

time.

At 1.30p.m., Hitler

was put on shore in the new German territory. He gave a remarkably short speech on the balcony of the theatre. In under three hours he was gone. He was back in Berlin by noon next day. This time, he dispensed with the hero's 123 return. Triumphal entries to Berlin could not be allowed to become so frequent that they were routine. Goebbels was aware of 'the danger that the petty-bourgeois (Spiefier) think it will go on like this forever. A lot of quite fantastic ideas

about.'

about the next plans of German foreign policy are being put

124

According to Goebbels, Hitler repeated what he had said earlier.

He now wanted

a period of

calm

in

order to win

new

a

few days

trust.

'Then

the colonial question will be brought up (aufs Tapet).' 'Always one thing after another,'

things

125 added the Propaganda Minister.

becoming

quiet. Hitler,

He

did not anticipate

however, was evidently not looking to war

with the western powers within a matter of months.

MISCALCULATION

own

His

pressure on Poland forced the issue. Wasting no time, Ribbentrop

had pushed Ambassador Lipski on 21 March to arrange Beck.

He

indicated that Hitler

press

was

straining at the leash to be turned loose

that

German

was

a visit to Berlin

German

on the Poles -

a threat

feeling could be as easily inflamed against

been against Czecho-Slovakia.

He

Poland as

tempted by the exploitation of

script.

solve the

128

agreement with Britain.

On

25 March, Hitler

127

Meanwhile, the Poles mobilized

want

indicated that he did not

still

Beck,

London

noting Chamberlain's Birmingham speech, secretly put out feelers to

their troops.

had

126

But the Poles were not prepared to act according to the

for a bilateral

it

repeated the requests about Danzig and

the Corridor. In return, Poland might be

Slovakia and the Ukraine.

by

losing patience, and that the

to

Danzig Question by force to avoid driving the Poles into the arms

of the British.

129

He had remarked

to

Goebbels the previous evening that he

hoped the Poles would respond to pressure, 'but we must apple and guarantee Poland's borders'.

However,

just after

noon on 26 March,

instead of the desired visit by

Beck, Lipski simply presented Ribbentrop with a the Polish Foreign Minister's views.

bite into the sour

130

It flatly

memorandum representing German proposals,

rejected the

reminding Ribbentrop for good measure of Hitler's verbal assurance

in his

speech on 20 February 1938 that Poland's rights and interests would be respected. Ribbentrop lost his temper. Hitler, he told Lipski that

was no

indication)

bullying attempt

German Poland.

would be

was

lost

mandate from

his

(of

which there

treated as aggression against the Reich.

on

He

Lipski.

131

Hitler's response still

service in the past.'

can be imagined.

makes great

naturally our enemies, even 133

if

difficulties.

from

The

replied that any furtherance of

plans directed at the return of Danzig to the Reich meant

diary: 'Poland

the

Going beyond

any Polish action against Danzig

132

war with

Goebbels recorded

The Polacks

self-interest they

are

in his

and remain

have done us some

Beck confirmed the unbending attitude of the Poles to

German ambassador in Warsaw on

tried to use force to alter the status of

the evening of 28

March:

By 27 March, meanwhile, Chamberlain, warned that against Poland might be imminent,

if

Germany

Danzig, there would be war.

was

a

134

German

telling the British cabinet

strike

he was

prepared to offer a unilateral commitment to Poland, aimed at stiffening Polish resolve

and deterring

Hitler.

a5

The

policy that had been developing

177

178

HITLER 1936-1945 since the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia

statement to the House of

found

Commons on

expression in Chamberlain's

its

March

31

1939: 'In the event of any

action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish

Government accordingly considered lend the Polish

Government

all

themselves bound at once to

feel

support in their power.'

This was followed, at the end of Beck's

visit to

136

London on 4-6

Commons

Chamberlain's announcement to the House of

Poland had agreed to sign a mutual assistance pact 'by a

with their national

vital to resist

it

His Majesty's Government would

forces,

On

hearing the British Guarantee of 31 March, Hitler his

on the marble-topped

fist

Chancellery.

an attack

'I'll

brew them

fell

the pressure

on the Poles

Czechs and the Slovaks. see sense

and

the Corridor.

German

a devil's potion,' he

work

as easily as

He had presumed

Danzig and concede the

yield

He had

satellite

to

taken

- an

it

fumed.

it

He had

expected

in the case of the

would

in

due course through

extra-territorial routes

would then become

on the Soviet Union. He had

later attack

been determined to keep Poland out of Britain's clutches. All of

thwarted by the British and spurned by the Poles.

this

He had

upturned. Danzig would have to be taken by force.

He would

was been

teach them a

139

lesson.

Or

He

138

had done

the Poles

for granted that Poland

any

ally in

into a rage.

table of his study in the Reich

Exactly what he had wanted to avoid had happened.

now

and

that Britain

in the event of

European power'. 137

thumped

a

April, by

so he thought. In reality, Hitler's over-confidence, impatience, and

misreading of the impact of

had produced a

German

aggression against Czecho-Slovakia

fateful miscalculation.

The next day,

1

April, speaking in

launch of the Tirpitz (the second

Wilhelmshaven

new modern

after attending the

battleship, following the

Bismarck, intended to spearhead Germany's challenge to the supremacy of the Royal

Navy during

to castigate

the next few years),

what he claimed was

140

Hitler used the opportunity

Britain's 'encirclement policy',

and

to

He summarized his who does not possess 'He

voice scarcely veiled threats at both Poland and Britain. brutal philosophy in a single, short sentence:

power

loses the right to

141

life.'

At the end of March Hitler had indicated to Brauchitsch, head of the army, that he

would use

force against Poland

if

diplomacy

failed.

Immediately, the

branches of the armed forces began preparing drafts of their own operational plans.

These were presented to Hitler

read without glasses.

He added

a

in the

huge 'Fuhrer type' that he could

preamble on

political aims.

By

3

April the

MISCALCULATION directive for 'Case White' (Fall Weifi) later.

143

was ready. 142

section, written by Hitler himself,

Its first

was issued eight days began: 'German relations It

with Poland continue to be based on the principles of avoiding any disturbances. Should Poland, however, change her policy towards

on the same principles

so far has been based

Germany, which

our own, and adopt a

as

threatening attitude towards Germany, a final settlement might necessary in spite of the Treaty in force with Poland. to destroy Polish military strength, satisfies

and create

the requirements of national defence.

become

The aim then

will be

which

in the East a situation

The Free

State of

Danzig

will

be proclaimed a part of the Reich territory by the outbreak of hostilities at the latest.

Poland

if

The

political leaders consider

possible, that

Wehrmacht had September 1939.

is

it

their task in this case to isolate

to say, to limit the

war

to

Poland only.'

144

The

to be ready to carry out 'Case White' at any time after i 14 ^

Army commanders had been divided over the merits of attacking CzechoNow, there was no sign of hesitation.

slovakia only a few months earlier.

The aims of

the

coming campaign

to destroy Poland

a fortnight or so by Chief of the General Staff

General Staff the previous

officers.

autumn,

were outlined within

Haider to generals and

Oppositional hopes of staging a coup against Hitler

was reaching

as the Sudeten crisis

its

denouement,

had centred upon Haider. At the time, he had indeed been prepared to Hitler assassinated.

146

It

was

the

same Haider who now

see

evidently relished the

prospect of easy and rapid victory over the Poles and envisaged subsequent conflict

with the Soviet Union or the western powers. Haider told senior

officers that 'thanks to the outstanding,

I

might say, instinctively sure

policy of the Fiihrer', the military situation in central

Europe had changed

fundamentally. As a consequence, the position of Poland had also cantly altered. Haider said he

was

certain he

was speaking

for

signifi-

many

in his

audience in commenting that with the ending of 'friendly relations' with

Poland

'a

stone has fallen from the heart'. Poland

among Germany's to destroy British

Poland

enemies. 'in

The

rest of

Guarantee would not prevent

outlined in

some

to be

ranked

record speed' ('einen Rekord an Schnelligkeif). this

of the capabilities of the Polish army.

He

was now

Haider's address dealt with the need

happening.

147

It

The

He was contemptuous

formed 'no serious opponent'.

detail the course the

German

attack

would

take,

acknowledging cooperation with the SS and the occupation of the country by the paramilitary formations of the Party. The aim, he repeated, was to ensure 'that

liquidated',

Poland as rapidly as possible was not only defeated, but

whether France and Britain should intervene

in the

West (which

179

l8o

HITLER 1936-1945 on balance he deemed ('

zermalmend*)

must be

.

He

Then

it

becomes Europe's

attack had to be 'crushing'

concluded by looking beyond the Polish

finished with

fortnight.

The

unlikely) or not.

will

Poland within three weeks,

if

conflict:

'We

possible already in a

depend on the Russians whether the eastern front

fate or not. In

any case, a victorious army,

filled

with

the spirit of gigantic victories attained, will be ready either to confront

Bolshevism or ... to be hurled against the West

On

148

.

Poland, there was no divergence between Hitler and his Chief of the

General in

.' .

Staff.

Both wanted to smash Poland

an isolated campaign but,

(though both thought

this

if

some point. Hitler could be time from his army leaders. at

for the

breakneck speed, preferably

necessary, even with western intervention

more improbable than probable). And both

looked beyond Poland to a widening of the

The contours

at

satisfied.

summer

crisis

conflict,

eastwards or westwards,

He need

expect no problems this

of 1939 had been drawn.

It

conflict to destroy Poland, but

major European powers locked

another continental war. This was

first

in

would

with the

end not with the desired limited

in the

instance a consequence of Hitler's miscalculation that spring. But,

as Haider's address to the generals indicated,

miscalculation alone.

it

had not been

Hitler's

5 GOING FOR BROKE

'The answer to the question of

and the Corridor"

among the

is

to

how

the problem "Danzig

be solved

is

still

the

same

general public: incorporation in the Reich? Yes.

Through war? No.' Reported opinion

in a district

of Upper Franconia, 31 July 1939

'When starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.' Hitler to his military leaders, 22 August 1939

'In

my

life I've

always gone for broke.' Hitler to Goring, 29 August 1939

For 20 April 1939, Hitler's

fiftieth

birthday, Goebbels had orchestrated an

astonishing extravaganza of the Fiihrer cult.

The

lavish outpourings of

adulation and sycophancy surpassed those of any previous 'Fuhrer's Birthday'.

The

festivities

had already begun on the afternoon of the

mid-evening, followed by a cavalcade of

fifty

limousines, Hitler

19th. In

was driven

along the thronged seven kilometres of the newly opened 'East- West Axis', lit

by flaming torches and bedecked with hundreds of banners,

main boulevard of the intended new

capital of the

After Albert Speer had declared the

new road open,

built as the

Nazi empire, 'Germania'. Hitler returned to the

Reich Chancellery, watching from the balcony, as Party deputations from all

the

Gaue wound

their

way

in torchlight procession

through the vast,

cheering crowd assembled in Wilhelmsplatz. At midnight he lated by all the

members of

now

his personal entourage,

was congratu-

beginning with his

secretaries. Speer,

by

a delighted Hitler

with a four-metre model of the gigantic triumphal arch

that

would crown

the firmly established court favourite, presented

the rebuilt Berlin. Captain

Hans Baur,

Hitler's pilot,

gave him a model of the four-engined Focke-Wulf 200 'Condor', under construction to take service as the 'Fiihrer Machine' in the summer.

upon row of further gifts - marble- white nude

statues,

porcelain, oil-paintings (some valuable, including a

bronze

casts,

Row

Meissen

Lenbach and even

a

found in the House of German Art in Munich), tapestries, rare coins, antique weapons, and a mass of other presents, many of them kitsch (like the cushions embroidered with

Titian, but mostly the standard dreary exhibits

Nazi emblems or 'Heil mein

Fiihrer')

- were

on long

laid out

tables in the

where Bismarck had presided over the Berlin Congress of 1878. Hitler admired some, made fun of others, and ignored most.

hall

1

184

HITLER I936-I945 The

central feature of the birthday itself

was

a

mammoth

display of the

might and power of the Third Reich, calculated to show the western

powers what faced them ambassadors of

if

new Germany. The

they should tangle with the

and the USA,

Britain, France,

The

Czecho-Slovakia, were absent.

recalled after the

march

Poles had sent no delegation.

parade on the 'East- West Axis' began

at

na.m. and

2

into

The

lasted almost five

hours. His secretaries returned to the Reich Chancellery exhausted from the 'dreadfully long' show; but Hitler never tired of being the centre of attraction at

propaganda

The

entire

displays,

however long he had

to stand with his

parade was recorded on 10,000 metres of

had now

Hitler the 'statesman of genius'

film.

arm

raised.

The image

of

complemented by the

to be

portrayal of the 'future military leader, taking muster of his armed forces'.

'The Fiihrer Hitler's

is

feted like

most adoring

3

4

no other mortal has ever been,' effused Goebbels.^

disciple

was

scarcely a rational judge. But, elaborately

stage-managed though the entire razzmatazz had been, there was no denying

- even

Hitler's genuine popularity

masses.

What had been

many - among the anti-Nazi Communist and

near-deification by

before 1933 bitterly

Socialist sub-cultures remained, despite terror

impervious to the Hitler adulation.

Many

throughout to Nazism's appeal, and,

in lesser

and propaganda,

still

Catholics, relatively

largely

immune

measure, Protestant church-

goers had been alienated by the 'Church Struggle' (though Hitler was held less generally to

blame than

his subordinates, especially

Rosenberg and

Goebbels). Intellectuals might be disdainful of Hitler, old-fashioned, upperclass conservatives

bemoan

the vulgarity of the Nazis, and those with

remaining shreds of liberal, humanitarian values of the regime, displayed in

full

appalled at the brutality

feel

during 'Crystal Night'. Even so, Hitler was

without doubt the most popular government head Social

Democratic leaders, analysing the Fiihrer

plethora of

letters,

Europe. The exiled

in

cult as reflected in the

poems, and other devotalia sent

in

by ordinary

citizens

German newspapers around Hitler's fiftieth birthday, admitted that the phenomenon could not be explained by propaganda alone.

and published

in

Hitler, a national leader arising

a certain 'naive faith'

Internal terror

from the lower ranks of

embedded

society,

had tapped

in lengthy traditions of 'heroic' leadership.

and the readiness of the western powers

success after another in foreign policy

to

hand

Hitler one

had undermined the scepticism of

The result was that, although there was much fear of war, 6 belief in the Fiihrer was extensive. 'A great man, a genius, a person sent to 7 us from heaven,' was one seventeen-year-old girl's naive impression. She

many

waverers.

spoke for many.

GOING FOR BROKE Whatever the Third Reich,

its

criticisms ordinary people

Fiihrer represented

had about everyday

and vexations, the

irritations

cult constructed

life in

the

around the

an enormous force for integration. The daily

reality of

Nazi rule spawned much antagonism. Grandiose Party buildings, erected vast cost, greatly affronted a hard-pressed

population in the big

Massive criticism continued to be heaped on

cities.

the self-evident corruption, scandalous high-living,

And, though the 'Church

functionaries.

compared with

at

and poorly housed working

struggle'

intensity of the years 1936

and arrogance of Party

had died down somewhat,

and 1937, the

attritional conflict

between Party anti-Church fanatics and the churchgoing population remained a source of repeated

friction.

8

But Hitler's 'successes' offered a

counter - a set of 'achievements', put forward as those of a national, not party, leader, in

come

which almost any German could take

pride.

the chaos in Germany,' claimed Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag

on 28 April, 'restored order, massively raised production national economy.' His litany of

accomplishments, continued:

'I

our

own

difficulties

of

German I

[!]

hearts, in keeping the

and

in rescuing

and

trade,

in

million

in

completely bringing back

German peasant on

German people,

our

own, personal

unemployed who were so dear his soil despite all

renewed flourishing

for him, in attaining the

it

in all areas of

as his

tremendously promoting transportation.

only politically united the

and

what were advanced

have succeeded

into useful production the seven to all

have over-

'I

I

have not

but also militarily rearmed them,

have further attempted to tear up page for page that Treaty, which

contained in

448

its

and human beings. us in 1919.

articles the I

most base violations ever accorded to nations

have given back to the Reich the provinces stolen from

have led back into the homeland the millions of deeply

I

unhappy Germans who had been torn away from the thousand-year historic unity of the

attempted to do

all this

soldier of

one

my

who

people.'

People worried

us.

I

have managed

I

have recreated

living-space,

without spilling blood and without

people or on others the suffering of war. strength, as

German

twenty-one years ago was an

and

I

have

on my my own

inflicting

this

from

unknown worker and

9

how

long

it

could

all last.

But the contrast with the dark

days of economic depression and national humiliation was scarcely credible.

What had been see

it

achieved seemed staggering.

put at risk through external

conflict.

long on the causes and consequences, one

masterminded

more than

it all.

Most people

For those

man

who

did not want to

did not dwell too

alone appeared to have

For that man, what had been achieved so far was no

a preparation for

what was

to

come.

185

l86

HITLER I936-I945 As what was

to prove the last peacetime spring

Hitler's subordinates

were

no doubt about the

in

difficulties at

impact on large sections of the population. The

their

'mood

close to complete despair'

owing

to the 'flight

The

and summer wore on,

among

SD had

home, and

spoken of a

the peasantry at the end of 1938

from the land' and ensuing massive labour shortage.

feeling of being crushed, the

SD

claimed, was partly reflected in

resignation, partly in outright revolt against the farmers' leaders.

10

In the

months of 1939, the peasants' mood was said to have deteriorated still 11 12 further. In Bavaria, it had reportedly reached 'boiling point' ('Siedehitze'). first

The SD concluded

now

that the 'production battle'

had passed

peak, and was

its

facing decline, with the extensification of agriculture, and threat to 13

the 'volkisch substance'.

suggested, had

would

now

In fact, the

reached

result only in declining

'Growing unrest and discontent'

as a consequence of living, working,

among

most industrialized regions, the Ruhr

among

sickness

- whether,

as

Further pressure on the work-force

performance and production. 14

housing conditions was reported

reports from the

workers

some claimed, from

in

working

the

class of

District, in early 1939.

same area were pointing

industrial

15

and

one of the

By summer,

to the sharp rise in the cases of

armaments

factories

'lack of discipline', or,

and coal-mines

more

likely,

from

genuine overwork, or from a combination of both can only be surmised. then, the labour situation

SD

whole economic expansion, the

its limits.

16

By

17

was described as 'catastrophic'. Yet sullen apathy,

not rebelliousness, characterized a work-force worn down by intensified production demands. neutralized, in itself

Even

so,

if

the industrial

productive capacity had by

all

working

class

was

accounts reached

its

politically

peak. This

posed an evident threat to any long-term preparations for war.

Hitler in

its

18

showed no

interest in the details of

from every part of the Reich. He was

economic

sensitive, as he

difficulties

had been

on morale, refusing in 1938 to entertain any rise But he had become increasingly preoccupied with foreign

1930s, to the impact prices.

19

Domestic issues were largely pushed to one

much

pouring

in the

business

Lammers,

side.

was postponed or neglected;

in the

Decisions were

access to

absence of cabinet meetings

now

him was

left

in

mid food

policy.

untaken;

difficult.

Even

the sole link with the

various government ministers, had been forced to plead with the Fuhrer's chief adjutant,

Wilhelm Bruckner, on 21 October 1938

for a brief audience

with Hitler to discuss urgent business since, because of the demands of foreign policy, he had

September. Arbeit)

20

The

managed only one

short meeting with

him

since 4

reports of the 'Trustees of Labour' {Treuhander der

had normally been passed to Lammers and often brought

directly

'

GOING FOR BROKE But

to Hitler's attention in 1937.

Hitler

was verbally informed of

in

1938-9, as the labour

mounting labour problems, on only one occasion

the

Lammers

in early

With regard

became acute,

the meeting with

(at

September 1938) and most of the reports, regarded as

highly repetitive, were by

He

crisis

the content, emphasizing the seriousness of

now

not even reaching Lammers.

to agriculture, Hitler's disinterest

21

was even more marked.

simply refused to accede to Darre's repeated requests for an audience

and did not respond to the Agriculture Minister's bombardment of the

memoranda about

Reich Chancellery with

October 1940 was Hitler bitterness in the

finally

the critical situation.

in

persuaded to comment on the intense

farming community about the labour shortage.

would be attended

that their complaints

Only

to after the war.

He

replied

22

This reflected a key feature of Hitler's thinking: war as panacea. Whatever the difficulties, they

was

would be - and could only be - resolved by war. He

certainly alert to the dangers of a collapse in his popularity,

likely

domestic

crisis

which would then occur. 23 The

191 8 were never far away.

24

He

and the

fears of a repeat of

own

even seemed to sense that his

massive

popularity had shaky foundations. 'Since I've been politically active, and especially since I've been leading the Reich,' he told his audience of

paper editors in then happen

if

November 1938, 'I have had only successes What would we were some time to experience failure? That, too, could .

happen, gentlemen. for

whom

he

felt in

2j

But he was speaking here of the

any case nothing but contempt.

at all of the reports of

If

.

.

'intellectual strata',

he took cognizance

poor mood among industrial workers and farmers,

they must merely have confirmed his view that he had been correct

only It

if

he had read them. Even three years or so

adjutant at the time, Fritz

Wiedemann, had

tried to

content of negative opinion reports, Hitler had refused to

'The

all

along:

war and expansion could provide the answer to Germany's problems. is, in fact, doubtful whether he would have believed the accounts of

poor morale, even his

news-

mood

in the

people

is

bad through such reports.

not bad, but good. I

I

know

earlier,

when

summarize the listen,

that better.

forbid such things in future.'

26

shouting: It's

On

made

the day

Poland was invaded he would say to members of the Reichstag: 'Don't

anyone

tell

me that in his Gau or his district, or his constituency {Gruppe), mood could at some point be bad. You are responsible for the

or his cell the

mood.'

27

In April 1939, he

took the adulation of the crowds

birthday celebrations, which, he claimed, had given the true indication of the

triumph upon another,

at his fiftieth

him new

strength, as

28

mood of the people. Following one extraordinary

his self-belief

had by

this

time been magnified into

187

HITLER 1936- 1945 among

full-blown megalomania. Even

his private guests at the Berghof, he

compared himself with Napoleon, Bismarck, and other great 29 historical figures. The rebuilding programmes that constantly preoccupied him were envisaged as his own lasting monument - a testament of greatness frequently

like the buildings of the

destiny.

Pharaohs or Caesars. 30

Such a mentality allowed

concerns of ordinary people.

It

little

was much

compared with

he was walking with

same when Schacht or Goring his attention.

phenomemon,

were, in his view, a mere passing

felt

space for the daily worries and the

brought the deteriorating economic situation to

significance

He

a

Such problems

temporary

the struggle ahead. Conventional economics

- however

limited his under-

standing - would, he was certain, never solve the problems. alone, as he

had repeatedly advocated

since the 1920s,

would one day provide

for

The sword

would produce

solution: the conquest of the 'living space' needed for survival.

the East

no

irritant of

the grandeur of his vision and the magnitude of

the

The lands

of

Germany. There would be no economic

problems then. The opportunities awaited. But they had to be grasped quickly. His enemies

- he had

said so after

Munich - were puny. But

were gathering strength. There was no time to

they

lose.

It was a bizarre mentality. But in the summer of 1939, such a mentality was driving Germany towards European war. All along the way, Hitler had

pushed

at

open doors. Revanchism and revisionism had given him

platform. Foreign Ministry mandarins, captains of industry, and above the leaders of the

armed

forces

had done everything -

in their

own

his all

interest

- to 'work towards the Fiihrer' in destroying Versailles and Locarno, pushing for economic expansion, building up a war machine. The weakened and divided western powers had given

way

at every step.

They had provided

the

international backcloth to the expansion of Hitler's power, to the diplomatic

triumphs cheered to the echo by millions. The exalting of Hitler's prestige

had

in turn elevated

close entourage.

him

The

awe even by his removed him more and more from criti-

to a position

Fiihrer cult

where he was held

in

cism, undermined opposition, inordinately strengthened his against those

who had done

everything to build him up but

themselves sidelined or bypassed. power-elites had helped to

The major in

shifts in

make

The

Hitler.

own hand now found

traditional national-conservative

But he

now towered above

them.

31

personnel in the army leadership and Foreign Ministry

February 1938, and the great foreign-policy triumphs that followed, had

removed the

last possible

constraining influences. Surrounded by lackeys,

yes-men, and time-servers, Hitler's power was by could decide over war and peace.

32

this

time absolute.

He

GOING FOR BROKE

I

Hitler

made

public the abrupt shift in policy towards Poland and Great

Britain in his big Reichstag speech of 28 April 1939.

The

speech, lasting

two hours and twenty minutes, had been occasioned

by a message sent by President Roosevelt a fortnight the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia, dictator's aggressive speech in

and

in direct

Wilhelmshaven on

earlier.

33

Prompted by

response to the 1

German

April, the President

had

appealed to Hitler to give an assurance that he would desist from any attack for the next twenty-five years

on

thirty

named

countries

- mainly European,

but also including Iraq, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Iran.

Were such

an assurance to be given, the United States, declared Roosevelt, would play part in working for disarmament and equal access to

its

world markets.

34

Hitler

raw materials on

was incensed by Roosevelt's telegram. That

it

had

been published in Washington before even being received in Berlin was taken as a

slight. Hitler also

thought

it

arrogant in tone.

3

^

And

the

of the thirty countries allowed Hitler to claim that inquiries

conducted as Syria,

in each,

and that none

felt

naming

had been

threatened by Germany. Some, such

however, had been, he alleged, unable to reply, since they were

deprived of freedom and under the military control of democratic states, while the Republic of Ireland, he asserted, feared aggression from Britain,

Germany/ 6 Roosevelt's raising of the disarmament issue which Hitler had made such capital a few years earlier) handed him a not from

propaganda his

gift.

With heavy sarcasm, he

(out of

further

tore into Roosevelt, 'answering'

claims in twenty-one points, each cheered to the rafters by the assembled

members of President.

He

the Reichstag, roaring with laughter as he poured scorn

on the

37

returned to the Reich Chancellery drenched in sweat, ready for the

hot bath that had been prepared for him.

38

Civil servants in the Foreign

Ministry thought he had 'lashed out' (ausgekeilt) in Hitler took as a compliment.

thought

it

Many German

all

directions,

listeners to the

one of the best speeches he had made. 39 William

which

broadcast Shirer, the

was inclined to agree: 'Hitler was a superb The performance was largely for internal consumption. The outside world - at least those countries that felt they had accommodated Hitler for too long - were less impressed.

American journalist

in Berlin,

actor today,' he wrote.

40

Preceding the vaudeville, Hitler had chosen the occasion to renounce the

Non-Aggression Pact with Poland and the Naval Agreement with

Britain.

i!

190

HITLER I936-I945

Memoranda to this effect had been handed over by the German embassies in Warsaw and London to coincide with the timing of the speech. Hitler, repeating his admiration for the British Empire, his search for an understanding,

and that

German

his only

colonies,

'encirclement policy'.

German

demand on

Britain

was

the return of the former

blamed the renunciation of the naval pact on

navy, which

41

In reality, he

felt its

was complying with

Britain's

the interests of the

construction plans restricted by the pact and

had been pressing for some time for Hitler to renounce it. 42 The intransigence of the Poles over Danzig and the Corridor, their mobilization in Hitler's eyes almost as big

May -

March - in

an affront as the Czech mobilization the previous

and the alignment with Britain against Germany were given

reasons for the ending of the Polish pact.

43

The reasons were

as

scarcely

regarded as compelling outside Germany. Since the end of March, which had brought the British guarantee for

Poland, followed soon afterwards by the announcement that there was to be a British-Polish mutual assistance treaty, Hitler had, in the Poles.

The

fact,

given up on

military directives of early April were recognition of this.

The Poles, he acknowledged, were not going to concede to German demands without a fight. So they would have their fight. And they would be smashed. Only the timing and conditions remained

to be determined.

warm who had opposed the high risk on Czecho-Slovakia the previous summer, and among broad swathes of the German population. The traditional anti-Polish sentiHitler's

new

aggressive stance towards Poland

welcome throughout

ment

in the

the regime's leadership, even

was

certain of a

among

those

Foreign Ministry was reflected in the relish with which Weiz-

sacker had conveyed the news to the Poles in early April that

was ending

all

negotiations.

44

Anti-Polish feeling in the military

rampant. Military leaders - even those with

little

Germany was

also

time for Hitler - were

enthusiastic about a revision of the disputed borders with Poland

where

they had been cool about Czecho-Slovakia. Ordinary soldiers were raring to be let loose at the Poles.

45

The commanders of the armed

forces' branches

were, moreover, better integrated from the outset into the military planning

on Poland than they had been

in the early stages of the

Sudeten

46

crisis.

Despite the British guarantee, they had greater confidence than the previous year in Hitler pulling off yet another coup, and fewer fears of western

involvement.

At

a

47

meeting

in his study in the

New Reich Chancellery on 23 May, Hitler

outlined his thinking on Poland and on wider strategic issues to a small

group of top military leaders. The main points of

his

speech were noted

GOING FOR BROKE down by was

Wehrmacht Adjutant Lieutenant-Colonel Rudolf Schmundt. It if some points (according to the noted record)

his

a frank address, even

were

left

ambiguous.

It

held out the prospect not only of an attack on

made clear that the more far-reaching aim was to prepare inevitable showdown with Britain. Unlike the meeting on 5 November for an 1937 that HoEbach had recorded, there is no indication that the military commanders were caused serious disquiet by what they heard. As on that occasion, the meeting had been called to deal with questions of raw materials Poland, but also

allocation, arising

naval Z-Plan.

48

from the

priority that

broad assessment of strategy,

into a

had been given

As then, Hitler did not deal with such this

in

January to the

specifics,

but launched

time regarding Poland and the

West. Other countries, including the Soviet Union, were scarcely touched

upon. Significantly - and an indication that reports of the mounting difficulties had not passed him by - Hitler began by emphasizing the need to solve

Germany's economic problems. His answer was the one he had been rehearsing for over fifteen years,

been

in his first

though

it

was now more

plainly stated than

it

had

speech to military leaders on being appointed Chancellor,

over six years earlier. 'This

is

not possible without "breaking in" to other

countries or attacking other people's possessions,' he baldly stated. In characteristic vein he continued: 'Living space proportionate to the greatness

of the State

is

fundamental to every Power. One can do without

time, but sooner or later the

The

crook.

problems

will

it

for a

have to be solved by hook or by

alternatives are rise or decline. In fifteen or twenty years' time

the solution will be forced

upon

us.

No German

statesman can shirk the

problem for longer.'

He

turned to Poland. The Poles would always stand on the side of

Germany's enemies. The Non-Aggression Treaty had not altered least.

He made his

For us

it is

intentions brutally clear.

a matter of

expanding our

'It is

not Danzig that

living space in the East

this in the is

at stake.

and making

food supplies secure and also solving the problem of the Baltic States. Food supplies can only be obtained fertility,

duce.

from

thinly populated areas.

thorough German cultivation

No

will

Over and above

tremendously increase the pro-

other openings can be seen in Europe.' Colonies were no answer,

he averred, since they were always subject to blockade by sea. In the event of

war with

the West, the territories in the East

would provide food and

labour.

He moved from economic

The problem of showdown with the West. The

to strategic considerations.

Poland could not be dissociated from the

191

192-

HITLER 1936-1945 would cave

Poles

in to

And

Russian pressure.

they

would seek

any German military involvement with the western powers. conclusion from this that

Our

He

decisive.'

task

was necessary

We cannot expect

suitable opportunity.

be war.

it

is

'to attack

Poland

a repetition of Czechia.

There

will

reserved to himself, therefore, the timing of any strike. Simul-

- Hitler revealed here his

against England and France'. if

the

at the first

to isolate Poland. Success in isolating her will be

taneous conflict with the West had to be avoided. Should to that

to exploit

He drew

priorities

He

- 'then

-

repeated

it,

the fight

however, come

must be primarily

directly contradicting himself,

Schmundt's notes are accurate - that the attack on Poland would only be

successful

if

better to fall

For the

West were kept out of it, but if that proved impossible upon the West and finish off Poland at the same time'.

the

time, there

first

was

than outright hostility

less

in his

comments

about the Soviet Union. Economic relations would only be possible, he once

political relations

made by

the

new

had improved - an oblique reference

Soviet Foreign Minister

Molotov

a

to

few days

'it is

said,

comments

earlier.

49

did not, as had previously been the case, rule out such an improvement.

He He

even suggested that Russia might be disinterested in the destruction of Poland.

His main concern was the coming showdown with the West, particularly with Britain. run. So

it

He doubted

was necessary

he implied

the possibility of peaceful coexistence in the long

to prepare for conflict.

unavoidable. 'Therefore England

England

is

A

contest over hegemony,

he had done privately to Goebbels earlier in the year), was

(as

a matter of life

is

our enemy and the

showdown with

and death.' He speculated on what the showdown

- speculations not remote from what was to happen a year later. Holland and Belgium would have to be overrun. Declarations of neutrality would be ignored. Once France, too, was defeated (which he did not dwell upon as a major difficulty), the bases on the west coast would would be

like

enable the Luftwaffe and U-boats to effect the blockade that would bring Britain to

its

knees.

our boats and

it

The war would be an

will

no longer be

a question of right

or not to be for 80 million people.'

reckoned with. every attempt outset

-

A

of ten to fifteen years had to be

long war had, therefore, to be prepared

would be made

for,

to deliver a surprise knock-out

even though

blow

at the

Germany avoided 'sliding into' war with Britain as Poland. Clearly, Hitler was here, too, envisaging the elimination

possible only

a result of

A war

'We must then burn or wrong but of to be

all-out one:

if

of Poland before any conflict with the

Decisive in the conflict with Britain

West took - and here

place.

50

Hitler indirectly provided

GOING FOR BROKE answer on raw materials allocation, and showed himself

at the same time strategically still locked in the past would not be air-power but the destruction of the British fleet. How, exactly, this would be achieved was not clarified. A special operations staff of the armed forces was to be set up

the

to prepare the

to bring

ground

England to

in detail

its

Only Goring responded

Not for

and keep Hitler informed. 'The aim

at the

end of the forthright,

surprisingly, he

wanted

raw

and about the

materials,

is

always

knees,' he stated.

to hear

rambling, address.

if

something concrete about the likely

priorities

timing of the conflict with the

West. Hitler replied, vaguely, that the branches of the armed forces would

determine what was to be constructed.

was adamant,

as his

shipbuilding programme.' indication of

On naval requirements,

remarks had indicated: 'Nothing

To

will be

the relief of those present,

when he envisaged

however, he

changed

who

took

West taking

the conflict with the

it

in the

as an

place, he

stipulated that the rearmament programmes were to be targeted at 1943-4 - the same time-scale he had given in November 1937. But no one doubted that Hitler intended to attack

Poland that very year/

1

II

Throughout the spring and summer frenzied diplomatic to try to isolate

were made

Poland and deter the western powers from becoming

involved in what was intended as a localized conflict. Hitler's address to his military leaders, Italy

so-called 'Pact of Steel',

Poland/ 2 The

efforts

Italians

meant

to

warn

On

the day before

and Germany had signed the

Britain

and France

had been soured by being kept

in the

off backing

dark about the

invasion of Czecho-Slovakia. 'Every time Hitler occupies a country he sends

me a message,' Mussolini had lamented/ But Ribbentrop had striven mend fences. The Italian annexation of Albania in early April - partly 3

to

to

show the Germans they could do it too - had been applauded by Berlin. The Japanese, interested only in an anti-Soviet alliance and keen to avoid any commitments involving the West, adamantly refused to

fall in

with

Ribbentrop's grand plan and establish a tripartite pact/ 4 But the

German Foreign Minister - even duped the

wanted peace

for five years

peacefully once they realized that support

forthcoming."

him as pact on the understanding

Hitler described

Italians into signing a bilateral military

that the Fiihrer

pompous swollen-headed -

and expected the Poles

to settle

from the West would not be

193

^

194

HITLER 1936— 1945 In the attempt to secure the assistance or benevolent neutrality of a

number

of smaller European countries and prevent

the Anglo-French orbit, the

west, Belgian neutrality

him - was shored up to

Germany's

them being drawn

German government had mixed

- whatever

Hitler's plans to ignore

to keep the western

into

success. In the

when

it

it

suited

powers from immediate proximity

industrial heartlands. Every effort

had been made

in preceding

years to promote trading links with the neutral countries of Scandinavia to

above

sustain,

all,

the vital imports of iron ore from

In the Baltic, Latvia

Sweden and Norway. i6

and Estonia agreed non-aggression

Europe, diplomatic efforts had more patchy

and Turkey were unwilling

pacts. But in central

Hungary, Yugoslavia,

results.

to align themselves closely with Berlin.

could not be prevented from siding

officially

Turkey

with Britain. But even here,

Turkey's need for good relations with Germany meant a willingness to provide the

vital supplies

of chrome. Economic penetration of the Balkans

had, moreover, ensured that copper and other minerals would be forth-

coming from Yugoslavia. And an economic assuring

of hostilities.

The

sealed by treaty in late

satellite,

Germany

had turned Romania into March 1939, more or less Romanian oil and wheat in the event

persistent pressure

of crucial access to

7

big question-mark concerned the Soviet Union.

might

But

The

regime's anti-

held the key to the destruction of Poland.

the

christ

it

USSR

could be prevented from linking hands with the West in the tripartite

be.

it

If

pact that Britain and France were half-heartedly working towards; better

-

a pact between the Soviet Union and the Reich - could be brought about: then Poland would be totally isolated, at Germany's mercy, the Anglo-French guarantees worthless, and Britain - the still, if

the unthinkable

itself

main opponent - hugely weakened. Such thoughts began

mind of

followed, Hitler,

it

who

was Ribbentrop on took the

the

German

forthcoming since March.

in a

explore

weeks that

than a hesitant

all

hints that the

rapprochement - hints that had been

i9

Within the Soviet leadership, the entrenched encourage German

side, rather

initiative in seeking to

Russians might be interested

to

to gestate in the

Hitler's Foreign Minister in the spring of 1939.^ In the

belief that the

aggression in the East (that

recognition that following

Munich

is,

collective security

head off any aggressive intent from the Japanese

West wanted

against the

was dead,

in the east,

USSR),

the

the need to

and above

all

the desperate need to buy time to secure defences for the onslaught thought certain to tentatively

come at some time, pushed - if for a considerable time only - in the same direction. 60 However, Stalin kept his options open.

GOING FOR BROKE Not until August was western powers.

the door finally closed

speech to the

Stalin's

on

a pact with the foot-dragging

61

Communist

Party Congress on 10 March, attacking

appeasement policy of the West as encouragement of German aggression

the

against the Soviet Union,

nuts out of the

fire'

and declaring

his unwillingness to 'pull the chest-

for the benefit of capitalist powers,

had been taken by

Ribbentrop, so he later claimed, as a hint that an opportunity might be

opening up.

He showed

the speech to Hitler, asking for authorization

He wanted

check what Stalin wanted. Hitler was hesitant.

to

developments.

62

Ribbentrop nevertheless put out cautious

unofficial response

was encouraging. But Ribbentrop thought

disapprove, and did not bring

it

to his attention.

ences should not hinder better relations.

mat

64

Still

feelers.

Hitler

The

would

By mid-April, however,

Ambassador was remarking to Weizsacker

the Soviet

Hitler.

63

to await

there

that ideological differ-

was no response from

He remained unconvinced when Gustav Hilger, a long-serving diplo-

in the

German Embassy

in

Moscow, was brought

to the

explain that the dismissal of the Soviet Foreign Minister

(who had been associated with retaining close through a

spell as Soviet

Ambassador

to the

ties

Berghof to

Maxim

Litvinov

with the West, partly

USA, and was moreover

a

Jew), and his replacement by Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's right-hand man,

had to be seen as a sign that the Soviet dictator was looking for an agreement with Germany.

Again

it

63

was Ribbentrop who was

stirred

by the suggestion.

around the same time from the German ambassador Friedrich

Werner von der Schulenburg,

rapprochement with Germany.

in a

67

that the Soviet

He

66

He

heard

Moscow, Count Union was interested in

scented a coup which

would

dramatically turn the tables on Britain, the country which had dared to

spurn him - a coup that would also win him glory and favour in the Fiihrer's eyes,

and

his place in history as the architect of

for his part

thought that Russian economic

Germany's triumph. Hitler difficulties

and the chance

spotted by 'the wily fox' Stalin to remove any threat from Poland to the Soviet western borders were at the back of any opening towards

His

own

interests

Ribbentrop was for

were to

isolate

now able to persuade Hitler to agree to the Soviet requests

resumption of trade negotiations with Moscow, which had been broken

off the previous February. 'political basis' left

Poland and deter Britain.

Germany.

68

69

would have

Molotov

to be

told Schulenburg, however, that a talks could be resumed.

He

Hitler again poured cold water

on

found before

unclear what he had in mind.

70

Ribbentrop's eagerness to begin political talks. Weizsacker's view was that

195

HITLER 1936- 1945 the Foreign Minister's notions of offering mediation in the Soviet conflict

with Japan and hinting of Tartar laughter'.

71

at partition of

Poland would be rejected 'with a peal

Deep suspicions on both

sides led to relations cooling

again throughout June. Molotov continued to stonewall and keep his options open. Desultory economic discussions were just kept alive. But at the end of June, Hitler, irritated by the difficulties raised by the Soviets in the trade discussions, ordered the ending of

took the

initiative.

all talks.

Within three weeks they were

72

This time the Soviets

letting

it

known

be

that

trade talks could be resumed, and that the prospects for an economic

agreement were favourable. 73 This was the signal Berlin had been waiting for.

Schulenburg

Four days

in

later,

ordered to 'pick up the threads again'. 74

Moscow was

Ribbentrop's Russian expert in the Foreign Ministry's

Trade Department, Karl Schnurre, invited the Soviet Charge d'Affaires Georgei Astakhov and trade representative Evengy Babarin to dinner in Berlin. Acting

under detailed instructions from the Foreign Minister himself,

he indicated that the trade agreement could be accompanied by a political

understanding between Germany and the Soviet Union, taking into account their

mutual

three days Ribbentrop directly to

the

was

The response was encouraging. 75 Within

territorial interests.

was

directing Schulenburg to put the

same points

Molotov. Schnurre wrote himself to Schulenburg:

problem of Russia in daily contact

is

'Politically,

He who in turn was in constant

being dealt with here with extreme urgency.''

with Ribbentrop, he stated,

touch with the Fiihrer. Ribbentrop was concerned to obtain a breakthrough in the

Russian question, to disturb Soviet-British negotiations, but also to

Germany 'Hence the haste with which we sent you the last instructions.' Molotov was non-committal and somewhat negative when he met Schulenburg on 3 August. But two days later, through bring about an understanding with

.

76

his informal contacts

that the Soviet

mutual

relations',

Towards

with Schnurre, Astakhov was letting Ribbentrop

government was seriously interested

and willing

the end of July, Hitler, Ribbentrop,

states.

dropped to Molotov during But Stalin was

were up

to,

in

no

rush.

78

his

partition of

Hints about such an arrangement were

meeting with Schulenburg on

And by now

3

August.

rains,

79

he had learned what the Germans

But for Hitler there was not a moment to

Autumn

77

and Weizsacker had devised

Union involving the

and the broad timing of the intended action against the

not be delayed.

know

'improvement of

to contemplate political negotiations.

the basis of an agreement with the Soviet

Poland and the Baltic

in the

lose.

The

Poles.

80

attack on Poland could

he told Count Ciano in mid-August, would

turn the roads into a morass and Poland into 'one vast

swamp

.

.

.

completely

GOING FOR BROKE unsuitable for any military operations'. of the

month.

The

strike

had

to

come by

the end

81

Ill

Hitler,

meanwhile, did everything possible to obscure what he had

to the general public in

NSD AP's

Germany and

to the outside world.

He had

in

mind

told the

press agency in mid-July to publish the dates of the 'Reich Party

Rally of Peace'

- longer than

ever before, and scheduled to take place at

Nuremberg on 2-11 September

1939.

It

was

announced that he would

also

attend a huge gathering, expected to attract 100,000 people, on 27 August

Tannenberg.

to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of

82

By

then, detailed military plans to launch the attack to destroy Poland no later

than

1

September had been

in existence for several

weeks.

Remarkably, for the best part of three months during

83

this

summer of high

drama, with Europe teetering on the brink of war, Hitler was almost entirely absent from the seat of government in Berlin.

when not

at his

Germany. Early

in

June he

factory at Fallersleben, earlier.

From

Much

of the time, as always,

alpine eyrie above Berchtesgaden, he was travelling around

there

it

visited the construction site of the

where he had

was on

laid the

Volkswagen

foundation stone a year or so

to Vienna, to the 'Reich Theatre

Week', where

he saw the premiere of Richard StrauE's Friedenstag, regaling his adjutants

with stories of his

visits to

the opera

and theatre there

thirty years earlier,

and lecturing them on the splendours of Viennese architecture. Before leaving, he visited the grave of his niece, Geli in

mysterious circumstances in his

where he

criticized

new worker

Munich

flat in

He

flew on to Linz,

From

was driven to Lambach, Hafeld, and Fischlham some of the places

associated with his childhood

and where he had

At the beginning of July, he was

new

193 1).

because they lacked the balconies

flats

he deemed essential in every apartment.

Berchtesgaden via

Raubal (who had shot herself

in

there he

first

attended school.

84

Rechlin in Mecklenburg, inspecting

aircraft prototypes, including the

He

176, the

first

rocket-propelled

plane, with a speed of almost 1,000 kilometres an hour.

Whenever he

expressed particular interest, Goring told him that everything would be

done to ensure that their

Then

it

would soon be ready

deployment

in

for service.

lay in the distant future.

the middle of the

month

No

one dared explain

8i

Hitler attended an extraordinary

four-day spectacular in Munich, the 'Rally of German Art 1939', culminating

197

198

HITLER I936-I945 in a

huge parade with massive

ages to illustrate 2,000 years of

week

later

he paid his regular

fried, in the

German

visit to

extravagant costumes of bygone

cultural achievement.

the Bayreuth festival. At

annexe that the Wagner family had

was 'Uncle Wolf,

Hitler felt relaxed. There he

Wagners

floats -and

since his early days in politics.

86

Less than a

Haus Wahn-

set aside specially for his use,

as he

While

had been known by the

in Bayreuth, looking self-

conscious in his white dinner-jacket, he attended performances of Der

greeting the crowds as usual

from the window on the

There was also a second reunion (following

their

flieg-

G otterdammerung,

ende Hollander, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walkure, and

first floor.

87

meeting the previous

year in Linz) with his boyhood friend August Kubizek. They spoke of the old days in Linz and Vienna, going to

Wagner operas

together. Kubizek

sheepishly asked Hitler to sign dozens of autographs to take back for his acquaintances. Hitler obliged.

The overawed Kubizek,

the archetypal

local-government officer of a sleepy small town, carefully blotted every

They went out for a while, reminiscing in the gathering dusk by Wagner's grave. Then Hitler took Kubizek on a tour of Haus Wahnfried. signature.

Kubizek reminded

his

former friend of the Rienzi episode

in Linz all those

years ago. (Wagner's early opera, based on the story of a fourteenth-century 'tribune of the people' in after the

Rome, had

so excited Hitler that late at night,

performance, he had hauled his friend up the Freinberg, a

hill

the edge of Linz, and regaled him about the meaning of what they had Hitler recounted the tale to Winifried

great deal

more pathos than

believed his

on

seen.)

Wagner, ending by saying, with a

truth: 'That's

when

it

began.' Hitler probably

own myth. Kubizek certainly did. Emotional and impressionable had been, and now a well-established victim of the Fuhrer cult,

as he always

he departed with tears in his eyes. Shortly afterwards, he heard the crowds cheering as Hitler Hitler spent

88

left.

most of August

important visitors to routine

at the Berghof.

Other than when he had

see, daily life there retained its

was more relaxed than

in Berlin,

but

its

usual patterns.

The

were equally

fixed

rituals

and tedious. Lengthy midday meals, dominated by the sound of voice, the arrival of the press reports (typed in large letters

Hitler's

on the

special

'Fuhrer typewriter', and usually necessitating the household to search for the misplaced reading glasses that he refused to be seen wearing in public),

walks

down

the

hill

House' for afternoon tea or coffee and cakes monologues on favourite themes), an evening

to the 'Tea

(usually producing further

snack followed by a film and more late-night talk for those unable to escape.

Magda Goebbels

told

Ciano of her boredom.

'It is

always Hitler

who

talks!'

GOING FOR BROKE he recalled her saying. 'He can be Fuhrer as

and bores

repeats himself

his guests.'

much

so than in Berlin, strict formalities were

If less

phere was

still

stuffy, especially in Hitler's presence.

Gretl, lightened

as he likes, but he always

89

observed.

The atmos-

Only Eva Braun's

sister,

somewhat, even smoking (which was much frowned

it

upon), flirting with the orderlies, and determined to have fun whatever

dampening

effect the

What

Fuhrer might have on things.

little

humour

otherwise surfaced was often in dubious taste in the male-dominated house-

where the

hold,

as decoration.

much

women

But

in attendance, including

in general, the

kissing of hands,

Eva Braun, served mainly

tone was one of extreme politeness, with

and expressions of 'Gnadige Frau'. 90 Despite Nazi

mockery of the bourgeoisie,

life

at the

Berghof was imbued with the intensely

bourgeois manners and fashions of the arriviste Dictator. Hitler's lengthy absence

how

thread, illustrates

from

Berlin, while

far the disintegration of

conventional central government had gone. to see Hitler.

European peace hung by

Few

man

in

Germany according

as the Party's self-professed ideological 'expert'

much

for his radical attacks

been a good judge) - was Baarova.

91

93

in

number.

Rosenberg (who,

was himself detested so

out of favour following his affair with Lida

Goring had not recovered the ground he had

Berchtesgaden.

to

on the Christian Churches, and ought to have

still

Speer enjoyed the special status of the protege. at

anything resembling a

ministers were permitted

Even the usual privileged few had dwindled

Goebbels - the most hated

a

lost since

Munich. 92

He spent much of the summer

But most of the time he was indulging Hitler's passion

for architecture, not discussing details of foreign policy. Hitler's 'advisers'

on the only issue of

now

real

consequence, the question of war and peace, were

largely confined to Ribbentrop, even

more hawkish,

if

he had been the previous summer, and the military leaders.

anything, than

On

the crucial

- when not represented through the Walther Hewel, far more liked by the Dictator preening Foreign Minister himself - largely had

matters of foreign policy, Ribbentrop

head of

his personal staff,

and everyone

else

than the

the field to himself. left

to

mind

The second man

at the

Foreign Ministry, Weizsacker,

the shop while his boss absented himself

not to have seen Hitler, even from a distance, between of August. to

fathom

What

the Dictator

in Berlin,

was up

to

Weizsacker added.

from

Berlin, claimed

May

and the middle

on the Obersalzberg was

difficult

94

The personalization of government in the hands of one man - amounting in this case to concentration of power to determine over war or peace - was as

good

as complete.

199

200

HITLER 1936-1945

IV Danzig, allegedly the issue dragging Europe towards war, was in reality no

more than

a

pawn

in the

Gauleiter Albert Forster clerk

German game

-

being played from Berchtesgaden.

a thirty-seven-year-old former Franconian

bank

who had learnt some of his early political lessons under Julius Streicher

and had been leader of the detailed instructions

summer on how

NSDAP

Danzig since 1930 - had received

from Hitler on a number of occasions throughout the

to keep tension

As had been the case

in

in the

simmering without allowing

Sudetenland the previous year,

not to force the issue too soon.

95

it

it

to boil over.

was important

Local issues had to chime exactly with the

timing determined by Hitler. Incidents were to be manufactured to display to the population in the Reich,

and to the world outside, the alleged injustices

Germans in Danzig. Instances of missome genuine - of the German minority

perpetrated by the Poles against the

treatment - most of them contrived, in other parts of Poland, too,

provided regular fodder for an orchestrated

propaganda campaign which, again analogous 1938, had been screaming Poles since

The propaganda

crisis.

to that against the Czechs in

banner headlines about the

iniquities of the

May.

powers, while least until

its

still

certainly

had

its effect.

The

fear of

war with

the western

widespread among the German population, was -

August - nowhere near

as acute as

it

at

had been during the Sudeten

People reasoned, with some justification (and backed up by the

German

press), that despite the guarantees for Poland, the

likely to fight for

Danzig when

it

had given

thought that Hitler had always pulled

it

West was hardly

in over the Sudetenland.

96

Many

off without bloodshed before,

and

97

Some had a naive belief in Hitler. One seventeen-yearmuch later how she and her friends had felt: 'Rumours of an impending war were spreading steadily but we did not worry unduly. We were convinced that Hitler was a man of peace and would do everything would do old

so again.

girl recalled

he could to

settle things peacefully.'

98

Fears of war were nevertheless pervas-

The more general feeling was probably better summed up in the report from a small town in Upper Franconia at the end of July 1939: 'The answer ive.

how the problem "Danzig and the Corridor" is to be solved is still the same among the general public: incorporation in the Reich?

to the question of

Yes.

Through war? No.' 99

But the anxiety about a general war over Danzig did not mean that there

was reluctance

to see military action against Poland undertaken

-

as long

GOING FOR BROKE as the

West could be kept out of

propaganda was pushing

much more

at

Inciting hatred of the Poles through

it.

an open door. 'The

mood

of the people can be

quickly whipped up against the Poles than against any other

neighbouring people,' commented the exiled Social Democratic organization, the Sopade. it

in the neck'.

100

thought

'it

would

serve the Poles right

if

they get

no underlining, emphasize the impact the propaganda was

attitude needs

having even

Many

Other reports from the Sopade's observers, whose anti-Nazi

among

those hostile to the regime. Existing anti-Polish feelings

were being massively sharpened. 'An action against Poland would be greeted by the overwhelming mass of the Poles are enormously hated

of the War.'

101

'If

among

German

people,' ran one report. 'The

the masses for

what they did

at the

end

Hitler strikes out against the Poles, he will have a majority

commented another. 102 In Danzig, too, where, war was especially pronounced, the daily reports

of the population behind him,'

not surprisingly, fear of a

about 'Polish terror' were manufacturing antagonism

among those who had

Above all, no one, it was claimed, whatever their political standpoint, wanted a Polish Danzig; the conviction that Danzig was German was universal. 103 The issue which the Danzig Nazis exploited to heighten the tension was the supervision of the Customs Office by Polish customs inspectors. These never been 'Pole haters'.

had indeed sometimes abused

their position in the interests of increased

Polish control over shipping. But there

had been nothing serious, and matters

could quite easily have been amicably resolved, or at least a reached,

if

that

had been the intention. As

increasingly subjected to violent attacks.

it

104

modus

vivendi

was, the customs officers were This had the desired effect of

When

keeping the tension in the Free City at fever pitch.

the customs

inspectors were informed on 4 August - in what turned out to be an initiative of an over-zealous German official - that they would not be allowed to carry out their duties

and responded with

a threat to close the port to

foodstuffs, the local crisis threatened to boil over,

Germans Forster

reluctantly backed

was summoned

down -

to Berchtesgaden

on 7 August and returned

announce that the Fuhrer had reached the the Poles,

Pans.

who were

and too soon. The

as the international press noted.

1(b

to

with

limits of his patience

probably acting under pressure from London and

106

This allegation was transmitted by Forster to Carl Burckhardt, the League of Nations

High Commissioner

trying to keep the

West out of

his

the representative of the detested

in

Danzig. Overlooking no possibility of

war with Poland,

Hitler

League of Nations as

was ready

to use

his intermediary.

107

201

Z02

HITLER 1936-1945

On

10 August, during a dinner in honour of the departing Deputy Represen-

Poland

tative of

in

Danzig, Tadeusz Perkowski, Burckhardt was

to the telephone to be told by Gauleiter Forster that Hitler

him on

the Obersalzberg at 4p.m. next day and

summoned

wanted

was sending

plane ready for departure early the following morning. 108 Following a in

which he was regaled by

fights

to see

his personal flight

a euphoric Albert Forster with tales of beerhall

with Communists during the 'time of struggle', Burckhardt landed in

Salzburg and, after a quick snack, was driven up the spiralling road beyond the Berghof itself and up to the Eagle's Nest (Adlerborst), the recently built

spectacular

Tea House

in the dizzy heights of the

was not fond of

Hitler

complained that the pressure.

110

He

air

and seldom went up

the Eagle's Nest

was too

mountain peaks. 109

thin at that height,

there.

and bad for

his

worried about an accident on the roads Bormann had had

constructed up the sheer mountainside, and about a failure of the

had to carry

He

blood

its

lift

that

passengers from the huge, marble-faced hall cut inside the

rock to the summit of the mountain, more than 150 feet above.

was an important

visit.

wanted

Hitler

to impress

111

But

this

Burckhardt with the

dramatic view over the mountain tops, invoking the image of distant majesty, of the dictator of

Germany

as lord of

all

he surveyed.

112

The imperious image had been somewhat dented just after Burckhardt when one of the serving staff had managed to drop a heavy armchair on Hitler's foot and had him hopping in pain. 113 But he quickly recovered to play every register in driving home to Burckhardt - and through him to the western powers - the modesty and reasonableness of his claims on arrived,

Poland and the

futility

of western support.

keep the West out of the coming anger one moment,

way

threats gave

fell

customs

rage, he

remained.

Wilhelm

If

II,

poured out,

in a

crescendo of

and resignation the next. The

denounced press suggestions that he had

way

over the issue of the Polish

His voice rising until he was shouting, he screamed

response to Polish ultimata:

would smash

a calculated attempt to

His voice rose

to feigned sadness

nerve and been forced to give officers.

was

to hopes even at this stage of an arrangement with Britain.

Almost speechless with lost his

conflict.

It

if

the Poles without warning so that not a trace of Poland

that

meant general war, then so be

it.

He would

not fight like

held back by his conscience, but ruthlessly to the bitter end. as usual,

He

an array of facts and figures to demonstrate Germany's

superiority in armaments. fortifications,

his

the smallest incident should take place, he

He

could hold the western

with seventy-four divisions. The

line,

thanks to his

rest of his forces

would be

hurled against Poland, which would be liquidated within three weeks. All

GOING FOR BROKE he wanted

was land

in the east to feed

no

timber. International trade offered

from

own

its

Germany, and

Germany had

basis of security.

That was the only

resources.

a single colony for to live

He

issue; the rest nonsense.

emphasized more than once that he wanted nothing of the West, but

demanded only a free hand in the East. He was ready, he said, to negotiate, but not when he was insulted and confronted with ultimata. He accused Britain

and France of interference

to the Poles.

Now

the Poles

agreement once and for this

time raring to be

let

all.

in the

on

to the terrace.

the peace

this lay in his

He had had enough

and quiet that he found

If

he

knew

that England

France were inciting Poland to war, he would prefer war

'this

than next'. But he was coming to the point of Burckhardt's

He was

he could wait.

in peace,

'But as in

will be

it

and timber.

May

another matter

do not

last.

I

our minorities

I

brain',

-

visit.

Were

prepared for a pact

ready for negotiations on this

they revile

me and

shall hit hard.'

the

cover

me with

happens

it

was

issue.

ridicule

Danzig or

in

to

Again shifting from threats to apparent

German-speaking Englishman, possibly General

handsome, and dashing, but 'more bluff and brawn than

tall,

who had

time in July

if

bluff. If the slightest thing

reason, he suggested that a Ironside

He was

and

year rather

with Britain, guaranteeing British possessions. For him, he repeated, a matter of grain

there.

hands more than any other person's.

This was not so, replied Hitler in a low voice.

Danzig

any

His generals, hesitant the previous year, were

He needed

Burckhardt enjoined that

Poles to leave

made

a position that blocked

loose against the Poles.

Hitler took Burckhardt outside

turmoil, he intimated.

reasonable proposals he had

had taken up

been dispatched to Poland by the British government for a

- should go

to Berlin.

114

Burckhardt, as intended, rapidly passed on to the British and French

governments the

gist

much

when he had

older than

told his British

of his talks with Hitler. last

115

The

dictator

met him, two years

earlier,

was the laconic

of Sir Alexander Cadogan, head of the Foreign Office.

conclusions were restraint

Burckhardt

116 and French contacts, and had been nervous, even anxious.

'Hitler apparently undecided, rather distracted, rather aged,'

comment

had seemed

on the

drawn from Burckhardt's report other than

Poles.

11

No

to urge

118

While Hitler and Burckhardt were meeting Kehlstein, another meeting

at the Eagle's

was taking place only

a

Nest on the

few miles away,

in

Ribbentrop's newly acquired splendrous residence overlooking the lake in Fuschl, not far

learning

from Salzburg. Count Ciano, resplendent

from the German Foreign Minister, dressed,

in

uniform, was

to his visitors' surprise,

203

Z04

HITLER 1936-1945 had been deceived

in casual civilian dress, that the Italians

The atmosphere was

Hitler's intentions.

flict

would not become

they

Were

a general one.

would be doomed

icy.

Britain

intervention.

saying

He evaded

decisions were

still

all

made him

He

119

Ciano added

any

provoke the

conflict

and

will

effect of solving the present

in his diary:

'The decision to

fight

is

[Ribbentrop] rejects any solution which might give satisfac-

Germany and avoid

The impression was next day.

all his

rule out

ten hours of discussion,

left after

which might have the

initiative

crisis peacefully'.

tion to

above

requests for details of Germany's plans by

greatly depressed, sure 'that he intends to

implacable.

and France to intervene,

locked in the Fiihrer's impenetrable bosom'.

Dinner passed without a word. Ciano

oppose any

The con-

Ciano found him unreasoning and obstinate. Discussion with

pointless.

'all

inevitable.

to defeat. But his information 'and

psychological knowledge' of Britain, he insisted,

him was

months about

Ribbentrop told Ciano that

Germany' was

the 'merciless destruction of Poland by

for

the struggle.'

reinforced

120

when Ciano met

Hitler at the Berghof the

Among the reasons put forward for the need to act, most of which

echoed the points that had been made by Ribbentrop, Hitler again revealed the extent to

Germany,

which he was affected by matters of

prestige'.

localized, that Britain

making, would not go to war.

It

claimed that

can begin now'.

121

He was

convinced that the conflict

and France, whatever noises they were

would be necessary one day

western democracies. But he thought

it

to fight the

'out of the question that this struggle

Ciano noted that he realized immediately

no longer anything that can be done. He has decided will.'

He

as a great nation, could not tolerate the continued provocation

by Poland 'without losing

would be

prestige.

to strike,

'that there

and

strike

is

he

122

Important news came through for Hitler

at the very time that

he was

underlining to the disenchanted Ciano his determination to attack Poland

no in

later

than the end of August: the Russians were prepared to begin talks

Moscow,

with Ciano, and rejoined

it

way was now open. The idea seems initially legal expert,

to

Moscow

A beaming Ribbentrop took was summoned from the meeting 123 The to report the breakthrough.

including the position of Poland.

the telephone call at the Berghof. Hitler

who had

to

in high spirits

to have been to send

been involved

conduct negotiations.

Hans Frank,

in the talks 124

the Nazis' chief

producing the Axis

in 1936,

But by 14 August Hitler had decided

- Ribbentrop pressing with maximum urgency for the earliest possible agreement, Molotov cannily to send Ribbentrop.

125

A

flurry of diplomatic activity

GOING FOR BROKE prevaricating until

was evident

it

that Soviet interest in the Anglo-French

126 mission was dead - unfolded during the following days.

trade treaty, under

The

text of a

which German manufactured goods worth 200 million

Reich Marks would be exchanged each year for an equivalent amount of Soviet

raw

materials,

was agreed. 127

the chattering teleprinter gave Hitler the Berghof, the

and Ribbentrop, waiting anxiously

news they wanted:

aggression pact without delay.

Stalin

It

was

He

had

the date Hitler

could not wait that long.

On

visit

- 26 August - posed Poland.

on the 22nd or 23rd. 130

Hitler

German Embassy

armed with

full

in

Moscow,

powers

to sign a

made a difference. But sweat it out. The tension at the

Hitler's intervention

made

once more Stalin and Molotov

Berghof was almost unbearable.

It

Hitler

was more than twenty-four hours

on the evening of 21 August, before the message came through.

was expected

in

Moscow

in

two days'

August. Hitler slapped himself on the knee in delight.

later,

Stalin

time,

Champagne

was ordered - though Hitler did not touch any. 'That in the soup,'

serious

129

20 August, he decided to intervene personally.

requesting the reception of Ribbentrop,

agreed. Ribbentrop

at

willing to sign a non-

set for the invasion of

telegraphed a message to Stalin, via the

pact,

was

128

Only the proposed date of Ribbentrop's problems.

on the evening of 19 August,

Finally,

all

on 23 round

will really land

he declared, referring to the western powers.

had

them

131

The news, announced just before midnight, struck like a bombshell. Most German citizens, once they had adjusted to the surprise, felt simply a sense of relief. The understanding with the unlikely new friends in the east had 132 Older eliminated the threat of encirclement and a war on two fronts. army leaders, schooled in the tradition of Seeckt's Reichswehr of good relations with Russia, felt the same way. Most presumed that Poland would now not dare to fight, and that the conflict would be resolved in much the same way as the Sudeten crisis of the previous year. 133 But reactions were mixed, even among the Nazi leadership. 'We're on top again. Now we 134 can sleep more easily,' recorded a delighted Goebbels. 'The question of Bolshevism saying that devil eats

is

for the

was

moment

of secondary importance,' he later added,

the Fiihrer's view, too. 'We're in need

and

eat then like the

135

flies.'

For the dyed-in-the-wool old anti-Bolshevik Alfred Rosenberg, hailed

from the

Baltic

and had personal experience of conditions

of the Russian Revolution, the response loss of respect in the light of

how

our

was predictably

by now

who

at the time

different. 'A

moral

twenty-year long struggle,' was

he described the pact. Even so, he was prepared to attribute Hitler's

ZO5

206

HITLER I936-I945 180-degree shift - the U-turn of trop,

time - to necessity, and blamed Ribben-

all

whom he believed occupied the post of Foreign Minister that ought to

have been Britain.

136

his

own,

In his

for destroying any hopes of the desired alliance with

dismay

but ready as always to place his trust in

at the pact,

the Fuhrer's judgement, Rosenberg undoubtedly spoke for most 'old fighters'

of the Party.

A

137

good number of SA men, veterans of many

with the Communists, had even

less

course. Voices were heard that

written.

138

that Mein Kampf was now doing the exact opposite of

was about time

it

taken out of the bookshops since Hitler was

what he had

Heinrich Hoffmann, according to his later account,

'My

raised the reactions of the Party faithful with Hitler.

know and and they

trust

a street fight

sympathy with the dramatic change of

me; they

know

will realize that the ultimate

the Eastern danger,' Hitler

from

will never depart

I

aim of

this latest

my

Party

gambit

said to have replied. But next

is

garden of the Brown House was reportedly

members

basic principles, is

to

remove

morning the

with badges discarded

littered

139

by disillusioned Party members.

Abroad, Goebbels remarked, the announcement of the imminent nonaggression pact that

was

'the great

world sensation'. 140 But the response was not

which Hitler and Ribbentrop had hoped

reaction

was

that the pact

for.

would change nothing. 141

The

In Paris,

Poles' fatalistic

where the news

of the Soviet-German pact hit especially hard, the French Foreign Minister

Georges Bonnet, fearing a German-Soviet entente against Poland, pondered

whether in

it

was now

better to press the Poles into

order to win time for France to prepare

after dithering for

would remain

compromise with Hitler

defences.

142

But eventually,

two days, the French government agreed

true to

its

were asking searching questions about the Secretary coolly,

not very great importance. Britain's obligations to

that France

143

The British cabinet, meeting on the unmoved by the dramatic news, even if MPs

obligations.

afternoon of 22 August, was

The Foreign

its

if

144

failure of British intelligence.

absurdly, dismissed the pact as perhaps of Instructions

went out

Poland remained unaltered.

Sir

to embassies that

Nevile Henderson's

suggestion of a personal letter from the Prime Minister to Hitler, warning

him of

Britain's determination to stick

Meanwhile,

in excellent

mood on

by Poland, was taken up.

account of his

prepared, on the morning of 22 August, to address leaders

on

his plans for Poland.

arranged before the news from

was

The

The diplomatic coup, by now

all

triumph, Hitler

the

armed

forces'

meeting, at the Berghof, had been

Moscow had come

to convince the generals of the

latest

145

through.

146

Hitler's

aim

need to attack Poland without delay.

in the public

147

domain, can only have boosted

GOING FOR BROKE his self-confidence.

weakened any

certainly

It

potential criticism

from

his

audience.

The

generals arrived mainly by plane, landing in Salzburg,

on the small

during the course of the morning to the Obersalzberg.

148

They were dressed attention - an objective

order not to arouse particular

in civilian clothing in

Munich, or

near Berchtesgaden, from where they were driven

airfield

not best furthered by Goring turning up in outlandish hunting garb.

way through

General Liebmann had met Papen on the

him

that he

149

Salzburg. Papen told

had spoken with Hitler the previous evening, warning him not

war with England, where the chances of winning would be under 50 per cent. He had the feeling that his arguments had made no impression at 130 all. Around fifty officers (including the Fuhrer's adjutants) had assembled to risk

in the

at

Great Hall of the Berghof by the time that Hitler began his address

noon.

rows of

1M

Ribbentrop was also present. lj2 The generals were seated on

chairs. Hitler, leaning

on the grand piano, spoke with barely

glance at the sparse notes he clutched in his

Those

taken.

were

listening

proceedings.^

4

One

two

or

left

hand.

1^3

No

minutes were

make any record

explicitly told not to

of the

of those present, including Admiral Canaris,

head of the Abwehr, ignored the instruction and surreptiously jotted the

main

a

points. Others, including Chief of Staff Colonel-General

down

Haider

and Admiral-General Boehm, thought what they heard was so important that they hastily compiled a 'It

was

later,'

clear to

began

me

Hitler.

thought that

I

first

'Essentially all talents.

to

155

come sooner or

this decision in the spring,

but

I

Circumstances had caused him to change his

Making no

in the first instance to his

own importance

concessions to false modesty, he claimed:

depends on me, on

my

existence, because of

my

political

Furthermore, the fact that probably no one will ever again have the

confidence of the whole again in the future be a is

had

later that day.

turn against the West in a few years, and only

went on. He pointed

to the situation.

what had gone on

had already made

after that against the East.'

thinking, he

of

that a conflict with Poland

'I

would

summary

German people as I have. There will probably never man with more authority than I have. My existence

therefore a factor of great value. But

criminal or a lunatic'

I

can be eliminated at any time by a

He also emphasized the personal role of Mussolini and He

Franco, whereas Britain and France lacked any 'outstanding personality'. briefly alluded to

Germany's economic

not delaying action. lose;

we have

'It is

easy for us to

difficulties as a further

make

decisions.

argument for

We have nothing to

everything to gain. Because of our restrictions {Einschran-

kungen) our economic situation

is

such that

we can

only hold out for a few

207

208

HITLER 1936-1945 more

years.

He

act.'

Goring can confirm

this.

these favourable circumstances will time.

No

conflict

We

have no other choice.

must

how much

one knows

no longer prevail

longer

I

in

two or

'All

three years'

shall live. Therefore, better a

now.'

In typical vein, he continued.

had become

Polish situation to others.

that the

We

reviewed the constellation of international forces, concluding:

was

better to test

There was a danger of losing

West would not

the politician as

had done

It

intolerable.

much

The

could not be handed

The high

prestige.

There was a

intervene.

German arms now. The

initiative

risk,

but

probability

it

was

was

the task of

as the general to confront risk with iron resolve.

notably in the recovery of the Rhineland in 1936,

this in the past,

and always been proved

He

right.

The

risk

had

to be taken.

'We

are faced,' he

stated with his usual apocalyptic dualism, 'with the harsh alternatives of striking or of certain annihilation sooner or later.'

He compared

the relative

arms strength of Germany and the western powers. He concluded that Britain

was

in

no position to help Poland. Nor was there any

interest in

The West had vested its hopes in enmity between Germany and Russia. 'The enemy did not reckon with my great strength of purpose,' he boasted. 'Our enemies are small fry (kleine Wiirmchen). I saw them in Munich.' The pact with Russia would be signed within two days. 'Now Poland is in the position in which I want her.' There need be no fear of a blockade. The East would provide the necessary grain, cattle, coal, Britain in a long war.

lead,

was

and

zinc.

His only

'that at the last

fear, Hitler said, in

obvious allusion to Munich,

moment some swine or other will yet submit to me a plan

for mediation'. Hinting at

what was

in his

mind following the destruction of

Poland, he added that the political objective went further. 'A start has been

made on

the destruction of England's

the soldiers after Hitler, assuring

I

have made the

him

that the

hegemony. The way

political preparations.'

Wehrmacht would do

its

will be

open for

Goring thanked

duty, and around

1.30p.m. the meeting broke up for a light lunch on the terrace.

156

After the lunch break, Hitler spoke again for about an hour, partly about

operational details.

157

His broader remarks were

now

largely

aimed

at

boosting fighting morale. Style and diction were inimitable, the sentiments brutally social-Darwinist.

He

repeated the need for 'iron determination'.

The would be 'no shrinking back from anything'. It was a 'life and death struggle'. The destruction of Poland, even if war in the West were to break out, was the priority, and had to be settled quickly in view of the season. The aim was, he stated, somewhat unclearly, if with evident menace, 'to eliminate active forces (Beseitigung der lebendigen Krafte), not to reach a

GOING FOR BROKE definite line'.

lj8

He would

provide a propaganda pretext for beginning the

He ended

war, however implausible.

and waging

your hearts to their right.

pity.

war

a

it is

Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what

Their existence must be made secure. The stronger

three

objectivity

and was

full

of illusions.

One had

repulsive.

war

and any

He

Hitler

had to

was

the case. But

say, they

was

it

less

was too

well.

161

replied

No if

if

Liebmann

The assembled

the speech.

picture

what

clear conception of

who

left

with

the generals were not enthused by

what

felt like

posed no objections. The

resigned. After the war,

one

this

man spoke who

thought that many,

grave faces or expressions of black humour, this

later

feelings.

and who, with unsurpassed wantonness, was

signified,

determined to leap into the dark.'

Probably

is

right.

bragging and brash tone

the feeling that here a

lost all feeling of responsibility

a victorious

'Its

is

months

heard some effective speeches by Hitler, he wrote, but

all

was downright had

man

own

General Liebmann, certainly no Hitler admirer, recalled his

lacked

When

not right that matters, but victory. Close

The greatest harshness.' 159 The reactions of Hitler's audience were mixed. Some

He had

'The

his philosophy:

whether he told the truth or not.

victor will not be asked afterwards starting

by summarizing

mood was largely fatalistic,

summarize the broad impact of

tried to

commented, were

generals, he

160

he did.

certain that the

rosy than Hitler's description. But they took the view that

late for objections,

and simply hoped things would turn out

one spoke out against

anyone were to do

Hitler.

162

who ought

Brauchitsch,

so, said nothing.

Any

to have

objections on his part, in

Liebmann's view, could only have been made as representing all the generals. Evidently he doubted whether Brauchitsch could have spoken for case, he

By August Hitler that.

it

it

was too

was only

late.

Liebmann added one other

a matter of a

war

against Poland.

The

disastrous collapse in the army's

Fritsch,

had remarked

man - Hitler he'll

drag us

is

all

own comments

And

fate for

power

Its still

any

telling point.

the

army

felt

For

up to

since the

after the

first

weeks of 1938

lamented former head, Werner

von Hassell some months

good or

evil. If it's

with him. There's nothing to be done.'

confidence in and

Towards

to Ulrich

Germany's

of the capitulation of the

little

In

163

could not have been more apparent.

von

all.

thought such objections would have to have been raised by spring.

Wehrmacht

now

164

It

earlier: 'This

into the abyss,

was an

indication

leadership to Hitler's will. Hitler's

meeting indicated that, on the eve of war, he had

much contempt

for his generals.

the end of his speech, Hitler

had broken

16j

off

momentarily to

209

2IO

HITLER I936-1945 wish

his

Foreign Minister success in

Moscow. Ribbentrop

left at

Condor

to fly to Berlin. In mid-evening, he then flew in Hitler's private

Konigsberg and, negotiations,

was

after a restless

from

his retinue of

there, next

around

family concern no

harm

capital.

thirty persons (including Heinrich

in the process) that a

Schulenburg (the German Ambassador

So large

Hoffmann,

second Condor was needed.

to his surprise, not just

in

in the

to

Moscow), he was taken

Molotov, but

filth'

to a long

Stalin himself, awaited

new

lasting basis with the Soviet Union. Stalin replied that,

countries had 'poured buckets of

167

Kremlin. Attended by

him. Ribbentrop began by stating Germany's wish for

no obstacle

166

captured on film, and do the profits of his

Within two hours of landing, Ribbentrop was

room where,

to

and nervous night preparing notes for the

morning, on to the Russian

moment was

ensure the historic

that point

relations

on

a

though the two

over each other for years, there was

moved to delineation USSR's claim to Finland, much of

to ending the quarrel. Discussion quickly

of spheres of influence. Stalin staked the the territory of the Baltic states,

and Bessarabia. Ribbentrop predictably

brought up Poland, and the need for a demarcation

Union and Germany. This -

line

between the Soviet

to run along the rivers Vistula, San,

and Bug -

towards concluding a non-aggression pact was The territorial changes to accompany it, carving up eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union, were contained in a secret protocol. The only delay occurred when Stalin's claims to the Latvian ports of Libau (Liepaja) and Windau (Ventspils) held up matters for a while. Ribbentrop

was

swiftly agreed. Progress

rapid.

felt

he had to consult.

Nervously waiting

Moscow embassy

168

at the Berghof, Hitler

paced impatiently up and Unterberg

down on

it

talks.

169

He

the terrace as the sky silhouetted the

in striking colours of turquoise,

remarked that

had by then already had the

telephoned to inquire about progress at the

pointed to a bloody war.

then violet, then If so,

fiery red.

Below

replied Hitler, the sooner

The more time passed, the bloodier the war would be. 170 Within minutes there was a call from Moscow. Ribbentrop assured

the better.

that the talks half an

were going

well, but asked

hour Hitler had consulted a

Hitler

about the Latvian ports. Inside

map and

telephoned his reply: 'Yes,

171

The last obstacle was removed. Back at the Kremlin in late evening there was a celebratory supper. Vodka and Crimean sparkling wine agreed.'

lubricated the already effervescent

Among

mood

of mutual self-congratulation.

was one proposed by Stalin to Hitler. 172 The texts of the Pact and Protocol had been drawn up in the meantime. Though dated 23 the toasts

August, they were

finally signed

by Ribbentrop and Molotov well after

/

i.

{previous page) Hitler, September 1936, portrayed wearing a suit and not the

usual Party uniform. 2.

(above) Hitler discussing plans in 1936 for

new

administrative buildings in

Weimar

with his up-and-coming favourite architect, Albert Speer. Fritz Sauckel, Reich Governor

and Gauleiter of Thuringia, 3.

{below)

The

is

on

Hitler's right.

Berlin Olympics, 1936: the

crowd

salutes Hitler.

•**

^^r

4. British Royalty at the Berghof. Hitler meets the Duke and Duchess of Windsor on 22 October 1937, during the visit to Germany of the ex-King Edward VIII and his wife, the former Mrs Wallis Simpson.

5.

Field-Marshal Werner von Blomberg in 1937.

War 6.

He was

to be dismissed

from

office as

Minister the following January on account of a scandal concerning his wife.

Colonel-General Werner Freiherr von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the

until his dismissal, in the

wake

Army

of the Blomberg scandal, at the beginning of February

1938 on trumped-up charges of homosexuality.

7- Hitler

addresses the exultant masses in Vienna's Heldenplatz on 15

March 1938,

following the AnschluG.

8. (facing

page, above)

The

Axis: flanked by Mussolini

Hitler views a parade of troops in 9. (facing

page, below) Hitler

is

Rome

during his

and King Victor-Emmanuel visit to Italy in

May

1938.

cheered by crowds of admirers in Florence.

III,

D DIEC I

^'

—

ORIENTALISCI

ENART,GES *AS RASSENGEMISCH

JUDEN .

«HTAUSCH 8ASSISCHE

ZUSAMMENS

DER DEUTSCHEN JUDI

VORWJEGEND VORDI

SIEHABENmiSCHEXUSSEREMERKMAlE

io. Part of the exhibition 'The Eternal Jew',

which opened

in

Munich on

8

November

1937 and ran until 31 January 1938, purporting to show the 'typical external features' of Jews and to demonstrate their supposedly Asiatic characteristics. The exhibition drew 412,300 visitors in all - over 5,000 per day. It helped to promote the sharp growth of anti-Semitic violence in

Munich and elsewhere

in

Germany during 1938.

from the exhibition 'The Eternal Jew', which opened in the on 12 November 1938. This was two days after Goebbels had unleashed

11. {below) 'Jews in Berlin',

Reich capital

a nation-wide orgy of violence in

Germany, leading to mass

which Jewish property was destroyed throughout Jews and their exclusion from business

arrests of

and commerce.

'

illir

^

^gl Ill

i

«X i

»*

V-

^^Saul J^n -

*

"

**

it

^^-

-

[*' '

w'*

•

.

12.

(/e/i?)

The synagogue in FasenenstraSe, Berlin, burns after Nazi stormstroopers on fire during the pogrom of 9-10 November 1938.

13. (right)

The Jewish Community building

in Kassel

on the morning

Beds, papers, and furniture, thrown out by the Nazi perpetrators,

after the

lie

on the

set

it

pogrom. street.

Onlookers and police watch as two people attempt to clear up.

- some smiling, some looking in apparent bewilderment - outside and looted Jewish shop in Berlin. The amount of glass smashed by Nazi

14. Passers-by a demolished

mobs gave

rise to the sarcastic appellation 'Reichskristallnacht'.

15- (left) A model family? Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, his wife

Magda, and

their children Helga, Hilde,

and baby Helmut, posing for the camera in

1936.

16. (below) Goebbels, broadcasting to

Germans on

the

the eve of Hitler's fiftieth

20 April 1939. The Propaganda Minister's marriage had been under

birthday,

severe strain during the previous

on account of

his affair

months

with the Czech

actress Lida Baarova, but for prestige

reasons Hitler had insisted that Goebbels

and

17.

An

his wife did

not separate.

unusual photograph, taken about

companion 1932 - a relationship kept secret from the German public until 1945.

1938, of Eva Braun, Hitler's since

i8. (top)

of the

19.

With Hitler looking on, General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the High Command Wehrmacht, greets the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, at the Berghof on 15 September 1938, during the Sudeten crisis.

German

after Hitler

troops crossing the Charles Bridge in Prague in

had forced the Czech government

March 1939,

a

few days

to agree to the imposition of a

Protectorate over the country.

German

K

i0

:

>

fa

£:-§

.-

|P |

ys9r

,

^m^Jm

m

mm

"^^^ i

20.

(to/?) Hitler's

imposing 'study'

in the

visitors

21.

Pomp and

Circumstance:

Reich Chancellery, used more to impress

than for work.

Hermann Goring

addresses Hitler during a ceremonial

occasion - probably on Hitler's birthday, zo April 1939 - in the New Reich Chancellery, designed by Albert Speer and completed in early 1939.

22. {top) 'The Fuhrer's birthday': Hitler

is

amused, on

his forty-ninth birthday,

20 April 1938, when Ferdinand Porsche presents him with a model of the Volkswagen, pointing out that the engine is in the boot. None of the 336,000 Germans who ordered

and paid

for a car partly or in full ever

took delivery of a Volkswagen. The vehicles

were produced during the war exclusively

for military purposes.

23. (centre) 'The Fuhrer's birthday': Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, gives Hitler his

present - a valuable equestrian portrait of Frederick the Great by Adolf von Menzel -

on the Fuhrer's

commander

fiftieth

birthday,

20 April 1939, watched by Sepp Dietrich

(centre),

of the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, and (extreme right) Karl Wolff, chief of Himmler's personal staff.

24. (bottom) Hitler, in evening dress, walks with Winifred

crowds during the

last

Wagner

Bayreuth Festival before the war,

past cheering

in July

1939.

25.

Molotov

signs the

Non-Aggression Pact of the Soviet Union with Germany

the early hours of 24 August 1939,

Marshal Boris looking

S.

watched by

{left

to right)

Red Army Chief

in

of Staff

Shaposhnikov, adjutant to Ribbentrop Richard Schulze, a smug-

German Foreign

Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Stalin.

26. Hitler in his temporary field-headquarters during the Polish campaign, together

with his Wehrmacht adjutants, (from

left to right)

(Luftwaffe), Captain Gerhard Engel (Army), adjutant).

Captain Nicolaus von Below

and Colonel Rudolf Schmundt

Martin Bormann

is

on

Hitler's left.

(chief

27. {top) Hitler reviewing troops in

Warsaw on

5

October 1939

at the conclusion

of the victory over Poland. 28. Hitler during his address to the Party's 'Old Guard' in the Biirgerbraukeller in

Munich on

8

November 1939. Only minutes

after he

had

left

the building, a

time-bomb

placed by a Swabian joiner, Georg Elser, exploded close to where he had been speaking, killing eight

and injuring more than

sixty of those present.

29.

{left)

Arthur Greiser, the fanatical Reich Governor and Gauleiter of Reichsgau

Wartheland, the annexed part of western Poland, at the celebration for the 'liberation' of the area on 2 October 1939. 30. (right) Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia, a rival to Greiser in the brutal attempt to 'germanize' the

31.

(left

and

right)

An

annexed parts of Poland.

ecstatic Hitler at his headquarters 'Wolfsschlucht' (Wolf's Gorge),

near Bruly de Peche in Belgium, on hearing the news on 17 June 1940 that France had requested an armistice. Walther Hewel, Ribbentrop's liaison at Fiihrer Headquarters, is

on

Hitler's right.

-Hi %

LAI

7*3

32. (top) Hitler visiting emplacements

on the Maginot Line

in Alsace, during his

short stay at his headquarters 'Tannenberg', near Freudenstadt in the Black Forest,

on 30 June 1940. 33. Hitler in Freudenstadt 34. (overleaf)

on

5

July 1940, the last day he

An immense crowd

was based

at 'Tannenberg'.

gathered on Wilhelmplatz in Berlin on 6 July 1940,

wildly cheering the conquering hero on Hitler's return from the triumph over France.

Goring

is

on

Hitler's right

on the balcony of the Reich Chancellery.

^^^S8 stiS^R^^^Br^ 38iL ,

}

2**A? »

mE?0%I

vm

,:

£

X * vU

,

rar k if %yE«*


scarcely accidental. But

process.

The

it

had, even so, been in

many

radicalization of anti-Jewish policy

had

respects an indirect largely been

pushed

along by the leadership of the Security Police, for the most part without specific

involvement of Hitler (though certainly with his approval), until

Poland genocidal mentalities

in

in near-genocidal conditions had acquired

ZENITH OF POWER their

own momentum.

active involvement 'living space'

In the crucial area of

was unquestionably

had returned

war

strategy,

where

his

crucial, Hitler's old obsession

own

about

via the difficulties he encountered in trying to

Now, showdown that

force Britain out of the conflict.

in the first half of 1941, the practical

preparations for the

Hitler

had always wanted could be

made. In these months the twin obsessions would merge into each other.

The

decisive steps into genocidal

war were about

to be taken.

337

8 DESIGNING A 'WAR OF ANNIHILATION'

'The forthcoming campaign conflict;

it

will lead, too, to a

ideologies

.

.

is

more than

showdown

The Jewish-Bolshevik

.

just

of

an armed

two

different

intelligentsia,

the

"oppressor" of the people up to now, must be eliminated.' Operational guidelines for 'Barbarossa', 3 March 1941

'We must

forget the concept of comradeship between sol-

diers.

A Communist

battle.

This

is

a

is

war of

no comrade before or

Hitler, addressing senior officers, 30

'Whether right or wrong, we must win have won,

who

after the

annihilation.'

will ask us

.

.

.

March 1941

And when we

about the method?'

Hitler, speaking to Goebbels, 16

June 19 41

With the decision 18

December

to invade the Soviet

Union, confirmed

in the directive

of

1940, Hitler had closed off his strategic options. In his anxiety

not to concede the initiative in the war, he had shifted the entire focus of

German war effort to

the aim of inflicting comprehensive military defeat on the Soviet Union - and obliterating it as a political entity - within a the

matter of months.

He was backed

had private reservations,

at

his military leaders,

who, even

no point raised serious objections to

course of action. In retrospect, generals did not for the

by

it

his

some

if

proposed

seems sheer idiocy. At the time, Hitler's

most part demur because they,

like he, grossly

underestimated Soviet military strength and capacity. Remarkable though it

seems from a

later perspective, the real anxiety

from

their point of

was directed not towards the Soviet Union but towards Great backed by

its

world empire and,

it

seemed increasingly

likely, in

view

Britain

-

due course

by the untold resources of the USA. The gamble, which most military advisers

- Admiral Raeder was an exception, Goring's

were soon dispelled - acceded 1

a matter of four or five

to, rested

months

to attain

hegemony

hand forced by Japanese action against Imperial Asia,

would then have no choice but

in the Pacific

to

early reservations

on knocking out the

come

in

USSR

within

Europe. Britain, her

territory in south-eastern

to terms.

America, confronted

by Japan, would keep out of the European arena. Germany

would have won

the war.

Domination throughout Europe would be

Subsequent, and ultimately inevitable, confrontation with the

USA

hers.

could

be contemplated from a position of strength. Hitler

had committed himself

to action

from which there was no turning

back. Did he have a real choice? Grand-Admiral Raeder thought so.

Some

of the generals thought so. Ribbentrop thought so. Hitler himself, however,

342-

HITLER 1936-1945 flirted in autumn 1940 with the 'peripheral strategy'. Having mooted immediately after the victory in the West a campaign against the Soviet Union, the war he had for long advocated as the ultimate necessity,

had only

he became increasingly wedded to the idea. The attempt to erode British strength in the Mediterranean through balancing the interests of Italy, Spain,

and Vichy France was abandoned

at the first sign of self-evident difficulties.

Probably, Hitler's best strategy in autumn 1940 would have been to

sit

tight

and await developments. Japan was playing her own game. As spring 1941 willing to look to a rapprochement with the Soviet

would show, she was Union

in order to

and the USA, inevitable.

have a

hand

free

to the south. Direct conflict with Britain

as Japanese territorial ambitions insatiably grew,

Had

without doubt have mounted sharply

Union and Germany,

Soviet

undoubted clashes

in

as

in the Pacific

Molotov's

own

East.

The

Scandinavia and in the Balkans. Russian expansionist

posed no direct threat to Germany

echoing Hitler's

and the Far

would

had demonstrated, faced

visit

aims conflicted directly with German interests

USSR

was almost

Hitler waited, the difficulties for both countries

in these regions.

at this time.

But the

Himmler, probably

views, had expressly rejected the notion of such a

threat at a speech to Party functionaries around the time of Molotov's visit to Berlin in

November

1940. Russia, he stated,

(militarisch ungefahrlichy

.

With

a

poor

was

officer corps

'militarily

and badly equipped

and trained, the Russian army 'cannot pose any danger to us uns uberhaupt nicbt gefahrlich werden)'.

1

it,

given the global

in the Pacific.

it is

at all (Sie

kann

Had the will been there to co-exist

and carve up continental Europe between them Ribbentrop's thinking -

harmless

effectively the basis of

hard to see which power could have prevented

commitments of

Britain

But none of these scenarios

ultimately, that of his military

and Party

and the threat posed by Japan fitted Hitler's

leaders.

From

mentality

-

nor,

Hitler's perspective,

Germany could not afford to wait. Russia posed, in his eyes, a threat which could only mount in the following year or so. An immediate German strike would both remove

that threat,

on American intervention. from

On

and destroy the

British

hopes that hinged

the other hand, to lose the initiative meant,

Hitler's point of view, to put himself

and Germany

in a strait-jacket

The war would then be lost. Germany's chance would have gone. And such was the international enmity towards Germany which he and the National Socialist regime had prompted that any conthat could only tighten.

cessions

and

his

from weakness would most

own

likely

mean

the demise of his regime

ousting from power.

Moreover, to refrain from the bold move, to remain passive, would be -

DESIGNING A WAR OF ANNIHILATION as seen

by Hitler - to

forfeit the psychological

dynamism of

built up. Sustaining the

impetus that the war had

the National Socialist

required the continuation of expansion, the conquest of setting of

new

343

new

Movement

territories, the

goals, the relentless pursuit of the millennium.

The

vision

could not be limited; the quest could not be permanently halted through conventional territorial settlements that would leave - in Hitler's eyes and

- the

those of his followers

and

racial

domination

reinvigorate

itself,

new

grail of a

unattained.

still

were not to lose

society built

Nazism were

If

as long

-

ago as the Hoftbach meeting

Such considerations predominated

economic pressures, of which he was

in Hitler's

far

racial purity

a point

in

and

to sustain

war had

ideological edge, the

its

continue. There could be no subsiding into sterility

had emphasized

upon

to

which Hitler

November

3

1937.

mind. But there were, too,

from unaware. Germany had

since

1939 become increasingly dependent upon the vast supplies of raw materials coming from the USSR. Under an agreement signed in January 1941,

improving on that of February 1940, the Russians promised delivery of 2V2 million tons of grain

German whose

goods -

capital

delivery

and

1

million tons of oil by

in increasingly

was scheduled

May

1942, in return for

demand in the war effort summer of 1941. Problems in

high

to start in the

German supplies, given its overstretched war economy, were already causing summer 1940. The economic problems in Germany were foreseen by planning experts as mounting in 1941. The dependence on Russia - anathema to all who put their faith in variants of autarkic policies resting on economic hegemony in Europe (Grofiraumwirtschaft) tensions and difficulties in

was accordingly oil-fields in

set to

grow, not diminish. The Soviet threat to the Ploesti

Romania posed

nothing did Hitler use

real

this as

danger to the Axis war

an argument

air-force could turn these oil-fields into 'an

and the

life

of the Axis depends on those

Economic, military, in Hitler's thinking

strategic,

in

effort.

Not

for

remarking that the Russian

expanse of smoking ruins

oil-fields'.

.

.

.

4

and ideological motives were not separable

on the Soviet Union. They blended together, and were

used by him with different strength at different times in persuading those in his

company of the

correctness and inevitability of his course of action.

cement holding them

in place

was, as

it

had been

doubtless the imperative to destroy once and for

an aim which would 'living-space'

at the

continent of Europe. But

it

all

same time provide the necessary

and give Germany

political

was not

until

The

two decades, 'Jewish Bolshevism' -

for nearly

security in

and military dominance over the

March 1941

that Hitler began to

emphasize the overriding ideological objective of 'Operation Barbarossa'.

344

HITLER 1936— 1945 For Heydrich and Himmler, the chance to push for such an objective had already been recognized by that time.

5

In the event, Hitler's attempt to avoid being pinioned in a strait-jacket

through retaining the strategic rossa'

- would

setback and

the

and the Americans

- the gamble of 'Operation Barba-

by the end of 1941, as the German war effort met with

lead,

crisis,

initiative

war

in the East

dragged on into the

finally entered the arena, to precisely the vice setting

around Germany that Hitler had wanted to avoid. be

difficult, if

infinite future,

A way

out would

now

not impossible. The chips were down. And, by that time, the

death camps were commencing operations. Victory or total destruction

were emerging

as the only options

had enveloped the German

state

left.

Hitler's 'all-or-nothing' mentality

and shaped the alternatives for

its

But by the end of 1941, though military fortune would fluctuate that

still

had long

to run, the

odds would already be stacked

in

future.

in a

war

favour of

destruction, not victory.

I

Between January and March 1941 the operational plans were put

in place

he was inwardly

and approved by less certain.

attack on the Soviet

On

Hitler. Despite his

for 'Barbarossa'

show

of confidence,

the very day that the directive for the

Union was issued

to the commanders-in-chief of the

1940, Major Engel had told Brauchitsch (who was still unclear whether Hitler was bluffing about invading the USSR) that the Fiihrer was unsure how things would go. He was distrustful of his

Wehrmacht,

own

18

December

military leaders, uncertain about the strength of the Russians,

and

6

disappointed in the intransigence of the British. Hitler's lack of confidence in the operational in the first

planning of the army leadership was not

fully

assuaged

months of 1941. His intervention in the planning stage brought and led by mid-March to amendments of some

early friction with Haider,

significance in the detailed directives for the invasion.

7

Already by the beginning of February, Hitler had been made aware of

doubts -

army

at

any rate a

mood

less

than enthusiastic -

leaders about the prospects of success in the

Thomas had presented

to the

among some

of the

coming campaign. General

Army High Command

a devastating overview

8 of deficiencies in supplies. Haider had noted in his diary on 28 January the

gist

of his discussion with Brauchitsch early that afternoon about 'Barba-

rossa':

'The "purpose"

('Sinn') is

not clear.

We

do not

hit the

English that

DESIGNING

WAR OF ANNIHILATION'

A

way. Our economic potential will not be substantially improved. Risk the west

must not be underestimated.

after the loss of her colonies,

and Greece. worse.'

9

we

If

It is

and we get

are then tied

up

in

possible that Italy might collapse a

southern front

in Russia, a

in Spain, Italy,

bad situation

will be

made

Misgivings were voiced by the three army group commanders,

Field-Marshals von Leeb, von Bock, and von Rundstedt,

with Brauchitsch and Haider on 31 January.

10

when

they lunched

was

Brauchitsch, as usual,

reluctant to voice any concern to Hitler. Bock, however, tentatively did so

on

1

He

February.

German army 'would

thought the

they stood and fought'. But he doubted whether

them

to accept peace-terms. Hitler

was

it

defeat the Russians

would be possible to

dismissive.

The

if

force

loss of Leningrad,

Moscow, and the Ukraine would compel the Russians to give up the fight. If not, the Germans would press on beyond Moscow to Ekaterinburg. War production, Hitler went on, was equal to any demands. There was an abundance of material. The economy was thriving. The armed forces had more manpower than was available at the start of the war. Bock did not feel it even worth suggesting that it was still possible to back away from the conflict.

'I

will fight,' Hitler stated.

sweep over them Haider pulled

like a hailstorm.'

his

brought up supply

punches

difficulties,

be overcome, and played

days

The army

earlier.

at a

'I

am

convinced that our attack will

11

conference with Hitler on

3

February.

He

but pointed to methods by which they could

down

the risks that he

had been emphasizing only

leaders accepted Hitler's emphasis

on giving

priority

Leningrad and the Baltic coast over Moscow. But they work out in sufficient detail the consequences of such a strat12 egy. Hitler was informed of the numerical superiority of the Russian troops and tanks. But he thought little of their quality. Everything depended upon to the capture of

neglected to

rapid victories in the

first

days, and the securing of the Baltic and the

southern flank as far as Rostow.

Moscow,

as he

had repeatedly

stressed,

could wait. According to Below, Brauchitsch and Haider 'accepted Hitler's directives to

opposition'.

wage war

against Russia without a single

word

of objection or

13

In the days that followed the meeting, General

Thomas produced

further

bleak prognoses of the economic situation. Fuel for vehicles sufficed for two

months, aircraft

fuel

till

autumn, rubber production

Thomas asked

Keitel to pass

that the Fiihrer

would not permit himself

difficulties.

on

until the

his report to Hitler.

end of March.

Keitel told

to be influenced by

him

economic

Probably, the report never even reached Hitler. In any case,

Thomas was

trying through presentation of dire

economic

if

realities to

345

346

HITLER 1936-1945 deter Hitler, his

method was guaranteed

demonstrated that fields

war

Soviet

to other

He was

number

1

of aspects of the

OKH's

plan-

concerned that the army leadership was underestimating the

German

flanks

from the Pripet Marsh,

February for a detailed study to allow him to draw

in

his

own

mid-March, he contradicted the General Staff's conasserting - rightly, as things turned out - that the Pripet Marsh

conclusions.

^

In

was no hindrance would

oil-

Nazi leaders. 14

dangers from Soviet strikes at the

clusions,

further report

industry. Such a prognosis could only serve as encouragement

and

and called

A

gain 75 per cent of the materials feeding the

Hitler remained worried about a ning.

to backfire.

quick victories were attained, and the Caucasus

Germany could

acquired,

to Hitler

if

to

army movement. He

also thought the existing plan

German forces overstretched, and too dependent upon what

leave the

he regarded as the dubious strength of the Romanian, Hungarian, and

Slovak divisions - the they were Slavs - on

from

a

last of these

dismissed merely on the grounds that

the southern front.

He ordered, therefore, the alteration

two-pronged advance of Army Group South to

towards Kiev and

down

a single thrust

the Dnieper. Finally, he repeated his insistence that

the crucial objective had to be to secure Leningrad and the Baltic, not push

on

to

Moscow

which, at a meeting with his military leaders on 17 March,

he declared was 'completely immaterial' ('Moskau vollig gleichgultigP).

At

this conference, these alterations to the original operational

accepted by Brauchitsch and Haider without demur.

framework

for the invasion

was

17

16

plan were

With that, the military

in all its essentials finalized.

II

While the preparations for the great offensive were taking shape, however, Hitler

was preoccupied with

the dangerous situation that Mussolini's

ill-

conceived invasion of Greece the previous October had produced in the Balkans, and with remedying the consequence of Italian military incompet-

ence in North Africa.

He

did everything possible to avoid discomfiting Mussolini

Italian dictator,

embarrassed by the military setbacks

Africa (where greatly

outnumbered

British troops

in

when

the

Albania and North

had early

in the

month

captured the Italian stronghold of Bardia), arrived at the small station of Puch, near Salzburg, on 19 January for two days of talks at the Berghof. Hitler and his military leaders were waiting

on the platform

in the

snow.

18

DESIGNING The

WAR OF ANNIHILATION

A

began without delay. There was no hint of

talks

mention of

a

Italian

on the Balkans, and on

military reversals. Discussion focused mainly

347

a

renewed attempt, through personal persuasion by the Duce, to bring about

German

Spanish intervention in the war and agreement to a Gibraltar.

found

19

Reporting to Ciano on his private

and not too

a very anti-Russian Hitler, loyal to us,

he intends to do in the future against Great Britain'.

The

out.

difficulty of

failure, after pistol'.

On

assault

on

Mussolini said 'he

talks,

A

definite

on what

landing was ruled

such an operation contained an unacceptable risk of

which Britain 'would know that Germany holds only an empty

20

the afternoon of 20 January, Hitler spoke for about

presence of military experts on the approaching

two hours

German

in the

intervention in

Greece. 'He dealt with the question primarily from a technical point of

Ciano recorded,

view,'

admit that he does impressed.'

21

'relating

this

Though

it

to the general political situation.

I

must

with unusual mastery. Our military experts are

the 'very anti-Russian Hitler' that Mussolini

saw

pointed to the future dangers from the Soviet Union after Stalin's death,

when

the Jews, at present pushed out of the leadership, could take over

again, and

when Russian air-power could

destroy the

Romanian

oil-fields,

he gave not the slightest inkling that at that very time he was preparing to attack in the East. the

last-

22

As

usual, the Italians

would be kept

Mussolini returned from the talks 'elated'

always

after a

is

Had

did.

meeting with

Hitler'.

23

It

was

(as

until

Duce

left

'as

he

when he

he stayed two days longer his growing sense of inferiority towards

Axis partner would have been sharpened

disastrous

news

for his Fascist regime that

further by the

still

now Tobruk had

fallen to the

24

Popular contempt

in

Germany

for the Italian

growing disdain of the Nazi leaders for

the

dark

Ciano remarked)

as well the

his senior

British.

in the

minute.

war

effort

was matched by

their Fascist counterparts.

Zi

'Mussolini has lost a great deal of prestige,' remarked Goebbels towards the end of January 1941, seeing the Duce's position military debacle in

North

Africa.

criticisms of the Italians, Hitler

partner.

Whatever the doubts, and

had no option but

his

own

to stick with his Axis

during the calamitous month of January the fighting in Libya had

some 130,000

Italians captured

complete rout for the Italians Hitler

weakened through the

27

In all,

seen

26

was

in

by the

British.

North Africa had

briefing the general he

28

The

likelihood of a

to be faced.

had selected to stop the

By 6 February,

British

advance

348

HITLER 1936-I945 and hold Tripolitania for the Axis. 29 This was Erwin Rommel, who, with combination of half of 1941 at

bay

in

tactical brilliance

a

would throughout the second tables on the British and keep them

bluff,

and most of 1942 turn the

North

Africa.

hopes of a

Hitler's

and

vital strategic

North Africa - by

affecting the situation in

- notably

gain in the Mediterranean

the acquisition of Gibraltar

were, however, to be dashed again by the obstinacy of General Franco.

Already at the end of January, Hitler had been informed by Jodl that 'Operation Felix' - the planned assault on Gibraltar - would have to be shelved, since the earliest

it

now

could

take place

would be

in

mid- April.

The troops and weapons would by then be needed for 'Barbarossa', at that 30 time scheduled for a possible start only a month later. Hitler still hoped that Mussolini, at his meeting

on 12 February with Franco, might persuade

The day before the meeting, Hitler sent Franco a personal letter, exhorting him to join forces with the Axis powers and to recognize 'that in such difficult times not so much wise foresight as a 31 bold heart can rescue the nations'. Franco was unimpressed. He repeated Spanish demands on Morocco, as well as Gibraltar. And he put forward in addition, as a price for Spain's entering the war at some indeterminate date, such extortionate demands for grain supplies - saying the 100,000 tons already promised by the Germans were sufficient for only twenty days the Caudillo to enter the war.

that there

be

left

was no

possibility they

would be met. 32 Spain,

as before,

had

to

out of the equation.

Ill Hitler confirmed the 'dreadful conditions' in Spain to

him

to

mark

which Goebbels reported

the day after his big speech in the Sportpalast

on 30 January 1941,

Propaganda Minister found Hitler

in high spirits, confident that

33

The Germany

the eighth anniversary of his appointment as Chancellor.

held the strategic initiative, convinced of victory, revitalized as always by the wild enthusiasm

-

like a

drug to him - of the vast crowd of raucous

admirers packed into the Sportpalast. times,'

added. 'He

is

seldom seen him like this

He

the Soviet

me

a true Leader, an inexhaustible giver of strength.'

In his speech, Hitler Britain.

'I've

Goebbels remarked. 34 'The Fiihrer always impresses

in recent

afresh,'

he

3^

had concentrated almost exclusively on attacking

did not devote a single syllable to Russia; nor did he mention

Union again

in

any public speech before 22 June 1941, the day of

DESIGNING the invasion.

36

When

A

WAR OF ANNIHILATION

speaking to Goebbels the following day, however,

Hitler did refer to a report

on Russia compiled on the

basis of seven years'

KPD member commented Goebbels (presumably echoing

experience of the country by the son of the former prominent Ernst

Torgler.

'Horrible!'

Hitler's sentiments in recording the gist of their conversation). 'Everything

confirmed what

we

suspected, believed, and also said.' Goebbels reinforced

such impressions on the basis of a report on the situation in

Moscow which

he himself had received from a leading figure in his Ministry.

One the

other aspect of Hitler's speech on 30 January

was noteworthy. For

time since the beginning of the war, he reiterated his threat

first

the rest of the the

37

'that, if

world should be plunged into a general war through Jewry,

whole of Jewry

laugh today about

will

have played out

38

Hitler

had made

'They can

role in Europe!'

he added, menacingly,

it,'

my prophecies. The coming months and seen things correctly.'

its

'just like

still

they used to laugh at

years will prove that here, too, I've this threat, in similar tones, in his

Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939. In repeating

it

now, he claimed

to

recall making his 'prophecy' in his speech to the Reichstag at the outbreak

of war. But, in fact, he had not mentioned the Jews in his Reichstag speech

on

1

September, the day of the invasion of Poland.

He would make the same

mistake in dating on several other occasions in the following two years.

was an

indication, subconscious or

directly associated the

Why

war with

more probably

He had

it.

It

intentional, that he

the destruction of the Jews.

was no obvious

did he repeat the threat at this juncture? There

contextual need for

39

referred earlier in the speech to 'a certain

Jewish-international capitalist clique', but otherwise had not played the antisemitic tune.

40

Probably the repeated 'prophecy' was intended, as was

the original in January 1939, as a threat to a Jewish-run 'plutocracy' in Britain

what

Hitler always regarded as

and the USA.

It

was

a repeat of the

blackmail ploy that he held the Jews in his power as hostages.

But within the few weeks immediately prior to the fate of the

Jews on

his

the task of developing a to deport the

his speech, Hitler

mind, commissioning Heydrich

had had

at this point

with

new plan, replacing the defunct Madagascar scheme,

Jews from the German sphere of domination.

41

His repeated

'prophecy' was presumably a veiled hint at such an intention, vague though

any plan

still

was

at this stage.

Perhaps Hitler had harboured his 'prophecy' since he

him of

had originally made

it.

it.

But, most probably,

in the recesses of his

mind

Perhaps one of his underlings had reminded it

was

the inclusion of the extract

from

his

speech in the propaganda film Der ewige Jude, which had gone on public

349

350

HITLER 1936-1945 release in

comment.

November

1940, that

had

stirred Hitler's

memory

of his earlier

42

Whatever had done so, the repeat of the 'prophecy' at this point was ominous. Though he was uncertain precisely how the war would bring about the destruction of European Jewry, he was sure that this would be the outcome.

And

was only

this

was

war

all

to destroy the

shape

in Hitler's

months before the war against

a matter of

the arch-enemy of 'Jewish-Bolshevism'

Jews once and for

to be launched.

was beginning

The

idea of the

to take concrete

mind.

According to the account - post-war recollections, resting partly on earlier, lost notes in diary

form - of his army adjutant Gerhard Engel, Hitler

discussed the 'Jewish Question' soon after his speech, on 2 February, with a group of his intimates.

right-hand

43

Keitel,

Bormann, Ley, Speer, and Ribbentrop's

man and liaison officer Walther Hewel were present. Ley brought

up the topic of the Jews. This was the

on

his thoughts.

He

trigger for Hitler to

expound

at length

envisaged the war accelerating a solution. But

created additional difficulties. Originally,

break the Jewish power

at

most

in

it

had

Germany'.

it

also

lain within his reach 'to

He had

thought at one time,

he said, with the assistance of the British of deporting the half a million

German Jews

to Palestine or Egypt. But that idea

diplomatic objections.

had been blocked by

Now it had to be the aim 'to exclude Jewish influence

power of the Axis'. In some countries, like Poland and Slovakia, the Germans themselves could bring that about. In France, it had become more complicated following the armistice, and was especially important there. He spoke of approaching France and demanding the island in the entire area of

of

to accommodate Jewish Bormann - aware, no doubt,

Madagascar

incredulous

resettlement. that the

When

an evidently

Madagascar Plan had by

now been long since shelved by the Foreign Ministry and, more importantly, by the Reich Security Head Office - asked how this could be done during the war, Hitler replied vaguely that he

would

like to

make

'Strength through Joy' fleet available for the task, but feared

its

the

whole

exposure to

enemy submarines. Then, in somewhat contradictory fashion, he added: 44 'He was now thinking about something else, not exactly more friendly.' This cryptic comment (assuming that Engels's account representation of what Hitler had said) was,

it

is

an accurate

can reasonably be speculated,

a hint that the defeat of the Soviet Union, anticipated to take only a

few

months, would open up the prospect of wholesale deportation of the Jews to the

newly conquered lands in the east - and forced labour under barbarous

conditions in the Pripet marshlands (stretching towards White Russia in

what were formerly eastern parts of Poland) and

in the frozen, arctic

wastes

DESIGNING

north of the Soviet Union. Such ideas were being given their

in the

airing

WAR OF ANNIHILATION

A

around

this

first

43

They would The thinking was now

time by Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann.

not have hesitated in putting their ideas to Hitler.

moving way beyond what had been contemplated under the Madagascar Plan,

inhumane though

now

as that

that itself

had been.

envisaged, the fate of the Jews

them would

In such

an inhospitable climate

would be

sealed.

Within 46

a

few

The

idea

of a comprehensive territorial solution to the 'Jewish problem' had by

now

years most of

become

effectively

worked

to death.

synonymous with genocide.

had been under continued pressure from Nazi leaders

Hitler

the

starve, freeze, or be

Jews from

Government seen persistent

was

own

their

territories, with,

who had

to relieve the chronic housing

to deport

as before, the General

favoured 'dumping ground'.

as the

Among

the

most

and former Hitler Youth Leader,

the Gauleiter of Vienna,

Baldur von Schirach,

now

been pressing hard since the previous summer

problems of Vienna by 'evacuating' the

city's

60,000 Jews to the General Government. Hitler had finally agreed to this in

December 1941.

4

1940.

The plans were

Fresh from his

visit to

fully

Vienna

the Anschluf^, Hitler discussed with

prepared by the beginning of February in

March, on the

third anniversary of

Hans Frank and Goebbels

removal of the Jews from Vienna. Goebbels, anxious to be

from

Berlin,

was placated with an indication

the

imminent

Jews would

rid of the

that the Reich capital

be next. 'Later, they must sometime get out of Europe altogether,' the

Propaganda Minister added. 48 Despite the problems which had arisen in 1940 about the transfer of Jews

and Poles into the General Government, Heydrich

from the Wehrmacht, which needed land for troop in

(partly

under pressure

exercises)

had approved

January 1941 a new plan to expel 771,000 Poles together with the 60,000

Jews from Vienna (bowing to the demands for deportation from Schirach, backed by Hitler) into Hans Frank's domain to make room for the settlement of ethnic

Germans.

ambitious

new

49

A

major driving-force behind the urgency of the

programme was the need to accommodate (and work-force) ethnic Germans who had been brought to

resettlement

incorporate in the

Poland from Lithuania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and elsewhere

Europe and since then miserably housed

nates were dismayed at having to cope with a massive ables'/

In the event,

new plan soon

however, inevitable

revealed

it

in eastern

in transit camps. Frank's subordi-

new influx of 'undesir-

logistical

complications of the

as a grandiose exercise in

inhumane lunacy. By

mid-March the programme had ground to a halt. Only around 25,000 people had been deported into the General Government. And only some 5,000,

351

352.

HITLER I936-I945 1

mainly elderly, Jews had been removed from Vienna/ There was

still

no

German conprogramme that programme, solving what seemed

prospect, within the confines of the territory currently under

of attaining either the comprehensive resettlement

trol,

Himmler was to be

striving for, or, within that

becoming

more and more

a

intractable problem:

From comments made by Eichmann's and, subsequently, by Eichmann himself,

associate,

removing the Jews.

Theodor Dannecker,

was around the turn of the year 1940-41 that Heydrich gained approval from Hitler - whether through the intercession of Goring or of Himmler is not clear - for his proposal for the 'final

evacuation' of

German Jews

January Dannecker noted:

'In

it

to the General

Government. 52

On

21

accordance with the will of the Fiihrer, the

Jewish question within the part of Europe ruled or controlled by Germany is

after the

war to be subjected to

a final solution (einer endgultigen Losung).'

To this end, Heydrich had obtained from Hitler, via Himmler or Goring, the 'commission to put forward a Plainly, at this stage, this

final solution project

was

still

{Endlosungsprojektes)\

i3

envisaged as a territorial solution - a

replacement for the aborted Madagascar Plan. Eichmann had in mind a figure of

Two

around

months

5.8 million later,

persons/

Eichmann

4

told representatives of the

Ministry that Heydrich 'had been commissioned with the

Propaganda

final

evacuation

of the Jews (endgultigen Judenevakuierung) and had put forward a proposal '

The proposal had, however, not been accepted 'because the General Government was not in a position at that time to absorb a single Jew or a Pole'.^ When, on 17 March, Hans Frank visited Berlin to speak privately with Hitler about the General Government - presumably raising the difficulties he was encountering with Heydrich's new deportation scheme - he was reassured, in what amounted to a reversal of previous policy, that the General Government would be the 6 first territory to be made free of Jews/ But only three days after this meeting, Eichmann was still talking of Heydrich presiding over the 'final

to that effect

some

eight to ten

weeks

earlier.

7

evacuation of the Jews' into the General Government.' Evidently that

was the

had

his sights set

territorial solution.

now opened up of

its

to

Frank was refusing to contemplate

him

this.

And

the prospect of his territory being the

certainly a further

to be rid

in the light

new territorial solution

was presumed) of the Soviet Union, it indicator that Hitler was now envisaging a

lands soon to be conquered

was almost

Hitler had

first

Jews. Perhaps this was said simply to placate Frank. But

of the ideas already taking shape for a comprehensive in the

(at least

Eichmann was holding to), Heydrich still at this point on the General Government as offering the basis for a

line that

(it

DESIGNING A WAR OF ANNIHILATION new option

war was

for a radical solution to the 'Jewish problem' once the

over by mass deportation to the East.

Heydrich and

Himmler were

his boss

own power-base on

opportunity to expand their the in

new

potential about to

certainly anxious to press

open up

in the East.

the

a grand scale by exploiting

Himmler had

no time

lost

acquainting himself with Hitler's thinking and, no doubt, taking the

chance to advance

his

own

On

suggestions.

the very evening of the signing

of the military directive for 'Operation Barbarossa'

made of

home

his

way to

the Reich Chancellery for a meeting with Hitler.

what was discussed

not raise the issue of

survives.

new

But

No record

hard to imagine that Himmler did

it is

tasks for the SS

which would be necessary

coming showdown with 'Jewish-Bolshevism'. 58 at this

on 18 December, he had

It

was

a matter of

point than obtaining Hitler's broad authority for plans

worked

in the

no more

still

to be

out.

Himmler and Heydrich were to be kept busy over the next weeks in plotting their new empire. Himmler informed a select group of SS leaders in January that there would have to be a reduction of some 30 million in 59 The Reich Security Head Office comthe Slav population in the East. 60 missioned the same month preparations for extensive police action. By Heydrich had already carried out preliminary negotiations

early February

with Brauchitsch about using units of the Security Police alongside the army for 'special tasks'.

No

major

difficulties

were envisaged. 61

IV What such

'special tasks'

might imply became increasingly clear to a wider

circle of those initiated into the

On

and March.

thinking for 'Barbarossa' during February

26 February General Georg Thomas, the Wehrmacht's

economics expert, learned from Goring that an early objective during the occupation of the Soviet

Bolshevik leaders'.

62

Union was 'quickly

A week

later,

on

3

draft of operational directions for 'Barbarossa' sent to

him made 63

He now summarized

These made plain that

armed

conflict;

ideologies

.

.

.

which had been routinely

this explicit: 'all Bolshevist leaders or

liquidated forthwith'. Jodl had altered the draft to Hitler.

to finish off (erledigen) the

March, Jodl's comments on the

it

The

'the

Hitler's directions for the 'final version'.

forthcoming campaign

will lead, too, to a socialist ideal

commissars must be

somewhat before showing it is

more than

showdown between two

can no longer be wiped out

just

an

different

in the

Russia

353

354

HITLER I936-I945 of today.

From

new states and principle. The Jewish-

the internal point of view the formation of

governments must inevitably be based on

this

Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the "oppressor" of the people up to now, must

be eliminated.' The task involved, the directions went on, was 'so that

it

cannot be entrusted to the army'.

make

double-spacing to allow Hitler to redrafted version

was

finally signed

'the Reichsfiihrer-SS has

64

Jodl had the draft retyped in further alterations.

by Keitel on 13 March,

it

mention of the liquidation of the 'Bolshevik-Jewish 'Bolshevik leaders and commissars'. so, the troops

When

the

specified that

been given by the Fiihrer certain special tasks

now no

within the operations zone of the army', though there was

Even

difficult

were to be

direct

intelligentsia' or the

65

directly instructed

about the need to deal

and Jews they encountered.

mercilessly with the political commissars

When

he met Goring on 26 March, to deal with a number of issues related to the activities of the police in the eastern

army ought

campaign, Heydrich was told that the

to have a three- to four-page set of directions 'about the danger

of the GPU-Organization, the political commissars, Jews

would know went on

to

etc.,

so that they

whom in practice they had to put up against the wall'. 66 Goring

emphasize to Heydrich that the powers of the Wehrmacht would

be limited in the east, and that

Himmler would be

left a

great deal of

independent authority. Heydrich laid before Goring his draft proposals for the 'solution of the Jewish Question',

which the Reich Marshal approved

with minor amendments. These evidently foresaw the

territorial solution,

which had been conceived around the turn of the year, and already been approved by Himmler and Hitler, of deportation of into the wastelands of the Soviet Union,

During the

all

the

where they would

European Jews perish.

67

months of 1941, then, the ideological objectives of the attack on the Soviet Union had come sharply into prominence, and had largely been clarified. Most active in pressing forward the initiative had first

three

been Reinhard Heydrich, alongside his nominal boss Himmler. the heads of the Four- Year Plan Organization, and the

High

68

Goring,

Command

of

Wehrmacht had also been deeply implicated. Hitler had authorized more than initiated. His precise role, as so often, is hidden in the shadows. But he had little need to move into the foreground. His radical views on 'Jewish-Bolshevism' were known to all. The different policy-objectives of the varying - and usually competing - power-groups in the regime's leader-

the

ship could be reconciled by accepting the

most radical proposals, from

Heydrich and Himmler, on the treatment of the arch-enemy This, in any case, complied with Hitler's

own

in the East.

ideological impulses.

He

set

DESIGNING

A

WAR OF ANNIHILATION

the tone once more, therefore, for the barbarism while others preoccupied

themselves with

its

mechanics. And, in the context of the imminent show-

down, the barbarism was now adopting forms and dimensions never

pre-

viously encountered, even in the experimental training-ground of occupied

Poland.

By mid-March, discussions between the Security Police and army ship about the treatment of political commissars were, as

we have

leader-

already

noted, well advanced. Here, too, in the fateful advance into the regime's

planned murderous policy

On

complicitous. Hitler:

ling

'The

in the Soviet

Union, the army leaders were

comments made

17 March, Haider noted

intelligentsia

put

in

that day by

by Stalin must be exterminated. The control-

machinery of the Russian Empire must be smashed. In Great Russia

force

must be used

in its

most brutal form.' 69 Hitler

said nothing here of any

wider policy of 'ethnic cleansing'. But the army leadership had two years earlier accepted the policy of annihilating the Polish ruling class.

depth of

prevalent anti-Bolshevism,

its

would have no

it

Given the

difficulty

accepting the need for the liquidation of the Bolshevik intelligentsia.

March,

a secret

army order

laid

down,

if

in

70

in

By 26

bland terms, the basis of the

agreement with the Security Police authorizing 'executive measures affecting the civilian population'. the army, Field-Marshal

71

The following

day, the Commander-in-Chief of

von Brauchitsch, announced

the eastern army: 'The troops

must be

to his

commanders of

clear that the struggle will be carried

out from race to race {von Rasse zu Rasse)^ and proceed with necessary severity.'

72

The army was, strategic

therefore, already in

good measure supportive of the

aim and the ideological objective of

ruthlessly uprooting

and

destroying the 'Jewish-Bolshevik' base of the Soviet regime when, on 30

March,

in a

speech in the Reich Chancellery to over 200 senior officers

lasting almost his

two and

a half hours, Hitler stated with unmistakable clarity

views of the coming war with the Bolshevik arch-foe, and what he

expected of his army. This was not the time for talk of strategy and It

was

to outline to generals in

of the conflict that they were entering.

He

rehearsed once more his familiar

arguments. England's hopes had been placed

The Russian problem had

the

armed

in the

its

other tasks.

at her disposal. In Russia, the

forces

United States and Russia,

to be settled without delay. This

Germany's accomplishment of

would then be

tactics.

whom he still had little confidence the nature

and break up the

state. Hitler

was

the key to

Manpower and aim had

materiel

to be to crush

repeated his disparaging

comments about Russian armaments - numerically superior but

in quality

355

356

HITLER 1936— 1945 poor. His confidence was undimmed. lapse under the

The

had been achieved, no more than about

military tasks

would

Russians, he stated,

combined onslaught of German tanks and

col-

Once the divisions would

planes.

sixty

be needed in the east, releasing the rest for action elsewhere.

He went on

most

to the

He was

aims of the war.

striking part of his speech

two

-

the ideological

ideologies.

Crushing

denunciation of Bolshevism, identified with a social criminality.

Commu-

nism

is

forthright: 'Clash of

We

an enormous danger for our future.

comradeship between

must forget the concept of

A Communist is no

soldiers.

comrade before or

after

we do not grasp this, we shall still beat the enemy, but thirty years later we shall again have to fight the Communist foe. We do not wage war to preserve the enemy.' He went on

the battle. This

is

a

war of

annihilation.

If

commissars and of the

to stipulate the 'extermination of the Bolshevist

Communist

intelligentsia'.

'We must

gration,' he continued. 'This

troop commanders must in this fight'

.

.

.

know

individual the leaders

GPU

men,' he declared, 'are criminals

The war would be very different to that in harshness today means lenience in the future.'

overcome any personal

to

The

They must be

as such.'

the West. 'In the East,

Commanders had

poison of disinte-

for military courts.

the issues at stake.

'Commissars and

and must be dealt with

fight against the

no job

is

scruples.

73

Brauchitsch claimed after the war that he had been surrounded by out-

raged generals it

when

Hitler

had

finished speaking.

would merely have prompted

the question

74

why

Had

their behalf) did not express their outrage to Hitler.

Warlimont,

who was

present, recalled 'that

this

However, General

none of those present availed

themselves of the opportunity even to mention the demands

during the morning'. after the

75

When

serving as a witness in a

end of the war, Warlimont, explaining the

declared that

villains

made by

trial

Hitler

sixteen years

silence of the generals,

Commissars (kriminelle Verbrecher)\ Others -

some had been persuaded by

were not soldiers but 'criminal

been the case,

they (or Brauchitsch on

Hitler that Soviet

- had, he claimed, followed the officers' traditional view Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht Hitler

himself included that as

'could do nothing unlawful'.

76

The day after Hitler's speech to the generals, 31 March 1941, the order was given to prepare, in accordance with the intended conduct of the coming campaign, as he had outlined functionaries (HoheitstrdgerY

whom,

is

it,

.

guidelines for the 'treatment of political

Exactly

unclear. Haider presumed,

came from

Keitel.

how

this

order was given, and by

when questioned

after the

war, that

it

DESIGNING

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

'When one has seen how, dozens of times, Hitler's most casual observation would bring the over-zealous loose

one can

all hell,

would worry

easily

Field

Marshal running to the telephone to

imagine

how

Keitel into believing that

it

a

random remark

was

his

duty on

let

of the dictator's this

occasion to

give factual expression to the will of the Fuhrer even before the beginning

of hostilities.

OKH

Then he or one of

question, they

would have telephoned

his subordinates

and asked how matters stood.

If

OKH had in fact been asked such a

would naturally have regarded

it

as a

prod

in the rear

and

7 would have got moving at once.' Whether there had been a direct command by Hitler, or whether - as Haider presumed - Keitel had once more been

'working towards the Fuhrer', the guidelines initiated at the end of March

way by

May into

78

found

their

down

in writing explicit orders for the liquidation of functionaries of the

Soviet system.

12

The reasoning

a formal edict.

was

given

For the

first

time, they laid

that 'political functionaries

and

leaders (commissars)' represented a danger since they 'had clearly proved

through their previous subversive and seditious work that they

European

culture, civilization, constitution,

to be eliminated.'

79

This formed part of a (following from the

set of orders for the

framework

for the

conduct of the war

war which

Hitler

speech of 30 March) that were given out by the High

Army and Wehrmacht is

reject all

and order. They are therefore

in

May

in the

had defined

Commands

and June. Their inspiration was

East

in his

of the

Hitler.

That

beyond question. But they were put into operative form by leading officers

(and their legal advisers),

The

all

avidly striving to implement his wishes.

draft of Hitler's decree of 13

first

80

May 1941, the so-called 'Barbarossa-

Decree', defining the application of military law in the arena of Operation

Wehrmacht High committed by enemy

Barbarossa, was formulated by the legal branch of the

Command. civilians

81

The order removed punishable

from the

acts

jurisdiction of military courts. Guerrilla fighters

be peremptorily shot. Collective reprisals against whole village

were ordered identified.

in cases

where individual perpetrators could not be rapidly

Actions by members of the

Wehrmacht

against civilians

not be automatically subject to disciplinary measures, even

coming under the heading of

The 'Commissar Order' this earlier order. Its

mand. 83 The

were to

communities

a crime.

itself,

'In the struggle against

normally

82

dated 6 June, followed on directly from

formulation was instigated by the

'Instructions

if

would

Army High Com-

on the Treatment of Political Commissars' began:

Bolshevism,

we must

not assume that the enemy's

conduct will be based on principles of humanity or of international law. In

357

358

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 and inhumane treatment of prisoners can

particular, hate-inspired, cruel,

who are the To show consideration to these elements during

be expected on the part of

all

real leaders of resistance ... this struggle, or to act in

grades of political commissars,

accordance with international rules of war,

wrong and endangers both our own conquered territory

.

.

.

Political

security

is

and the rapid pacification of

commissars have

initiated barbaric, Asiatic

methods of warfare. Consequently, they will be dealt with immediately and with

maximum

severity.

As

a matter of principle, they will be shot at once,

whether captured during operations or otherwise showing resistance.^ 4

The ready compliance

of leading officers with the guidelines established

by Hitler for the criminal conduct of the war It

in the East

was unsurprising.

had followed the gradual erosion of the traditional position of power of

the

armed

- especially

forces'

on the way had been the been liquidated,

in

the army's

Rohm

- leadership

since 1933. Milestones

1934 (when the SA's leaders had no small measure to placate the army) and, especially, affair of

The

the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis of 1938.

great victory in the

West

in

1940 had silenced the doubters, underlining the rapidly growing inferiority

complex of the armed of the

own

army

to a

forces' leadership

Leader whose

political

towards

Hitler.

programme had

for long served

its

ends had turned inexorably into subservience to a Leader whose

high-risk gambles

implicating the

Not

were courting disaster and whose ideological goals were

army

in outright criminality.

that this can be seen as the imposition of Hitler's will

army. In part, the army leadership's rapid compliance ideological imperatives into operative decrees its

The subordination

political reliability

was

and avoid losing ground

on a reluctant

in translating Hitler's

in order to

to the SS, as

demonstrate

had happened

during the Polish campaign. 83 But the grounds for the eager compliance

went further than Poland had been a

this.

vital

In the descent into barbarity the experience in

element. Eighteen months' involvement in the brutal

subjugation of the Poles

- even

if

the worst atrocities were perpetrated by

the SS, the sense of disgust at these

generals had been bold

enough

had been considerable, and a few them - had helped prepare

to protest about

the ground for the readiness to collaborate in the premeditated barbarism

of an altogether different order built into 'Operation Barbarossa'.

As the

full

barbarity of the

to officers in the

Commissar Order became more widely known

weeks immediately prior to the campaign, there were,

here too, honourable exceptions. Leading officers from

Army Group B

(to

become Army Group Centre), General Hans von Salmuth and LieutenantColonel Henning von Tresckow (later a driving-force in plans to kill Hitler),

DESIGNING for

example,

be

let it

known

commanders

international law

'If

86

should do

it first.'

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

confidentially that they

of persuading their divisional

commented:

A

is

As the remark

for

ways

Tresckow

to be broken, then the Russians, not we,

Commissar Order was

indicates, that the

breach of international law was plainly recognized.

a

would look

to ignore the order.

87

Field-Marshal Fedor

von Bock, Commander of Army Group Centre, rejected the shooting of

and

partisans

incompatible with army discipline, and

civilian suspects as

used this as a reason to ignore the implementation of the Commissar Order.

comments acknowledged,

But, as Warlimont's post-war

was

the officer corps believed Hitler 'criminals'

and should not be treated

on the western front had been

Commander

as 'soldiers' in the

treated. Colonel-General

Army,

of the 18th

on 25 April that peace

right that the Soviet

88

at least part of

Commissars were

way

that the

Georg von

enemy

Kiichler,

commanders

for instance, told his divisional

Europe could only be attained for any length of

in

Germany presiding over territory that secured its food-supply, other states. Without a showdown with the Soviet Union, this

time through

and that of

was unimaginable.

In terms scarcely different

from those of Hitler himself,

he went on: 'A deep chasm separates us ideologically and racially from Russia. Russia .

.

.

from the very extent of land

is

The aim has

to be, to annihilate the

Russian European state criminals. to be put

.

.

.

The

These are the people

on the spot before

testimony of the inhabitants

advance

will

faster.'

Panzer Group later still

4,

89

political

who

.

German

is

people.

a

.

people are .

.

They

are

German blood and we

Even more categorical was the operational order

Hoepner (who

for his part in the plot to kill Hitler)

for

three years

on 2

Commissar Order: 'The war

before the formulation of the

Union

GPU

and sentenced on the basis of the

This will save us

.

issued by Colonel-General Erich

would be executed

Soviet

commissars and

to dissolve the

tyrannize the population

a field court .

occupies an Asiatic state

it

European Russia,

May -

against the

fundamental sector of the struggle for existence of the It

is

the old struggle of the

Germanic people against

Slavdom, the defence of European culture against Moscovite-Asiatic inundation, the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. This struggle has to have as

its

aim the smashing of present-day Russia and must consequently be carried out with unprecedented severity. Every military action must in conception

and execution be led by the iron the enemy. In particular, there

will mercilessly

is

current Russian-Bolshevik system.'

to be

and

totally to annihilate

no sparing the upholders of the

90

The complicity of Kiichler, Hoepner, and numerous other way they had been brought up and educated,

built into the

generals

was

into the

way

359

360

HITLER 1936-1945 they thought. able,

and

is

The ideological overlap with the Nazi leadership was consider-

undeniable. There was support for the creation of an eastern

empire. Contempt for Slavs

was

rife

throughout the

was deeply

officer corps.

the outrightly Hitlerian variety

blended as the ideological yeast

- was also widespread. Together, they whose fermentation now easily converted

the generals into accessories to mass

campaign.

The hatred of Bolshevism Antisemitism - though seldom of

ingrained. 91

murder

in the

forthcoming eastern

92

V week of March,

In the last

three days before he defined the character

of 'Operation Barbarossa' to his generals, Hitler received

unwelcome news with consequences for paign. He was told of the military coup

some highly

the planning of the eastern camin

Belgrade that had toppled the

government of Prime Minister Cvetkovic and overthrown the regent, Prince Paul, in favour of his

two days

nephew, the seventeen-year-old King Peter

II.

Only

ceremony on the morning of 25 March

earlier, in a lavish

in

Hitler's presence in the palatial surrounds of SchloE Belvedere in Vienna,

Cvetkovic had signed Yugoslavia's adherence to the - following much pressure - committing his country

Tripartite Pact, finally to the side of the Axis.

Hitler regarded this as 'of extreme importance in connection with the future

German

military operations in Greece'.

been risky, he told Ciano,

if

93

Such an operation would have

Yugoslavia's stance had been questionable,

with the lengthy communications line only some twenty kilometres from the Yugoslav border inside Bulgarian territory.

94

He was much

relieved,

therefore, although, he noted, 'internal relations in Yugoslavia could despite

everything develop in more complicated fashion'.

9i

Whatever

his fore-

bodings, Keitel found him a few hours after the signing visibly relieved,

'happy that no more unpleasant surprises were to be expected Balkans'.

96

It

fabric of the

took

less

than forty-eight hours to shatter

this

in the

optimism. The

Balkan strategy, carefully knitted together over several months,

had been torn apart. This strategy had aimed

at

binding the Balkan states, already closely

interlinked economically with the Reich, ever

more

tightly to

Germany.

Keeping the area out of the war would have enabled Germany to gain

maximum economic initial

thrust

was

benefit to serve

its

anti-British, but since

Molotov's

visit to Berlin

97

The German

military interests elsewhere.

DESIGNING

A

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

'

had developed an increasingly anti-Soviet tendency. 98

policy in the Balkans

Mussolini's reckless invasion of Greece the previous October had then

brought a major revision of objectives. The threat posed by British military

The

intervention in Greece could not be overlooked.

Soviet

Union could

not be attacked as long as danger from the south was so self-evident. By 12

November

had issued Directive No.

Hitler

ordering the army to

18,

make

preparations to occupy from Bulgaria the Greek mainland north of the

Aegean should

it

become

necessary, to enable the Luftwaffe to attack any

British air-bases threatening the

nor navy leadership were of the

Romanian oil-fields." Neither the Luftwaffe

satisfied

with

this,

and pressed

for the occupation

whole of Greece and the Peloponnese. By the end of November,

Wehrmacht operational staff agreed. 100 Hitler's Directive No.zo of 13 December 1940 for 'Operation Marita' still spoke of the occupation of the the

Aegean north

coast, but

now held out the possibility of occupying the whole

have most of the troops engaged available as possible.

With the

'for

101

The intention was to new deployment' as quickly

of the Greek mainland, 'should this be necessary'.

102

directive for 'Barbarossa' following a

obvious what 'new deployment' meant. The timing was told

Ciano

in

November

before the spring.

it

was

tight. Hitler

had

few days

later,

Germany could not intervene in the Balkans 'Barbarossa' was scheduled to begin in May. When

103

that

unusually bad weather delayed the complex preparations for 'Marita', the

And once Hitler finally decided in advice, as we have seen - that the

timing problems became more acute.

March - following

earlier military

operation had to drive the British from the entire Greek mainland and

occupy

it,

the

campaign had

originally anticipated.

104

It

to be both longer

was

this

the strongly expressed views of the size of the force initially

In the intervening

earmarked

and more extensive than

which caused

Hitler, in opposition to

Army High Command,

to reduce the

for the southern flank in 'Barbarossa'.

months, strenuous

efforts

105

had been made on the

diplomatic front to secure the allegiance of the Balkan states. Hungary,

Romania, and Slovakia had joined the Tripartite Pact

in

November

1940.

106

Bulgaria, actively courted by Hitler since the previous autumn, finally

committed

itself to

the hardest to

fit

in:

vital to the success

in

the Axis

on

1

March. 107 The

Yugoslavia.

Its

jigsaw was

made

it

of an attack on Greece. Here, too, therefore, beginning

November, every attempt was made

to bring about a formal commitment The promise of the Aegean port of Salonika offered The threat of German occupation - the stick, as always,

to the Tripartite Pact.

some temptation. 108

last piece in the

geographical position alone

361

362

HITLER 1936— 1945 alongside the carrot

was

among

plain that,

would not be

- provided

for further concentration of minds. But

it

the people of Yugoslavia, allegiance to the Axis

a popular step. Hitler

and Ribbentrop put Prince Paul under

heavy pressure when he visited Berlin on 4 March. Despite the fear of

which the Regent emphasized, Prince Paul's

internal unrest,

way

for the eventual signing of the Tripartite Pact

visit

paved the

on 25 March. Hitler was

prepared to accept the terms which the Yugoslav government stipulated: a guarantee of the country's territorial integrity; no through-passage for

German

troops;

no military support

for the invasion of Greece;

no future

requests for military support; and backing for the claim to Salonika.

109

But

within hours of Prime Minister Cvetkovic and Foreign Minister Cincar-

Markovic signing the Pact

Vienna, high-ranking Serbian

in

had long resented Croat influence

was given

Hitler

He summoned

the

Keitel

who

officers,

government, staged their coup. 110

27th. He was outraged. He would never accept this, from Belgrade. He had been betrayed in

news on the morning of the

and Jodl

straight

he shouted, waving the telegram the

in the

away.

most disgraceful fashion and would smash Yugoslavia whatever the new

government promised. 111 'The Fiihrer does not in these matters,'

let

himself be messed around

noted Goebbels a day or two

later.

112

Hitler

had also

immediately sent for the heads of the Luftwaffe and army - Goring and Brauchitsch - together with Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. As usual putting a favourable

complexion on unwelcome events, he

good fortune that the coup had taken place when 'Barbarossa' had already begun. to settle the Balkan issue. also been peremptorily

how

114

113

As

it

now emphasized

had done, and not

was, there was

But there was

summoned from

it

now

still

just

about time

great urgency. Haider had

Zossen. Hitler asked him forthwith

long he needed to prepare an attack on Yugoslavia. Haider provided

on the spot the rudiments of an invasion-plan, which he had devised car

the

after

on the way from Zossen.

in the

llj

By one

o'clock, Hitler was addressing a sizeable gathering of officers from army and Luftwaffe. 116 'Fiihrer is determined,' ran the report of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, to make all preparations to smash Yugo-

the

'.

slavia militarily

and

.

.

as a state-form.'

Speed was of the essence.

It

was

important to carry out the attack 'with merciless harshness' in a 'lightning operation'. This

would have the

effect of deterring the

Turks and offering

advantages for the subsequent campaign against Greece. The Croats would

back Germany and be rewarded with garians,

and Bulgarians would have

in return for their

support.

their

autonomy. The

Italians,

territorial gains at Yugoslavia's

The beginning of 'Operation

Hun-

expense

Barbarossa', Hitler

DESIGNING

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

added, would have to be postponed for up to four weeks. discussion.

118

He

117

There was no

ordered preparations to begin immediately. The army and

Luftwaffe were to indicate their intended tactics by the evening. Jodl summarized Hitler's objectives in the military directive for the attack that

119 went out the same day. The plans

for the invasion of Greece

and the

build-up to 'Barbarossa' were fully revised at breakneck speed to allow for the preliminary assault

ment of the work of

on Yugoslavia. Hitler gave no his

General

Staff.

120

sign of acknowledge-

The operation was 121

scheduled to begin in the early hours of 6 April.

'But that

is

eventually

now

only a

small beginning,' noted Goebbels. 'The problem of Yugoslavia will not take

up too much time

The Yugoslav

.

.

The

.

crisis

ese Foreign Minister,

big operation then

had caused

Hitler's

Yosuke Matsuoka,

necessitated Ribbentrop being called his

comes

against R.'

to be put back a few hours.

away from

was made

to impress the important guest.

crowds had been organized -

had been handed out

this

123

Matsuoka's

As usual on

time waving the thousands.

in their

men around

invariably dwarfed by lanky SS

visit to

and Ribbentrop — was 12j

delay.

Far East.

on the

Japanese paper

little

loss of

flags

The diminutive Matsuoka, him, occasionally acknowl124

His hope — encouraged by Raeder

visit.

to persuade the Japanese to attack Singapore without

With 'Barbarossa' imminent,

The

effort

state visits, cheering

edged the crowd's applause with a wave of his top-hat. Hitler placed great store

also

It

the preliminary talks with

was accompanied by enormous pomp and circumstance. Every

Berlin

122

meeting with the hawkish Japan-

Japanese counterpart to attend Hitler's briefing.

that

later:

this

would

tie

up the

British in the

Singapore would be a catastrophic blow for the

undefeated Britain. This in turn,

keep America out of the war.

126

it

was thought

And any

in Berlin,

would

still

serve to

possible rapprochement between

Japan and the USA, worrying signs of which were mounting, would be ended in the

at

one

fell

swoop.

127

Hitler sought

to divulge anything of 'Barbarossa' earlier that

German

relations

and strongly hinted

Union

Hitler outlined for

Axis powers. it

- though

On

was only

all

at

some

point.

Matsuoka

fronts they

a question of

fact,

he was not prepared

in his talks

morning Ribbentrop had indicated

attack the Soviet

and

no military assistance from Japan

forthcoming war against the Soviet Union. In

with Matsuoka

a deterioration in Soviet-

at the possibility that Hitler

might

128

the military successes and position of the

were

in

command.

Britain

had

whether she would recognize

two hopes, he went on, again singing the old

refrain,

and the Soviet Union. The former would play no

lost the

war,

this. Britain's

were American aid

significant part before

363

364

HITLER 1936— 1945 1942.

And Germany had

which he would not need be - though he added that

available 160 to 180 divisions

Union

hesitate to use against the Soviet

if

he did not believe the danger would materialize. Japan, he implied, need

have no fear of attack from the Soviet Union

German

against Singapore: 150

divisions

-

number - were standing on the border with be more favourable, therefore, for the Japanese to actual

had deployed

Hitler

moving more than doubled the

in the event of her

Hitler

Russia. act.

his full rhetorical repertoire.

disappointed at Matsuoka's reply.

129

No time could

130

But he was sorely

An attack on Singapore was, the Japanese

Foreign Minister declared, merely a matter of time, and in his opinion could

not come soon enough. But he did not rule Japan, and his views had not so

weighty opposition. 'At the present moment,' he stated,

far prevailed against

under these circumstances enter on behalf of

'he could not

Empire into any commitment Hitler as

was going to

to act.'

his

Japanese

131

get nothing out of

Matsuoka,

whom he later described

'combining the hypocrisy of an American Bible missionary with the

cunning of a Japanese

Asiatic'.

132

It

was

clear: Hitler

had

to reckon without

any Japanese military intervention for the foreseeable future. to see this as a vital step in the global context.

He

As Ciano noted,

a

continued

few weeks

later, 'Hitler still

considers the Japanese card as extremely important in

order, in the

place, to threaten

pletely

first

any American

action.'

in early April to report

to give

on

his

133

and eventually counterbalance com-

When Matsuoka

him every encouragement. He acceded

assistance in submarine construction.

Should Japan

returned briefly to Berlin

meeting with Mussolini, Hitler was prepared

'get into' conflict

He

then

to the request for technical

made an

unsolicited offer.

with the United States, Germany would

immediately 'draw the consequences'. America would seek to pick off her enemies one by one. 'Therefore Germany would,' Hitler said, 'intervene

immediately three Pact

in case of a conflict

powers was

their

Japan-America, for the strength of the

common

letting themselves be defeated singly.'

Germany

into

war

action. Their

134

It

was

weakness would be

the thinking that

would

in

take

against the United States later in the year following

on Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile, the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact which Matsuoka negotiated with Stalin on his way back through Moscow - ensuring that Japan would not be dragged into a conflict

the Japanese attack

between Germany and the Soviet Union, and securing her northern flank the event of expansion in to Hitler.

south-east Asia - came

in

as an unpleasant surprise

135

While Matsuoka was

in Berlin,

preparations for 'Marita' were already

DESIGNING furiously taking shape. Within

Marita' was

now

little

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

over a week they were ready. 'Operation

begin at 5.20a.m. on Sunday morning, 6 April.

set to

tension in the Propaganda Ministry and other agencies of the regime

Goebbels had already devised, with Hitler's approval, the radio

feverish.

fanfares for the Balkan campaign, taken

from the opening of 'Prinz Eugen'. 136

At ia.m., feeling the tension himself and about to snatch a few hours'

summoned

he was the

The was

to the Fuhrer. Hitler outlined the attack.

campaign could take two months. Goebbels thought

to the Friendship Treaty

only the day before. precautions.

If

137

less.

sleep,

He reckoned

Hitler referred

which the Soviet Union had signed with Yugoslavia

He had no

He had

fear of Russia.

taken sufficient

Russia wanted to attack, then the sooner the better.

Germany were not

to act

If

now, the whole of the Balkans and Turkey would

be inflamed. That had to be prevented.

The war

against the Serbs

would be

carried out 'without mercy'.

The time seemed

to drag.

Goebbels drank tea with Hitler and, as a

diversion, they talked about matters other than the war. Hitler turned to

one of

his favourite topics:

making Linz

into a cultural capital greater than

Vienna. Goebbels said he would help as far as possible, in the

by setting up film studios there.

138

came. The attack had started. Hitler

first

instance

Another hour passed. Then 5.20a.m. felt

he could

now go

to bed.

139

Shortly afterwards, Goebbels read out on the radio the proclamation Hitler

had

dictated.

140

By then, hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers were turning

Belgrade into a heap of smoking ruins. Hitler justified the action to the

German people

as retaliation against a 'Serbian criminal clique' in Belgrade

which, in the pay of the British Secret Service, was attempting, as in 1914,

The German troops would end

their action

once the 'Belgrade conspirators' had been overthrown and the

last British

to spread the

war

in the Balkans.

soldiers

had been forced out of the region. 141 What could, of course, not be

revealed

was that the invasion of Yugoslavia would,

respect, be a trial-run for 'Barbarossa'. Hitler

in at least

one important

had spoken privately about

campaign being 'merciless {ohne Gnade)\ 142 On 2 April, Chief of Staff General Haider - presumably acceding to a request from Heydrich - added

the

two new target-groups alongside 'Emigrants, Saboteurs, dealt with by the Security Police nists

and

SD

in the

Terrorists' to be

Balkan campaign:

Commu-

and Jews. 143

With the campaign

in its early stages, Hitler left Berlin

10 April, en route for his improvised in his Special

the Alps

on

field

on the evening of

headquarters. These were located

Train Amerika, stationed at the entrance to a tunnel beneath a single-track section of the line

from Vienna to Graz,

in a

365

366

HITLER 1936— 1945 wooded from

The Wehrmacht Operational Staff, apart were accommodated in a nearby inn. The

area near Monichkirchen.

Hitler's closest advisers,

tunnel

was

danger from the

to offer protection in the event of

day before he

left Berlin,

Hitler

had experienced the worst

Some

yet over the Reich capital.

144

air.

The

British air-raid

of the historic buildings on Unter den

Linden - including the State Opera House, the University, the State Library,

and the Crown Prince's Palace - were damaged. Hitler was furious with Goring at the failure of the Luftwaffe. He immediately commissioned Speer with the rebuilding of the Opera House.

145

Hitler remained in his secluded, heavily guarded field headquarters for a fortnight.

He was

visited there

the regent of Hungary, and

Yugoslavia.

146

by King Boris of Bulgaria, Admiral Horthy,

Count Ciano - vultures gathering at the corpse of

His fifty-second birthday on 20 April was bizarrely celebrated

with a concert in front of the Special Train, after Goring had eulogized the Fuhrer's genius as a military

commander, and

of each of his armed forces' chiefs.

147

Hitler

the capitulation of both Yugoslavia and Greece.

After overcoming

some

German

enemy

forces.

148

early tenacious resistance, the dual

against Yugoslavia and Greece fact,

had shaken the hand

While there Hitler heard the news of

campaign

had made unexpectedly rapid progress. 149

operational planning had grossly overestimated the

Of the twenty-nine German

In

weak

divisions engaged in the Balkans,

only ten were in action for more than six days.

1M)

On

10 April

Agram was

reached, and an independent Croatian State proclaimed, resting on the

slaughterous anti-Serb Ustasha reached.

On

Movement.

17 April the Yugoslav

Two

days later Belgrade was

army surrendered unconditionally.

Around 344,000 men entered German captivity. Losses on the victors' were a mere 151 dead with 392 wounded and fifteen missing. 151 In contrast to the punitive attack

on Yugoslavia,

conquest of Greece was purely strategic.

and regretted having to

Hitler's interest in the

He forbade the bombing of Athens,

fight against the Greeks. If the British

intervened there (sending troops in early against Mussolini's forces), he

March

to assist the

would never have had

of the Italians, he told Goebbels.

1^

2

side

had not

Greek struggle

to hasten to the help

Meanwhile, the German 12th Army had

rapidly advanced over Yugoslav territory

on Salonika, which

fell

on 9

April.

The bulk of the Greek forces capitulated on 21 April. A brief diplomatic farce followed. The blow to Mussolini's prestige demanded that the surrender to the

Germans, which had

surrender to the Italians. to comply.

in fact already

To

The agreement

taken place, be accompanied by a

avoid alienating Mussolini, Hitler was forced

signed by General List

was disowned. Jodl was

DESIGNING new

sent to Salonika with a it.

This was

finally signed,

A

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

'

armistice. This time the Italians

amid Greek

protests,

on 23

April.

153

were party to Greeks taken

numbered 218,000, British 12,000, against 100 dead and 3,500 wounded or missing on the German side. In a minor 'Dunkirk', the British managed to evacuate 50,000 men - around four-fifths of their Expeditionary

prisoner

Force, which had to leave behind or destroy

whole campaign had been completed

A

in

heavy equipment.

its

under a month.

154

The

155

follow-up operation to take Crete by landing parachutists was, while

he was

in

Monichkirchen, somewhat unenthusiastically conceded by Hitler

under pressure from Goring, himself being pushed by the commander of the parachutist division, General Kurt Student.

had proved successful. But of 2,071 dead, 2,594

it

By the end of May,

'Operation Mercury' -

this

had been hazardous. And the German

wounded, and 1,888 missing from

around 22,000 men were

far higher than in the entire

the attack

He

following year on Malta.

a

too

losses

deployment of

Balkan campaign.

on Crete - convinced

paratroop landings had had their day. in the assault the

156

Hitler that

mass

did not contemplate using them 157

Potentially, the occupation of

Crete offered the prospect of intensified assault on the British position in the

Middle

East.

But his eyes were

On

Naval High

now

turned only

in

persuade Hitler of

tried to

in

Though people

158

Germany responded

in

time the

last

triumph from a lightning victory achieved in

this.

one direction: towards the East.

28 April, Hitler had arrived back in Berlin - for the

warlord returning cost.

Command

at

minimal

more muted fashion than

they had done to the remarkable victories in the West, the Balkan campaign

appeared to prove once again that their Leader was a military

was undiminished. But

genius. His popularity

strategist of

there were clouds

horizon. People in their vast majority wanted, as they had done peace: victorious peace, of course, but above

up when Hitler spoke of

'a

all,

all

on the along,

peace. Their ears pricked

hard year of struggle ahead of

us' and, in his

triumphant report to the Reichstag on the Balkan campaign on 4 May, of providing even better weapons for

German

soldiers 'next year'. Their

worries were magnified by disturbing rumours of a deterioration in relations

with the Soviet Union and of troops assembling on the eastern borders of the Reich.

What

159

the mass of the people had, of course,

had already put out the

invasion of the Soviet Union 18 December,

had

laid

no inkling of was that Hitler

directive to prepare 'Operation Barbarossa'

- almost

down

five

months

earlier.

That

-

the

directive, of

that preparations requiring longer than eight

weeks should be completed by 15 May. 160 But

it

had not stipulated

a date

367

368

HITLER 1936-1945 for the actual attack. (In one of the military conferences preceding the directive,

on

December, Hitler had envisaged the end of

5

to strike. But, so far in

upon weather conditions

as the time

was no more

for the vital initial advantage, this

161

than a date to aim

May

advance of a campaign which would be dependent

on 27 March, immediately following news of the Yugoslav coup, Hitler had spoken of a at.

In his speech to military leaders

)

delay of up to four weeks as a consequence of the need to take action in the

Balkans.

162

Back

in Berlin after his stay in

Monichkirchen, he

lost

no time -

assured by Haider of transport availability to take the troops to the East

arranging a

in

Towards

date for the start of 'Barbarossa' with Jodl: 22 June.

the end of the war, casting round for scapegoats, Hitler looked

back on the

fateful delay as decisive in the failure of the

Russian campaign.

we had attacked Russia already from 15 May onwards,' he claimed, we would have been in a position to conclude the eastern campaign

'If '.

new

-

163

.

.

before the onset of winter.' as exaggerating the inroads

164

This was simplistic in the extreme - as well

made by

the Balkan

campaign on the timing of

16i

'Barbarossa'. Weather conditions in an unusually wet spring in central Europe would almost certainly have ruled out a major attack before June -

perhaps even mid-June. divisions engaged

166

Moreover, the major wear and tear on the German

on the Balkan campaign came

inclusion of Yugoslavia than

many months

in

less from the belated from the invasion of Greece - planned over

conjunction with the planning for 'Barbarossa'.

did disadvantage the opening of 'Barbarossa'

ment

at

was

167

What

the need for the redeploy-

breakneck speed of divisions that had pushed on as far as southern

Greece and now, without recovery time, had rapidly to be transported to their eastern positions.

and pot-holed roads

168

In addition, the

in the

Balkan

hills

damage caused

to tanks by rutted

required a huge effort to equip them

again for the eastern campaign, and probably contributed to the high rate of mechanical failure during the invasion of Russia. serious effect of the Balkan

campaign on planning

169

Probably the most

for 'Barbarossa'

was

the

German forces on the southern flank, to the south of the Pripet But we have already seen that Hitler took the decision to that

reduction of

Marshes.

170

on 17 March, before the coup in Yugoslavia. The weaknesses of the plan to invade the Soviet Union could not be

effect

at the

for

door of the

what

Hitler

'Barbarossa'

Italians, for their failure in Greece, or the

saw

as their treachery.

was located squarely

in the

The

calamity, as

nature of

it

laid

Yugoslavs,

emerged, of

German war aims and

ambitions. These were by no means solely a product of Hitler's ideological obsessiveness, megalomania, and indomitable willpower. Certainly, he had

DESIGNING

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

provided the driving-force. But he had met no resistance to speak of higher echelons of the regime.

him

in the turn to the East.

power was

who had

crass,

lost

it

The army,

in particular,

had

fully

in the

supported

And if Hitler's underestimation of Soviet military

was an underestimation shared with his military leaders, their confidence that the war in the Soviet Union

none of

would be over long before winter.

VI Meanwhile, Hitler was once more forced by events outside

his control, this

time close to home, to divert his attention from 'Barbarossa'.

When

he stepped

down from

Reichstag deputies on 4

the rostrum at the end of his speech to

May, he took

his place, as usual, next to the

Deputy

Leader of the Party, his most slavishly subservient follower, Rudolf HeE.

Only

a

few days

later,

while Hitler was on the Obersalzberg, the astonishing

news came through that Augsburg, flown off on

'It's

to be

Then came that

the

HeE had

hoped

his

his

news struck the Berghof dead.

Deputy had taken

own

like a

a Messerschmitt

no

from

en route for Britain, and disappeared. The

bombshell.

172

The

first

wish was that he was

he's crashed into the sea,' Hitler

was heard

to say.

173

announcement from London - by then not unexpected -

landed in Scotland and been taken captive. With the Russian

campaign looming, Hitler was important

171

still:

now

He£ had provided

faced with a domestic

the British with a gift for

intelligence purposes. In fact, the decision

crisis.

More

propaganda or

was soon taken

in the British

cabinet to ignore the obvious propaganda opportunity in order to put

pressure on Stalin at a critical juncture.

On the afternoon of Saturday,

174

May, HeE had said goodbye to his wife, Use, and young son, Wolf Riidiger, saying he would be back by Monday evening. From Munich he had travelled in his Mercedes to the Messerschmitt works

in

10

Augsburg. There, he changed into a fur-lined flying

Luftwaffe captain's jacket. (His alias on his mission was to be

suit

and

Hauptmann

Alfred Horn.) Shortly before 6p.m. on a clear, sunlit evening, his Messer-

schmitt

no taxied on to the runway and took off. Shortly after np.m., after

navigating himself through Germany, across the North Sea, and over the

abandoning

his plane

from Glasgow, and parachuted - something he had never

practised

Scottish Lowlands, Heft wriggled out of the cockpit,

not far

-

to the ground, injuring his leg as he left the plane.

Air defence had picked up the

flight

path, and observers had seen the

369

370

HITLER 1936— 1945 plane's occupant bale out before

it

exploded

farmhand, Donald McLean, was, however,

in flames.

on the

first

A

local Scottish

scene.

He

quickly

established that the parachutist, struggling to get out of his harness,

unarmed. Asked whether he was

British or

German, Heft

was

replied that he

name was Hauptmann Alfred Horn, and he had an important message to give to the Duke of Hamilton. Another local man,

was German;

his

the elderly William Craig,

went

had by

this

time arrived on the scene. While Craig

summon assistance, the limping Heft was escorted back to the where McLean lived with his wife and mother, and offered a cup of

off to

cottage

tea (which he declined in favour of water).

members

of the local

come down near

a parachutist

Within

few

a short time, a

Home Guard, already heading for the farm after seeing by, entered the cottage. Smelling of

whisky

and prodding their prisoner with an old First World War pistol, they bundled him into a car and drove him to Home Guard headquarters - a scout-hut in the

Home Guard officers, curious about the word spread, soon turned up. They were followed a little by Major Graham Donald, Assistant Group Officer of the Royal next village. Police and more

German captive later

as

Observer Corps,

maps before

seen the course of Heft's plane charted on his

had disappeared from

it

after midnight,

who had

trace.

an hour and a half or more

The

prisoner, by

after landing - tired

now -

becoming increasingly agitated about the prospects of fulfilling his impressed upon Donald that he had a

vital secret

well

and probably 'mission',

message for the Duke of

Hamilton. Donald undertook to contact the Duke. But he was not deceived by 'Hauptmann Horn'; he said he would

had Rudolf Heft

in his custody.

tell

the

Duke

The Duke had by

of Hamilton that he

then, in fact, already been

informed that a captured German pilot was demanding to speak to him,

though he had not been

until

true identity of the pilot.

presence, the that night to to

Donald's telephone

call

aware of the apparent

Even now, when told who urgently awaited

his

Duke showed remarkably little inclination to put himself out come and see the prisoner of such high rank who was claiming

have brought him a

The Duke,

a

vitally

important message.

wing-commander

in the

RAF,

175

did eventually arrive from his

German captive by mid-morning on n May. The was inconsequential, but convinced Hamilton that he was indeed face with Heft. By the evening he had flown south, summoned to

base to talk to the discussion face to

report to Churchill at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, a palatial eighteenth-

century residence in magnificent grounds, frequently used by the British

Prime Minister as a weekend headquarters. Churchill was dinner party.

A

film, the hilarious

in the

midst of a

The Marx Brothers Go West, had been

DESIGNING

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

arranged for the evening. Churchill was glad of the diversion from the

gloomy news coming in of the damage wrought by a heavy air-raid on London the previous night. 'Now, come and tell us this funny story of yours,' Churchill joked to Hamilton, as he entered the dining-room. Hamilton

suggested the story would be better told in private.

The other

guests,

apart from the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, withdrew.

Hamilton then described what had happened. But

a full debriefing

had

wait until after midnight. 'Hess or no Hess,' Churchill announced,

going to see the

Marx

Brothers.'

'I

to

am

176

By the following day, Monday 12 May, the professionals from the Foreign Office were involved.

was decided

It

to send Ivone Kirkpatrick,

from

1933 to 1938 First Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin and a strong

opponent of Appeasement, to interrogate HeE. Kirkpatrick and Hamilton left

to fly to Scotland in the early evening.

It

was

time they arrived at Buchanan Castle, near Loch prisoner.

after

midnight by the

Lomond,

to confront the

177

knew of Hefs"s disappearance was in the late morning of May, when Karl-Heinz Pintsch, one of the Deputy Fuhrer's adjutants, turned up at the Berghof. He was carrying an envelope containing a letter which HeE had given him shortly before taking off, entrusting him to deliver it personally to Hitler. With some difficulty, Pintsch managed to make plain to Hitler's adjutants that it was a matter of the utmost urgency, The

first

Sunday,

Hitler

n

and that he had to speak personally to the Help's letter, the colour drained

from

Fiihrer.

his face.

179

18

When

Hitler read

Albert Speer, busying

himself with architectural sketches at the time, suddenly heard an 'almost animal-like scream'. is

Bormann?!'

Then

Hitler bellowed,

'Bormann immediately! Where

180

In his letter,

He£ had

outlined his motives for flying to meet the

Hamilton, and aspects of

a plan for

peace between

be put before 'Barbarossa' was launched.

He

Duke

of

Germany and Britain to made three

claimed he had

previous attempts to reach Scotland, but had been forced to abort them

because of mechanical problems with the aircraft.

own

about, through his

which the

- was telephoned

Fiihrer himself, despite

in achieving. If the Fiihrer

he could have him declared insane.

Goring - residing

His aim was to bring

person, the realization of Hitler's long-standing

idea of friendship with Britain

had not succeeded

181

at the

were not

in

all efforts,

agreement, then

182

time in his castle at Veldenstein near Nuremberg

straight

away. Hitler was

in

no mood

for small-talk.

'Goring, get here immediately,' he barked into the telephone. 'Something

371

372.

HITLER 1936-1945 was

dreadful has happened.' Ribbentrop while,

also

summoned. 183

had ordered Pintsch, the hapless bearer of ill

tidings,

Hitler,

and

adjutant, Alfred Leitgen, arrested, and spent his time marching the hall in a rage. speculation.

185

184

The mood

Amid

Heft's defection.

up and down

Berghof was one of high tension and

was clear-sighted enough to act power-vacuum in the Party leadership arising

the turmoil, Hitler

quickly to rule out any possible

from

in the

mean-

Heft's other

That very day, he issued

a terse edict stipulating that

Deputy Leader would now be termed the Party

the former office of the

him personally. It would be led, as Comrade Martin Bormann. 186 It was reminiscent of the way Hitler had dealt with the Gregor Strasser crisis of 1932 by - at least nominally Chancellery, and be subordinated to

before, by Party

- taking the

own

reins into his

hands.

chief of the Party's central office

187

In practice,

making Bormann

would provide from now on

interventionist zeal by the Party, increasingly imposing

its

the

a level of

ideologically

driven activism on the regime's administration, on a scale which had never

been witnessed under Heft.

188

Accompanied by General Ernst Udet, Goring Hitler repeated the

whether

it

arrived during the evening.

hope that Heft had crashed. He asked Goring and Udet

was probable

that Heft

near Glasgow. They thought

it

would manage

to reach his flight-target

could be ruled out. In their view, Heft did

not have sufficient mastery of the technical equipment. Hitler disagreed. At that,

Ribbentrop was dispatched to

Rome

to prevent any potential

rift in

The news from London could break at any time. It was vital any presumption by Mussolini that Germany was attempting

the Axis.

obviate

arrange a separate peace with Britain. Hitler

was furious

had prepared lead

to to

189

banned from flying, He persuaded himself - taking his

to learn that Heft, despite being

his plans in

minute

from what Heft himself

detail.

in his letter

had suggested - that the Deputy

Fuhrer was indeed suffering from mental delusion, and insisted on making his 'madness' the centre-point of the extremely

awkward communique

which had to be put out to the German people. 190 Since there was

still

nothing from Britain, but some sort of official announcement from Berlin was thought to be unavoidable, it was suggested that the Deputy Fuhrer had probably crashed en route. There was still no word of Heft's whereabouts when the communique was broadcast at 8p.m. that evening. The

communique mentioned its

the letter which had been

left

behind, showing

'in

confusion unfortunately the traces of a mental derangement', giving

rise to fears that

he had been the 'victim of hallucinations'. 'Under these

circumstances,' the

communique ended,

it

had

to be

presumed that

'Party

DESIGNING Comrade

Heft had

accident'.

somewhere on

his

WAR OF ANNIHILATION

A

journey crashed, that

Goebbels, overlooked in the then also been

summoned

first

round of

met with an

in his diary.

for the world: a mentally-deranged second

had by

Hitler's consultations,

to the Obersalzberg. 'The Fiihrer

Propaganda Minister noted

crushed,' the

man

following day, on reaching the Berghof, he was Heft. 'A

is,

191

muddle-headed shambles, schoolboy

completely

is

'What a spectacle

after the Fiihrer.'

shown

192

the letters

was

dilettantism,'

The

left

by

his verdict

on Heft's intention to work through the Duke of Hamilton to bring down Churchill and attain peace-terms. 'That Churchill

would immediately have

him arrested hadn't, unfortunately, occurred to him.' The letters, he claimed, were

full

of 'half-baked occultism'.

He pointed to Heft's belief in horoscopes.

'A thoroughly pathological business,' he concluded. 13

May,

BBC

the

in

London had brought

193

Meanwhile, early on

the official

announcement

that

Heft indeed found himself in British captivity.

The

German communique composed by Hitler no longer suffice. The new communique of

first

would

edged Heft's

flight to

Scotland, and capture.

illness

- he had suffered from

years,

which had put him

like, It

the previous day

plainly

bringing about

'a

open the

also held

in the

hands of mesmerists,

-

possibility that he

had flown

bore

all

to the

had been entrapped by the

what had happened

to

him

for

instead at

had undertaken the action of an 194

ultimately to concede that the

Deputy mental

first

down

Remarkably, Goebbels had not been informed

until the

evening of 12 May.

195

Hitler

had not turned relied

on Otto Dietrich, the Press Chief. Goebbels was highly

from the outset about the 'mental and Gauleiter

who

illness'

explanation.

None

inundated him with telephone

the position, he wrote, believed the 'madness' story.

'It

would have been

calls

of the

about

sounds so absurd

could be taken for a mystification,' he frankly admitted.

preference

his

propaganda advice on how to present the debacle, but had

Reichsleiter

it

British

the hallmarks of a hasty and ill-judged attempt to play

of

that

and the

astrologists,

enemy, and attributing the action to

the enormity of the scandal.

critical

his physical

stretching back

without any notion of the consequences. His action, the communique

The two communiques, forced state,

acknowl-

mental confusion' that had led to the present action.

ended, would alter nothing in the struggle against Britain.

Fiihrer

May

emphasized

a gall-bladder complaint

Secret Service. Affected by delusions, he idealist

It

13

to say nothing until forced to

do

196

His

own

so, then to

suggest that Heft, as had been claimed of Gregor Strasser in 1932, had 'evidently lost his nerve' at the last minute.

197

This way, weakness rather

373

374

HITLER 1936-1945 than insanity could have been blamed. ation to defend. that a in

man

198

As

it

It

would have been an easier interpret-

was, a real difficulty had to be faced:

recognized for

many

such an idiot could be the second

remarked.

SD

explain

years as mentally unbalanced had been

such an important position in the running of the Reich.

how

how to

man

'It's

left

rightly asked

Goebbels

after the Fiihrer,'

199

reports and other soundings of popular reactions told Goebbels of

damaging impact on the morale of the people. 200 For the Nazi Party's standing, the fall-out from the Heft affair was disastrous. Hefty and sus-

the

tained criticism of the Party and

even during the victorious Fiihrer

its

summer

had been widespread

representatives

of 1940. Alongside the adulation for the

and the eulogies for the Wehrmacht went

and

feelings that the Party

had perhaps once served some purpose, but were by now Many thought the Party functionaries were corrupt, interfering, and self-serving - feathering their own nest at home, shirking, and draftits

representatives

superfluous.

dodging while the indomitable Fiihrer and

brave soldiers were at the

his

enemy. As before the war, the corruption, high-handedness,

front, facing the

loose living, and other personal failings of the jumped-up 'tin-pot gods

(NebengotterY were the subject of extensive condemnation. The popular distaste

was much

in evidence in the

months before the HeE scandal.

then, scarcely surprising that, alongside the deep shock

Party

members and

loyal supporters, Help's defection

of massive criticism cascading

A

down on

sense of the popular feeling could be grasped

rumoured

dubbed 'the month Himmler and Ley had

official

that

all

fled

by

wave

201

from the innumerable

what one

parts of the Reich in

of rumours'.

was,

felt

a

the heads of the Party hacks.

wild rumours that sprouted overnight in

government

and dismay

now evoked

It

202

It

was, for instance,

abroad, that the Gauleiter of

Upper Bavaria, Adolf Wagner, had been caught on the border trying

to

export into Switzerland 22 million Reich Marks robbed from monasteries,

and that Alfred Rosenberg, Julius

Streicher,

Count Helldorf

(the Police

Chief of Berlin), and Walther Darre (the Blut und Boden guru) had been shot for their involvement in Heft's 'treason'.

rumours was important

true.

mode

203

Of

course, none of the

But their existence - and negative rumour was an

of criticism in the police state

-

graphically highlights the

low popular esteem of leading Party representatives. Goebbels to prestige so deeply that he

felt

wanted to avoid being seen in public.

an awful dream,' he remarked. 'The Party will have to chew on time.'

204

The only

hatches and

let

solution from his point of view

the hurricane

blow

itself out.

was

it

to batten

the

blow like

'It's

for a long

down

Soon he was commenting

the

that

DESIGNING was

the issue

losing

dramatic

its

effect.

WAR OF ANNIHILATION'

A

205

was turning

It

into a nine-days'

wonder. Hitler himself

was occasionally caught

popular joke doing the rounds

The

Churchill. in his

British

at the

HeE

HeE summoned

Prime Minister, bulldog expression on

mouth, was supposed to have

'Oh, no,'

in the line of fire of criticism.

time had

replied, 'only his Deputy.'

206

his face, cigar

madman

said: 'So you're the

One

before

are you?'

But, generally, the contrast

between the scarcely diluted contempt for the Party functionaries and the massive popularity of Hitler himself, embodying

was

positive in National Socialism,

who now had

the Fiihrer

with.

As

ever,

it

was presumed

behalf of the nation, he

was kept

of his most trusted chieftains.

that

was seen

Much sympathy was

stark.

on top of

this,

all

all his

voiced for

other worries, to contend

he was working

that, while

in the dark, let

to be

tirelessly

on

down, or betrayed by some

207

This key element of the 'Fiihrer myth' was one that Hitler himself played

when, on 13 May, he addressed

to

Reichsleiter

and Gauleiter

a rapidly arranged meeting of the

at the Berghof.

There was an

Goring and Bormann, both grim-faced, entered the his

of

Bormann read out Help's final shock and anger among those listening was appearance.

into the

room.

December

in

betrayal. his

208

Much

most trusted

the Duce.

He

its

The

letter to Hitler.

palpable.

Then

when made

feeling

Hitler

came

on the theme of

loyalty

and

He appealed to the loyalty of that HeE had acted without his

betrayed him, he stated.

'old fighters'.

knowledge, was mentally with regard to

of tension

as in the last great crisis within the Party leadership,

1932, he played masterfully

HeE had

air

hall before Hitler

ill,

He

and had put the Reich

Axis partners.

stressed once

declared

an impossible position to

Rome to placate

more HeE's long-standing odd behaviour

dealings with astrologists and the like). Fiihrer's opposition to his

in

He had sent Ribbentrop

own

He

castigated the former

(his

Deputy

orders in continuing to practise flying. HeE,

he said, had arranged for a specially adapted Messerschmitt to be

fitted out,

and had had regular weather charts for the North Sea sent to him for months.

A few days

before HeE's defection, he went on, the Deputy Fiihrer

had come to see him and asked him pointedly whether he still stood to the programme of cooperation with England that he had laid out in Mein

Kampf. Hitler

When the

said he had, of course, reaffirmed this position.

he had finished speaking, Hitler leaned against the big table near

window. According

years older'.

209 'I

to

one account, he was

'in tears

and looked ten

have never seen the Fiihrer so deeply shocked,' Hans Frank

told a gathering of his subordinates in the General

Government

a

few days

375

376

HITLER 1936-1945 later.

210

As he stood near the window, gradually

all

the sixty or seventy

persons present rose from their chairs and gathered round him in a semicircle.

No one spoke a word. 211 Then Goring provided an effusive statement

of the devotion of Heft.

212

The

'core'

all

present.

The

intense anger

was reserved only

for

following had once more rallied around their Leader, as

moment

in the 'time of struggle', at a

of

crisis.

a massive jolt; but the Party leadership,

The regime had

backbone, was

its

suffered

holding

still

together.

At

one of those present, Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle of the

least

Auslandsorganisation (Foreign Countries' Organization), thought - or so he asserted after the war - that Heft had acted with Hitler's

knowledge

full

and encouragement. 213 Some other contemporaries, notably General Karl

who was

Heinrich Bodenschatz, Goring's adjutant,

when

the

news was broken

to Hitler, also

present at the Berghof

remained convinced of

involvement. Their voices have sometimes carried weight

However, there All

who saw

registered his

214

news of

Hitler in the days after the

profound shock, dismay, and anger

This has sometimes been interpreted, as poraries, as clever acting

on

it

was

at

Heft's defection broke

what he saw

also by a

more than one occasion, of putting on

its

which only he

we have noted on

as

a theatrical performance.

was acting, it was of Hollywood-Oscar calibre. That the Deputy Fuhrer had been captured in shook the regime to

as betrayal.

number of contem-

Hitler's part, concealing a plot

and Heft knew about. 215 Hitler was indeed capable,

it

the ages.

not a shred of compelling and sustainable evidence to

is

support the case.

down

his

Britain

But

if

was something

this

that

foundations. As Goebbels sarcastically pointed out,

never appears to have occurred to Heft that this could be the outcome of

his 'mission'.

It is

hard to imagine that

mind, had he been engaged

in a plot.

it

But

would not have crossed

it

would have been

Hitler's

entirely out of

character for Hitler to have involved himself in such a hare-brained scheme.

His

own

acute sensitivity towards any potential threat to his

towards being made to look foolish world, would

itself

have been

in the eyes of his

sufficient to

and

to have

his

own

prestige,

have ruled out the notion of

sending Heft on a one-man peace-mission to Britain. But,

was every reason, from

own

people and the outside

in

any case, there

point of view, not to have become involved

most categorically prohibited what Heft had

in

mind.

was a gambler. But he invariably weighed the odds and took what seemed to him calculable risks. He was always highly nervous, Certainly, Hitler

even hesitant, before any attempted coup. In

this instance, his

behaviour

DESIGNING was unremarkable

in the

- even

had been enticement from the

so,

it

little

for

And

Hef

which there

British Secret Service

no evidence, there

- were

so remote that 216

And had

not been party to the planning of 'Barbarossa'.

he

He had

months. His competence

He had no

Party matters.

strictly to

his

experience in foreign

he had never been entrusted previously with any delicate

diplomatic negotiations.

217

any case, Hitler's motive for contemplating a secret mission such as

He£ attempted

to carry out

would be

had been single-mindedly preparing

difficult to grasp.

to attack

confident that the Soviet Union

arising

He and

were

left

no room

for

manoeuvre. The

the last

wanted was any hold-up through diplomatic complications

from the intercession by HeE

to be launched.

Had

would have had

a

few weeks before the invasion was

'Barbarossa' not taken place before the end of June,

postponed to the following year. For Hitler,

to be

would have been unthinkable. He was well aware do so

at

that there were those in

not before, 'Barbarossa'.

after,

Rudolf HeE

it

this

who would still prefer to sue for peace. He expected

the British establishment to

his generals

would be comprehensively defeated by

autumn. The timetable for the attack thing Hitler

For months Hitler

and destroy the Soviet Union

precisely in order to force Britain out of the war.

them

drama. The chances is

the prospect.

in Hitler's presence over the previous

was confined affairs.

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

hard to believe that he would have settled on Hefi as

is

HeE had

emissary.

In

if,

would not conceivably have entertained

Hitler

been

'

days building up to the

of the Hef3 flight succeeding

done

A

no time, whether during

his interrogations after

in Scotland, in discussions

with his fellow-captives while awaiting

Nuremberg, or during

long internment

his

in

landing trial in

Spandau, implicated Hitler.

His story never wavered from the one he gave to Ivone Kirkpatrick at his first

interrogation on 13

summed up

May

1941. 'He

in his report, 'without the

had come

here,' so Kirkpatrick

knowledge of Hitler

in order to

convince responsible persons that since England could not win the war, the wisest course

was

to

make peace now. From

of the Fiihrer, which

a long

and intimate knowledge

had begun eighteen years ago

in the fortress of

Landsberg, he could give his word of honour that the Fiihrer had never entertained any designs against the British Empire. to

world domination.

He

Nor had he

ever aspired

believed that Germany's sphere of interest

was

in

Europe and that any dissipation of Germany's strength beyond Europe's frontiers

would be

a

many's destruction.'

weakness and would carry with

He

admitted,

when

it

the seeds of Ger-

pressed by Kirkpatrick on whether

Russia was to be seen as part of Europe or Asia, that

Germany had some

377

378

HITLER 1936-1945 demands on Russia, but denied Union.

that Hitler

was planning to attack

the Soviet

218

HeE's British interlocutors rapidly reached the conclusion that he had nothing to offer which went beyond Hitler's public statements, notably his 'peace appeal' before the Reichstag on 19 July 1940. Kirkpatrick concluded

'He£ does not seem ... to be

his report:

government

as regards operations;

in the near counsels of the

and he

is

German

not likely to possess more secret

information than he could glean in the course of conversations with Hitler

and

others.'

219

If,

in the light of this,

Hitler himself, he

would have had

HeE was

to be as

following out orders from

supreme an actor - and to have

continued to be so for the next four decades - as was, reputedly, the Leader he so revered. But, then, to what end?

He

said nothing that Hitler

had not

number of occasions stated himself. 220 He brought no new negotiating position. It was as if he presumed that the mere fact of the Deputy Fuhrer voluntarily - through an act involving personal courage -

publicly

on

a

putting himself in the hands of the British

government

see the

good

enemy was enough

to have

made

the

will of the Fuhrer, the earnest intentions

behind his aim of cooperation with Britain against Bolshevism, and the need to

overthrow the Churchill 'war-faction' and

settle

amicably.

221

The

naivety

of such thinking points heavily in the direction of an attempt inspired by no

one but the

idealistic,

other-worldly, and muddle-headed HeE.

own motives were not more mysterious or profound than they appeared. HeE had seen over a number of years, but especially since the war His

had begun,

his access to Hitler strongly reduced.

Martin Bormann, had

in effect

been usurping

Fuhrer's company, always able to put in a to translate his wishes into action.

the Fuhrer

had been

striving for over

HeE had remained

always

his position,

word here or

in the

there, always able

A spectacular action to accomplish what many years would transform

overnight, turning 'Fraulein Anna', as he in the Party, into a national hero.

His nominal subordinate,

his status

was disparagingly dubbed by some

222

highly influenced by Karl Haushofer

-

his

former

teacher and the leading exponent of geopolitical theories which had influ-

enced the formation of Hitler's ideas of Lebensraum - and his son Albrecht

(who

later

became

closely involved with resistance groups). Their views

had

reinforced his belief that everything must be done to prevent the undermining of the 'mission' that Hitler had laid out almost attack

on Bolshevism together with, not

in

two decades

opposition

to,

earlier: the

Great Britain.

made several attempts to contact the Duke prominent member of the Anglo-German Society known

Albrecht Haushofer had

of

Hamilton -

to

a

DESIGNING

WAR OF ANNIHILATION'

A

have sympathized with notions of close and peaceful cooperation between

and Germany - before the Heft escapade, but had received no

Britain

to his letters.

Hamilton himself strenuously denied, with

seems, receiving the the Berlin

letters,

Olympics

replies

justification

it

and also denied Heft's claim to have met him

at

in 1936.

223

By August 1940, when he began

own

to plan his

intervention, Heft

was

deeply disappointed in the British response to the 'peace-terms' that Hitler

had offered.

He was

aware, too, that Hitler was by

attacking the Soviet Union even before Britain agree to terms.

The

time thinking of

this

willing to 'see sense' and

original strategy lay thus in tatters. Heft

most

that of the Fiihrer's his

was

faithful paladin,

now

saw

his role as

destined to restore through

personal intervention the opportunity to save Europe from Bolshevism

- a unique chance wantonly which had taken over the knowledge, but

in

deep

cast

away by

British

(if

Churchill's 'warmongering' clique

government. Heft acted without Hitler's

confused) belief that he was carrying out his

wishes.

Heft

now became

an unwitting

to bluff Stalin. Churchill

was

pawn

in the

moves by

reluctantly dissuaded by

Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary his initial instinct to

British intelligence

Anthony Eden and

at the Foreign Office,

make maximum propaganda

from

capital out of Heft's

- something Hitler and Goebbels both expected and feared. 224 Prompted by a report from Sir Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador to capture

Moscow,

that Heft's flight to Scotland

in the Soviet leadership of a

at Russia's cost,

had newly inflamed the old paranoia

peace arranged between Britain and Germany

Eden and Cadogan devised

strengthening Soviet resistance to Hitler.

a

more

subtle ploy,

aimed

at

The absence of anything more

than the most terse public statement about Heft's capture was part of the idea.

225

By the beginning of June, thanks to the code-breaker 'Ultra', which mid-1940 had enabled the decrypting of German military intelligence

since

cyphers, the British cabinet

been tipped less a

war.

was aware

that Hitler

would

strike against the

Union during the second half of the month. 226 The

Soviet

off, indirectly,

British

had

also

through a leak passed on via Dahlerus, by no

person than Goring - concerned, as Heft was, to avoid a two-front

227

Anxious to wean the Soviet Union away from Germany, Churchill a number of those who had German attack. 228

was among expect a

The aim

let Stalin

know

was now to exploit mind about whether

of Eden, Cadogan, and Lord Beaverbrook

Heft's capture

by sowing further doubts

in Stalin's

as early as April to

379

380

HITLER 1936-194 Britain

was about

upon peace proposals same time, through door open to a rapprochement

to strike a deal with Hitler, based

advanced by the former Deputy Fuhrer, while warnings of German intentions, leaving the

at the

between Britain and the Soviet Union. The threat of a compromise peace, it was reasoned, might strengthen Moscow's fears of isolation to the extent that the Red Army could launch a preventive attack on the Wehrmacht. At the

same

time, supplying Stalin with information about

German plans could

encourage him to seek contact with Britain. Either way, British interests

would be well

served. Stalin was, therefore, sent deliberately conflicting

Under the pressure they were attempting subtly Secret Service envisaged a third - the most likely -

signals of British intentions.

to exert, the British

reaction by Stalin: adopting a wait-and-see stance.

229

He

Predictably, Stalin indeed followed the third option.

brushed away

warnings, confident that Hitler would not risk a two-front war. Heft's defection bolstered this confidence, since Stalin presumed the Deputy Fuhrer

had been commissioned by Hitler few weeks remained available

if

and that only

to put out peace feelers,

a

an attack were to be launched. The silence

from London about Heft together with rumours that

Britain might be

ready to pull out of the war, aligned with the warnings of an imminent attack by Hitler split

on Russia, further reinforced the presumption of

within the British government.

From

Stalin's point of view, this

the likelihood of delay, thereby hindering agreement with

blocking the chances of a year.

Stalin tried to

that the capture of Heft

additional armies

keep

his options

was announced

moved

in

open -

still

London,

just in case.

time that

13

May,

and London agreeing a separate peace were

'Barbarossa'

came

in

the day

had four

when rumours 231

rife.

to be launched, large Russian tank divisions

forward positions

On

Stalin

into the western border area of the Soviet Union.

further twenty-five divisions followed early in June,

Berlin

in

was

attack while there

meant

Germany, and

230

However,

A

German

a serious

of

By the time were ranged

an arc around Bialystok and Lemberg. They were

intended to be in a position to convert readily into an attack-force should, against Stalin's expectations, a separate peace be speedily agreed between Britain

and Germany. 232

Stalin

had seen

in Heft's flight to Britain a rationality, as part of Hitler's

planned strategy, which was not there. by British policy.

What

He had

been encouraged

in this

the Soviet dictator could not contemplate was,

unfortunately for him and his country, the real position: that Hitler had had

nothing to do with the absurd Heft adventure; that he had no desire at

this

DESIGNING

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION' was

point to enter into negotiations with Britain; and that he

aimed

a 'war of annihilation' to destroy the Soviet Union,

upon

fixated

at leaving Britain

then with no choice but to seek terms.

VII By the middle of May,

after a

week preoccupied by

the

HeE

affair, Hitler

could begin to turn his attention back to this imminent showdown.

The

on 23 May, supporting the pro-Axis regime in Iraq (which had come to power following a military coup at the beginning of

directive he signed

April,

had refused

to allow British troop

had sent

Iraqi troops to

nominal

significance.

troops, the

A

movements

in the country,

surround a British air-base) had small

little

and

more than

number of German aeroplanes, carrying in mid-May. They could do little to help

had already flown to Iraq

weak

army fend

Iraqi

off the invading British relief forces,

which

ultimately re-established a pro-British administration. In any case, Hitler's directive

made

plain that a decision

on any German attempt

the British position in the eastern Mediterranean

only follow 'Barbarossa'.

to

undermine

and the Persian Gulf would

233

The end of what had been a troubled month for Hitler brought further gloom to the Berghof with the news on 27 May of the loss of the powerful pocket-battleship Bismarck, sunk in the Atlantic after a fierce battle with British warships

Hitler did not

and planes. Some 2,300

brood on the human

sailors

loss.

went down with the

ship.

234

His fury was directed at the naval

enemy

—

a

huge

Meanwhile, the ideological preparations for 'Barbarossa' were

now

leadership for unnecessarily exposing the vessel to risk,

he had thought, for potentially

little

gain.

rapidly taking concrete shape. Hitler needed to regard. earlier,

them

He had

attack

23 ^

do nothing more

in this

down the guidelines in March. These sufficed, we saw for the High Commands of the Wehrmacht and the Army to convert

in

Political civilian

laid

May

and early June into the series of orders to liquidate the Soviet Commissars and offer a 'shooting licence' 236 against the Russian

population outside the jurisdiction of military courts for

German

237

was during May, too, that Heydrich assembled the four Einsatzgruppen ('task groups') which would accompany the army into the Soviet soldiers.

It

Union. Each of the Einsatzgruppen comprised between 600 and 1,000

men

(drawn largely from varying branches of the police organization, augmented by the Waffen-SS) and was divided into four or

five

Einsatzkommandos

381

382

HITLER 1936-1945 Sonderkommandos ('special forces'). 238 The middleranking commanders for the most part had an educated background. ('task

or

forces')

Highly qualified academics,

civil servants,

even an opera singer, were

among them. 239 The

lawyers, a Protestant pastor, and

top leadership was drawn

almost exclusively from the Security Police and SD. 240 Like the leaders of the Reich Security

Head

Office, they

of the generation, just too that

had sucked

young

were

in the

main well-educated men,

World War, German universities during the 1920s. 241 May, the 3,000 or so men selected for the to have fought in the First

in volkisch ideals in

During the second half of Einsatzgruppen gathered

in Pretzsch, north-east of Leipzig,

where the Border

Police School served as their base for the ideological training that

launch of 'Barbarossa'.

last until the

number

of occasions.

target-groups

when

nevertheless, plain.

would

Heydrich addressed them on a

avoided narrow precision in describing their

they entered the Soviet Union. But his meaning was,

He mentioned

and had

in the East

He

242

that

Jewry was the source of Bolshevism

to be eradicated in accordance with the Fiihrer's aims.

And he told them that Communist functionaries and activists, Jews, Gypsies, saboteurs, and agents endangered the security of the troops and were to be

executed forthwith.

243

By 22 June the genocidal whirlwind was ready

to

blow. 'Operation Barbarossa

rolls

on

further,' recorded

Goebbels

in his diary

on 31 May. 'Now the first big wave of camouflage goes into action. The entire state and military apparatus is being mobilized. Only a few people are informed about the true background.' Apart from Goebbels and Ribbentrop, ministers of government departments were kept in the dark. Goebbels's

own

ministry had to play up the theme of invasion of Britain. Fourteen

army

divisions

were to be moved westwards to give some semblance of

reality to the charade.

244

As part of the subterfuge

that action

was

to be expected in the

West while

preparations for 'Barbarossa' were moving into top gear, Hitler hurriedly

arranged another meeting with Mussolini on the Brenner Pass for 2 June. It

was

little

wonder

hastily devised talks. his part in

that the 246

Duce could not understand the reason for the was unwittingly playing

Hitler's closest Axis partner

an elaborate game of

Hitler did not mention a

bluff.

word

of 'Barbarossa' to his Italian friends.

claimed on the return journey to have dropped a hint. completely passed Mussolini by.

The two

two hours, before being joined by Mussolini reported,

243

247

But,

if

He

so,

it

dictators talked alone for almost

their Foreign Ministers. Hitler

when he spoke about HeE. 248

If so,

had wept,

he was weeping

DESIGNING

A

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

about the political damage the former Deputy Fiihrer had done. There were

no personal lamentations for the

loss of

one of

most

his

loyal devotees over

many years. 249 Ciano and Ribbentrop were meanwhile reviewing relations with a number of countries and the general state of the war. 'Rumours in so

circulation

on the beginning operations against Russia

remarked Ribbentrop,

'are to be considered

He conveyed

excessively premature.'

in the near future,'

devoid of foundation, at

least

German

the impression that the

build-up of troops was solely in response to the Soviet military concentration

on the German

frontier,

and that any action by the Reich would only follow

an attempted attack by the Red Army. Hitler

had

'discussion'.

250

evidently, to Mussolini's irritation,

He now

monopolized

proceeded to do the same

their private

in the presence of the

Foreign Ministers. His rambling tour d'horizon was practically devoid of

any genuine substance that might have warranted an urgent meeting.

2^

The

1

worried that the purpose of the meeting was to force concessions

Italians,

on them

to the advantage of France,

were glad to learn that relations

between Germany and France were unchanged. amplified by Ribbentrop, described situation in Britain, speculating

152

Hitler, his views as

what he saw

on Lloyd George

always

as an increasingly critical as Churchill's likely suc-

much more amenable policy towards peace with the Axis as a consequence. He ruled out an invasion of Cyprus, which Mussolini had cessor and a

encouraged. Finally, turning to the 'Jewish Question', Hitler declared that 'all

Jews must get out of Europe altogether

Madagascar -

a project definitively discarded over six

possible solution. discourse.

after the war',

253

The

Soviet

Union was noticeable

and mentioned

months

earlier

—

as a

its

absence in the

stated that the Fiihrer

and Duce had

for

254

The published communique simply

held friendly discussions lasting several hours on the political situation.

The deception had been for the

moment

successful. Ciano's general impression

Hitler has

no

was

135

'that

precise plan of action'. Mussolini, too, so

Ciano remarked, was 'convinced that a compromise peace would be received by the Germans with the greatest enthusiasm. "They are victories...'"

now

sick of

256

When he met the Japanese ambassador Oshima the day after his talks with Mussolini, Hitler dropped a broad hint - which was correctly understood that conflict with the Soviet

Union

But the only foreign statesman to

in the

whom

near future was unavoidable.

-

257

he was prepared to divulge more

than hints was the Romanian leader General Antonescu, when Hitler met

him

in

Munich on

12 June.

258

Antonescu had to be put broadly

in the picture.

383

.

384

HITLER 1936-1945 was relying on Romanian troops for support on the southern Antonescu was more than happy to comply. He volunteered his forces

After

all,

flank.

Hitler

without Hitler having to ask. his

When

22 June arrived, he would proclaim to

people a 'holy war' against the Soviet Union. 259 The bait of recovering

Bessarabia and North Bukowina, together with the acquisition of parts of

was

the Ukraine,

tempting to the Romanian dictator. 260 Even to

sufficiently

Antonescu, a few days before 'Barbarossa', Hitler betrayed as possible. His explanation for the

was couched the military

sionism.

261

as

entirely in terms of a necessary defensive reaction to counter

menace posed

Germany and Europe through

to

He mentioned no

imminent.

little

coming showdown with the Soviet Union

date.

The Romanian

Stalin's

expan-

Antonescu divined, however, that one was

leader agreed that a conflict with Russia could

not be delayed. The Soviet army would not offer strong resistance, he thought, and the people wanted their liberation.

The Romanian people were

thirsting for their revenge for the injustices they

of the Russians. Comparisons with

given the motorization of

had suffered

Napoleon were out of

modern warfare.

at the

hands

place, he said,

Hitler rejoined 'that the

aim of

the action did not consist of allowing the Russian armies to retreat into their vast land, but that the armies

On

had

to be annihilated {vernichtetY

1G1

14 June Hitler held his last major military conference before the

start of 'Barbarossa'.

The

generals arrived at staggered times at the Reich

Chancellery to allay suspicion that something major was afoot. Hitler

sought an account from each army commander of planned operations the respective theatres during the

first

part he listened without interruption.

in

days of the invasion. For the most

The

picture he gleaned

was one of

numerical advantage, but qualitative inferiority, of the Red Army. The

outlook was, therefore, positive. After lunch, Hitler spoke for about an hour.

263

avowed

He went

over the reasons for attacking Russia. Once again, he

his confidence that the collapse of the Soviet

Britain to

come

to terms.

against Bolshevism. resistance.

Heavy

264

Hitler emphasized that the

The Russians would

air-raids

Union would induce

had

fight

war was

a

war

hard and put up tough

to be expected. But the Luftwaffe

would

and smooth the advance of the land forces. The worst would be over in about six weeks. But every soldier had to know what he was fighting for: the destruction of Bolshevism. If the war 265 Most of the generals were to be lost, then Europe would be bolshevized. attain quick successes

of the fighting

had concerns about opening up the two-front war, the avoidance of which had been a premiss of military planning. But they did not voice any objections. Brauchitsch

266 and Haider did not speak a word.

DESIGNING

'WAR OF ANNIHILATION'

A

Two days later Hitler summoned Goebbels was

told to enter through a back

door

in

to the

Reich Chancellery - he

order not to raise suspicions - to

explain the situation. Hitler looked well, thought Goebbels, despite living in

an extraordinary state of tension, as invariably was the case before major

'actions'. Hitler told

become calm,

Goebbels that once the

'action'

had been the case on numerous

as

greeted his Propaganda Minister warmly.

now

would

earlier occasions.

267

He

its toll

of

of materiel, so that

had been somewhat delayed. But it would be completed

within a week, and the attack on Russia would then immediately

commence.

It

was good

that the weather

that the harvest in the Ukraine

hope

started, he

Then he gave him an account

developments. The Greek campaign had taken the military build-up

had

was

so poor, Hitler remarked,

had not yet ripened. As

a result, they

and

could

The attack would be the most massive history had There would be no repeat of Napoleon (a comment perhaps

to gain

ever seen.

most of

it.

betraying precisely those subconscious fears of history indeed repeating

The Russians had around 180-200 divisions, about as many as said, though there was no comparison in quality. And the fact that they were massed on the Reich borders was a great advantage. 'They would be smoothly rolled up.' Hitler thought 'the action' would take about four months. Goebbels estimated even less time would be needed: itself).

the

Germans, he

'Bolshevism will collapse like a house of cards,' he thought. Hitler had

time convinced himself of the preventive war theory he had con'We have to act,' Goebbels recounted. 'Moscow wants to keep out of the war till Europe is exhausted and sucked of its life-blood. Then Stalin would like to act, to bolshevize Europe, and bring in his form of rule.' The German action would put a stop to this. No geographical limits were put on 'the action'. The fight would continue until Russian power had ceased

by

this-

cocted.

to exist.

Goebbels continued of Russia conflict

would

free

summary of Hitler's argument - that the defeat some 150 divisions and massive resources for the his

with Britain. 'The thrust {Tendenz) of the entire campaign

wrote Goebbels: 'Bolshevism must fall and England will have its able continental

weapon knocked out

must be removed from Europe.' see the

of

its

is

clear,'

conceiv-

hand.' 'The Bolshevik poison

All true Nazis, he added,

would

rejoice to

day that 'genuine socialism' took the place of 'Jewish Bolshevism'

in Russia.

The Pact of 1939 -

'a stain

on our badge of honour' - would be

lives fighting, we will now He conveyed this thought to Hitler, who said: 'Whether right wrong, we must win. That is the only way. And it is morally right and

washed away. 'That which we have spent our annihilate.'

or

last

385

386

HITLER 19 3 6-194 5 necessary.

And when we have won, who

about the method? In

will ask us

any case, we have chalked up so much that we have to win, otherwise our entire people

wiped

will be

- and

in first place

we

ourselves, with

that

all

out.'

Hitler asked Goebbels about public opinion.

The Propaganda Minister

replied that people believed that relations with the Soviet

sound, but would be behind the regime 'when out that the

veil

we

call

Union were

still

on them'. He pointed

of secrecy had meant an entirely different approach to that

now

previously deployed. Pamphlets were printers

dear to us -

is

and packers who were confined

being produced en masse by

to the

the invasion took place. In fact, Goebbels

was

Propaganda Ministry less in

until

touch with opinion

than he imagined. Given the extent of the military build-up in the eastern provinces of the Reich, rife

for

it

was hardly

weeks about an imminent

surprising that

conflict

rumours had been

with Russia.

268

Even

so, the

concealment was broadly successful. According to one internal report,

numerous troops

'the concentration of

in the eastern areas

had allowed

speculation to arise that significant events were afoot there, but nevertheless

probably the overwhelming proportion of the German people did not think of any warlike confrontation with the Soviet Union'.

Goebbels himself,

269

meeting with Hitler on 18 June, had been

after his

driven out of the back gate of the Reich Chancellery and through the

'where people are harmlessly walking about in the rain. wrote, 'who

know

nothing of

all

our concerns and

2

l

27

for distribution to the

On 21 June Hitler dictated the proclamation to the German people

to be read out the next day.

and was

city,

people,' he

live for the day.'

By 18 June, 200,000 pamphlets had been printed troops.

Happy

in a highly

2 2

nervous

Hitler state,

was by

this

time looking over-tired,

pacing up and down, apprehensive,

involving himself in the minutiae of propaganda such as the fanfares that

were to be played over the radio to announce German

was

him

victories.

2 3

Goebbels

They discussed the proclamation, to which Goebbels added a few suggestions. They marched up and down his rooms for three hours. They tried out the new fanfares for an hour. Hitler called to see

in the evening.

gradually relaxed somewhat. 'The Fiihrer

is

closer the decision comes,' noted Goebbels.

'It's

freed

from

a

nightmare the

always so with him.' Once

more Goebbels returned to the inner necessity of the coming conflict, of which Hitler had convinced himself: 'There is nothing for it than to attack,' he wrote,

summing up

burned out.

Stalin will

Hitler's thoughts. 'This cancerous fall.'

growth has to be

Since July the previous year, Hitler indicated,

he had worked on the preparations for what was about to take place.

Now

DESIGNING the

moment had

arrived. Everything

done. 'The fortune of war must

decided

was time

it

to snatch a

begin within the next hour.

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

now

decide.'

few hours'

sleep.

At 2.30a.m., Hitler 274

'Barbarossa'

276

It

amounted

preventive action.

to

27j

his

example. At 5.30a.m.,

just over

German guns had opened fire on all borders, sounded over German radios. Goebbels read out

Liszt fanfares

finally

was due

after the

proclamation.

German

'

had been done which could have been

Goebbels was too nervous to follow

two hours

A

the

new

Hitler's

to a lengthy pseudo-historical justification for

The Jewish-Bolshevik

rulers in

Moscow had

sought for two decades to destroy not only Germany, but the whole of

Europe. Hitler had been forced, he claimed, through British encirclement policy to take the bitter step of entering the 1939 Pact.

277

But since then the

had magnified. At present there were 160 Russian divisions

Soviet threat

massed on the German borders. 'The hour has

now

therefore arrived,'

Hitler declared, 'to counter this conspiracy of the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon

warmongers and the equally Jewish Moscow.'

278

A

slightly

rulers of the Bolshevik headquarters in

amended proclamation went out

swarming over the border and marching

On

21 June, Hitler had at last

into Russia.

composed

to the soldiers

279

a letter to his chief ally, Benito

Mussolini, belatedly explaining and justifying his reasons for attacking the

The letter was delivered to Ciano at 3a.m. next morning, just was about to begin. Ciano had to disturb Mussolini to convey him - greatly to the annoyance of the Italian dictator, who

Soviet Union. as the attack

the

news

to

complained that the Germans told him nothing then broke

announce

a fait accompli.

1*

Once more,

the

same arguments,

his sleep to all

resting

on

the need to undertake a preventive strike, were rehearsed. Characteristically, Hitler underlined the dangers of waiting.

Time,

as always,

was not on

Germany's side. The Soviet Union would be stronger in a year's time, England - pinning its hopes on the USSR - would be even less ready for peace, and by then the mass delivery of material from the

coming

His conclusion was typical: 'Whatever

available.

Duce, our situation cannot become worse as a

USA would

result of this step;

improve.' Hitler ended his letter with sentences which, as with his to Goebbels, give insight into his mentality 'In

conclusion,

to this decision,

Union,

it

I

me

was

seemed

to

say one

again

in spite of the

conciliation,

other

let

more

on the eve of the

thing, Duce. Since

feel spiritually free.

I

it

can only

comments

titanic contest:

struggled through

The partnership with

the Soviet

complete sincerity of the efforts to bring about a

nevertheless often very irksome to me, for in

me

to be a break with

be

may now come,

final

some way or

my whole origin, my concepts, and

387

388

HITLER 1936-1945

my

former obligations.

agonies.'

am happy now

I

to be relieved of these mental

281

The most

destructive

beginning.

It

and barbaric war

was the war

that Hitler

mankind was 1920s - the war

in the history of

had wanted since the

showdown. He had come to it by a roundroute. But, finally, about Hitler's war was there: a reality. For almost a year this war had been consciously worked towards and prepared by the German leadership. Hitler's inability to bring Britain to the against Bolshevism.

It

was

the

conference table had provided the spur to contemplate the bold strike in the East

perceived shortage of time, given the looming threat of the near-certainty of at least indirect involvement in the supplies of material force.

The need

territory

if

war dragged

the

into a further year,

to secure unlimited sources of

USA

and the

was

the driving-

raw materials from oil

Soviet

supplies

central motive. Ideological considerations

and for

the need to eradicate Bolshevism once

Hitler's psyche for almost

all

- deeply embedded

two decades, had not been

nant of the timing of the showdown. But they gave its

of a

war through massive

and to ensure that there would be no interruption to

from Romania was an additional

-

move

even while the contest in the West remained unsettled. The

in

the primary determi-

it its

indelible colouring,

sense not just of war, but of crusade.

Had

Britain been ready to

come

Union would nonetheless have

still

war against the gone ahead at some point -

to terms, the

Soviet in the

conditions Hitler had always hoped for. Hitler had sought the conflict.

He

war which had been a central element in his when it came actually to planning, not just imagining, the showdown, the Wehrmacht leadership, including the leaders of the army, the key branch of the armed forces as regards the war in the east, had gone along with every step. They had let Hitler dictate was the main author of

a

thinking for almost two decades. But

the course of events. At

him.

no point had they

seriously attempted to discourage

On the contrary, the combination of anti-Bolshevism

and gross under-

estimation of Soviet military capabilities had prompted army chiefs to be

no

less optimistic

would be If

than Hitler himself about the ease with which the

the initial aims

cal input

USSR

defeated.

had been forged by

had not been long

in

strategic consideration, the ideologi-

coming. Himmler and Heydrich, rapidly

spotting a chance to extend their

own empire and

to create an entire

new

vast area for their racial experiments, had no difficulty in exploiting Hitler's

long-established

paranoia

about

'J

ew

i

sn "Ik>lshevism'

to

advance new

DESIGNING schemes for solving

'the

'

WA R OF ANNIHILATION'

Jewish problem'. By March, Hitler had

the parameters of a genocidal as well as the

A

war which

willing agents in the

laid

down

Wehrmacht

SS leadership were only too ready to translate into firm

guidelines for action.

The war

in the East,

which would decide the future of the Continent of

Europe, was indeed Hitler's war. But inflicted to,

it

was more than

that. It

by a tyrannical dictator on an unwilling country.

even welcomed

(if

in different

It

was not

was acceded

measure and for different reasons), by

all

German elite, non-Nazi as well as Nazi. Large sections of ordinary German population, too, including the millions who would

sections of the

the

lowly ranks in the army, would - once they had got over their initial shock go along with the meaning Nazi propaganda imparted to the fight in

conflict, that of a 'crusade against Bolshevism'.

committed pro-Nazis would as a preventive

entirely

The more

ideologically

swallow the interpretation of the war

one to avoid the destruction of western culture by the

Bolshevik hordes. They fervently believed that Europe would never be liberated before 'Jewish-Bolshevism' out.

The path

was

utterly

and completely rooted

to the Holocaust, intertwined with the

Bolshevism, was prefigured in such notions.

The

showdown with

legacy of over

two decades

of deeply rooted, often fanatically held, feelings of hatred towards Bolshevism, fully interlaced with antisemitism, ferocity.

was about

to be revealed in

its full

389

9 SHOWDOWN

'It is

thus probably no overstatement to say that the Russian

campaign has been won

in the space of

two weeks.'

General Haider, 3 July 1941

'The whole situation makes

it

increasingly plain that

we

have underestimated the Russian colossus.' General Haider, 11 August 1941

'What India was

for England, the eastern territory will be

for us.' Hitler, speaking privately in the

Fuhrer Headquarters,

August 1941

At dawn on 22 June over

3

million

German

troops advanced over the

borders and into Soviet territory. By a quirk of history, as Goebbels noted

somewhat

uneasily,

it

was exactly the same date on which Napoleon's

Grand Army had marched on Russia 129 years earlier. The modern invaders deployed over 3,600 tanks, 600,000 motorized vehicles (including armoured 1

cars), 7,000 artillery pieces,

mechanized; as

in

and 2,500

aircraft.

Not

all

their transport

of them. Facing the invading armies, arrayed

on the western

frontiers of the

USSR, were nearly 3 million Soviet soldiers, backed by a number now estimated to have been as many as 14-15,000 (almost 2,000 the

most modern

planes.

2

The

was

Napoleon's day, they also made use of horses - 625,000

designs), over 34,000 artillery pieces,

scale of the titanic clash

now

War

of

and 8-9,000

beginning, which

determine the outcome of the Second World

of tanks

them

fighter-

would

chiefly

and, beyond that, the

shape of Europe for nearly half a century, almost defies the imagination.

I

Despite the numerical advantage in weaponry of the defending Soviet armies, the early stages of the attack appeared to endorse

and

his

all

the optimism of Hitler

General Staff about the inferiority of their Bolshevik enemies and

the speed with

which complete victory could be attained. The three-pronged

attack led by Field Marshals

von Bock

in the centre,

Wilhelm

Ritter

German

in the north,

Fedor

in the south initially made week of July Lithuania and

and Gerd von Rundstedt

astonishing advances. By the end of the Latvia were in

von Leeb

first

hands. Leeb's advance in the north, with Leningrad

394

HITLER 1936— 1945 as the target,

had reached

even farther.

Much

as far as Ostrov.

Army Group

of White Russia had been taken.

Centre had pushed

Minsk was

encircled.

Bock's advancing armies already had the city of Smolensk in their sights. Further south, by mid-July Rundstedt's troops had captured Zitomir and Berdicev.

The

3

Soviet calamity

was immense - and avoidable. Even

tanks were rolling forwards, Stalin

would not dare attack Stalin

the Soviet

still

Union

until

demands but was confident

He had

that,

German

he had finished with Britain.

had been well informed on the German

growing menace of invasion.

as the

thought Hitler was bluffing, that he

military build-up

anticipated

some German

and the

territorial

necessary, negotiations could stave off

if

year, the Soviet Union would be more prepared. Though two of the top-ranking Soviet generals, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and General Georgi Zhukov, had put forward a plan

an attack

on 15

in

May

1941 at

least.

By the following

for a pre-emptive strike against

such a notion out of hand, fearing to avoid.

it

Germany,

would provoke

There were no plans to invade Germany.

Stalin

had dismissed

the attack he

wanted

A preventive war against

an imminent Soviet invasion of the Reich was a Nazi propaganda legend. So convinced was Stalin of the correctness of situation that he

had chosen

his

own

4

diagnosis of the

to ignore a veritable flood of intelligence reports

warning of the imminent danger, some even predicting the precise date of the invasion.^

Once

the attack took place, Stalin

near mental collapse and deep depression. of his

first

actions

was

of his top commanders. Stalin's

Amid

fell

for days into a state of

violent mood-swings, one

to hurl abuse at his military leaders

and sack some

6

bungling interference and military incompetence had combined

with the fear and

servility of his generals

and the limitations of the

inflexible

Soviet strategic concept to rule out undertaking the necessary precautions to create defensive dispositions

armies were

left in

and

fight a

rearguard action. Instead, whole

exposed positions, easy prey for the pincer movements 7

of the rapidly advancing panzer armies. In a whole series of huge encircle-

Red Army suffered staggering losses of men and equipment. By some 3 million soldiers had trudged in long, dismal columns into German captivity. A high proportion would suffer terrible inhumanity 8 in the hands of their captors, and not return. Roughly the same number

ments, the

the autumn,

had by then been wounded or evident from

German

its first

killed.

9

The

barbaric character of the conflict,

day, had been determined, as

we have

seen, by the

plans for a 'war of annihilation' that had taken shape since March.

Soviet captives were not be treated as soldierly comrades,

Geneva conven-

showdown tions

were regarded as non-applicable,

interpreted in the widest sense

lation subjected to the cruellest reprisals.

Wehrmacht.

the actions of the ficiently

from

his

trauma

no ordinary war, but a 11

Mutual

On

first

place.

Atrocities

were not confined to

proclaim that the conflict was

at the invasion to

form partisan groups to organize and

fear of capture fed rapidly

The

driving-force

popu-

shot, the civilian

the Soviet side, Stalin recovered suf-

barbarization on the eastern front. But the

10

'great patriotic war' against the invaders.

necessary, he declared, to battle'.

commissars - a category

political

- were peremptorily

it

was

It

'merciless

directly into the spiralling

did not cause the barbarization in

was the Nazi

ideological drive to extirpate

was

'Jewish-Bolshevism'. Hitler's response in private to Stalin's speech revealing.

The

declaration of partisan war, he remarked, had the advantage

of allowing the extermination of

anyone who got

way.

in the

12

interpretation of 'partisans' by the Security Police ensured that particularly

prominent among the increasing numbers liquidated.

Already on the

first

day of the invasion reports began reaching Berlin of up

to 1,000 Soviet planes destroyed

troops. 'We'll soon pull

it

off,'

added: 'We must soon pull depressed mood.

The main author four years of

its

was

wrote Goebbels off.

Among

in his diary.

He

immediately

the people there's a .

.

somewhat

Every new theatre of war

.

13

of the most deadly clash of the century, which in almost

duration would produce an unimaginable harvest of sorrow

throughout central and eastern Europe and a

human

never experienced in Hitler

it

and Brest-Litowsk taken by the advancing

The people want peace

causes concern and worry.'

for families

The wide Jews were

history, left Berlin

level of destruction

around midday on 23 June.

setting out with his entourage for his

new

field

headquarters,

chosen for him the previous autumn, near Rastenburg in East Prussia.

presumption was, as there a few weeks, to Berlin. This

it

had been

make

in earlier

a tour of

was only one of

The

campaigns, that he would be

newly conquered areas, then return

his miscalculations.

{Wolfs schanze) near Rastenburg was to be his next three and a half years.

14

He would

home

finally leave

it

The 'Wolf's in the

a

main

broken

Lair'

for the

man

in a

broken country.

The Wolf's Lair - another play on Hitler's favourite pseudonym from the 1920s, when he liked to call himself 'Wolf (allegedly the meaning of 'Adolf, and implying strength) - was hidden away in the gloomy Masurian woods, about eight kilometres from the small town of Rastenburg. 15 Hitler and

his

accompaniment arrived there

new surroundings were not

late in the

greatly welcoming.

evening of 23 June. The

The

centre-point consisted

395

396

HITLER 1936— 1945 of ten bunkers, erected over the winter, camouflaged and in parts protected

two metres thickness of

against air-raids by at the

was windows faced north so that he There were rooms big enough for military

northern end of the complex. All

could avoid the sun streaming

in.

concrete. Hitler's bunker

its

conferences in Hitler's and Keitel's bunkers, and a barracks with a dining-

around twenty people. Another complex - known

hall for

a

little

as

HQ Area 2 -

distance away, surrounded by barbed wire and hardly visible from

Wehrmacht Operations Staff under Warlimont. The army headquarters, where Brauchitsch and Haider were based, were situated a few kilometres to the north-east. Goring - designated by Hitler on 29 June

the road, housed the

- and the Luftwaffe

to be his successor in the event of his death in their special trains.

staff stayed

16

known as 'Security Zone One', own daily rhythm. The central event was the 'situation

Hitler's part of the Fiihrer Headquarters,

swiftly developed

discussion' at

its

noon

bunker shared by Keitel and Jodl. This frequently

in the

ran on as long as two hours. Brauchitsch, Haider, and Colonel Adolf

Heusinger, chief of the army's Operations Department, attended once or twice a week.

The

these days for the

always

was followed by

briefing

most part punctually

strictly to a

non-meat diet. Any audiences that he had on non-military

matters were arranged for the afternoons. his secretaries for coffee.

who

a lengthy lunch, beginning in

at 2p.m., Hitler confining himself as

A

special

word

Around 5p.m. he would call in was bestowed on the one

of praise

could eat most cakes. The second military briefing, given by Jodl,

followed at 6p.m. The evening meal took place at 7.30p.m., often lasting

two hours. Afterwards

there were films.

The

final

part of the routine

was

the gathering of secretaries, adjutants, and guests for tea, to the accompani-

ment of

Hitler's late-night

some time during early hours.

cussions

18

came

monologues.

17

Those who could snatched

the afternoon so they could keep their eyes

Sometimes, to an end.

it

nap

in the

was daylight by the time the nocturnal

dis-

19

Hitler always sat in the

window, flanked by

open

a

same place

Press Chief Dietrich

and Bodenschatz opposite him. Generals,

at meals,

with his back to the

and Jodl, with

Keitel,

Bormann,

staff officers, adjutants, Hitler's

made up the rest The atmosphere was good in these early days, and not The mood at this time was still generally optimistic. 21 Life in

doctors, and any guests visiting the Fiihrer Headquarters

of the complement.

too formal. the

FHQ

20

had not yet reached the stage where

as half-way 'between a

Two

it

could be described by Jodl

monastery and a concentration camp'.

22

of Hitler's secretaries, Christa Schroeder and Gerda Daranowski,

showdown had also accompanied him to described their

larger than a

and

The

compartment in

a radio, but not

water

week

there to a friend, one

life

quarters were very simple.

much

after arriving.

Their living

was no

sleeping section of their bunker

a railway carriage.

else.

Schroeder

his field headquarters. Christa

They had

a toilet, a mirror,

There were shower rooms, but without hot

weeks. They had as good as nothing to do. Sleeping,

in the early

filled up most of their day. Some of the men company of the FHQ soon started to complain that the presence of Hitler's two under-employed secretaries in the military 23 complex was quite superfluous. Much of the secretaries' energy was spent trying to swat away a constant plague of midges. Hitler complained that his advisers who had picked the spot had chosen 'the most swampy, midge-

eating, drinking,

and climatically unfavourable area for him', and joked that he

infested,

would have

to send in the Luftwaffe

those in his daily the

and chatting

otherwise entirely male

in the

company

called him,

on the midge-hunt. 24 'The chief,

was

part of the Russian campaign.

first

secretaries.

When

generally in a

He

enjoyed light banter with his

Christa Schroeder could not find her torch one night, as

she emerged into the dark

compound,

not think he had stolen

'I'm a country (Landledieb) thief, not a

{Lampledieb)

as

good mood during

thief,'

it.

Hitler remarked that she should

lamp

25

he quipped.

How monochrome life in the confines of the Fiihrer Headquarters rapidly became ments off

for Hitler's secretaries

travels. It's

same routine

in Berlin,

on the Mountain

The danger was,

contact with the real world'. Only the

around

'the

Berghof, a

in Berlin or at the

early days, he usually faced a big

At the drop of

a hat, he

common

life

of the Wolfsschanze's

fell

apart.

word during meals on one

map

late.

as he stood in front of a big

and

say: 'In four

ground.'

28

weeks

26

of Hitler's 27

In these

of the Soviet Union pinned to the

would launch

into yet another harangue about

the danger that Bolshevism signified for Europe,

year would have been too

the

Chief, held the group together, she

favourite topics could easily trigger an hour-long monologue.

wall.

[at

she went on, 'of losing

wrote. But should Hitler be absent, things immediately

As

com-

always the same limited group of people, always

inside the fence.'

inhabitants, revolving

in Christa Schroeder's

end of August: 'We are permanently cut

from the world wherever we are -

Berghof ], or on the

was indicated

in a letter to a friend at the

and how to wait another

On one occasion, his secretaries heard Hitler, map

of Europe, point to the Russian capital

Moscow. Moscow will be razed to the much better than could have been imagined,

we'll be in

Everything had gone

he remarked. They had been lucky that the Russians had placed their troops

397

398

HITLER 1936-1945 on the borders and not pulled the German armies deep which would have caused

difficulties

with supplies.

29

into their country,

Two-thirds of the

Bolshevik armed forces and five-sixths of the tanks and aircraft were destroyed or severely damaged, he told Goebbels, on the Propaganda Minister's

visit to Fiihrer

first

Headquarters on

8 July.

30

After assessing the

Wehrmacht advisers, Goebbels noted, was 'that the war in the East was in the main already There could be no notion of peace-terms with the Kremlin. (He

military situation in detail with his

the Fiihrer's conclusion

won'.

31

would think

month later.) Bolshevism would component parts, deprived of any intellectual, political, or economic centre. Japan would attack the Soviet differently

about

this

only a

be wiped out and Russia broken up into

Union from the

its

east in a matter of weeks.

'with a sleepwalker's certainty'.

this early stage, Hitler

foresaw England's

Whether he would take up any

compromise peace from London he could not even at

He

was

say.

less ebullient,

32

On

there

in of 3,500 aircraft

was other news of

offer of a

other occasions,

betraying signs of uncer-

knew

tainty about the Soviet Union, about which, he said, they

News came

fall

so

33

little.

and over 1,000 Soviet tanks destroyed. But

fanatical fighting by Soviet soldiers

who

feared the

worst if they surrendered. Hitler was to tell the Japanese Ambassador Oshima

on 14 July that 'our enemies are not human beings any more, they are beasts'. 34 It was, then, doubtless echoing her 'chief and the general atmosphere in

FHQ when Christa Schroeder remarked to her friend that 'from all previous experience Hitler

it

can be said to be a

fight against

wild animals'.

35

had permitted no Wehrmacht reports during the very

first

days of

But Sunday, 29 June - a week after the attack had started was, as Goebbels described it, 'the day of the special announcements'. the campaign.

36

Twelve of them on

Liszt's

morning.

altogether, each introduced by the 'Russian Fanfare' based

'Hungarian Rhapsody', were broadcast, beginning

37

Dominance

in the air

had been

at

Two

that

attained, the reports proclaimed.

Grodno, Brest-Litowsk, Vilnius, Kowno, and Dunaburg were hands.

na.m.

Soviet armies were encircled at Bialystok.

in

German

Minsk had been

The Russians had lost, it was announced, 2,233 tanks and 4,107 aircraft. Enormous quantities of materiel had been captured. Vast numbers of prisoners had been taken. But the popular reception in Germany was

taken.

less enthusiastic

than had been hoped. People rapidly tired of the special

announcements, one

after the other,

and were

sceptical

about the propa-

ganda. Instead of being excited, their senses were dulled. Goebbels was furious at the

repeated.

38

OKW's

presentation, and

vowed

that

it

would never be

showdown The invasion in contrast to

we have

of the Soviet Union, for which, as

seen, there

had

previous campaigns been of necessity no prior manipulation

of popular opinion,

was presented

German

to the

public as a preventive

war. This had been undertaken by the Fiihrer, so Goebbels's directives to

head off

the press ran, to

entire western culture

moment to

minute the threat to the Reich and the

at the last

through the treachery of 'Jewish-Bolshevism'. At any

the Bolsheviks

had been planning

to strike against the Reich

and

overrun and destroy Europe. Only the Fuhrer's bold action had prevented 39

this.

More

extraordinary than this propaganda

and Goebbels had convinced themselves of

had

falseness, they

the

to play out a fiction even

unprovoked decision

to attack

and

among

and 1,800 the

artillery pieces

toll

of 324,000

Red Army

captured or destroyed.

second day of the campaign,

42

After a

reached j^6^.

43

Soviet divisions

its

Union.

and Minsk had

over a fortnight later

figures.

41

Already by the

numbers of aircraft shot

When Goring expressed

doubts

were checked and found to be 200-300 below the actual

month of By

fighting, the figure for aircraft destroyed

early July

had been

it

was estimated

Red Army were

The scale of underestimation of Soviet come as a severe shock. But in early July

German

military leadership

and that only nine

still fit

fighting potential it

was hardly

was

had

that eighty-nine out of 164

entirely or partially destroyed,

out of twenty-nine tank divisions of the

feeling in the

aware of

prisoners, 3,300 tanks,

Little

estimates put

or destroyed on the ground at 2,500.

at the figures they total.

German

Fully

themselves to justify

at Bialystok

end of the battle for Smolensk doubled these

down

40

utterly destroy the Soviet

By the end of June the German encirclements produced the astonishing

the fact that Hitler

lie is

truth.

its

for

combat.

44

would soon

surprising

that 'Barbarossa'

if

the

was on

course for complete victory, that the campaign would be over, as predicted, before the winter.

On

3

July Haider

summed up

would come

to haunt him:

the Russian

campaign has been won

least

'It is

his verdict in

thus probably no overstatement to say that in the space of

have the foresight to acknowledge that

two weeks.' He did

this did

over: 'The sheer geographical vastness of the country

of the resistance, for

which

many more weeks

is

carried

to come.'

words which

45

on with

all

not

mean

that

it

at

was

and the stubbornness

means, will claim our efforts

399

'

400

HITLER 1936— 1945

II

The territorial gains brought about by the spectacular successes of the Wehrmacht in the first phase of 'Barbarossa' gave Hitler command over a European continent than any

greater extent of the

power and might were

ruler since

Napoleon. His

lunchtime or late-night mono-

at their peak. In his

logues to his regular retinue in the Fuhrer Headquarters, he revealed few,

if

any, signs of the wear and tear on his nerves which growing conflict with his

army leaders and shifting fortunes at the front would cause during the coming weeks. His rambling, discursive outpourings were the purest expression of

unbounded, megalomaniac power and breathtaking inhumanity. They were the face of the future in the vast

new

'The beauty of the Crimea,' he rhapsodized

would be made

their version of the Italian or

late at

Germans through

accessible to

French

saw night on

eastern empire, as he

riviera.

46

it.

July 1941,

5

motorway.

a

It

would be

Every German, after the war,

he remarked, had to have the chance with his 'People's Car' (Volkswagen) personally to see the conquered territories, since he if

need be to

fight for them'.

would have

The mistake of the pre-war

'to

be ready

era of limiting the

colonial idea to the property of a few capitalists or companies could not be

Roads would be more important

repeated.

Only through

for passenger transport.

known, he

He was

asserted.

asked whether

to eradicate

it

was It

that

No

would be enough suffice,

a

country be

to stretch the conquests to the

he replied. But Bolshevism had to be to carry out expeditions

any new centres that might develop. city

made

here,

'St

from there

- as he called

Petersburg'

incomparably more beautiful than Moscow.'

and the

to be sealed off,

little

cities as

by road could

48

But

he decided, was to be identical to that of the capital. 'An example

to be

was

it

would

would be necessary

Leningrad - 'was as a its fate,

travel

than the railways

47

Urals. 'Initially', that

exterminated, and

in the future

city will

disappear completely from the earth.'

bombarded, and starved

out.

49

He

imagined, too,

left of Kiev. He saw the destruction of Soviet German power in the conquered territories. 50

would ultimately be

the basis for lasting

military

power was

to be tolerated within 300 kilometres east of the

M Urals. 'The border between Europe and

Asia,' he stated,

'is

not the Urals

but the place where the settlements of Germanic types of people stop and

pure Slavdom begins. the east,

and

if

It is

our task to push

necessary beyond the Urals.

Hitler thought the Russian people

fit

this

border as far as possible to

i2

for nothing but hard

work under

SHOWDOWN coercion. lie)

33

'The

who would

Slavs,'

he declared, 'were a rabbit-family (Kaninchenfami-

never proceed beyond the family association

a ruling class. Their natural

do so by

of general disorganization.'

54

if

not forced to

and desired condition was one

'The Ukrainians,' he remarked on another

occasion, 'were every bit as idle, disorganized, and nihilistically asiatic as the Greater Russians.'

they understood

was

dictator, he thought,

To

speak of any sort of work ethic was pointless. All

'the whip'.

He admired

was 'one of

Stalin's brutality.

human

the greatest living

only through the harshest compulsion, he had succeeded

out of this Slavic rabbit-family'. of the

most extraordinary

his office

35

He

figures of

in

The

Soviet

beings since,

described 'the sly Caucasian' as 'one

world

who

history',

scarcely ever left

but could rule from there through a subservient bureaucracy.

Hitler's

model

for

if

welding a state

56

domination and exploitation remained the British

Empire. His inspiration for the future rule of his master-race was the Raj.

He

voiced his admiration on

many

occasions for the

country as Great Britain had been able to establish

world

in a

huge colonial empire.

what Germany could do territory

way such

rule

British rule in India in particular

in Russia. It

a small

throughout the

showed

must be possible to control the eastern

with a quarter of a million men, he stated. With that number the

British ruled

German

its

400 million Indians. Russia would always be dominated by

rulers.

They must

see to

it

that the masses were educated to

do no

living standard for them The south of the Ukraine, in particular the Crimea, would be settled by German farmer-soldiers. He would have no worries at all about deporting the existing population somewhere or other to make room for them. The vision was of a latter-day feudal type of settlement: there would be a standing army of 1/4-2 million men, providing some 30-40,000 every year for use each year when their twelve-year service was completed. If they were sons of farmers, they would be given a farm-

more than read road

was

in the

German

stead, fully equipped, service.

though a reasonable

signs,

interest.

They would

37

by the Reich

in return for their

also be provided with

twelve years of military

weapons. The only condition

was that they must marry country- not town-girls. 38 German peasants would live in beautiful settlements,

Beyond

German

this

would be

linked by

'the other

good roads

subjugation. Should there be a revolution,

drop a few bombs on their

new

tasks to

fore, real master-types,

and the business

'all

we need

will be over'.

59

to

do

is

After ten

German elite, to be counted on when be undertaken. 'A new type of man will come to the

years, he foresaw, there

there were

cities

to the nearest town.

world' where the Russians lived under

would be

who

a

of course can't be used in the west: viceroys.'

60

401

402

HITLER 1936— 1945 German ernors

administrators would be housed in splendid buildings; the gov-

would

live in 'palaces'.

61

His musings on the prospect of a

German

equivalent of India continued

on three successive days and nights from 8- n August. India had given the English pride. The vast spaces had obliged them to rule millions with only a

few men. 'What India was for England, the eastern he declared.

us,'

territory will be for

62

For Hitler, India was the heart of an empire that had brought Britain not only power, but prosperity. Ruthless economic exploitation had always

been central to

his

dream of the German empire

dream would soon become

that

in the east.

Now,

it

seemed,

'The Ukraine and then the Volga

reality.

basin will one day be the granaries of Europe,' he foresaw. 'And we'll also

provide Europe with iron.

good, then we'll take

it

If

Sweden won't supply

from the

63

east.

one of these days,

it

Belgian industry can exchange

its

products - cheap consumer wares - for corn from these areas. From Thuringia and the Harz mountains, for example, we can remove our poor 64 working-class families to give them big stretches of land {grofie Raume).' 'We'll be an exporter of corn for

month

later. 'In the

Crimea we

40,000 hectares we'll

marches

make

will give us reeds.

glass chains as jewellery,

Europe who need

all in

will

have citrus

fruits,

he went on, a

it,'

rubber plants (with

ourselves independent), and cotton.

We

The

Pripet

will deliver to the Ukrainians head-scarves,

and whatever

peoples

else colonial

like.

We

Ger-

mans - that's the main thing - must form a closed community like a fortress. 6 The lowest stable-lad must be superior to any of the natives Autarky, in Hitler's thinking, was the basis of security. And the conquest of the east, as he had repeatedly stated in the mid-i920s, would now offer Germany that security. 'The struggle for hegemony in the world will be .'

.

^

.

decided for Europe through the occupation of the Russian space,' he told his

entourage in mid-September. 'This makes Europe the firmest place in

the world against the threat of blockade.'

days I

later.

'As soon as

I

recognize a

66

He

put every effort into making us independent

livestock,

wood - we must have them

Europe

self-sufficient, as

existing us.'

is

which could

He compared, as

long as

utilize

returned to the theme a few

raw material

we

European

at

as

in

important for the war,

it.

our disposal

just

Iron, coal, oil, corn, .

.

.

Today

prevent another

I

can say:

mammoth

state

civilization to mobilize Asia against

many years

earlier, the benefits

economy and

the mistakes, as he

he had frequently done

of autarky with the international market

saw them, made by Britain and America through their dependence upon exports and overseas markets, bringing cut-throat competition, correspond-

SHOWDOWN and production

ing high tariffs

this

had meant that

we

'The country that

was

it

by the error

class

tied to exports,

the only country without

unemployment.

now opening up

are

working

its

Germany was not

of industrializing India, he continued.

and

and unemployment. Britain had

costs,

unemployment and impoverished

increased

source and marketing area, not a

is

for us only a raw-material

field for industrial

production

Far East. Here

cotton goods, cooking-pots, the necessities of as

We

our market.

is

life.

We

can be marketed here.

all

have a

Hitler

A

right.

like so

see there great possibilities for the build-up of a

I

was blunt about

might was

demand for much

simple articles for satisfying the

.

.

.

For the next few hundred years

of activity without equal.'

field

in the

We'll deliver

it.

won't be able to produce anything

strong Reich, a true world-power will

simply need to secure

We

.

.

.

won't need any more to look for an active (aufnahmefahigen) market

we

67

his justification for

conquering

this territory:

culturally superior people, deprived of 'living space', 68

It was for him, as always, a matter of the harm the Russians now, then for the reason that they would otherwise harm me,' he declared. 'The dear God, once again, makes

needed no further 'laws of nature'.

it

like that.

He

justification.

'If

I

suddenly casts the masses of humanity on to the earth and

how he gets through. One person And at the end you can only say that

each one has to look after himself and takes something

away from

the stronger wins.

That

the other.

after all the

is

most sensible order of

There would be no end of the struggle after a

German

victory. Hitler

in the east, that

things.'

was

clear,

even

spoke of building an 'Eastern Wall' along the

human

Urals as a barrier against sudden inroads from the 'dangerous reservoir' in Asia.

69

would be no conventional fortification, but a live wall who would form the new eastern settlers. 'A

It

built of the soldier-farmers

permanent border struggle us

from sinking back

Europe.' a

70

War was

man means

for a

back frequently

in the east will

into the softness of a state system based purely

for Hitler the essence of girl,'

in these

human

activity.

weeks to

his

own

Looking

he was completely gripped by

it

had been

like that in

'a

'I'm If

it

in the

immensely happy to have experienced the war

he could wish the

German people one

referred

World

heroic epic such as there

what he always

but that nobody had been able to record

He

at the newsreel of the

had never previously been'. He immediately then added tion) that

71

experiences in the First

life.

on

'What meeting

he declared, 'war meant for him.'

War, probably the most formative of his 'Battle of Kiev',

produce a solid stock and prevent

(in flat

contradic-

called 'the

World War',

same way

for posterity.

in this way,'

thing, he

he added.

2

remarked on another

403

404

HITLER 1936— 1945 occasion,

it

would be

war every fifteen of 200,000 lives, he would reply to have a

reproached for the loss the

German

nation by zVi million, and

sacrifice of the lives of a tenth. 'Life

and passing away,

being, existing,

Everything that

born must

is

felt justified

it's

through

into

(ein Toten).

illness, accident,

73

'new order' have to be placed

Hitler's notions of a social

Coming

always a killing

Whether

If

had enlarged

demanding the

in

horrible {grausam).

there's

later die.

or war, that remains the same.'

is

to twenty years.

that he

in this setting

of conquest, ruthless exploitation, the right of the powerful, racial domi-

nance, and more or

less

permanent war

readily expendable. His ideas often still

smouldered

at the

way

the disadvantages of his

his

own

all

and could expect once or twice criticized the distinctions

'talents'

was cheap and

had been

left

unrecognized or

compared with the

Thus he advocated

talented youngsters.

life

their roots in the resentment that

social status

the high-born and well-to-do. the state, for

own

world where

in a

had

privileges of

free education,

funded by

Workers would have annual holidays

in their lives to

between different

go on a sea-cruise.

classes of passengers

74

He

on such

And he approved of the introduction of the same food for both and men in the army. 7j Hitler might appear to have been promoting

cruise ships. officers

ideas of a

else

modern, mobile,

classless society, abolishing privilege

upon achievement. But

solely

was subordinated. Thus,

in the

upholstered

first-

in the east,

he said,

resting

which

all

Germans would travel - to separate them

all

or second-class railway carriages

from the native population. 76 It was attractions for

and

the central tenet remained race, to

many members

a social vision

which could have obvious

The image was The Reich

of the would-be master-race.

of a cornucopia of wealth flowing into the Reich from the east.

would be linked

to the

endless steppes and the

new

frontiers by

motorways cutting through the spaces. Prosperity and power

enormous Russian

would be secured through the new breed of supermen who lorded the downtrodden Slav masses.

The

vision, to those

who

heard Hitler describe

modern: a break with traditional society

where

Germans, that

talent

modern.

77

He

is.

had

its

class-

it,

it

over

appeared excitingly

and status-bound hierarchies

reward and there was prosperity for

all

-

to a

for

all

Indeed, elements of Hitler's thinking were unquestionably

looked, for instance, to the benefits of modern technology,

envisaging steam-heated greenhouses giving of fresh fruit and vegetables

all

German

through the winter.

cities a 78

He

regular supply

looked, too, to

modern transport to open up the east. While the bounty of the east pouring into Germany would be brought by train, the car for Hitler was the vital

SHOWDOWN transport vision

means of the

was

its

The

mixed

apparent modernity, the social

all its

colonial conquests of the nineteenth

What Hitler was offering was a modernized imperialist conquest, now translated to the ethni-

inspiration.

version of old-fashioned

German

But for

in essence atavistic.

century provided

cally

79

future.

Europe where the Slavs would provide the

terrain of eastern

equivalent of the conquered native populations of India and Africa

in the British

Empire.

By mid-July, the key

had been taken to translate the horrendous

steps

At an important five-hour meeting

vision into reality.

Bormann, Hitler established the

in the

Fuhrer Head-

Lammers,

quarters on 16 July attended by Goring, Rosenberg,

basic guidelines of policy

Keitel,

and

and practical

arrangements for administering and exploiting the new conquests. Once

more, the underlying premiss was the social-Darwinist justification that the

what they were

strong deserved to inherit the earth. But the sense that

doing was morally objectionable nevertheless ran through Hitler's opening

comments,

Bormann. 'The motivation of our

as reported by

eyes of the world

must be directed by

we had

emphasize that

impose

said nothing about our intentions

do

sensibly continue not to

so,'

Bormann

we were compelled

to

recorded.

'We

providing calm, food, transport

In

will

will then again

etc.

we had

Therefore our settlement.

etc. etc.

then not be recognizable that a final settlement

measures - shooting, deportation

and we

occupy an area to bring order, and to

security. In the interest of the native population

don't want to

steps in the

We must proceed

Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium.

here exactly as in the cases of these cases, too,

tactical viewpoints.

- we

is

will

to see to It

should

beginning! All necessary

and can do anyway.

We

make premature and unnecessary enemies. We will simply we wish to carry out a mandate. But it must be clear to

act, therefore, as if

us that

we

will never again leave these territories,' Hitler's blunt statement

continued. 'Accordingly, final

are the liberators that

it

a matter of:

is

we can

first

Russians have

.

.

.

rule

now

Basically, it,

it's

doing nothing to hinder the

power west of

its

advantage: us.

the Urals

As

pied east. Rosenberg

emphasizing that we

it

up the giant cake so

and thirdly exploit

it.

war behind our

The

front.

gives us the possibility of

a basic principle: the construction

must never again be

we have to wage war for proceeded to make appointments

consequence

Hitler

it,

given out the order for a partisan

exterminating anything opposing of a military

2.

a matter of dividing

secondly administer

This partisan war again has

as a

1.

settlement but rather preparing this in secret;

a

hundred

possible, even

years.'

if

80

to the key positions in the occu-

was confirmed next day

as

head of what appeared on

405

406

HITLER I936-I945 the surface to be the all-powerful Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.

81

But nothing was as

authority, as Hitler's decree

it

made

seemed

in the

clear, did

Third Reich. Rosenberg's

not touch the respective spheres

of competence of the army, Goring's Four- Year Plan organization, and the SS.

The

big guns, in other words, were outside Rosenberg's control.

than that, Rosenberg's allies,

and

own

More

conception of winning certain nationalities as

under German tutelage, against Greater Russia - notions which he

his staff

policy of

had been working on since the spring -

maximum

fell

foul of

Himmler's

repression and brutal resettlement and Goring's aims

of total economic exploitation.

Himmler was within weeks

in receipt of

plans for deporting in the coming twenty-five years or so over 30 million

people into far more inhospitable climes further eastward. Goring was envisaging the starvation in Russia of 20-30 million persons

-

a prospect

advanced even before the German invasion by the Agricultural Group of

Economic Staff Goring - could find

the

a

- Rosenberg, Himmler, and

common denominator

in Hitler's goal of destroying

Bolshevism and acquiring berg's concept

- no

82

All three

for the East.

'living space'.

less ruthless,

opposed to the contrary

But beyond that minimum, Rosen-

but more pragmatic - had no chance

we have

idea, backed, as

vision, of absolute rapaciousness

and repression.

when

seen, by Hitler's

own

83

Opposing Rosenberg's wishes, Hitler had yielded

in the

conference of 16

July to the suggestion of Goring, backed by Bormann, that the

- even by

Nazi standards - extraordinarily brutal and independent-minded Erich

Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia, should be made Reich Commissar of the key territory of the Ukraine.

84

Koch,

like Hitler,

but in contrast to Rosenberg,

was

rejected any idea of a Ukrainian buffer-state. His view

very beginning

it

was necessary

be hard and brutal'.

'to

from the

that

He was

held in

favour in Fiihrer Headquarters. Everyone there thought he was the most suitable person to carry out the requirements in the Ukraine. a

compliment when they called him the 'second In contrast to the tyrant,

Koch,

who

Stalin'.

It

was seen

continued to prefer his old East

domain to his new fiefdom, Hinrich Lohse, appointed Commissar in the Baltic, now renamed the Ostland, made himself

Prussian

of ridicule

a subject

territory with

and often petty bureaucratization, unleashed

in torrents of

the

German occupying

decrees and directives. For

all that,

at the suggestion of

forces in his

he was weak

the SS, and other competing agencies.

russia,

as Reich

own

among

his fanatical

as

85

86

Similarly,

Goring and Rosenberg

in the face of the

power of

Wilhelm Kube, appointed

as General

Commissar

proved not only corrupt and incompetent on a grandiose

in Belo-

scale,

but

SHOWDOWN another weak petty dictator in his province, his instructions often ignored by his

own

power of

subordinates, and forced repeatedly to yield to the superior

the SS.

87

The course was the very all

set,

'New Order'

therefore, for a

in the east

which belied

name. Nothing resembled order. Everything resembled the war of

against

extended

all,

in

built into the

Nazi system

occupied Poland, and

now

in the

taken to

Reich

itself,

logical

its

massively

denouement

in

the conquered lands of the Soviet Union.

Ill

In fact, despite the extraordinary gains

July

would bring recognition

failed.

in the

And

made by

the advancing

Wehrmacht,

that the operational plan of 'Barbarossa'

had

for all the air of confidence that Hitler displayed to his entourage

Wolf's Lair, these weeks also produced early indications of the

tensions and conflicts in military leadership and decision-making that

continue to bedevil the

German war

effort. Hitler

would

intervened in tactical

matters from the outset. As early as 24 June he had told Brauchitsch of his

worries that the encirclement at Bialystok was not tight enough.

following day he was expressing concern that

South were operating too far

in depth.

in

our plans.'

On

27, 29,

The

Centre and

Haider dismissed the worry. 'The

old refrain!' he wrote in his diary. 'But that 89

Army Groups

88

is

not going to change anything

and 30 June and again on 2 and

3

July Haider

recorded worried queries or interventions by Hitler in tactical deployments of troops.

90

'Again the whole place

FHQ

is

in a state of jitters,'

Haider remarked

wedge of Army Group South now advancing eastward might be threatened by flank attacks from north and south.' Haider admitted that in tactical terms the fear was about

on

3 July, 'because the Fiihrer

is

afraid that the

not unwarranted. But he resented the interference. 'What level,'

he confided to his diary notes,

mands which ation,

is

one of the most

lacking on top

that confidence in the executive

essential features of

and that is so because it fails

from the

'is

is

our

command

to grasp the coordinating force that

common schooling and education of our Leader Corps.'

com-

organiz-

comes

91

Haider's irritation at Hitler's interference was understandable. But the errors

and misjudgements, even

of 'Barbarossa', were as

Command was

as of the

much

former

the greatest warlord of

First all

in the first,

seemingly so successful, phase

Army High World War corporal who now thought he

those of the professionals in

time.

407

408

HITLER 1936— 1945 The mounting

conflict

with Hitler revolved around the implementation

of the 'Barbarossa' strategic plan that had been laid

December

in Directive 21.

down

the previous

This in turn had emanated from the

feasibility

summer by military strategists. Planning had, we noted, by Haider on 3 July 1940 almost a month

studies carried out during the in fact,

been initiated as

before Hitler gave the verbal orders on the 31st to prepare a spring campaign in the East.

92

Feasibility studies followed, the

most important, produced

at

the beginning of August 1940, by General Erich Marcks, Chief of Staff of

the

Army. War games were

1 8th

carried out at Army Headquarters to Army High Command had favoured at this point, based on the 'Marcks Plan', making Moscow the key objective. Hitler's

test the studies.

especially

own,

different, conception

was not

dissimilar in a

the independent strategic study prepared for the Staff it

by Lieutenant-Colonel Bernhard Lol^berg

differed

from

this, too,

The emphasis

on the

number of essentials from Wehrmacht Operational

in

September 1940, though

crucial question of

Moscow. 93

in Hitler's 'Barbarossa Directive' in

December, and

in all

subsequent strategic planning, had been on the thrusts to the north, to take

Leningrad and secure the Ukraine.

94

Even

if

Baltic,

with a further thrust to the south, to take the

unenthusiastically, the

Army

General Staff had accepted

the significant alteration of what it had originally envisaged. According to this

amended plan, Army Group Centre was to advance as far as Smolensk before swinging to the north to meet up with Leeb's armies for the assault on Leningrad.

The taking of Moscow

figured in the agreed plan of 'Barbarossa'

only once the occupation of Leningrad and Kronstadt had been completed.

Already on 29 June Hitler was worried that Bock's

where the advance was

especially spectacular,

4 July he claimed that he faced the

most

Army Group

would overreach

difficult decision of the

whether to hold to the original 'Barbarossa' plan, amend deep thrust towards the Caucasus

by some of

Army Group

(in

8

Army Group

July

96

On

campaign:

to provide for a assisted

Centre's panzer forces), or retain the panzer

Moscow. 97 The

was the one wanted by Haider:

reached by

Centre,

itself.

which Rundstedt would be

concentration in the centre and push forward to

offensive of

it

95

decision he

to press forward the

Centre with the aim of destroying the mass of the

enemy forces west of Moscow. 98 The amended strategy now discarded Army Group Centre's turn towards Leningrad, built into the original 'Barbarossa' 99 plan. The 'ideal solution', Hitler accepted, would be to leave Leeb's Army Group North to attain its objectives by its own means. 100 However, Hitler was even now by no means reconciled to the priority of capturing Moscow - in his eyes, as he said, 'merely a geographical idea'. 101

SHOWDOWN The

with

conflict

Army High Command,

supported by

Centre, about concentration on the taking of

continued over the next weeks. Hitler pressed,

Moscow

in revised operational

for priority to be given to the capture of Leningrad,

the south the drive to the industrial area of to be reached before the onset of winter. to Directive

Army Group

as the objective,

Kharkhov and

By

At the same time,

'Supplement

his

No. 33', dated 23 July, indicated that Army Group Centre would

enemy between Smolensk and Moscow by its infantry and would then 'take Moscow into occupation'. 102

late July

Haider had changed

of victory. Early in the

known

his

month he had

164 Soviet divisions were

still

told Hitler that only forty-six of the

capable of combat. This had been in

enemy's

a rash underestimation of the

it

was certainly

On

ability to replenish its forces.

July he revised the figure to a total of ninety-three divisions.

been 'decisively weakened', but by no means

As

divisions

tune about the certainty and speed

probability an overestimation of the extent of destruction;

all

in

into the Caucasus,

destroy the alone,

form,

and now included

'finally

a consequence, since the Soviet reserves of

23

The enemy had

smashed', he concluded.

manpower were now

seen to

be inexhaustible, Haider argued even more forcefully that the aim of further operations had to be the destruction of the areas of armaments production

around Moscow. 103

As the strength of Soviet defences was being

German army and Luftwaffe

also

were showing signs of exhaustion;

had

revised, the toll

on the

to be taken into account. Air-crews

their planes could not be

maintained

fast

enough. By the end of July only 1,045 aircraft were serviceable. Air-raids

on Moscow demanded by Hitler were of

little

effect

because so few planes

were available. Most of the seventy-five raids on the Soviet capital carried out over the next months were undertaken by small numbers of bombers, scarcely able to

make

infantry were even

engaged

a pinprick in Soviet

more

in

need of

in fierce fighting, for

over a

armaments production. 104 The

rest. They had been marching, and month without a break. The original

operational plan had foreseen a break for recuperation after twenty days.

But the troops had received no of the campaign

was not

over.

105

rest

By

and dead) had reached 213,301 miracles

by the fortieth day, and the

first

phase

this time, casualties (wounded, missing,

officers

and men. 106 Moreover, despite

worked by Quartermaster-General Eduard Wagner's organization,

transport problems on roads often unfit even in

midsummer

for

mechanized

transport brought immeasurable problems of maintaining supply-lines of fuel,

equipment, and provisions to the rapidly advancing army. Supplies for

Army Group

Centre required twenty-five goods trains a day. But despite

409

4IO

HITLER 1936— 1945 working round the clock

German

to convert the railway lines to a

gauge,

only eight to fifteen trains a day were reaching the front line in late July and early August. It

107

was becoming obvious already by the end of July

down

'Barbarossa' operational plan as laid

in Hitler's

that the revised

Supplement to Direc-

No. 33 could not be carried out before winter descended. 108 Hitler interpreted this as demanding panzer support from Army Group Centre for tive

on Leningrad. Moscow could wait. Haider took the diametrically

the assault

opposite view.

Making Moscow

committed the bulk of its

communications system and

render resistance more capital

109

If

industries,

The

difficult.

would bring about

eastern war.

the objective

would ensure

the

the attack

fall

would

implication

that the Soviets

Taking the

their forces to its defence.

split the

was

including

city,

Soviet

Union and

that the capture of the

of the Soviet system, and the end of the

on Moscow were not pushed through with

all

enemy would bring the offensive to a halt before winter, then regroup. The military aim of the war against the Soviet Union would have speed, the

failed.

110

was

Hitler

still

adamant

that capturing the industrial region of

and the Donets Basin and cutting

off Soviet oil supplies

Kharkhov

would undermine

Moscow. 111 But he was wavering. At this point, even Jodl and the Wehrmacht Operations Staff had been converted 112 to the need to attack Moscow. Citing the arrival of strong enemy reinforcements facing and flanking Army Group Centre, Hitler now, on 30 July, 113 cancelled the Supplement to Directive N0.33. Haider was momentarily resistance

more than

the

fall

of

ecstatic. 'This decision frees every thinking soldier of the horrible vision

obsessing us these last few days, since the Fuhrer's obstinacy

down

bogging Directive

No. 34 was issued the same day

Army Group assault

made

of the eastern campaign appear imminent.' it

offered Haider

114

the final

But when

little

comfort.

Centre was to recuperate for the next attack; in the north the

on Leningrad was to continue; and Army Group South was

to

enemy forces west of the Dnieper and in the vicinity of Kiev. 115 decision - for or against the drive to Moscow - had effectively just

destroy the

The

real

been postponed for a while. 116 In early

reckoned

August Hitler remained wedded to Leningrad this

would be cut

could be redeployed by

off

by

2.0

Army Group

as the priority.

He

August, and then troops and aircraft Centre.

The second

priority for Hitler

was, as before, 'the south of Russia, especially the Donets region', which

formed the

on

'entire basis of the

his priority-list.

He

Russian economy'.

Moscow was a clear third

recognized that in this order of priorities the capital

SHOWDOWN could not be taken before winter. Haider tried unavailingly to get Brau-

on whether to put everything into delivering

chitsch to obtain a clear decision the

enemy

for

economic reasons.

him

vince

a fatal

blow

Moscow

at

He

Moscow and

that the objectives of

By now, Haider was

Wehrmacht. 'The whole

or taking the Ukraine and the Caucasus

persuaded Jodl to intervene with Hitler to con-

makes

it

we reckoned with about 200 enemy

divisions.

and

line,

have

is

often poor. But

we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front

if .

.

Now we

without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the

enemy.'

118

Supplement to Directive No. 34, issued on 12 August, Hitler for the

In his first

.

we have

armed and equipped

according to our standards, and their tactical leadership

up another dozen

117

n August. 'At the outset

already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not

there they are,

to be met.

increasingly plain that

underestimated the Russian colossus,' he wrote on of the war,

had

magnitude of the task facing the

realizing the

situation

the Ukraine

time stated categorically that once the threats from the flanks were

enemy

eliminated and the panzer groups were refreshed the attack on the

massed for the protection of

forces

Moscow was

to be prosecuted.

The

removal from the enemy before winter of the entire

state,

armaments, and communications centre around Moscow', ran the

direc-

aim was

tive.

119

'the

.Three days later, however, Hitler intervened once more in the tactical

dispositions by ordering panzer forces

Group Centre attack.

to help

from the northern flank of Army

Army Group North

resist a

His concession,

if

heavily qualified,

negation of the decision,

on Moscow, then -

may have been

mounting hypochondria, he had, ably good health lifestyle.

- perhaps

But he had

now

unwell and 'very

in fact,

in effect

- rapid

affected by the severe attack of

dysentery from which he was suffering in the

still

strong Soviet counter-

120

first

half of August. Despite

over the past years enjoyed remark-

surprisingly so, given his eating habits

been laid low

irritable',

at a vital time.

and

Goebbels found him

though on the mend, when he

visited

FHQ

on 18 August. The weeks of tension, and the unexpected military difficulties of the past month - 'a distinctly bad time' - had taken their toll, the Propaganda Minister thought. 121

In fact, electrocardiograms taken at the

time indicated that Hitler had rapidly progressive coronary sclerosis. Morell's discussion of the results of the tests could have done Hitler's

mood, or

to lessen his hypochondria.

Probably Hitler's

ill-health in

little

to

lift

122

August, at a time

when he was stunned by

411

412.

HITLER I936-I945 the recognition of the gross underestimation by

weakened

true level of Soviet forces, temporarily

war

German

his resolve to continue the

Goebbels was plainly astonished, on

in the east.

intelligence of the

FHQ

his visit to

on 18

August, to hear Hitler entertain thoughts of accepting peace terms from Stalin

and even

Red Army, would be no

stating that Bolshevism, without the

danger to Germany. 123

(Stalin, in fact,

appears briefly to have contemplated

moves to come to terms, involving large-scale surrender of Soviet territory, in 124

late July.)

In a pessimistic state of

victory in the east, Hitler

maybe

for peace;

mind about an

was clutching

at straws:

early

and comprehensive

perhaps Stalin would sue

Churchill would be brought down; quite suddenly peace

might break out. The turnabout could come as quickly as

it

had done

in

January 1933, he suggested (and would do so on other occasions down to 1945), when, without prospects at the start of the month, the National Socialists

had within

Haider's

time had

own

come

to destroy the

sent Haider's

a matter of

nerves were by this point also frayed.

to confront Hitler once

enemy

since

On

main

effort

He now

12 ^

thought the

Army Groups North their own

from within

must be the immediate offensive against

Centre would be unable to continue

on account of weather conditions.

memorandum had

its

oper-

126

been prepared by Colonel Heusinger, the

army's Chief of Operations Department.

Heusinger discussed the

power.

18 August Brauchitsch

argued that

attain their objectives

Army Group

ations after October

It

in

with the imperative need

all

around Moscow.

forces

resources, but that the

Haider's

and for

memorandum on to Hitler.

and South would have to

Moscow,

weeks found themselves

memorandum

Two

days after

its

submission,

with Jodl. Hitler's closest military

adviser suggested psychological motives behind the dictator's strategic choices. Heusinger recalled Jodl saying that Hitler

sion to treading the

as Napoleon. Moscow gives him a sinister When Heusinger reaffirmed the need to defeat

Moscow, Jodl

the

enemy

tell

you what the Fuhrer's answer

replied: 'That's

will be:

There

what you is

at the

better possibility of beating the Russian forces. Their

remarked:

'I

will

say.

Now

moment

a

main grouping

east of Kiev.' Heusinger pressed Jodl to support the finally

instinctive aver-

same path

feeling (etwas Unbeimliches).'

forces at

had 'an

will

I

much

is

now

memorandum. Jodl

do what I can. But you must admit that the Fuhrer's

reasons are well thought out and cannot be pushed aside just like that.

must not

try to

compel him

to

do something which goes against

convictions. His intuition has generally been right.

The Fuhrer myth

still

his inner

can't deny that!'

127

- and among those closest to Hitler. was not long in coming- and was a devastating

prevailed

Predictably, Hitler's reply

You

We

SHOWDOWN riposte to

was

Army High Command. On

told that Hitler rejected

proposals as out of line with his intentions.

its

Instead, he ordered: 'The principal object that

the onset of winter

is

not the capture of

Crimea and the

the occupation of the

Army High Command

21 August,

must be achieved yet before

Moscow, but industrial

Donets, together with isolation of the Russian

oil

rather, in the South,

and coal region of the regions in the Caucasus

and, in the North, the encirclement of Leningrad and junction with the Finns.'

The immediate key

exposed Soviet Fifth

Army

step

was the encirclement and destruction of

in the region of

the

Kiev through a pincer movement

from Army Groups Centre and South. This would open the path for Army

Group South to advance south-eastwards towards Rostov and Kharkhov. The capture of the Crimea, Hitler added, was 'of paramount importance for safeguarding our oil supply from Romania'. All means had to be deployed, therefore, to cross the Dnieper quickly to reach the Crimea before the enemy 128 could call up new forces. Hitler developed his arguments the following day in a 'Study' blaming

Army High Command

for failing to carry out his

reaffirming the necessity of shifting the

Moscow to

north and south, and relegating

was accused of lack of leadership special interests of the individual

was the

praise, in contrast,

Luftwaffe.

in

operational plan,

main weight of the attack

to the

a secondary target. Brauchitsch

allowing himself to be swayed by the

army groups. And

handed out

wounding

particularly

to Goring's firm leadership of the

129

In this 'Study' of 22 August, Hitler rehearsed

once more the objective of

eliminating the Soviet Union as a continental ally of Britain, thereby removing

from Britain hope of changing the course of events

objective, he claimed, could only be attained

forces

in

and the occupation or destruction of the economic basis for continuing

on sources of raw

the war, with special emphasis the need to concentrate

materials.

on destroying the Soviet position

raw materials

to protect

for the Soviet

German

blame for ignoring

oil

reasserted

vital in

and

terms

war economy. He also underlined the need Romania. Army High Command was to

supplies in

his orders to press

insisted that the three divisions

the beginning of the

He

in the Baltic

on occupying the Ukraine and Black Sea region, which were of

Europe. This

through annihilation of Soviet

campaign

home

the advance

on Leningrad. He

from Army Group Centre, intended from

to assist the numerically

weaker Army Group

North, should be rapidly supplied, and that the objective of capturing

Leningrad would then be met. Once supplied by

Army Group

this

was done, the motorized

Centre could be used to concentrate on

units

their sole

413

414

HITLER 1936— 1945 remaining objective, the advance on Moscow. In the south, too, there was

no diversion from

to be

move on Moscow. Once

original plans to

the

destruction of the Soviet forces east and west of Kiev which threatened the

Army Group Centre was accomplished, he argued, the advance on Moscow would be significantly eased. He rejected, therefore, the Army flank of

High Command's proposals

for the further conduct of operations.

130

In the privacy of his diary notes, Haider could not contain himself.

'I

regard the situation created by the Fuhrer's interference unendurable for the

OKH,'

he wrote. 'No other but the Fiihrer himself

zigzag course caused by his successive orders.'

is

to

blame for the

The treatment of Brauchitsch,

Haider went on, was 'absolutely outrageous'. Haider had proposed to the

Commander-in-Chief that both should chitsch

had refused such

a step 'on the

offer their resignation. But Brau-

grounds that the resignations would

not be accepted and so nothing would be changed'.

Deeply upset, Haider flew next day to

131

Army Group

Centre headquarters.

The assembled commanders predictably backed his preference for resuming the offensive on Moscow. They were agreed that to move on Kiev would mean a winter campaign. Field-Marshal von Bock suggested that General Heinz Guderian, one of outspoken

Hitler's favourite

commanders, and

quarters in an attempt to persuade the dictator to change his to

Army High Command's It

was

in the best light

mind and agree

plan.

getting dark as Haider

According to Guderian's

particularly

should accompany Haider to Fiihrer Head-

at the meeting,

later

and Guderian arrived

account - naturally aimed

- Brauchitsch forbade him

in East Prussia.

at reflecting himself

to raise the question of

Moscow.

The southern operation had been ordered, the Army Commander-in-Chief declared, so the problem was merely one of how to carry it out. Discussion was pointless. Neither Brauchitsch nor Haider accompanied Guderian when he went in to see Hitler, who was flanked by a large entourage including Keitel, Jodl, and Schmundt. Hitler himself raised the issue of Moscow, according to Guderian, and then, without interruption,

let

him unfold

arguments for making the advance on the Russian capital the

When

Guderian had

finished, Hitler started.

Keeping

The raw

continuation of the war, he stated.

neutralized to rule out attacks on the aircraft-carriers.

'My

generals

war,' Guderian heard

had already given

know

him say

strict

he put the

materials and agricultural base of the Ukraine

alternative case.

were

vital for the

his temper,

the

priority.

Romanian

The Crimea had oil-fields

to be

from Soviet

nothing about the economic aspects of

for the

first

time. Hitler

was adamant. He

orders for an attack on Kiev as the immediate

SHOWDOWN strategic objective.

Action had to be carried out with that

present nodded at every sentence that Hitler spoke.

were

tives

behind him. Guderian

entirely

argument.

He took

it was carried out autumn rains.

was confirmed,

He avoided all further

much

later, that since the

was now

it

mind. All those

in

OKW representahis task to ensure

as effectively as possible to ensure victory before the

that

When

felt isolated.

the view, so he remarked

decision to attack the Ukraine

The

he reported to Haider next day, 24 August, the Chief of the

General Staff

into a rage at Guderian's complete volte-face

fell

confronted by Hitler at

whom

first

hand.

132

Haider's dismay was

all

Army

on being

the greater

Army Comamong the most vehement critics of Hitler during 133 the meeting at Army Group Centre Headquarters the previous day. Bock shared Haider's contempt for the way the outspoken and forthright Gudsince Guderian,

he had considered as a possible future

mander-in-Chief, had been

erian

had caved

in

under Hitler's pressure.

brium now heaped on him by

By the time the Kiev

itself

had

In reality,

his superiors, there

of Guderian changing Hitler's mind. great battle for Kiev

134

135

At any

whatever the oppro-

had been

rate, the die

little

was

prospect cast.

The

and mastery of the Ukraine was about to begin.

'Battle of Kiev'

fallen six

was over on 25 September -

the city of

days earlier - the Soviet south-west front was

totally destroyed. Hitler's insistence

on sending Guderian's Panzer Group

south to bring about the encirclement had led to an extraordinary victory.

An

astonishing

number

of Soviet prisoners

- around 665,000 - were

taken.

The enormous booty captured included 884 tanks and 3,018 artillery 136 The victory paved the way for Rundstedt to go on to occupy the Ukraine, much of the Crimea, and the Donets Basin, with further huge 137 losses of men and material for the Red Army. In the light of the immense scale of the Soviet losses in the three months since the beginning of 'Barbarossa', the German military leadership now concluded that the thrust to Moscow - given the name 'Operation Typhoon' - could still succeed despite

pieces.

starting so late in the year. It

was

scarcely any wonder, basking in the

Kiev, that Hitler

him

138

was

in the Fiihrer

ments afford

in ebullient

glow of the great victory

mood when Goebbels spoke

Headquarters on 23 September. Hitler's reported com-

a notable insight into his thinking at this juncture. After bitterly

complaining about the

difficulties in getting his

way with

the General Staff, Hitler expressed the view that the defeats

Red Army

at

alone with

in the

Ukraine marked the breakthrough. 'The

Goebbels recorded. Things would

now

the 'experts' in

imposed on the spell

is

broken,'

unfold quickly on other parts of the

415

416

HITLER 1936-1945 front.

New great victories could be expected in the next three to four weeks.

By mid-October, the Bolsheviks would be in full retreat. The next thrust was towards Kharkov, which would be reached within days, then to Stalingrad and the Don. Once

this industrial area

was

in

German

hands, and the

Bolsheviks were cut off from their coal supplies and the basis of their

armaments production, the war was

lost for

them.

Leningrad, birthplace of Bolshevism, Hitler repeated, would be destroyed street

by street and razed to the ground.

Its 5

million population could not

139

The plough would one day once more pass over the site of the city. Bolshevism began in hunger, blood, and tears. It would end the same way. Asia's entry-gate to Europe would be closed, the Asiatics forced back to be fed.

A

where they belonged.

similar fate to Leningrad, he reiterated, might also

Moscow. The attack on the capital would follow the capture of the The operation to surround the city should be completed by 15 October. And once German troops reached the Caucasus Stalin was lost. Hitler was sure that in such a situation, Japan would not miss the opportunity to make gains in the east of the Soviet Union. What then happened would be up to Stalin. He might capitulate. Or he might seek a befall

industrial basin.

which Hitler would naturally take up. With

'special peace',

power broken, Bolshevism would driven back to Asia.

It

represent no further danger.

military

its

could be

It

might retain extra-European imperialist ambitions,

but that could be a matter of indifference to Germany.

He

returned to a familiar theme. With the defeat of Bolshevism, England

would have

lost its last

would disappear. And which would follow Churchill

who was

hope on the Continent.

Its last

chance of victory

the increasing successes by U-boats in the Atlantic

in the

next weeks would put further pressure on a

betraying signs of nervous strain.

140

Hitler did not rule

out Britain removing Churchill in order to seek peace. Hitler's terms would be as they always were: he was prepared to leave the Empire alone, but Britain

would have

Germany

a free

to get out of Europe.

hand

The

British

in the east, but try to retain

would probably grant

hegemony

Europe. That, he would not allow. 'England had always insular power.

It is

future in Europe.' All in

all,

in

western

felt itself

to be an

alien to Europe, or even hostile to Europe.

It

has no

141

the prospects at this point, in Hitler's eyes, were rosy.

remark indicated, however, that an early end to the sight. Hitler told

Goebbels

disastrously misplaced

-

in

that

passing all

wintering the troops in the east.

-

his

conflict

was not

in

assumption would soon prove

necessary precautions had been

142

One

made

for

SHOWDOWN By

and the Wehrmacht leaders had already

this time, in fact, Hitler

arrived at the conclusion that the

The

war

in the

East would not be over in 1941.

OKW

collapse of the Soviet Union, declared an

memorandum

of 27

August, approved by Hitler, was the next and decisive war aim. But, the

memorandum

ran,

'if it

proves impossible to realize this objective com-

campaign has top

pletely during 1941, the continuation of the eastern 143

priority for 1942'.

The

summer had been

military successes over the

remarkable. But the aim of the quick knock-out blow at the heart of the 'Barbarossa' plan had not been realized. In spite of their vast losses, the Soviet forces had been far from comprehensively destroyed. to

They continued

men and

be replenished from an apparently limitless reservoir of

resources,

and to

fight

tooth and nail in the proclaimed 'Great Patriotic

War' against the aggressor. German

losses

were themselves not

negligible.

Already before the 'Battle of Kiev', casualties numbered almost 400,000, or over

n per cent of the eastern army.

difficult to find.

144

Replacements were becoming more

By the end of September, half of the tanks were out of

action or in different stages of repair.

145

And by now

the

autumn

rains

were

already beginning to turn the roads into impassable quagmires. Whatever the successes of the

summer, objective grounds

to be strongly qualified.

The

drive to

for continued

Moscow

that began

optimism had

on 2 October,

seeking the decisive victory before the onset of winter, rested on hope more

than expectation.

It

glory.

It

amounted

is

own

evident.

responsibility for the difficulties

Whereas

Stalin learnt

in tactical detail as well as

now

crowning

German

147

Hitler's interference

was, as Haider's

which he refused to concede the

priority of an attack

end of July, not

closest military adviser, Jodl,

just the

on Moscow, even

army leadership but

military judgement

was superior

the bewildering

to that of

way

in July

his.

own

any of his generals. His contempt

and Haider was reinforced on every occasion that

views on tactics differed from

his

had accepted the argument, was quite

remarkable. After the glorious victories of 1940, Hitler believed his

for Brauchitsch

diffi-

damaging. The tenacity and stubbornness with

culties indicated, intensely

for a while, at the

faced by the

grand strategy, arising from his chronic and

Army High Command,

intensifying distrust of the

own

its

from the calamities of 1941 and came

to leave military matters increasingly to the experts,

when

to an improvisation

failure of the original 'Barbarossa' plan rather than

146

Hitler's

army

a desperate last attempt to force the conclusive

Union before winter.

defeat of the Soviet

marking the

was

their

Conversely, the weeks of conflict, and

and August

in

which

directives

were arrived

at,

417

418

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 then amended, undermined the confidence in Hitler not just of the hopelessly supine Brauchitsch and of Haider's

Army

General

Staff,

but also of the

field

commanders. But the problem was not one-sided. Certainly, as we have seen, the invasion of the Soviet Union of the triumph in

summer

was

own

Hitler's

idea

- and

that at the height

from dismissing the idea

1940. But far

as illusory,

vainglorious, or risky to a degree that courted outright disaster, the army's feasibility studies that

summer had underwritten

The

ten-

campaign was

still

the proposition.

sion between the conflicting conceptions of the eastern

inwardly unresolved as far as Haider was concerned when Hitler's Directive

No. 21 was issued on 18 December 1940, indicating Moscow as a secondary rather than primary objective. The conflict of the coming summer months

was prefigured had

in this

unresolved contradiction even before the campaign

started. If reluctantly,

the alternative strategy

attack in subsequent

Army High Command had

which Hitler favoured.

months followed from

apparently accepted

Strategic planning of the

this premiss.

The strategy of first gaining control over the Baltic and cutting off essential Soviet

economic heartlands

German

oil

senseless.

supplies in

And

in the south,

while at the same time protecting

Romania, before attacking Moscow was not

the fear that a frontal assault

drive back instead of enveloping Soviet forces

Command's

in itself

on Moscow would simply

was

a real one.

Army High

preference to deviate from the plan of 'Barbarossa' once the

campaign was under way was not

a self-evident

to Haider's originally preferred strategy

7

improvement. The reversion

was tempting because Army Group

Centre had advanced faster and more spectacularly than anticipated, and

was pressing hard

to be allowed to continue and, as

job by taking Moscow. But even more that the army's intelligence

The

it

now

it

thought, finish the

followed from the realization

on Soviet military strength had been woeful.

Moscow, though favoured in the OKH's thinking from an had in fact come to be a substitute for the 'Barbarossa' plan,

attack on

early stage,

which had gone massively awry not simply because of

Hitler's interference,

but also because of the inadequacy and failures of the army leadership. Since Hitler had placed the key men, Brauchitsch and Haider, in their posts, he

must take

Commander

in

a

good deal of the blame

for their failings. But as

Chief of the Army, Brauchitsch was hopelessly weak and

ineffectual. His contribution to strategic

minimal. Torn between pressures from his

planning appears to have been field

commanders and

bullying

from Hitler, he offered a black hole where clear-sighted and determined military leadership

was

essential.

Long before

the crisis

which would

ulti-

SHOWDOWN marely bring his removal from

office,

Haider, partly though his

own

(though they came to nothing

more generously viewed by bility for the

Command

justification.

post-war apologetics and

his flirtations

with groups opposed to Hitler, has been

posterity.

As Chief of the General

planning of army operations was

with the High

The

Brauchitsch was a broken reed.

contempt with which Hitler treated him was not without

Wehrmacht,

of the

his.

Staff, responsi-

The chequered measure

in large

relations

Hitler's

own

mouthpiece, of course gravely weakened Haider's position. But the Chief of the General Staff failed to highlight difficulties in the original 'Barbarossa'

The northward swing of Army Group Centre forces was not fully worked out. The problems that motorized forces would face in the terrain

plan.

between Leningrad and

Moscow were

not taken into account. Haider was

lukewarm from the outset about the concentration on

the Baltic and

would

have preferred the frontal assault on Moscow. But instead of being settled beforehand, the dispute, as

we have

noted,

was

left

to fester once the

campaign was under wa) Moreover, the all-out attack on Moscow that Haider - and Commander of Army Group Centre Bock - were urging, would itself have been a highly risky venture.

would then almost

It

certainly have been impossible to

eliminate the large Soviet forces on the flanks (as happened in the 'Battle of Kiev' And the Russians were expecting the attack on the capital. Had the Wehrmacht reached the city, in the absence of a Luftwaffe capable of razing Moscow to the ground as Hitler wanted the result would probably have been a preview of what was eventually to happen at Stalingrad. And even had the city been captured, the war would not have been won. A Soviet .

,

psychological, political, economic, and military collapse as a consequence

would have been

unlikely.

149

Whatever the speculation on off course already by late

put

down

to Hitler's

meddling

The

the military professionals.

memoirs,

this, that

summer

that, left to their

in

campaign was blown

the eastern

of 1941 cannot solely, or even mainly, be

matters which should have been

implication, encountered in

own

devices, the military

Germany was both

to

left

some post-war

would have won

the

war

in the east for

The

escalating problems of Barbarossa' were ultimately a consequence of

a self-defensive

and an arrogant claim.

v

the calamitous miscalculation that the Soviet

pack of cards

in the

wake

Union would collapse

of a Blitzkrieg resting on

some

like a

highly optimistic

assumptions, gross underestimation of the enemy, and extremely limited resources.

"

This was Hitler's miscalculation. But

military planners.

it

was shared by

his

419

420

HITLER I936-1945

IV While the tumultuous developments on the eastern front unfolded, the Reich

was gradually turning the

summer

into a Fiihrer state with an absentee Fuhrer.

away

of 1940, Hitler had been

western front for approaching two months. 151 interlude. But once the eastern

was

realized that this

was

campaign had

to be

was concerned

often as

was

It

on the

and especially once

started,

effect,

During

had been no more than an

no repeated rapid

absence became prolonged and then, in chill

at his headquarters

it

military triumph, his

permanent. Whereas Chur-

to speak to the British people

and

let

practicable, Hitler practically disappeared

himself be seen as

from the public

eye.

During the remaining months of 1941, and with the popular mood in the Reich far from buoyant, he scarcely left his field headquarters to appear in public in

Germany. Pressed by Goebbels

to give a speech to rouse sagging

morale, he deigned to spend six hours in Berlin on later,

on

8

November, he

travelled to

to the 'Old Fighters' of the

Munich, gave

Movement

to

And

November

he attended on 21

Ernst Udet (the First

had committed

World War

suicide after

his

left

A month

customary address

commemorate

next day to the Reichs- and Gauleiter, and Lair.

October.

3

the Putsch, spoke

immediately for the Wolf's

the funeral in Berlin of General

flying-ace in charge of air

armaments who

Goring had made him the scapegoat for the

Luftwaffe's failures on the eastern front), returning six days later for the

ceremony prolonging the Anti-Comintern Pact and using the occasion receive a

number

headquarters in East Prussia after a stay of two days.

Otherwise the German people saw him only usually in the

company

152

in occasional

newsreel

clips,

of his generals. His continued absence in 1941

the start of a process which, as a mirage,

to

of foreign dignitaries before departing again for his field

the war progressed and

final victory

was

became

would transform

the most notable populist leader of the twentieth demagogue whose power base had rested in no small unrivalled ability to play on the expectations and resentments

century, the masterly

measure on

his

of the people, into a remote and distant figure. Hitler's increasing

detachment meant an inevitable acceleration of the

existing, strongly developed tendency

towards the disintegration of any

semblance of coordinated administration of the Reich. The stark figures for

governmental legislation provide an indicator. Out of 445 pieces of legislation in 1941, only seventy-two laws, published Fuhrer decrees, and ministerial

decrees

represented

any

semblance

of

inter-ministerial

policy

SHOWDOWN The remaining 373

formation. tries

decrees were produced by individual minis-

without wider consultation.

Bormann's appointment lery in

May

as

133

head of the newly designated Party Chancel-

1941 accentuated rather than checked the trend. His proximity

commitment, and

to Hitler, bureaucratic energy, ideological

new impetus and scope for weak and ineffectual Rudolf

ruthless drive

certainly gave the Party

intervention, after years

of leadership by the

Hef.

role, in

belonging

'to the closest staff of the Fiihrer', as

Bormann saw

his

channelling selected

information to Hitler and 'continually informing the Reichsleiter, Gauleiter,

and heads of organizations of the decisions and opinions of the

Though, under the influence of events the Party

now

on the home

in the east,

Fiihrer'.

154

Bormann's leadership of

accentuated the ideological tone and radicalization of policy front,

it

brought no coordination of government.

contrary: the consequence in practice

was

to intensify

still

On

the

further inter-

governmental conflict and heighten the unresolvable tension built into the

Nazi regime between the demands of bureaucratic administration and the anti-bureaucratic pressures of an ideologically driven leadership of the

regime.

133

Hitler's role remained, of course, pivotal.

of the system free-for-all)

(if

'system'

is

He

was, as ever, the linchpin

an appropriate term for such an administrative

and the fount of ideological legitimation. He was also kept

informed, though in unsystematic and ill-balanced ways, quite trivial as well as all

more important

issues.

of, frequently,

But the insistence on retaining

the overriding controls of every significant sphere of rule in his

own

hands, coupled with his physical absence from the centre of government,

almost total preoccupation with the war

effort,

and complete

distaste for

bureaucratic methods, meant an inescapable fragmentation of the machinery of government and,

accompanying

it,

an ever-intensifying radicalization of

the regime. Hitler's ultimate

gamble of war

in the east to destroy

one swift knock-out blow was also to put

his

own

Bolshevism with

popularity at risk, and

with that the very focus of the regime's support. Hitler's immense popularity

had been attained during the 1930s through successes, beyond through

'victories

without bloodshed' that had brought

and returned national pride and strength to had begun

in 1939, the victories

all

else

territorial

expansion

a humiliated country.

Once war

were quick, spectacular and,

bloodshed', then nevertheless relatively painless for the

if

not 'without

German

people. But

to retain the heights of popularity reached after the stunning victory over

France

in 1940, Hitler

needed to bring

final victory.

That had so

far eluded

421

422

HITLER I936-1945 him. Sensitive as he was to the fickleness of popular support, and never

how

forgetting

collapsing morale had given

1917-18, he knew

how much

way

to revolutionary fervour in

on the rapid and complete crushing of the Soviet Union. Victory in the east would produce the material base of lasting power and prosperity - endless bounty from the riches of the new territories to

for

upward

improve

rested

living standards at

home, and

mobility, wealth, and domination. Failure to deliver the knock-

out blow would, by contrast, endanger the regime.

-

in its

wake, increasing

with that his

own

limitless opportunities

sacrifice

due course the conditions

in

It

meant prolonged war

and privation, suffering and misery, and in

which the regime's popularity and

unique authority could be undermined.

Though Nazi

loyalists

welcomed

the

showdown with

following the uneasy period of what they saw as an tactical pact, the initial reactions of the

the arch-enemy,

artificial

German people

'Barbarossa', unprepared as they were for the extension of the east,

were for the most part anxiety and dismay.

noted, the

'special

first

High

Command

^6

war

in the

As we have already

announcements' of the remarkable advance and

Wehrmacht had,

military successes of the their desired effect.

1

and purely

to the beginning of

as

Goebbels realized,

far

from

As the triumphalist communiques of the Wehrmacht

continued to blare out of their radios, one bulletin after

another reporting yet a further grandiose victory, proclaiming the total defeat or annihilation of the enemy, and announcing Stalin's deployment of his last reserves,

hopes were raised of an early end to the

(They

conflict.

were encouraged by the tone of propaganda: Goebbels had told media

on 22 June that the war in the east would be over within Ardent Nazis were naturally jubilant, outright opponents depressed. But the deep anxieties and hopes of an early peace - a victorious one if at all possible, but above all an end to war - among the mass of the representatives eight weeks.

157

)

population could not for long be banished. And, however great the reported victories of the

wore on,

it

Wehrmacht were, no end seemed

was obvious

that Stalin

had

far

in sight.

from used up

As the summer

his last reserves.

Scepticism in the reports started to mount. Moreover, accounts of hard fighting, fierce resistance bestialities'

by the Red Army, and,

especially, of 'horrible

and the 'inhumane way of fighting of the Bolsheviks' and

'crimi-

nal types' in the 'Jewish state', not unnaturally increased the worries,

whatever the scale of the

husbands

at the front.

A young soldier, diary of the

mood

victories, of those

with fathers, brothers, sons, and

158

just

home on two weeks of

married and

after only

leave, left

fighting

an indication

in his

when he attended

a

SHOWDOWN Sunday morning service in his church: 'There were read out - in a quite matter-of-fact way - the name, year of birth, date and place of death of the dead and

fallen,

and precisely these cold

The widows sobbed throughout

the church

did not prevent approval of Nazi aims. later, his

had

.

doubly moving

a

lj9

.'

But such observations

.

The same

effect.

soldier noted, a

few days

approval of the antisemitic films Jud Sufi and Die Rothschilds^

remarking on

money

facts

how

the Jewish banking family had been able through their

to determine the politics of Europe.

watched newsreels of the

manner of

in early

August, he

commented on the 'demonic' Red Army - contemptuous of 'all rules of civility

righting in the east, he

fighting of the

and humanity',

And when,

'truly Russian-Asiatic', as

Attitudes towards the

war - and

160

he put

it.

the need to fight

it

- were

divided. In

stark contrast with the views of this soldier, the wishes of a farming

community

in

northern Franconia, according to the outspoken report of the

local Landrat, could scarcely

have been more distant from the ideological

aims of the Nazi leadership. There was in his area, he wrote, 'not the least

understanding for the realization of plans for world domination

Overworked and exhausted men and women do not be carried

still

further into Asia

same Landrat wrote: Berlin or a

Munich

.

.

.

'I

and

Africa.'

161

see

why

the

my

office

.

.

At the end of August, the

have only the one wish, that one of the

should be in

.

war must

some time when,

officials in

for example,

worn-out old peasant beseechingly requests allocation of labourers or

other assistance, and as proof of his need shows two the

company commander

cannot be granted, and

From they

his heroic

the point of view of

which the company commander of the

death in an encounter near Propoiszk.'

most ordinary Germans, the 'good

remembered them from the

unnecessary, as

to

war and

this

was, they saw, the war.

life

What

return to 'normality', not yet another

many people thought -

162

times', as

1930s, were over. Conditions of daily

were deteriorating sharply. The cause of

was needed was an end

one of which

of the elder son answers that leave for the harvest

in the other of

younger son informs of

letters, in

extension of the conflict, and

-

now

against the most implacable and dangerous enemy. Daily concerns domi-

nated the mood, alongside fears for loved ones at the front. Reports from cities

highlighted the 'catastrophic state of provisions' and anger at food

shortages and high prices. Industrial workers were becoming increasingly alienated by

working conditions and wage

the stupid one, the

He was

SD from

levels.

The

Stuttgart reported as a

having to work hard at great

sacrifice, as

'little

man' was again

commonly

held view.

had always been the

case,

to benefit the 'big noises (Bonzen), plutocrats, toffee-nosed {Standesdiinkel),

423

42.4

HITLER I936-I945 and war-profiteers'. 'What does national community mean tively asked.

163

was

here?'

In the Alpine reaches of southern Bavaria, the

plain-

mood was

'bad and tired of war', dominated by the 'constantly mounting great and small worries of everyday

- comparable with

On

life',

and -

that of 1917.

top of this came

new

it

was somewhat

theatrically claimed

164

worries.

It

was while

was

the ferocious warfare

raging on the eastern front that, within the Reich, the Nazi regime's renewed assault on Christianity, which had begun in early 1941, reached its climax. At the same time, the disturbing rumours - which over the previous year

had spread

like wildfire

- about

the killing of mentally sick patients taking

place in asylums were causing intensified disquiet. Elimination of

worth

had an increasingly threatening ring

living'

to

it,

family, as psychologically scarred as well as physically badly injured soldiers in ever larger

and asylums throughout the Reich.

own repeatedly expressed wish for calm in war

the Churches as long as the his view,

had

young

numbers were brought back from the front and housed

in hospitals, sanatoria,

Despite Hitler's

not

'life

potentially for every

lasted

-

relations with

the reckoning with Christianity, in

to wait for the final victory

-

a

wave of anti-Church

agitation,

accompanied by an array of new measures, had taken place during the half of 1941.

The

activism appears in the main to have

as anti-Church radicals exploited

wartime needs to

hold - strengthened by the anxieties of the war

continued to have on the population. But

it

try to

itself

break the vexing

- which

certainly

first

come from below, the Churches

had encouragement

from above, particularly through Bormann and the Party Chancellery. confidential circular to

all

Gauleiter in June 1941,

Bormann had

declared that Christianity and National Socialism were incompatible. Party must struggle, therefore, to break the Church's

Whether

power and

In a

expressly

The

influence.

16 ^

this represented Hitler's wishes, given his essential stance

on

On

the

relations with the

other hand,

Churches during the war,

Bormann never

Most probably, he

is

extremely doubtful.

acted directly contrary to

what

Hitler wanted.

misinterpreted on this occasion Hitler's repeated rantings

about the malevolent influence of Christianity and sent the wrong signals to Party activists.

166

By the time Bormann wrote had already

intensified

his circular,

ment of Catholic nuns by 'brown (the Nationalsozialistische

tions of feast days

sisters'

from the Nazi welfare organization

Volkswohlfahrt, or NS V) the shifting of celebra-

from weekdays

abolish school prayers.

antagonism among churchgoers

through bans on Church publications, the replace-

,

to the nearest Sunday,

Rumours spread

and attempts to

that baptism of children

would

SHOWDOWN soon no longer be allowed, and that priests would be turned out of their presbyteries. In

some

localities, the closure of

monasteries, eviction of the

monks, and sequestration of monastic property to accommodate refugees or provide space for Party offices caused

A

immense

anger.

167

highpoint of popular unrest provoked by Nazi attacks on the Church

occurred in predominantly Catholic Bavaria in the Gauleiter of the 'Traditional Gau' of

Minister,

Munich and Upper

Adolf Wagner, acting

Hitler's oldest allies,

had ordered

in April the

summer

The

Bavaria, one of

in his capacity as

Education

removal of crucifixes from Bavarian

schoolrooms. Whether, as was later claimed, he was trying effect to the teaching

of 1941.

'to give visible

handed down by Reichsleiter Bormann, that National

Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable opposites', or whether he was acting

on

his

own

cannot be established.

initiative

168

Wagner's order went

out several weeks before Bormann's circular, which cannot, therefore, have

provoked the

'action'.

But Wagner probably read the signals coming from

- without apparently any meaning to the anti-Church

Party headquarters earlier in the year and acted

consultation in Bavaria drive in his

own

itself

-

to give direct

province, where the

power of Catholicism was

the side of the Party, by attacking the very

The

result, in

articulated

any case, was to

above

all

stir

up

a thorn in

symbol of Christianity

itself.

a torrent of embittered protest,

by mothers of schoolchildren. Their

loved

letters to

ones at the front were read by soldiers incredulous at what the 'Bolsheviks in the

homeland' were doing, and threatened to have a damaging

the troops' morale.

Mass meetings

to school, collection of signatures

in village halls, refusal to

on

petitions,

town stand

a signed

list

Bolshevism.

to revoke his earlier order.

fixes. It

some

One petition,

Many

are giving

We cannot understand that particularly in this hard

time people want to take the cross out of the schools.'

functionaries in

send children

containing 2,331 names, ran: 'The sons of our

in the east in the struggle against

their lives in the cause.

169

Wagner was

forced

But things had become so chaotic that Party

areas only then started actually removing the cruci-

was autumn before

issue gradually subsided.

the heat generated wholly unnecessarily by the

The damage done

to the standing of the Party in

such regions was immeasurable and irreparable.

170

Hitler did not escape the wrath of Bavarian Catholics. Farmers in

areas

of als

removed

God

on

and public demonstrations

by angry mothers meant that the matter could not be ignored.

accompanied by

effect

his picture

from

their houses. 'Rather

some

Wilhelm by the grace

than the idiot of Berchtesgaden {Lieber Wilhelm von Gottes Gnaden

den Depp von Berchtesgaden)' was a sentiment registered

in

Munich. 171

425

42.6

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 But the Ftthrer myth - of

back by

his underlings

Fiihrer doesn't

want

this,

the crosses,' shouted one

brown

shirts

his

- was

on top, but

ignorance of actions carried out behind his still

strong,

if

not wholly unscathed. 'The

and certainly knows nothing of

woman

this

removal of

172

'You wear

during a demonstration.

inside you're Bolsheviks

and Jews. Otherwise you

wouldn't be able to carry on behind the Fuhrer's back,' ran an anonymous letter

woman

traced to a

in the

indicate, the strength of feeling

Berchtesgaden area.

on the Crucifix

issue

173

was

As such remarks

entirely compatible

with support for Hitler, and for the 'crusade against godless Bolshevism',

which Catholic Bishops themselves had applauded. 14 But the Crucifix though confined to one part of Germany, had cast momentary the increasing fragility of backing for Party radicalization

and lack of coordinated, pragmatic policy

sion turned outwards, as long as

unobjectionable, at

and regime

it

it

was

painless

and

issue,

on

light

as the inevitable

intensified.

Aggres-

was

successful,

largely

seems. But as soon as aggression was directed inwards,

widely held traditional belief systems as opposed to unloved but harmless

minorities,

Nazism,

its

The 'total claim' made by intolerance towards any institutional framework the Movement

it

was

a different matter altogether.

did not control, and the inbuilt 'cumulative radicalization' of the system

meant, therefore, an inexorable trend towards greater, not conflict.

This as, in

less,

social

175

now emerged

midsummer

an issue

in

at the very heart of the regime's ideology

1941, serious disquiet over the 'euthanasia action'

came

out into the open. All too credible rumours about the killing of asylum patients

had been

circulating since

summer

1940.

Taking place

in selected

asylums within Germany, in close reach of major centres of population,

had been impossible

Those

intended.

patients unload

smoking. there

1

6

in the

immediate

vicinity

saw the grey buses

it

had been

to keep the 'action' as close a secret as

arrive, the

and enter the asylum, the crematorium chimneys continually

Occasionally, as at Absberg in Franconia in February 1941,

had been public demonstrations of sympathy for the victims

as they

were loaded on to the buses to take them to what everyone knew was a certain death.

177

The secrecy, and absence of any public statement, let alone what was known to be happening, stoked the fires of

law, authorizing

alarm. Protest letters landed in the Reich Chancellery and the Reich Justice Ministry.

Some were even from dyed-in-the-wool National

Socialists.

Others, on occasion not mincing words, were from prominent churchmen.

But the churchmen up to 7 July a pastoral letter

this

point had kept their protests confidential.

from German bishops was read out

in

178 179

On

Catholic

SHOWDO \V N churches, declaring that defence.

180

But

it

this veiled

was wrong

attempt to

war or

to kill except in

for self-

no

criticize the 'euthanasia action' left

obvious mark. The death-mills stayed working.

Then, on

3

August 1941, Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, the

Catholic Bishop of Miinster in Westphalia, referring to the pastoral in a

most courageous sermon

denounced

in plain

anti-liberal,

and

in the St

Lamberti Church

in

letter,

Miinster, openly

terms what was happening. Galen, deeply conservative,

had been thought

anti-socialist,

the 1930s even to be a

181

Catholic bishops, he had

welcomed

in

some Church

circles in

like

some other

the attack on the Soviet

Union and

Nazi sympathizer.

In

June 1941,

offered his prayers for the 'successful defence against the Bolshevik threat to

our people'.

182

But by July, as Miinster suffered under a

bombs, he delivered

a series of

sermons denouncing

terms the Gestapo's suppression of religious orders

On

in the

hail of British

most forthright

in the city.

183

14 July, a day after a sermon attacking the closure of the monasteries,

Galen sent

a telegram to the

Reich Chancellery requesting Hitler to defend

the people against the Gestapo. the telegram in church.

Two

The following Sunday, 20 July, he read out

days later he wrote to Lammers with what

could only be seen as a criticism of Hitler and his

The

state.

Fuhrer's

involvement with foreign and military matters was such, Galen remarked, that he

was not

in a position to deal

sent to him. 'Adolf Hitler limitation,

who

is

responsible leader

then

I

know

(I

am

Popular unrest Hitler's attention

all

the petitions

and complaints

not a divine being, raised above every natural

able to keep an eye on and direct everything at the

However, when

time.

is

with

.

.

.

work

as a result of this overloading with

the Gestapo shatters unrestrained the

called upon) ... to raise at the closing of the

my

home

voice loudly.'

same

of the

front

.

.

.

18

monasteries was also brought to

by Lammers on 29 July while a protest by Bishop Franz

Rudolf Bornewasser of Trier was being discussed.

It

seems

likely that

Galen's telegram, and the contents of his letter to Lammers, were referred to Hitler at the

same

time. Bishop Bornewasser's confidential protest

had

already linked the unrest over the closing of monasteries to the disquiet

about the

killing of

'unworthy

life'.

Galen

now

did the same

His fury over the dissolution of the monasteries assault

in public.

the fuse for his open

on the Nazi 'euthanasia programme'. 18 ^

In his its

lit

- but

sermon on

attacks

action'. 'There 'that these

3

August, Bishop Galen again pilloried the Gestapo for

on Catholic is

religious orders.

Then he came

a general suspicion verging

numerous deaths of mentally

ill

on

to the 'euthanasia

certainty,' the

Bishop stated,

people do not occur of themselves

42^

42-8

HITLER I936-I945 but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine

may

according to which one innocent people

implications. People

become worthless investigate our

their lives are of

life at

life.

the front,

would

through labour and war, and

all

be at

of the "unproductive",

list

And no

no further value

emotional terms, Galen pointed out the

state.' In

who had become invalids

the soldier risking his

can put us on the

being followed, life", that is kill

one considers that

if

and the

for the nation

is

destroy so-called "worthless

risk.

who

'Some commission

in their

police force will protect us

opinion have

and no court

will

murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.

Who will be able to trust his doctor any more? He may report his patient as "unproductive" and receive instructions to

him.

kill

It

is

impossible to

imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families

and followed.'

if

this dreadful doctrine

Even before Galen delivered

his

sermon, Hitler had been

concerned about morale and popular unrest the all

war

that he

seizures of

tolerated, accepted,

is

186

had issued orders

at

such a

critical

sufficiently

juncture of

to Gauleiter to cease until further notice

Church and monastic property. Under no circumstances were

independent actions by Gauleiter permissible. Similar instructions went to the Gestapo.

hotheads

187

According to Papen, Hitler attributed

in the Party.

and that he would

He had told Bormann

tolerate

no

all

the blame to the

that the 'nonsense'

had

conflict, given the internal situation.

to stop,

188

It

was

simply a tactical move. Hitler sympathized with the radicals, but acted pragmatically.

189

As

his

comments

a

few months

later

made

plain, he fully

190 Only the need for peace approved of the closure of the monasteries.

relations with the

determined his stance. Events

in the

Warthegau (where by 1941 94 per cent

of churches and chapels in the Posen-Gnesen diocese were closed,

cent of the clergy murdered, and most

n

per

of the remainder thrust into prisons

and concentration camps) showed the face of the to the

in

Churches to avoid deteriorating morale on the home front

future.

191

A victorious end

war would unquestionably have brought a renewed, even more savage

onslaught on the Churches. But in the context of such widespread unrest, Hitler

had

to take seriously the impact of Galen's

sermon on the

killing of

asylum patients, a copy of which had been brought to him by Lammers.

Moreover, with that sermon, reproduced

in

192

thousands of clandestine copies

and circulated from hand to hand, the secrecy surrounding the 'euthanasia action'

had been broken.

The Nazi

193

leadership realized that

take strong action against Galen.

It

it was helpless in the circumstances to was suggested to Bormann that Galen

SHOWDOWN Bormann answered that, while the death penalty was war circumstances the Fiihrer would

should be hanged.

certainly warranted, 'considering the

scarcely decree this measure'. Goebbels

acknowledged that

if

anything were

undertaken against the Bishop, support from the population of Miinster

and Westphalia could be written off during the war.

194

He hoped

that a

favourable turn in the eastern campaign would provide the opportunity to deal with him.

193

about the decline

Not in

surprisingly, since he

morale

in the

wake

was aware of

of the

Church

Hitler's concern

conflict,

spoke against arousing public discussion over 'euthanasia'

Goebbels

at precisely that

time. 'Such a debate,' noted Goebbels, 'would only inflame feelings anew. In a critical period of the war, that

is

extraordinarily inexpedient. All

inflammatory matters should be kept away from the people

at present.

People are so occupied with the problems of the war that other problems only arouse and irritate them.'

during his

visit to Fiihrer

196

Goebbels's comments on popular opinion

Headquarters on 18 August must have reinforced

view that the time had come to calm the unrest

Hitler's

T4

August, Hitler stopped the

two years earlier. 197 On the very same day, Hitler, through an

started

at

home.

On

24

'euthanasia action' as secretly as he had

it

replacement buildings for damaged hospitals raids to be constructed.

The

to be attached to asylums

in areas

threatened by bombing

barrack-like prefabricated constructions were

and nursing homes, which were

existing patients relocated in order to costs of the

internal Party circular, ordered

make room

to

have their

for air-raid victims.

The

removal of the patients were to be borne by the 'Community

Patients Transport Service'

-

precisely the

same organization, run by

the

Chancellery of the Fiihrer, whose buses had carried the asylum inmates to their deaths in the 'euthanasia' centres.

disquiet

which

this

would

cause, the

Hitler's doctor, Karl Brandt,

who

Specifically

acknowledging the

order - signed by none other than

along with Bouhler had been authorized

autumn 1939 to carry out the 'euthanasia action' - stated that relatives would be informed in advance about the destination of the patients, and would be able to visit them there. The press would undertake a propaganda in

campaign In his

to explain

sermon of

3

what was happening and prevent rumours spreading. 198 August, Bishop Galen had cleverly brought the 'eutha-

nasia action' into connection with the bombing-raids

on Miinster, which he

hinted were a 'punishment of God' for the offences against the

ment 'Thou attacks in

shalt not

kill.'

Command-

Galen's sermon had linked the three areas -

on the Church, 'euthanasia', and bombing-raids on German

cities

-

which alienation of the population from the regime, and the consequent

429

43°

HITLER 1936— 1945 threat to morale,

was

The population

greatest.

Westphalia were bearing the brunt of the

morale

in the area

was

on the monasteries and point.

And

this

was

raids.

suffering accordingly.

of the industrial belt of

As SD

reports pointed out,

At the same time the attacks

had reached

religious orders in the area

at precisely the juncture

when

their high

the patients

from the

Westphalian asylums were being deported to the 'euthanasia' killing-centres.

Any attempt to

to provide

combat the

effect

emergency hospitals for the victims of the

on morale, had

to

make

asylums. But this could only be attained by removing the patients.

would immediately

give rise to further unrest.

strait-jacket that Hitler

bowed

His pragmatic solution,

it

air-raids,

use of the spare capacity of the

It

was

And

this

in the grip of this

to the pressure created by Galen's protest.

seems, was to halt the

T4

'Action' in order to be

able to offer the hospital care for air-raid victims, and the accompany-

ing assurances necessary to calm the unrest in Westphalia and restore

morale.

199

By the time of Hitler's killed

more than

'halt order', the

T4

'euthanasia action' had already

the 70,000 victims foreseen at the outset of the 'pro-

gramme'. 200 Bouhler had

in fact

boasted to Goebbels as early as January

1941 that 40,000 mentally sick patients had already been liquidated, and that there were another 60,000

the

number

still

to be dealt with.

201

By the end of 1941,

gassed, starved to death, or poisoned with lethal injections

was nearer 100,000 than 70,000. 202 The 'halt order' ended the 'euthanasia programme' neither completely nor permanently. Tens of thousands of concentration-camp prisoners,

by doctors, to perish by 1945.

The

203

As

for the

ill

or incapable of work, were, after selection

in existing, or

newly established, 'euthanasia'-centres

T4

new

personnel:

tasks were rapidly found for them.

experts in gassing techniques were, within a few weeks, already being

redeployed to start the planning in Poland of a far larger mass-killing

'programme': the extermination of Europe's Jews.

on 23 September, Goebbels took the opportuof morale within Germany. Hitler, remarked the

In his lengthy talk with Hitler nity to describe the state

Propaganda Minister, was well aware of the {BelastungsprobeY to which the

'serious psychological test

German people had been

subjected over the

past weeks. After the notable slide in morale, Goebbels pressed Hitler,

who

had not appeared in public since the start of the Russian campaign and had

SHOWDOWN last

spoken to the German people on 4 May, following the victorious Balkan

campaign, to come to Berlin to address the nation. Hitler agreed that the time was ripe, and asked Goebbels to prepare a mass meeting to open the Winter the speech

Aid campaign

was

at the

end of the following week.

fixed for 3 October.

a struggle with Fiihrer

204

The date of

Even on the day before, Goebbels had

Headquarters to establish that Hitler would, indeed,

be coming to Berlin to speak in the Sportpalast. Only in the evening did Hitler finally confirm his appearance. Goebbels

make

the preparations.

was now

at last able to

That day, 2 October, 'Operation Typhoon', the

Moscow, had been launched. 205 The early news from was good. The scene for the speech could not have been better,

great offensive against the front

thought Goebbels.

He hoped

impression of his address in after a

six-month period of

the Fiihrer

would be

Germany and

silence,

be an immense one.'

In his proclamation to the soldiers

good form. 'The

in

world

in the entire

will then,

206

on the Eastern Front

at the start of

'Operation Typhoon', Hitler described Bolshevism as essentially similar to the worst kind of capitalism in the poverty

it

produced, stressing that 'the

bearers of this system are also in both cases the same: Jews and only Jews!'

Now

was the

thrust'.

208

last

push before winter to deliver the enemy

'the

207

deadly

Similar sentiments were to dominate his address to the nation.

Around ip.m. next day, immediately

summoned

Hitler's train pulled into Berlin.

Goebbels was

He found

Hitler looking

to the Reich Chancellery.

was given an

well and full of optimism. In the privacy of Hitler's room, he

overview of the situation at the front. The advance was proceeding better than expected. Big successes were being attained. 'The Fiihrer

convinced,'

is

commented Goebbels, 'that if the weather stays moderately favourable the 209 Soviet army will be essentially smashed within fourteen days.' Through the proclamation, every soldier knew what was at stake: annihilating the Bolshevik army before the onset of winter; or getting stuck half-way and having to put off the decision until the following year. Hitler was of the opinion that the worst of the war would be over if the attack succeeded: 'for what will we gain in new armaments and economic potential from the industrial areas lying before us!

We have already conquered so many sources

of oil that the oil which the Soviet of earlier economic treaties

The

USA

were

in

now

no position

Union had promised

flows to us from our

to us

own

to affect the course of the war.

had the decisive Russian agricultural and industrial areas 'we will be

fairly

on the

basis

production.'

210

Once Germany

in its possession,

independent and can cut off the English imports through

our U-Boats and Luftwaffe'.

211

Hitler

was

in

no mood

for

compromises.

He

431

432-

HITLER 1936-1945

the 'bloody

come to a clear decision with Britain, since otherwise showdown would have to be repeated in a few years'. He did

not think

likely that Stalin

thought

out.

212

necessary to

it

it

He

also thought the

tough resistance. But

though he could not

capitulate,

'London plutocracy' would continue

view was

his

whole the product of

would

fate'. It

'that everything that

was good,

happens

in retrospect, that

rule

to

it

wage

on the

is

none of the

peace feelers since 1939 involving Poland, France, and Britain had come to anything. 'The most cardinal problems

would then have

still

remained

unsolved, and would doubtless sooner or later have again led to war.

Another military force besides ours must never

exist in Europe.'

Cheering crowds, which the Party never had any trouble

was driven

lined the streets as Hitler

in the

it

with the mass meetings

was spent

Hitler's speech clique,

in

in the

the Soviet

Union

blaming the war on

He

as preventive.

enemy were

danger was,

how

214

215

German

first

part of

warmongering

to justify the attack

by a

how gigantic the preparations

Germany and Europe, and how immense the hair's breadth we have escaped the annihilation not

He

described the threat as

second Mongol storm of a new Gengis Khan'. But, he claimed,

coming out with the words say today that this

He went

enemy

is

that his audience were anxious to hear:

home

front.

The audience as

it

218

'I

can 217

on, to the delight of his audience, to pour scorn on British

Hitler

in the Sportpalast rose as

was

had been

efforts of

Almost every sentence towards the end was interrupted by

storms of applause. Hitler, despite the lengthy break, had not

end.

at last

already broken and will not rise up again.'

propaganda and heap praise both on the Wehrmacht and on the the

on

precautions had been

against

only of Germany, but of the whole of Europe.' 'a

A

Goebbels com-

The

Britain's

He went on

said

incomplete on only one thing: 'We had no idea of this

hall.

run-up to power.

backed by international Jewry. 216

in mobilizing,

afternoon to the Sportpalast.

rapturous reception awaited him in the cavernous

pared

213

thrilled

one

in

lost his touch.

an ecstatic ovation

at the

with his reception. The mood, he said, was

in the 'time of struggle'

before 1933.

And

just

the cheering of the

ordinary Berliners in the streets had 'not for a long time been so great and genuine'.

219

But he was

to the station. his

way back

in a

By 7p.m.,

a

hurry to get away.

mere

six

He was

driven straight back

hours after he had arrived, he was on

to his headquarters in East Prussia.

220

Goebbels had been with Hitler on the way to the station as the

news came expected.

221

latest

from the front. The advance was going even better than The Fuhrer had taken all factors into account, commented

in

Goebbels. Realistically assessing

all

circumstances, he had reached the

showdown conclusion 'that victory can no longer be taken from

gave

rise to

concern.

'If

the weather stays as

we might hope

Minister wrote, 'then

us'.

222

Only the weather

at present,' the

it is

Propaganda

that our wishes will be fulfilled.'

223

The Russian weather was, however, predictable. It would, all too soon, would give way to arctic conditions. However optimistic Hitler appeared to be, his military leaders knew they

turn wet. Within weeks, the rains

were up against time.

The better.

224

early stages of the advance could, nonetheless, scarcely have

Haider purred, soon

after

that Operation

its start,

'making pleasing progress' and pursuing 'an absolutely

The German army had thrown

classical course'.

225

seventy-eight divisions, comprising almost

men, and nearly 2,000 tanks, supported by

2 million

gone

Typhoon was

a large proportion of 226

Once more, the Wehrmacht seemed invincible. Once more, vast numbers of prisoners 673,000 of them - fell into German hands, along with immeasurable amounts the Luftwaffe, against

Marshal Timoshenko's

forces.

of booty, this time in the great encirclements of the double battle of Brjansk

and Viaz'ma the

mood

in the first half of

in the

227

October.

It

was hardly any wonder

among

Fuhrer Headquarters and

that

the military leadership

was buoyant. Jodl thought the victory at Viaz'ma the most decisive day of 228 the Russian war, comparable with Koniggratz. Quartermaster Eduard

Wagner imagined

the Soviet

Union

to be

on the verge of collapse.

to his wife

on

under way.

We have the impression that the

.

.

.

5

Moscow

October, he wrote: 'At present the

Operational aims are

set that

last great collapse is

would once have made one's

on end. Eastwards of Moscow! Then,

I

war

estimate, the

In a letter

operation

is

imminent hair stand

will be largely

over and perhaps there will then indeed be the collapse of the system. That'll take us on a good stretch in the

amazed

at the Fiihrer's military

war

against England.

judgement.

He

is

Over and again, I'm

intervening this time, one

could say decisively, in the course of the operations, and up to

always been

On

right.'

now

he has

229

the evening of 8 October, Hitler spoke of the decisive turn in the

military situation over the previous three days.

Werner Koeppen, Rosen-

berg's liaison at Fuhrer Headquarters, reported to his boss that 'the Russian

army can

essentially be seen as annihilated'.

have to revise

it

drastically

- was

through lack of tank defences. a disastrous

hopes

in the

Hitler

231

230

Hitler's

that Bolshevism

view - he would soon

was heading

for ruin

'The rapid collapse of Russia would have

impact on England,' he asserted. Churchill had placed Russian war-machine.

had been

in

'Now

an unusually good

that too

mood

is

past.'

at the

all his

232

meal table on the

433

'

434

HITLER 1936— 1945 evening of 4 October, having just returned from a

Command's headquarters to congratulate day. Not for the first time, he gazed into Within the next half-century, he foresaw former soldiers

He

the future in the 5

'German

East'.

million farms settled there by

who would hold down the Continent through military force.

placed no value in colonies, he said, and could quickly

with England on that score. Germany needed only a for coffee

Army High

visit to

Brauchitsch on his sixtieth birth-

and

tea plantations. Everything else

it

little

come

to terms

colonial territory

could produce on the

Cameroon and a part of French Equatorial Africa or the Belgian Congo would suffice for Germany's needs. 'Our Mississippi must be the Continent.

Volga, not the Niger,' he concluded.

Next evening,

after

233

Himmler had

with his impressions of Kiev, and

regaled those round the dinner table

how 80—90

per cent of the impoverished

population there could be 'dispensed with', Hitler came round to the subject of

German dialects.

to a rejection of

all

It

started with his dislike of the

German

dialects.

They made

Saxon accent and spread

the learning of

German

for

more difficult. And German now had to be made into the general form of communication in Europe. 234 Hitler was still in expansive frame of mind when Reich Economics

foreigners

Minister Walther Funk visited him on 13 October.

would mean

the end of

unemployment

in

The

eastern territories

Europe, he claimed.

He

envisaged

from the Don and the Dnieper between the Black Sea and the Danube, bringing oil and grain to Germany. 'Europe - and not America river links

will be the land of unlimited possibilities.

Four days

later, the

23j

presence of Fritz Todt prompted Hitler to an even

vision of new roads stretching through the conquered Motorways would now run not just to the Crimea, but to the Caucasus, as well as more northerly areas. German cities would be estab-

more grandiose territories.

lished as administrative centres

on the

river crossings.

Three million

pris-

oners-of-war would be available to supply the labour for the next twenty years.

German farmsteads would

like steppe

would soon

line the roads.

'The monotonous Asiatic-

offer a totally different appearance.'

He now

spoke

of 10 million Germans, as well as settlers from Scandinavia, Holland, Flanders, and even America putting

would 'have

down roots there. The Slav population own dirt away from the big roads'.

to vegetate further in their

Knowing how to read the road-signs would be quite sufficient education. Those eating German bread today, he said, did not get worked up about the regaining of the East Elbian granaries with the

sword

century. 'Here in the east a similar process will repeat

in the twelfth

itself

for a second

showdown time as in the conquest of America.' Hitler wished he were ten to fifteen years younger to experience

But by

this

what was going

to happen.

236

time weather conditions alone meant the chances of Hitler's

vision ever materializing

were sharply diminishing. The weather was already

bad. By mid-October, military operations had stalled as heavy rains swept

The

over the front. Units were stranded.

were bogged down on impassable roads.

Army Group Away from the choked

vehicles of

nothing could move. 'The Russians are impeding us far

and the mud,' commented Field-Marshal Bock. 'struggle with the fuel

mud'.

238

On

237

less

Centre roads,

than the wet

Everywhere,

was

it

a

top of that, there were serious shortages of

and munitions. 239

There was

also, not before time,

concern

now

about winter provisions

Wagner, on

for the troops. Hitler directly asked Quartermaster-General

Headquarters, about

visit to Fiihrer

this

Army Groups North and South would have a half of their provisions by the end of the month but Army Group Centre, the that

would only have

the three,

difficult since the Soviets

Sea of Azov.

240

A

a third. Supplying the south

later,

on

i

November,

Army High Command

winter clothing which

was

necessary largest of

especially

had destroyed part of the railway track along the

few days

headquarters of the

a

on z6 October. Wagner promised

Hitler paid a visit to the

to look at the exhibition of

Wagner had assembled. Once more

the Quarter-

master : General assured Hitler that provision of the troops with sufficient clothing

was

in

hand. Hitler accepted the assurance.

to Goebbels, he gave the

When Wagner

Propaganda Minister the impression that

thing had been thought of and nothing forgotten'. In fact,

241

Wagner appears

to have

become

spoke

'every-

242

seriously concerned by this vital

matter only with the rapid deterioration of the weather in mid-October, while Haider had been aware as early as August that the problem of transport of winter clothing and equipment to the eastern front could only

Red Army before the worst of the weather set Brauchitsch was still claiming, when he had lengthy talks with Goebbels November, that an advance to Stalingrad was possible before the snows

be solved by the defeat of the in.

on

243

i

arrived and that by the time the troops took

Moscow would was forced

to

be cut

off.

244

By now

this

up their winter quarters was wild optimism. Brauchitsch

acknowledge the existing weather problems, the impassable

roads, transport difficulties, and the concern about the winter provisioning

of the troops.

24:>

In truth,

whatever the unrealism of the

macht High Commands about what was attainable depths of winter, the

last

Army and Wehr-

in their

two weeks of October had had

view before the

a highly sobering

435

4}6

HITLER 1936— 1945 effect

on the

front-line

commanders and the initial exaggerated hopes of the 246 By the end of the month the offensive of

success of 'Operation Typhoon'.

Army Group

Centre's exhausted troops had ground temporarily to a halt. 247

The impression which

Hitler gave, however, in his traditional speech to

the Party's old guard, assembled in the Lowenbraukeller in late

different. It

Munich on

the

afternoon of 8 November, the anniversary of the 1923 Putsch, was quite 248

The speech was intended primarily for domestic consumption. 249

aimed to boost morale, and to

members

rally

autumn. Hitler paraded once more before campaigns and why he had

went on 250

struck

felt

his

summer and

audience the victories in earlier

compelled to attack the Soviet Union.

to describe the scale of the Soviet losses.

declared, 'no those.'

round the oldest and most loyal

of Hitler's retinue after the difficult months of

army

'My

He

Party Comrades,' he

in the world, including the Russian, recovers

from

'Never before,' he went on, 'has a giant empire been smashed and

down

in a shorter

claims that the

time than Soviet Russia.'

war would

can

last into 1942. 'It

251

He remarked on enemy

last as

long as

it

wants,' he

German one.' 252 Despite that the war was far from

retorted. 'The last battalion in this field will be a

the triumphalism,

it

was

the strongest hint yet

over.

The next

day, after the usual ceremony at the 'Temples of Honour' of

the Putsch 'heroes'

on the Konigsplatz

Munich, Hitler addressed

in

and Gauleiter. The speech was

Reichsleiter

ditional loyalty to the very

backbone of the Party,

body of diehard support. His way of doing veiled threat

in effect

Hitler's essential hardcore

this, as usual,

was

a mixture of

and pathos. Those who stepped out of line, showed themselves

weak, or conspired against him would be ruthlessly dealt with, was the part of his message.

Josef

Wagner from

Silesia.

his

an appeal for uncon-

He

first

referred to the dismissal (in the previous year) of

his position as Gauleiter of

Westphalia-South and of

Wagner's pro-Catholic sympathies (and those of

declared incompatible with the post of a Gauleiter.

his wife)

He had

were

actually been

the victim of inner-party intrigues. But the last straw for Hitler had been a letter

from Frau Wagner (apparently with her husband's backing), forbid-

ding their daughter to marry a non-Christian SS-man. Hitler spoke darkly of the conspiratorial behaviour of

Wagner and former SA

chief Captain 253

Both

were said to have had close relations with Rudolf Heft. Hitler stressed

what

Franz Pfeffer von Salomon -

a

blow

British

for

him the Heft

now

affair

lodged in a concentration camp.

had been, and how thankful he was that to portray the Deputy

propaganda had missed the opportunity

Fuhrer as his ambassador carrying a peace-offer. Germany would have

lost

showdown its allies

imagined - something which even

as a result, Hitler

now

stopped

the blood in the veins.

He moved to pathos. There could never be any He would continue the war until it finished in

thought of capitulation.

serious crisis afflict the Fatherland,' he said with

no sense of an apparent

contradiction, 'he

would be seen with

morale of the population, he placed

'And should

victory.

the last division.'

234

To

a

ensure the

and

his entire trust in the Party

his

and Gauleiter, 'who must now place themselves around him as 2 solemnly sworn body (festuerscbworenes Korps)\ ^ The Soviet Union he

Reichsleiter a

saw

as already defeated,

resistance

would

last.

within four weeks.

He ended

though

He hoped

Then

it

was impossible

to predict

to reach the goals intended before winter

with an appeal to have confidence, and to rejoice

in a position to

It

would

give

Germany land

signified could

Some time

east, ice

by

this time, the

snow was

was again on

his

will never be

families will be

Reich far to the

settled here in order to carry the thrust of the

Shortly after his speech, Hitler

not be fully

still

German peasant

later millions of

arriving back in the Wolf's Lair

And

of limitless horizons. 'This land,

which we have conquered with the blood of German sons, surrendered.

in the

Germany

counter the greatest efforts of the United States.

what the overthrow of the Soviet Union grasped.

long

the troops could take up their winter quarters.

opportunity to take part in a struggle to shape Europe's future.

was

how

east.'

256

way back to East Prussia,

on the evening of the next day. 257 falling.

Torrential rain had given

In the

way

to

and temperatures well below zero Fahrenheit. Even tanks were often

unable to cope with ice-covered slopes. For the men, conditions were

worsening by the day. There was already an acute shortage of warm clothing

were becoming widespread. The

to protect them. Severe cases of frostbite

combat-strength of the infantry had sunk drastically.

2j8

Army Group

Centre

alone had lost by this time approaching 300,000 men, with replacements of 2:)9

number available. It was at this point, on 13 November, that, at a top-level conference of Army Group Centre, in a temperature of -8 degrees Fahrenheit, Guderian's little

more than

half that

panzer army, as part of the orders for the renewed offensive, was assigned the objective of cutting off

Moscow from

its

eastward communications by

taking Gorki, 250 miles to the east of the Soviet capital. lack of realism in the army's orders derived

260

The

astonishing

from the perverse obstinacy

with which the General Staff continued to persist in the view that the Red

Army was on macht

in

the point of collapse, and

was

greatly inferior to the

fighting-power and leadership. Such views, despite

all

Wehr-

the evidence

437

438

HITLER 1936-1945 to the contrary,

prevailing with Haider (and, indeed, largely shared

still

Army Group Centre, Bock), underlay the memorandum, presented by the General Staff on 7 November, for the second 261 offensive. The hopelessly optimistic goals laid down - the occupation of by the Commander-in-Chief of

Maykop

main source of oil from the Caucasus), Stalingrad, and Gorki were on the wish-list - were the work of Haider and his staff. There was no (a

pressure by Hitler on Haider. In fact, quite the reverse: Haider pressed for

acceptance of his operational goals. These corresponded in good measure

with goals Hitler had foreseen as attainable only

Had

in the following year.

262

more assertive at this stage in rejecting Haider's proposals, of the coming weeks might have been avoided. As it was,

Hitler been

the disasters

Hitler's uncertainty, hesitancy,

Command

and lack of

clarity

allowed

the scope for catastrophic errors of judgement.

Army High

263

The opposition which Haider's plans encountered at the conference on November then resulted in a restriction of the goals to a direct assault on Moscow. This was pushed through in full recognition of the insoluble logistical problems and immense dangers of an advance in near-arctic conditions without any possibility of securing supplies. Even the goal was not clear. The breach of Soviet communications to the east could not possibly be attained. Forward positions in the vicinity of Moscow were utterly exposed. Only the capture of the city itself, bringing - it was presumed - the collapse and capitulation of the Soviet regime and the end of the war, 13

could justify the

risk.

264

submission before the ground-troops arrived, entry

have meant street-by-street prevailing conditions,

bomb the city into into Moscow would

But with insufficient air-power to

it is

fighting.

With the

difficult to see

how

forces available,

the

and

in the

German army could have

proved victorious. Nevertheless, in Hitler

was by now

of 25

November he

mid-November

distinctly

the drive

on Moscow recommenced.

uneasy about the new offensive.

On the evening

expressed, according to the recollection of his

Army

Adjutant, Major Gerhard Engel, his 'great concern about the Russian winter

and weather'. 'We started

more the

to the strategy he

fall

month too

Then

he went on, returning once ideal solution

would be

on Moscow from south and north together with

there

would be

greatest nightmare'.

few days

frontal

the prospect of an eastern wall with military

bases.' Hitler ended, characteristically,

A

late,'

of Leningrad, capture of the southern area, and then, in that event,

a pincer attack assault.

a

had always favoured. 'The

by remarking that time was

'his

263

earlier, Hitler

had been more outwardly optimistic

in a

showdown The Propaganda Minister remarked was looking - almost unscathed from the pressures of

three-hour conversation with Goebbels.

on

how

well Hitler

the war, he thought.

At

the discussion ranged over the situation in

first

North Africa, where Hitler was more pessimistic than Army High

Command

about holding the position, given the inability to transport sufficient troops

and material to that

front.

He foresaw setbacks there, and

advised Goebbels

not to raise expectations of military success. But his eyes were so fixed on the east, Goebbels recorded, that he regarded events in

more than

'peripheral',

and unable

to affect events

North Africa

on the Continent

as

no

itself.

266

Once more he repeated his intention of destroying Leningrad and Moscow. 'If the weather stays favourable, he still wants to make the attempt to encircle Moscow and thereby abandon it to hunger and devastation.' 267 Whether an advance to the Caucasus would prove successful depended on the weather. But the improvement in weather and road conditions - on the frozen surfaces, instead of mud - had at least allowed motorized units Hitler then turned to the eastern campaign.

The

to operate again.

supplies problems were serious. But he remained

confident that the troops if

he

would master

in victory in

1918

when he

lay

'if

he had believed

without help as a half-blinded corporal

Pomeranian military hospital, why should he not now believe

when he

controlled the strongest

whole of Europe was prostrate

armed

forces in the

at his feet?'

He

they occurred in every war. 'World history

added.

him

the situation. Goebbels asked

believed in victory. Typically, he answered that

still

played

in

in a

our victory

world and almost the

down

the difficulties;

was not made by weather,' he

268

Three days

later,

Goebbels was telephoned from

FHQ

and told

to be

cautious in his propaganda about the exhibition of winter clothing for the troops.

It

was proving

scarcely possible to transport the provisions to the

front. In these circumstances,

blood'.

269

The caution was

winter-clothing collection in that

such an exhibition at

justified.

home

Within weeks, the

Germany would

could

start of

give the

stir

up 'bad

an emergency

most obvious

sign

propaganda reassurance about provisions for the troops had been

misplaced.

On

It

pointed unmistakably to a serious failure in planning.

270

29 November, with Hitler once again briefly in Berlin, Goebbels had

chance to speak with him at length. Hitler appeared

a further

optimism and confidence, brimming with energy, professed

still

Ewald von initially

in excellent health.

to be positive, despite the reversal in Rostov,

Kleist's

taking the

full 271

of

He

where General

panzer army had been forced back the previous day after city.

272

Hitler

now

intended to withdraw sufficiently far

439

440

HITLER I936-I945 from the

city to

allow massive air-raids which would

any of the Soviet major it

simply

left

the

bomb

it

to oblivion as

The Fuhrer had never favoured, wrote Goebbels, taking

a 'bloody example'.

cities.

There were no practical advantages

problem of feeding the

women and

children.

in

it,

and

There was no

doubt, Hitler went on, that the enemy had lost most of their great armaments centres. That, he claimed,

He hoped

achieved.

that a great encirclement

meant any attempt

had been the aim of the war, and had been

to advance further

to

was impossible

largely

on Moscow. But he acknowledged at present.

The weather uncertainty

advance a further 200 kilometres to the

would be madness. The and would have to be withdrawn with a secure supplies,

front-line troops

east,

without

would be

cut off

great loss of prestige which, at the

current time, could not be afforded. So the offensive had to take place on a smaller scale.

would be

273

Hitler

of

little left

it

still

expected

Moscow

to

fall.

When

it

did, there

but ruins. In the following year, there would be an

expansion of the offensive to the Caucasus to gain possession of Soviet supplies

-

or at least deny them to the Bolsheviks.

turned into a huge

German

oil

The Crimea would be

settlement area for the best ethnic types, to be

incorporated into the Reich territory as a

Gau - named the

'Ostrogoth Gau'

(Ostgotengau) as a reminder of the oldest Germanic traditions and the very origins of

Hitler

Germandom. 274

was evidently by

sight of the vision of

this

time in his element, and allowing Goebbels a

German

prosperity based on colonization and exploi-

tation of the east that he

had expounded many times

Wolf's Lair.

He

a matter of

when London would

plutocracies'.

275

to his entourage in the

returned, as always, to the threat from the west.

He

It

was only

recognize the 'hopeless position of the

expressed confidence - in contrast to some of his com-

ments only a few days

later

-

that the troops were being provided with

Once that was the case, the weather would determine advance would go. 'What cannot be achieved now, will be

winter equipment.

how

far the

achieved in the coming summer,' were Hitler's sentiments, according to

Goebbels's notes. Asia.

'In

any event, the Bolsheviks were to be driven back to

European Russia must be won

for Europe.' Hitler

saw

1942. as difficult,

but a far better situation developing in 1943. Foodstuffs and raw materials

now

were

Once

available

from the occupied European parts of the Soviet Union.

the exploitation of the area

no longer be endangered'.

told

'our victory can

show of optimism was put on to delude Goebbels - or himself. same day that he spoke with the Propaganda Minister, he was by Walter Rohland - in charge of tank production and just back from

Hitler's

On

was properly organized,

276

the very

SHOWDOWN a visit to the front

-

presence of Keitel, Jodl, Brauchitsch, Leeb, and

in the

other military leaders, of the superiority of the Soviet panzer production.

Rohland to the

also

USA

warned,

own

in the light of his

in 1930, of the

experience gleaned from a trip

immense armaments

which would be

potential

ranged against Germany should America enter the war. The war would then be lost for Germany.

who had

gifted ministers,

277

Todt, one of Hitler's most trusted and

Fritz

arranged the meeting about armaments, followed

up Rohland's comments with a statement on German armaments production.

Whether

in the meeting, or

more

privately afterwards,

Todt added:

war can no longer be won militarily.' Hitler listened without interrup'How, then, should I end this war?' Todt replied that the

'This

tion, then asked:

war could only be concluded see a

way

As Hitler was returning the

politically. Hitler retorted:

of coming politically to an end.'

news coming

things were to

in

on the evening of 29 November, 279 from the front was not good. Over the next days

worsen markedly.

Immediately on

the

mouth

his return to the

Wolf's Lair, Hitler

Kleist

of the

wanted

Bakhmut

to

Kleist's

move back

river. Hitler

retreat be halted further east. Brauchitsch

fell

into 'a state of

panzer army, thrown back

to a secure defensive position at

forbade

this

and demanded the

was summoned

to Fiihrer

quarters and subjected to a torrent of abuse. Browbeaten, the ill

Commander

of

Army Group

came from Rundstedt,

evidently not realizing that the

be changed or he be relieved of his post.

Hitler's

von Reichenau.

Rostov - and the

281

retreat to the line

He was

280

it,

and that

either the order

must

This reply was passed directly to

hours of the following morning, Rundstedt, one of

command given to Field-Marshal Walter

Later that day, Reichenau telephoned to say the

had broken through the

2

The order had come

most outstanding and loyal generals, was sacked - the scapegoat

for the setback at

On

to the

South, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt.

from Hitler himself, that he could not obey

Hitler. In the early

Head-

Commander-

and severely depressed man, passed on the order

in-Chief, an

reply

still

to East Prussia

extreme agitation' about the position of

from Rostov.

can scarcely

'I

278

line

ordered by Hitler and requested permission to

282 Rundstedt had demanded. Hitler concurred.

December, Hitler flew south to view put fully

enemy

in the picture

Kleist's position for himself.

about the reports, which he had not seen,

from the Army Group prior to the attack on Rostov. The outcome had been accurately forecast.

He

exonerated the

from blame. But he did not

amounted

Army Group and

reinstate Rundstedt.

to a public acceptance of his

own

error.

283

the panzer

army

That would have

441

442-

HITLER I936-I945 By that same

date, 2

December, German troops, despite the atrocious

weather, had advanced almost to a point only

become

some twelve

miles

Moscow. Reconnaissance troops reached

from the

-

city centre.

284

But the offensive had

Moscow on 4 December had dropped to -32 degrees Fahrenheit and without adequate support, Guderian decided on the evening of 5 December to pull back his troops to more secure defensive positions. Hoepner's 4th Panzer Army and hopeless. In intense cold

the temperature outside

Reinhardt's 3rd, some twenty miles north of the Kremlin, were forced to do the same.

285

On

December, the same day that the German offensive

5

irredeemably broke down, the Soviet counter-attack began. By the following day, 100 divisions along a 200-mile stretch of the front

Army Group

ted soldiers of

Centre.

fell

upon

the exhaus-

286

VI Amid

the deepening

east, the best

gloom

in the

Fuhrer Headquarters over events

news Hitler could have wished

for arrived. Reports

in the

came

in

during the evening of Sunday, 7 December that the Japanese had attacked the

American

fleet

anchored

Harbor

at Pearl

in

Hawaii.

287

Early accounts

two battleships and an aircraft carrier had been sunk, and 288 four others and four cruisers severely damaged. The following morning indicated that

President Roosevelt received the backing of the

on Japan. 289 Winston Churchill, overjoyed now

same boat'

Roosevelt had put

(as

authorization from the

war.

to him),

had no

to declare

Americans

war

'in

the

difficulty in obtaining

War Cabinet for an immediate British declaration of

290

Hitler thought he at

it

US Congress to have the

all,'

had good reason

he exclaimed. 'We

in 3,000 years.

to be delighted.

now have an

ally

'We

can't lose the

war

which has never been conquered

,291

This rash assumption was predicated on the view which Hitler had long held: that Japan's intervention Pacific theatre,

and seriously

possessions in the Far East.

292

would both tie the United States down in the weaken Britain through an assault on its Goebbels echoed the expectations: 'Through

war between Japan and the USA, a complete shift in the general world picture has taken place. The United States will scarcely now the outbreak of

be in a position to transport worthwhile material to England Soviet Union.'

let

alone the

293

Relations between Japan and the

USA

had been sharply deteriorating

SHOWDOWN throughout the autumn. With the collapse of any rapprochement by mid-

October over the loosening of the economic sanctions which were biting hard

Japan, the government of Prince Konoye had resigned and been

in

replaced by an administration headed by General Tojo. hardliners

and warmongers

ascendant. Early in the Americans. 29j

be war. in

If

in the military

November in the

had been increasingly

dark about

impressions that war between Japan and the

German Ambassador early in November of his

USA

and Britain was

was about

an assurance that Germany would go to Japan's aid

lay

in

war with

the

future'.

would

'actively enter the

likely.

to ask for

in the event of her

USA. 296 Such information

behind Hitler's optimism, when speaking to Goebbels

of the month, that Japan

would

stipulated, there

also learned that the Japanese administration

becoming engaged

in the

details, the

Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, informed Berlin

He had

Since then, the

they had fixed a deadline for agreement with

none could be reached, they had

Though kept

294

war

doubtless

in the

middle

in the foreseeable

297

The Japanese leadership had, in fact, taken the decision on 12 November should war with the USA become inevitable, an attempt would be made to reach agreement with Germany on participation in the war against America, and on a commitment to avoid a separate peace. Any insistence by Germany on Japan's involvement in the war against the Soviet Union would .be met with the response that Japan did not intend to intervene for the time being. Should Germany then delay her entry into the war against 298 the USA, this would have to be taken on board. On 21 November Ribbentrop had laid down the Reich's policy to Ott: Berlin regarded it as self-evident that if either country, Germany or Japan, found itself at war with the USA, the other country would not sign a 299 separate peace. Two days later, General Okamoto, the head of the section that,

of the Japanese General Staff dealing with foreign armies, further. as at

He

asked Ambassador Ott whether

war with

the

USA

if

Japan were

to

went

a stage

Germany would regard

open

hostilities/

00

There

itself is

no

record of Ribbentrop's replying to Ott's telegram, which arrived on 24

November. But when he met Ambassador Oshima

in Berlin

on the evening

Germany would come to Japan's aid if she were to be at war with the USA. And there was no possibility of a separate peace between Germany and the USA under any 301 circumstances. The Fuhrer was determined on this point. of 28

November, Ribbentrop assured him

For the Japanese,

little

that

depended on the agreement with Germany.

Already two days before Ribbentrop met Oshima, Japanese

air

and naval

443

444

HITLER 1936— 1945 forces

had

to attack

set

out for Hawaii.

on the

7th.

And on

December, the order had been given

1

302

Ribbentrop's assurances were fully in

Matsuoka's

draw

visit to Berlin in

line

with Hitler's remarks during

Germany would immediately 303 into conflict with the USA. But

the spring, that

the consequences should Japan get

at this point, before entering

any formal agreement with the Japanese,

Ribbentrop evidently deemed

necessary to consult Hitler.

this

on the evening of

seen, to visit

it

December. 304 The next day, Hitler

1

Army Group South

following the setback at Rostov. Bad

weather forced him to stay overnight

was apparently

cut off

in Poltava

305

to return to his

Ribbentrop reached him there and

gained approval for what amounted to a

German Foreign

on the way back, where he

from communications. He was able

headquarters only on 4 December.

He told Oshima we have

flew, as

new

- which the

tripartite pact

Minister rapidly agreed with Ciano - stipulating that

should war break out between any one of the partners and the

USA,

the

other two states would immediately regard themselves as also at war with

America.

306

Already before Pearl Harbor, therefore, Germany had effectively

itself to war with the USA should Japan - become involved in hostilities.

committed inevitable

The agreement, which had one-sided commitment, was

inserted the mutual pledge

still

as

now seemed

and not

just left a

unsigned when the Japanese attacked Pearl

Harbor. This unprovoked Japanese aggression gave Hitler what he wanted without having already committed himself formally to any action from the

German side. However, he was keen to have a revised agreement - completed on

n December, and now stipulating only an obligation not to conclude an

armistice or peace treaty with the

propaganda reasons: afternoon.

USA

to include in his big speech to the Reichstag that

307

The idea

of a speech to the Reichstag in mid-December, giving an account

of the war-year 1941, had been in Hitler's

spoken to Goebbels about

it

mind

make

some weeks. He had

a declaration of

the high-point of his long-planned speech.

news of the Japanese

for

November. 308 Immediately

as early as 21

following Pearl Harbor, he decided to

USA

without mutual consent - for

As soon

war on

as he

the

heard the

attack, he telephoned Goebbels, expressing his delight,

and ordering the summoning of the Reichstag for Wednesday, 10 December, 'to make the German stance clear'. Goebbels commented: 'We will, on the basis of the Tripartite Pact, probably not avoid a declaration of

United States. But that's protected on the flanks.

now

not so bad. We're

The United

States will

now

war on

the

to a certain extent

no longer be so rashly able

showdown England with

to provide

From

all

that for their

own war

for Hitler.

Given the

front, he

of a positive nature to include in a progress-report to the

No

people.

further mention had, in fact, been

made

to

account

But

now

a

had

German

of a speech to the

Reichstag since he had himself originally raised the prospect weeks

With nothing but setbacks and

30

Harbor

at Pearl

on the eastern

crisis

can

it

with Japan.'

propaganda point of view, the Japanese attack

a

was most timely little

weapons, and transport-space, since

aircraft,

be presumed that they will need

prolonged war, contrary to

all

earlier.

promises,

he would almost certainly have wished to avoid a speech.

for,

the Japanese attack gave

him

a positive angle.

On

8

December,

Ribbentrop told Ambassador Oshima that the Fiihrer was contemplating the best way,

from the psychological point of view, of declaring war on the

United States.

310

speech, Hitler

Since he

wanted time

to prepare carefully such an important

had the assembling of the Reichstag postponed from 10

December, the date he had originally stipulated, to the next day, despite Japanese pressure for an earlier date.

311

At

least,

Goebbels remarked, the

time of the speech, three o'clock in the afternoon, though scarcely good for the

German

On

suprise

would allow

the Japanese

morning of 9 December,

the

Bahnhof

public,

in Berlin.

and

313

He

initial incredulity at

who saw him

the attack

is

good, after so

unpleasant news, to

had to prepare to say.

316

come

his speech.

his

in

314

him

if

she did

'The Fiihrer

again.

,3b

is

Goebbels

victory,'

to digest

Hitler

still

gave Goebbels a resume of what he intended

But when Goebbels saw him again the following lunchtime, 10

December, Hitler had speech.

midday, of

many days when we've had

into direct contact with

He

at

to act before long

beaming again with optimism and confidence 'It

312 it.

on Pearl Harbor, though he had

would be forced

not want to give up her claim to world-power status.

remarked.

to hear

Hitler's train pulled in at the Anhalter

told Goebbels,

always- expected that Japan

and Americans

still

found no time, he

said, to begin

work on

the

317

USA was, as we have seen, a No agreement with the Japanese compelled 318 But Hitler did not hesitate. A formal declaration might have to wait until the Reichstag That Germany would declare war on the

matter of course.

it.

could be summoned. But at the earliest opportunity, on the night of 8-9

December, he had already given the order ships.

319

possible

A -

to U-boats to sink

American

formal declaration of war was necessary to ensure as far as in

accordance with the agreement of

would remain

in the

war.

320

And

it

was

n

December -

also important,

of view, to retain the initiative, and not

let this

from

that

Japan

Hitler's point

pass to the United States.

445

446

HITLER I936-I945 Certain, as he

had been for many months, that Roosevelt was

European was merely anticipating the formalizing what was in effect already the

just

looking

for the chance to intervene in the

conflict, Hitler

his declaration

inevitable and, in any case,

Not

situation.

thought that

least, for the

German public, it was important to demonstrate that he still controlled events. To await a certain declaration of war from America would, from Hitler's standpoint,

have been a sign of weakness. 321 Prestige and propa-

ganda, as always, were never far from the centre of Hitler's considerations. 'A great power doesn't let itself have war declared on

Ribbentrop - doubtless echoing

and

a half hours.

more than Hitler

323

It

was some

German this

The

n

declares

told Weizsacker.

December,

first

war itself,' lasted

322

one

half consisted of

no

on the progress of the war which

to provide long before the events of Pearl Harbor.

German dead which

had been presumed. 324 (The

army

available to the

were by

his best.

surprise at the figure of 160,000

a far higher figure

total

was not one of

the lengthy, triumphalist report

had intended

-

Hitler's sentiments

on the afternoon of Thursday,

Hitler's speech

it, it

figure

matched,

There

Hitler gave;

in fact, those

leadership, though Hitler omitted to mention that

losses, including

wounded and more than 35,000 missing, 325 The rest of the speech was largely

time over 750,000 men.)

taken up with a long-drawn-out, sustained attack on Roosevelt. Hitler built

up the image of

a President,

backed by the

'entire satanic insidiousness' of

on war and the destruction of Germany. 326 Eventually he came the climax of his speech: the provocations - up to now unanswered - had

the Jews, set to

finally forced

Germany and

Italy to act.

He

read out a version of the

statement he had had given to the American Charge d'Affaires that after-

noon, with a formal declaration of war on the USA.

new agreement,

He

then read out the

signed that very day, committing Germany, Italy, and Japan

to rejecting a unilateral armistice or peace with Britain or the In Goebbels's view, Hitler's speech

whom

German

people, to

surprise,

nor a shock. 328 In

had had

the declaration of reality, the

a 'fantastic' effect

war had come

and now the opening of aggression against

adversary, had sunk to

Goebbels was, his part,

war

in fact,

to

a further powerful

not blind to the poor state of morale.

had the capacity,

little

into the indefinite

lowest point since the conflict began.

its

on the

neither as a

speech had been able to do

raise morale which, given the certain extension of the

future,

USA. 327

329

330

Hitler, for

as always, to convince not only himself, but those

in his presence, that things

were

see Japan's entry into the

war

less

bad than they seemed. Not only did he

as a turning-point.

He

also continued to

convey optimism about the eastern front, despite the depressing situation

showdown there.

'The Fiihrer doesn't take too tragically the events

eastern campaign,' Goebbels recorded, after he

December.

331

Weather and supplies problems had compelled

present, for a break to build

against the Soviet in

in the theatre of the

had spoken

Union -

up strength and resources

in the

mid-May. This would be so

on 9

to Hitler

a need, already

for a spring offensive

south at the end of April, and in the centre

carefully prepared that

it

would quickly

lead

to victory.

By then the army would be completely ready, and would not

have to tap

its last

reserves.

Hitler's ability to put a positive gloss even

him even

to see the onset of the

Had

advantage.

bad weather

on

a

major setback allowed

autumn

in the east in the

the rainy weather not arrived

when

did, he said,

it

as an

German

troops would have pushed so far forward that the supplies problem could

not have been solved. This showed 'how good fate prevents us through

we would been to

own

call off the offensive in

weapons

And

332

He acknowledged how

and how

it

necessary

it

had

order to give time for the exhausted troops

he admitted that there were at present no sufficient

to counter the heavy Russian panzers.

them from was

to us

intervention from mistakes which without that

doubtless have made'.

to recuperate.

front'.

its

is

a mystery, but 'currently the

'The Bolsheviks,' he went on,

Where

they kept producing

most serious concern of the

'are for the

most part comparable with

animals; but animals, too, are sometimes unyielding {standhaft), and since the Soviet certain

Union needs take no consideration of

way

superior to us.'

333

own

its

people,

were only temporary ones, and that Germany's position, especially entry of the Japanese into the war, of this mighty continental struggle

The following day,

Hitler

conceded that the situation

it is

in a

But Hitler concluded that the recent setbacks

was

was so favourable

was not

in doubt'.

at least

in the east

was

334

somewhat more 'at

the

after the

that 'the conclusion

moment

realistic.

He

not very good',

and agreed with Goebbels's wishes to prepare the people for unavoidable setbacks through propaganda of

war and

the sacrifices

it

more attuned

to the realism of the harshness

demanded. Hitler and Goebbels evidently

dis-

cussed the catastrophic lack of winter clothing for the troops, and the effect this

was having on morale. 33 ^ Goebbels was well aware from the

criticism in countless soldiers' letters to their loved ones of

as

how bad

the

was on morale, both at the front and at home. 336 337 were already set on the big spring offensive in 1942. And,

impact of the supplies

But Hitler's eyes

bitter

crisis

always when faced with setbacks, he pointed to the 'struggle for power',

and

how

difficulties

The need

had

at that

time been overcome.

to boost morale, in the

first

instance

338

among

those he held

447

448

HITLER 1936— 1945 responsible for upholding Hitler's address

-

on the home

it

the second in

little

over a

front,

undoubtedly lay behind

month -

to his Gauleiter

on the

afternoon of 12 December.

He began with the consequences of Pearl Harbor. the war, he

would have

at

some point had

If Japan

to declare

war on

had not entered the

USA. 'Now

the East- Asia conflict falls to us like a present in the lap,' Goebbels reported

him

saying.

The pyschological

significance should not be underrated. With-

USA,

out the conflict between Japan and the

Americans would have been was,

it

was taken

difficult to

German

The extension U-boat war in the

as a matter of course.

had positive consequences for the restraint,

a declaration of

accept by the

now

he expected the tonnage sunk

would probably be

decisive in

war on

people.

the

As

it

to the conflict also Atlantic. Freed of

to increase greatly

- and

this

winning the war. Aware of objections that

the alliance with the Japanese stood opposed to 'the interests of the white

man

in

East Asia', Hitler was frank, forthright, and pragmatic: 'Interests of

must

the white race

people. life

We

at present give place to the interests of the

are fighting for our

(Lebensboden)

is

What

life.

We

would

could weaken the Anglo-Saxon position.' turned to the war in the

east.

a fine theory

if

the basis of

ally ourselves

all

means

with anyone

if

we

339

Both tone and content were much as

He acknowledged

they had been with Goebbels in private.

had had

is

taken away? ... In a life-and-death struggle,

available to a people are right.

He

use

German

for the time being to be pulled

that the troops

back to a defensible

line, but,

some 300 the coming

given the supplies problems, saw this as far better than standing

The troops were now being saved for A new panzer army in preparation within

kilometres further east. spring and

summer

offensive.

Germany would be ready by

then.

He

also alluded to the difficulties in

defending against the Russian tanks, but pointed out that a

gun was well ably.

in preparation.

He viewed

The North African campaign, he

new

anti-tank

the general situation very favour-

misleadingly stated, was well pro-

vided for, and an Allied landing on the Continent for the time being out of the question.

The

difficulties

elements (naturbedingt) It

was

.

his firm intention,

(erledigeri) Soviet

faced at present were determined by the

340

he declared,

in the

following year to finish off

Russia at least as far as the Urals. 'Then

it

would perhaps

be possible to reach a point of stabilization in Europe through a sort of half-peace', by

which he appeared to mean that Europe would

self-sufficient, heavily

powers

to fight

it

armed

fortress, leaving the

out in other theatres of war.

An

exist as a

remaining belligerent

attack on the European

SHOWDOWN much less possible than at present. German anti-aircraft weapons, he was

Continent, he claimed, would then be

And

given the progress

made

in

'extraordinarily sceptical' about the impact, which, he thought,

become ever more

limited, of British air-raids.

case, he claimed, Britain

He said,

would be

in a

quandary.

would

turned out to be the

If this 341

outlined his vision of the future. His National Socialist conviction, he

had become even stronger during the war.

war was over

It

was

essential after the

programme embracing workers this. And it would provide reasoning behind the aim of material improvement huge

to undertake a

social

and farmers. The German people had deserved

- always

the political

the 'most secure basis of our state system (unseres staatlichen GefiigesY

'.

The enormous housing programme he had in mind would, he stated openly, be made possible through cheap labour - through depressing wages. The work would be done by the forced labour of the defeated peoples. He pointed out that the prisoners-of-war were

war economy. This was

as

it

antiquity, giving rise in the

now

being fully employed in the

should be, he stated, and had been the case in

German war

place to slave labour.

first

would doubtless be 200-300 billion Marks. These had

to be covered

debts

through

work 'in the main of the people who had lost the war'. The cheap labour would allow houses to be built and sold at a substantial profit which would the

go towards paying off the war-debts within ten to Hitler put forward once India',

more

fifteen years.

his vision of the east as

Germany's

343

There would, he made

clear,

be no place in

Christian Churches. After the trouble of the

summer, he had

For the time being, he ordered slow progression

.

.

.

it is

clear,'

There

is,

in the

noted Goebbels, himself numbering

anti-Church radicals, 'that after the war

Utopia for the

this

which both appeased the Party hotheads but also restrained 'But

'future

which would become within three or four generations 'absolutely

German'.

ive

342

it

to take a line

their instincts.

'Church Question'.

among the most aggress-

has to find a general solution

namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a

Germanic-heroic world-view.'

344

Pressing engagements in Berlin

-

particularly the audience next day with

Ambassador Oshima to award him the Great Golden Cross of the Order of the German Eagle - prevented Hitler from returning that evening, as he had intended, to the Wolf's Lair. again, in the different

34 ^

When he eventually reached his headquarters

morning of 16 December,

it

was back

from the rosy picture he had painted to

ally catastrophic military crisis

was unfolding.

to a reality starkly

his Gauleiter.

346

A potenti-

449

450

HITLER I936-I945

VII Already before Hitler had

left

outlined the weakness of his

for Berlin, Field-Marshal

Army Group

von Bock had

against a concentrated attack,

and stated the danger of serious defeat if no reserves were sent. 347 Then, while Hitler

was

German

in the

lines,

Reich capital, as the Soviet counter-offensive penetrated

driving a dangerous

wedge between

Guderian reported the desperate position of

2nd and 4th Armies,

the

his troops

and a serious

'crisis

commands. 348 After Schmundt had been sent to Army Group Centre on 14 December to discuss the situation at first hand, in confidence' of the field

Hitler responded immediately, neither awaiting the report

from Brauchitsch,

who had accompanied Schmundt, nor involving Haider. 349 Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm, Commander of the Reserve Army, was summoned and asked for a report on the divisions that could be sent straight away to the eastern front. Goring and the head of the

Wehrmacht transport,

General Rudolf Gercke, were told to arrange the transport. half divisions of reserves, assembled throughout

Lieutenant-

350

Germany

Four and

at

a

breakneck

speed, were rushed to the haemorrhaging front. Another nine divisions were

drummed up from

and the Balkans. 351

the western front

On

15

December

Jodl passed on to Haider Hitler's order that there must be no retreat where the front could possibly be held. But

where the position was untenable, and

once preparations for an orderly withdrawal had been made, retreat to a

more

defensible line

of Bock and of the

Group Centre,

was permitted. 252 This matched

man who would soon replace him as Commander of Army

at this time

Giinther von Kluge.

353

still

commanding

had by

this

That evening, Brauchitsch, deeply depressed, its

as

Haider put

it,

told

current position.

'scarcely

postman {kaum mebr BrieftragerY - and was dealing

354

Army

time long since ceased listening to his broken

Commander-in-Chief- by now, a

Army, Field-Marshal

the 4th

Haider that he saw no way out for the army from Hitler

the recommendations

any longer even

directly with his

Army Group Commanders. 355 Bock had,

in fact, already

that Hitler should

make

should stand fast and fight

had openly 'in

recommended

a decision its

to Brauchitsch

on

13

December

on whether the Army Group Centre

ground, or

retreat. In either eventuality,

Bock

was the danger that the Army Group would collapse Trummer)\ Bock advanced no firm recommendation. But he

stated, there

ruins (in

indicated the disadvantages of retreat: the discipline of the troops might give

way, and the order to stand-fast

at the

new

line

be disobeyed.

356

The

SHOWDOWN implication

was

plain.

The

might turn into a rout. Bock's evaluation

retreat

on

of the situation, remarkably, had not been passed

He

only received

it

on 16 December, when Bock told Schmundt what he

had reported to Brauchitsch three days

That

to Hitler at the time.

night, Guderian,

who two

earlier.

357

days earlier had struggled through a

blizzard for twenty-two hours to meet Brauchitsch at Roslavl and put his

case for a withdrawal,

was telephoned on

no withdrawal; the

to be

line

Army Group North was defend the front to the

was

to be held; replacements

told the

last

a crackly line by Hitler: there

same day, 16 December,

Sevastopol.

Army Group

that

man. Army Group South had also

and would be sent reserves from the Crimea

front

would be

after the

it

was

sent.

had

358

to

to hold the

imminent

fall

of

Centre was informed that extensive withdrawals

could not be countenanced because of the wholesale loss of heavy weapons

which would ensue. 'With personal commitment of the Commander, subordinate commanders, and officers, the troops were to be compelled to fanati-

without respect for the enemy breaking

cal resistance in their positions

through on the flanks or

rear.'

359

Hitler's decision that there should be

and Haider

no

conveyed to Brauchitsch

retreat,

16-17 December, was

in the night of

his

own. But

it

have taken Bock's assessment as the justification for the high-risk no-retreat. His order stated: 'There can be

Only

in

some

is

enemy has more

soldiers.

we

On

13

are.'

tactic of

no question of a withdrawal.

places has there been deep penetration by the enemy. Setting

up rear positions than

seems to

fantasy.

The

It

front

is

suffering

doesn't have

more

from one thing only: the

artillery. It's

much worse

360

December, Field-Marshal von Bock had submitted to Brauchitsch be relieved of his

his request to

overcome the consequences of

command,

since, so

he claimed, he had not

361

Five days later, Hitler

his earlier illness.

had Brauchitsch inform Bock that the request for leave was granted. Kluge took over the

was

the turn

command

of

Army Group

Centre.

362

On

19

December

- long overdue - of the Commander-in-Chief of

the

it

Army,

Field-Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, to depart. Brauchitsch's sacking had been on the cards for military adjutants

had been speculating over

November. 363 His health had serious heart attack in health,

some

weeks been very poor.

mid-November.

364

time. Hitler's

replacement since mid-

He had

suffered a

At the beginning of December,

his

Haider noted, was 'again giving cause for concern' under the pressure

of constant worrying. sick

for

his

man,

at the

36 ^

end of

Hitler spoke of

his tether'.

366

him even

Squeezed

in

November

in the conflict

as 'a totally

between Hitler

451

452.

HITLER 1936— I945 and Haider, Brauchitsch's position was indeed unenviable. But his own feebleness had contributed markedly to his misery. Constantly trying to balance demands from his

Army Group Commanders and from Haider with

the need to please Hitler, his weakness

more exposed

and compliance had

in the gathering crisis to a

Leader

who from

left

him ever

the start lacked

confidence in his army leadership and was determined to intervene in tactical dispositions.

him part,

It

was recognized by those who saw the way Hitler was no longer up to the job. 367 Brauchitsch,

treated

that Brauchitsch

was anxious

to resign,

and

tried to

for his

do so immediately following the

start of the Soviet counter-offensive in the first

week

He

of December.

thought of Kluge or Manstein as possible successors. 368 Hitler disingenuously told

Schmundt

at the

time (and commented along

similar lines to his Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus

that he

was

clueless

von Below, two days

later)

about a replacement. Schmundt had for some time

favoured Hitler himself taking over as head of the army, to restore confidence, and

now

put

According to Below,

this to

was

it

him. Hitler said he would think about in the night of

decided to take on the supreme

finally

369 it.

16-17 December that Hitler

command

of the

army

himself.

At

the height of the crisis which culminated in the 'stand-fast' order, Brauchitsch

had shown himself in

Hitler's eyes to be

The names of Manstein and ring.

was.

But Hitler did not

And

once and for

like

Manstein,

brilliant

Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring,

370

commander though he

known

as a

was earmarked

Luftwaffe in the Mediterranean (and, perhaps, was

by

dispensable.

Kesselring were thrown momentarily into the

organizer, and an eternal optimist,

be too

all

tough and capable

for

command

in addition

of the

thought to

much in Goring's pocket). 371 In any case, Hitler had convinced himself

this

time that being in charge of the army was no more than a

'little

command' that 'anyone can do'. 372 Haider, who, it might have been imagined, would have had most to lose by the change-over, in fact appears to have welcomed it. He seems momentarily to have deluded matter of operational

himself that through this move, taking him directly into Hitler's presence in

decision-making, he might expand his the entire

Wehrmacht.

Keitel put

own

influence to matters concerning

an early stop to any such pretensions,

ensuring that, as before, Haider's responsibilities were confined to

army concerns and that he himself took over all non-operational had previously pertained

to the

Hitler's takeover of the

strictly

tasks

which

OKH. 373

supreme command of the army was formally

announced on 19 December. 374

In

one sense, since Brauchitsch had been

increasingly bypassed during the deepening crisis, the change

was

less

showdown fundamental than

now

No

appeared. But

it

it

taking over direct responsibility for tactics, as well as grand strategy.

other head of a belligerent state

debacle, pulled back

was

meant, nevertheless, that Hitler was

- not even

somewhat from

who

Stalin,

direct intervention in

after the early

army

tactics

so closely involved in the minutiae of military affairs. Hitler

absurdly overloading himself

mand

army would deprive him,

of the

And

further.

still

his

German

public, of

375

Immediately on the heels of the announcement of Brauchitsch's

came an even

nation

plainer sign of crisis in the east.

Hitler published an appeal to the

clothing for the troops in the east. to be

handed

in

376

was

takeover of direct com-

in the eyes of the

scapegoats for future military disasters.

-

German people Goebbels

On

to send

resig-

20 December,

warm

winter

listed all the items of clothes

during a lengthy radio broadcast that evening.

377

The

population responded with shock and anger - astonished and bitter that the

made proper

leadership had not

provision for the basic necessities of their

loved ones fighting at the front and exposed to a merciless, polar winter.

378

Also on the day after Brauchitsch's dismissal, Hitler sent a strongly-

worded

directive to

Army Group

days earlier to hold position and

Centre, reaffirming the order issued four

fight to the last

man. 'The

fanatical will to

defend the ground on which the troops are standing,' ran the directive, 'must be injected into the troops with every possible means, even the toughest

crumble

more

.

Where this will is not fully present the front will begin to Wanken geraten) without any prospect of stabilizing it once prepared position. For, every officer and man must be clear that .

.

(ins

in a

the withdrawal of the troops will expose

them

to the dangers of the Russian

winter far more than staying in position, however inadequately equipped

may

be.

losses

That

threatening to there

is

quite apart

which must occur

is

a

become

in a

reality.

it

from the considerable, unavoidable material withdrawal

.

.

.

Talk of Napoleon's

retreat

is

Thus, there must only be a withdrawal where

prepared position further in the rear

.

.

.

But

if

troops have to leave

a position without being offered an equivalent substitute, then a crisis of

confidence in the leadership threatens to develop from every retreat.' a systematic

scorched-earth policy. 'Every piece of territory which the

Where

withdrawal was to take place, Hitler ordered the most brutal

enemy must be made unusable

inhabitation must be burnt

for

down and

the population, to deprive the

him

is

forced to be

as far as possible.

left

to

Every place of

destroyed without consideration for

enemy of

all

possibility of shelter.'

He

concluded with an appeal to the force of will and to a sense of superiority

which must not be

lost.

There was, he declared, 'no reason that the troops

453

454

HITLER 1936-1945 should lose their sense of superiority, constantly proven up to now, over this

On

enemy.

the contrary,

the justified self-confidence

enemy and

depend on strengthening everywhere

will

it

and on possessing the

cope with

will to

this

the difficulties conditioned by the weather until sufficient

reinforcements have arrived and the front

One commander, more

is

thereby finally secured.'

379

unwilling than most to accept Hitler's 'Halt

Order' lying down, was the panzer hero Guderian. Through Schmundt,

Guderian had a direct

line to Hitler.

380

He made use of it to arrange a

special

meeting at Fiihrer Headquarters where he could put his case for withdrawal openly to Hitler. Guderian had his

own way

in dealing

with military

With Bock's connivance, he had

orders which he found unacceptable.

ignored or bypassed early orders, usually by acting

first

tacitly

and notifying

later.

But with Bock's replacement by Kluge, that changed. Guderian and Kluge did not get on. Hitler

was well informed of Guderian's 'unorthodoxy'.

perhaps suprising, then, that he was

still

mander an audience,

lasting five hours,

put his case at length.

381

All Hitler's military entourage

the state of the

It is

prepared to grant the tank com-

on 20 December, and allow him

to

were present. Guderian informed him of

2nd Panzer Army and 2nd Army, and

his intention of

But Guderian was not telling the The retreat, for which he had presumed to receive authorization from Brauchitsch six days earlier, was already under way. Hitler was

retreating. Hitler expressly forbade this.

whole

story.

He

unremitting.

said that the troops should dig in

where they stood and

hold every square yard of land. Guderian pointed out that the earth was frozen to a depth of five

feet.

Hitler rejoined that they

blast craters with howitzers, as

had been done

would then have

in Flanders

to

during the First

World War. Guderian quietly pointed out that ground conditions in Flanders and Russia

in

midwinter were scarcely comparable. Hitler insisted on

order. Guderian objected that the loss of

pointed to the

'sacrifice'

his

would be enormous, Hitler Great's men. 'Do you think

life

of Frederick the

Frederick the Great's grenadiers were anxious to die?' Hitler retorted. 'They

wanted

to live, too, but the king

themselves. lay

down

I

his

his troops,

believe that life.'

He

I,

too,

am

was

right in asking

entitled to ask

to sacrifice

any German soldier to

thought Guderian was too close to the suffering of

and had too much

pity for them.

'You should stand back more,'

he suggested. 'Believe me, things appear clearer range.'

them

when examined

at longer

382

Guderian returned to the front empty-handed. Within days, Kluge had requested the tank commander's removal, and on 26 December, Guderian

showdown was informed of generals to

fall

his dismissal.

383

He was

from the

far

from grace during the winter

last

of the top-line

Within the following

crisis.

weeks Generals Helmuth Forster, Hans Graf von Sponeck, Erich

three

Hoepner, and Adolf StrauE were sacked, Field-Marshal von Leeb was

command of Army Group North, and Field-Marshal von Reichenau died of a stroke. Sponeck was sentenced to death - subsequently relieved of his

commuted Crimean the

for

front.

army with

overcome, replaced.

The

withdrawing

from the Kerch peninsula on the

his troops

Hoepner, also for retreating, was summarily expelled from pension rights.

loss of all his

in spring,

384

By the time that the

numerous subordinate commanders had

crisis

was

also been

385

crisis lasted into

On New

January.

Year's Eve, while the newly

acquired gramophone blared out Lieder by Richard Strau£ and, of course, the inevitable tipsier

Wagner, and the inhabitants of the

Fiihrer Headquarters got

and merrier, Hitler spent three hours on the telephone

insisting that the front be held.

summoned

386

When

he was eventually finished, he

middle of the night. Their good

his secretaries for tea in the

mood

soon evaporated. Hitler swiftly dampened the

spirits

to Kluge,

by nodding off

The merry-making palled. His entourage, coming in to congratulate It was so dreadful that Christa Schroeder went back to her room and burst into tears. She found the remedy in returning to the mess and joining a few of the young officers to sleep.

him, removed their smiles and put on serious faces.

there in singing sea-shanties to the alcohol.

accompaniment of copious amounts of

387

was mid-January before Hitler was prepared to concede the tactical withdrawal for which Kluge had been pleading. 388 By the end of the month, It

the worst

was

The eastern front,

over.

Hitler claimed full credit for this.

of the

will'.

Looking back,

on an almost complete

come

to him, he said,

he really thought also asked

Reich.

On

it

enormous

at

few months

a

would be

whether the it

retreat.

less

retreat

it

on, that a retreat

out any retreat at

cold

He had

fifty

army.

One

would

stay

He would

where

'And

I

pulled

it

He had

kilometres to the rear. at the

telling

borders of the

was.

off!

him

to get

far,

he

back to

himself take over the leadership It

was

'the fate of it

crisis

general had

asked the general whether

would only stop

would have meant all.

stabilized.

might indeed be necessary to withdraw so

as quickly as possible.

of the army, and

had been

he blamed the winter

later,

immediately dismissed the general, he said,

Germany

cost,

was, in his eyes, once more a 'triumph

failure of leadership in the

wanting to

hearing that

It

plain to him, he

went

He had

ruled

Napoleon'.

That we overcame

this

winter

455

456

HITLER 1936— 1945 and are today

in the position again to

proceed victoriously ...

attributable to the bravery of the soldiers at the front

hold out, cost what

may.'

it

and

my

is

solely

firm will to

389

Salvation through the Fiihrer's genius was, of course, the line adopted (and believed) by Goebbels

combined pure

and other Nazi

leaders.

390

Their public statements

and impure propaganda. But despite Haider's outright condemnation - after the war - of Hitler's 'Halt Order', not all military faith

experts were so ready to interpret

Chief of

it

as a catastrophic mistake. Kluge's

General Guenther Blumentritt, for instance, was prepared to

Staff,

acknowledge that the determination to stand decisive in avoiding a

much

fast

was both

correct

bigger disaster than actually occurred.

and

391

Hitler's early recognition of the dangers of a full-scale collapse of the front,

and the

utterly ruthless determination with

which he

resisted

to retreat, probably did play a part in avoiding a calamity of

demands

Napoleonic

392

But, had he been less inflexible, and paid greater heed to some of the advice coming from his field commanders, the likelihood is that

proportions.

same end could have been achieved with

the

over, stabilization

was

finally

far smaller loss of

new

Order' and agreed to a tactical withdrawal to form a

The

strains of the winter crisis

now showing

He

faint.

psychologically.

394

mark on

in

March. Hitler looked

Hitler.

tear.

grey,

393

He was

Goebbels was

and much aged.

The

in the

winter, he acknowledged, had also affected

felt

him

But he appeared to have withstood the worst. His confi-

dence was, certainly to

He

left their

front line.

admitted to his Propaganda Minister that he had for some time

and often

ill

had

unmistakable signs of physical wear and

shocked when he saw him

More-

life.

achieved only after he had relaxed the 'Halt

all

autumn, of doubts

outward appearances, undiminished. Hints, given

at the

outcome of the war, were no longer heard. 395

told his entourage in the Fuhrer Headquarters that the entry of Japan

in history, which would denote 'the loss of a whole - regrettable, because the loss would be that of the 'white race'. 396 The British would not be able to prevail against Japan once Singapore had 397 been lost. The question would then be whether Britain could hold on to India. He was sure that, offered the chance of keeping India (and preventing

had been a turning-point continent'

the complete disintegration of the Empire) while abandoning Europe to

Germany, almost

the entire British population

would be

Against what had seemed in the depths of the winter

crisis

398

almost insuper-

Germany was ready by spring to launch another offensive in the The war still had a long way to go. 399 Certainly, the balance of forces

able odds, east.

in favour.

showdown at this juncture

was by no means one-sided. And

the course of events

would

undergo many vagaries before defeat for Germany appeared inexorable. But the winter of 1941-2 can nevertheless,

in retrospect,

merely a turning-point, but the beginning of the end.

The aim advanced by

Hitler since the

summer

be seen to be not

400

of 1940, with the backing

of his military strategists, had been to force Britain to

come

keep America out of the war through

and comprehensive

defeat

inflicting a swift

to terms

and

upon the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, Germany had failed to Union and was now embroiled in a long, enormously bitter

defeat the Soviet

war in the east. Britain had not only been uninterested in coming was now fighting alongside the USA and, since concluding a mutual assistance agreement in Moscow on 12 July 1941, allied - whatever 401 the continuing frictions - with the Soviet Union. Not least, Germany was and

costly,

to terms, but

now

war with America. Whatever Hitler's contempt, he knew no ways 402 of defeating the USA. And if final victory over the Soviet Union could not at

rapidly be achieved, America's mighty resources contest. Hitler

seriously

now had

weaken

would soon weigh

to place his hopes in the Japanese,

the British

and lock the

USA

in the

who might

into conflict in the Pacific.

But he could no longer depend upon the power of German arms alone.

Germany no

longer held the initiative.

was running against Germany

more than those of anyone

He had

in its bid for

else

proving to be the case. Though

it

always predicted that time

supremacy. His

had ensured that

this

would not become

actions

fully plain for

months, Hitler's gamble, on which he had staked nothing future of the nation, had disastrously failed.

own

was indeed now less

some

than the

457

IO FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY'

'I

already stated on

Reichstag - and this

war

I

will not

September 1939

i

refrain

come

to an

the extermination of the the result of this the

war

German

end

as the

Jews imagine, with

European— Aryan peoples, but that

will be the annihilation of

time the old Jewish law will

first

in the

from over-hasty prophecies - that

now

Jewry. For

be applied: an

eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Hitler, speaking in the Sportpalast, Berlin, 30

'A judgement

is

being carried out on the Jews which

barbaric, but fully deserved.

world war fashion

.

.

is

.

The prophecy which

them along the way

Fiihrer gave

January 1942

for bringing

is

the

about a new

beginning to become true in the most terrible

Here, too, the Fiihrer

is

the unswerving

cham-

pion and spokesman of a radical solution.' Goebbels, diary entry, zj

March 1942

It

was no accident

that the

war

objective of eradicating 'Jewish-Bolshevism'

what had been inseparably

The

in the east led to genocide.

was

ideological

central, not peripheral, to

deliberately designed as a 'war of annihilation'.

bound up with

the military campaign.

With

the

It

was

murderous

onslaught of the Einsatzgruppen, backed by the Wehrmacht, launched in the

first

days of the invasion, the genocidal character of the conflict was

already established.

programme, the

Hitler spoke a

would rapidly develop

It

like of

into an all-out genocidal

which the world had never

seen.

good deal during the summer and autumn of 1941 to his most brutal terms imaginable about his ideological

close entourage in the

aims

in crushing the Soviet

on numerous occasions though invariably the

months

in

Union. During the same months, he also spoke

in his

monologues

in the Fiihrer

in barbaric generalizations

- about

Headquarters -

the Jews. These were

which, out of the contradictions and lack of clarity of

anti-Jewish policy, a

programme to kill

all

the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe

began to take concrete shape. In contrast to military affairs, his

army

his repeated interference reflected

professionals, Hitler's involvement in ideological matters

frequent and

less direct. Hitler

He needed to do little more. genocidal the

where

constant preoccupation with tactical minutiae and his distrust of the

war

fires

would rage

had

laid

down

Self-combustion would see to

into a mighty conflagration

to destroy 'Jewish-Bolshevism'.

in contrast to

'professionals'

military matters, Hitler

would

and Heydrich, above

let all,

the guidelines in

When

leave

that,

once

less

1941.

lit,

the

amid the barbarism of

came

had no need

him down. He could

would

it

it

was

March

to ideological aims, to

worry that the

rest assured that

no stone unturned

Himmler

in eliminating the

462

HITLER 1936-I945 ideological

enemy once and

for

all.

they would find willing helpers at

Imperium

in the east,

And

he could be equally certain that

all levels

among

the masters of the

whether these belonged to the Party, the

new

police, or the

civilian bureaucracy.

Just as, from

autumn 1939 onwards

until his 'halt order' of

August 1941,

he had seen no need to involve himself in the 'euthanasia action' any further,

once he had authorized

commencement, so now he would see no cause business of the dirty work of genocide. That was

its

to participate in the daily

1

neither his style, nor his inclination. Organization, planning,

could confidently be

to others.

left

work

to 'carry out practical

There was no shortage of those keen 2

It was sufficient that was provided; and that he could take

for our Fuhrer'.

authorization for the major steps

and execution

his

for

granted that, with regard to the 'Jewish Question', his 'prophecy' of 1939

was being

On

fulfilled.

had assured Hans Frank that the Jews would be 'removed' from the General Government 'in the foreseeable the eve of 'Barbarossa', Hitler

could therefore be regarded merely as a type of

future'. Frank's province 'transit

camp' (Dutch gangslager)

able to 'get rid' of the

3 .

Frank registered the pleasure

Jews from the General Government, and remarked

Jewry was 'gradually perishing'

that

in Poland.

'The Fuhrer had indeed

prophesied that for the Jews,' commented Goebbels. the intention

at being

had been,

as

we have

4

From

early in the year

already noted, to deport the Jews from

Frank's domain to the east, following the victory over the Soviet Union

—

5

expected by the autumn. The Jews from Poland, then from the rest of Europe, would be wiped out in the east within a few years by starvation and being worked to death in the icy wastes of an arctic climate. For those incapable of

work, the intended

The 5-6

fate, if

not spelled out, was not

million Jews of the

USSR

difficult to

were included

imagine.

in the

wholesale

resettlement scheme for the racial reordering of eastern Europe, the 'General

Plan for the East' which Himmler, two days after the launch of 'Barbarossa',

had commissioned

his settlement planners to prepare.

The Plan envisaged

the deportation over the subsequent thirty years of 31 million persons, 6 mainly Slavs, beyond the Urals and into western Siberia. Without doubt,

the

Jews would have been the

solution which, for them,

first

ethnic group to perish in a territorial

was tantamount

to their death warrant.

What

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' was intended was

in itself plainly genocidal.

The

'territorial solution' could,

therefore, be seen as a type of intended 'final solution'. But shooting or

gassing to death

programme

all

the Jews of

Europe - the

full-scale industrialized killing

months

into what would then - was at this stage not in mind. March received the green light from

that evolved over the following

be a differently defined

'final solution'

Reinhard Heydrich had already

in

Union

Hitler to send the Einsatzgruppen into the Soviet

the

Wehrmacht

to 'pacify' the

elements'. Hitler gentsia a

most

had

in the

wake

conquered areas by eradicating 'subversive

specified in

March

that 'the Bolshevist-Jewish intelli-

7

must be eliminated'. Heydrich had been more than ready

mandate

liberal interpretation to this

gruppen

in Pretzsch

According to a

and Berlin

letter

of

in the

to apply

in his briefings to the Einsatz-

weeks before the campaign.

which Heydrich sent on 2 July

newly

to the four

appointed Higher SS and Police Leaders for the conquered areas of the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen had been instructed to liquidate, alongside

Communist

functionaries and an array of 'extremist elements',

the service of the Party

made

and

state'.

8

'all

Jews

in

Heydrich's verbal briefings must have

clear that the widest interpretation

was

on such an

to be placed

instruction.

From the beginning, the killings were far from confined to Jews who were Communist Party or State functionaries. Already on 3 July, for instance, the chief of the

Jewish

men

Einsatzkommando

shot.

Kaunas (Kowno)

He in

said he

in

Luzk

wanted

Lithuania as

many

to put his

meticulous

in July.

listing),

Of

12

its

based in

10

this area,

killing,

11

in the Baltic,

Einsatzgruppe B

in

interpreted

was almost

White Russia

initially

targeted, in the main, the Jewish 'intelligentsia', while Einsatzgruppe

spoke of working the Jews to death

in

criminately, one killer squad in Chotin

doctors).

on the Dnjestr confined

Communist and Jewish

first

its

13

less indis-

murderous

'intellectuals' (apart

from

14

In the Baltic, the butchery of Einsatzgruppe

The

C

reclaiming the Pripet Marshes.

While some Einsatzkommandos were slaughtering Jews more or action in early July to

on

But the briefings had

They were capable of being

ways. Whereas Einsatzgruppe A,

unconstrained in

3,

In

July.

the 'executions', totalling 4,400 (according to a

the vast majority were Jews.

evidently not been unambiguous. in different

stamp on the town. 9

Jews were shot on 6

as 2,514

Shootings were carried out by Einsatzkommando

twenty days

Poland had some 1,160

in eastern

A was

especially ferocious.

massacre of Jews took place on 24 June, only two days after the

beginning of 'Barbarossa', in the small Lithuanian township of Gargzdai,

463

464

HITLER 1936— 1945

Men from the Security Police

and a police unit

from Memel shot dead 201 Jews that afternoon. By 18

July, the killing

lying just behind the border.

squads had claimed 3,300 victims; by August the death-toll had reached

between 10,000 and 12,000 mainly male Jews together with Communists. 15

The ists

killing units

were

assisted in the early stages by Lithuanian national-

who were prompted into

savage pogroms against the Jews. 16 In

Jews were clubbed to death one by one by of onlookers - women holding

One

cheered.

killed in this

their children

up

to see

eyewitness recalled that around forty-five to

way

When

within three-quarters of an hour.

finished his slaughter, he climbed

on

Kowno,

a local enthusiast while

to the

crowds

- clapped and Jews were

fifty

the butcher

had

heap of corpses and played the

German soldiers stood by 17 photographs. The Wehrmacht com-

Lithuanian national anthem on an accordion. impassively,

mander

some of them taking

in the area,

General-Colonel Ernst Busch, took the view, on hearing

reports of the atrocities, that

it

was

a matter of internal Lithuanian disputes,

and that he had no authority to intervene. for the security police.

Hitler

Union.

was keen

It

was seen

as exclusively a matter

18

to keep abreast of the killing operations in the Soviet

On 1 August SS-Brigadefiihrer Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo,

had passed an encyphered message

to the

commanders of the four

Einsatz-

gruppen: 'Continual reports from here on the work of the Einsatzgruppen be presented to the Fiihrer.'

in the east are to

Goebbels registered in

his satisfaction,

19

when he

received a detailed report

mid-August, at the information that 'vengeance was being wreaked on

the Jews in the big towns' of the Baltic,

masses on the

is

by the self-protection organizations'.

streets

now

taking place,' he wrote, 'that

provoking another war,

when he visited

He connected the

it

would

lose

its

if

Jewry succeeded

20

Three months

existence.'

'revenge' of the local population against the Jews,

and were

had been impressed

still

into ghettos

who had been

liche GestaltenY-

He

They had

somehow

to be

'shot

being 'executed' by the hundred.

and worked

described the Jews as 'the

lice

you spare them,

them

rest

'vile figures (scheufl-

of civilized mankind.

eradicated {ausrotten), otherwise they would

always again play their torturing (peinigende) and burdensome to cope with

down

The

for the benefit of the local

economy. The ghetto inhabitants, he commented, were

way

in

later,

Vilnius, Goebbels spoke again of the 'horrible (grauenhaftY

in their thousands'

only

in their

with Hitler's 'prophecy' of January 1939. 'What the Fiihrer

killing directly

prophesied

and that they were 'being slain

is

to treat

them with

you'll later be their victim.'

21

role.

The

the necessary brutality.

If

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' Such were the extreme, pathological expressions of sentiments which, often in scarcely less overtly genocidal form,

new masters of

the

had a wide currency among

the eastern territories, and were far

from confined

to

diehard Nazis.

between the Wehrmacht and the SS following

In contrast to the conflicts

between Heydrich

the invasion of Poland, the close cooperation established

and the army leadership in the build-up to 'Barbarossa' enabled the barbarity of the Einsatzgruppen in the eastern

and often

from the

in close

start

harmony.

given. 23

campaign to proceed without hindrance,

The Wehrmacht

leadership aligned

itself

with the ideological aim of combating 'Jewish-Bolshevism'.

Cooperation with the

did.

22

Without

SD and

Security Police

was

extensive,

and willingly

the Einsatzgruppen could not have functioned as they

it,

'The relationship to the Wehrmacht

is

now,

before, wholly

as

untroubled (ohne jede Trubung),' ran an Einsatzgruppe report in midAugust. 'Above the tasks

all,

growing

a constantly

interest in

and understanding for

and business of the work of the security police can be seen

Wehrmacht

circles.

This could especially be observed at the executions.'

an order issued on 12 September 1941, the head of the

In

Marshal Wilhelm

demands

ruthless

declared:

Keitel,

and

against the Jews, the

OKW,

from military leaders went

carriers of Bolshevism.'

further.

still

Field-

'The struggle against Bolshevism

above

energetic, rigorous action {Durchgreifen)

main

in 24

A month

25

all

Other exhortations

later, the

emphatically

pro-Nazi Field-Marshal Walter von Reichenau, Commander-in-Chief of the 6th

Army,

fighter

told his troops: 'The soldier in the eastern sphere

pitiless racial (volkisch)

ideology and the avenger of

have been inflicted on the

The

soldier

not only a

He

related ethnic nation (Volkstum).

understanding for the necessity of

26

all.'

if

the 17th

Army, Colonel-General Hermann

anything, even further than Reichenau.

on the 'Behaviour of German Soldiers

He spoke

in the East', issued

of a struggle of 'two inwardly unbridgeable philosophies of honour

which

way will we fulfil our German people from the Asiatic-Jewish threat

The Commander-in-Chief of Hoth, went,

the bestialities

concluded: 'Only in this

duty of liberating the

once and for

full

all

atonement from the Jewish subhumans (am jiidischen

Untermenschentum) .' historic

German and

must therefore have

the severe but just

and

against asiatic

small

is

according to the rules of the art of warfare, but also the bearer of a

race, centuries-old

intellectuals.'

instincts

His

an order

on 17 November, .

.

German soldierly tradition

ways of thinking and primitive

number of mainly Jewish

.

in

German

feeling

(Soldatentum),

whipped up by

men should

a

act out of

465

466

HITLER I936-I945 'belief in a its

change

which, on the basis of the superiority of

in the times, in

race and achievements, the leadership of Europe has passed to the

people'.

It

was

a 'mission to rescue

asiatic barbarism'.

He

murdered' German

pointed to the

soldiers.

was wholly misplaced. He

Germany 'spiritual

after the First

way

the

Red Army had

Any sympathy with

Towards

'bestially

the native population

Jews for circumstances

stressed the guilt of

World War. He saw

'a rule

the end of

November,

the

Commander-in-Chief of the nth

in a secret order to his troops,

was equally

uncompromising. The German people had stood since 22 June, he in a life-and-death struggle against the

The

that a Soviet regime

and

'all

clear

dominated by Jews was responsible

Manstein referred to the Soviet partisan war behind the front

Jewry, with trade,

was

stated,

Bolshevik system, which was not

being fought according to traditional European rules of war.

for this.

of

27

Army, Erich von Manstein,

implication

in

the extermination of the

support of Bolshevism' and 'aid of the partisans' as

self-preservation'.

German

European culture from the advance of

lines.

the key-points of the political leadership and administration,

crafts' in their

hands, formed, he claimed, the 'intermediary

between the enemy

in the rear

Red Army and Red

Leadership'.

and the remainder

From

this,

still

fighting of the

he drew his conclusion. 'The

Jewish-Bolshevik system must be eradicated (ausgerottet) once and for

all,'

he wrote. 'Never again must

The

German

it

enter into our European living space.

soldier has the task, therefore, not solely of

means of power of

this system.

He

is

smashing the military

also the bearer of a racial (volkiscb)

all atrocities perpetrated on him and the German people The soldier must show sympathy for the necessity of the hard atonement 28 demanded of Jewry, the spiritual bearer of the Bolshevik terror. Other army commanders increasingly used the spread of partisan warfare

idea and avenger of .

.

.

.'

.

.

as justification for the no-holds-barred treatment of the Jews. Already in

the

first

weeks of 'Barbarossa', Jews were being equated with partisans by

some commanders or seen

as the

major source of

'partisan struggle' only began in earnest in the

Army Group

Centre, a 'seminar'

their support.

autumn.

was organized

in

30

29

But the

In the rear area of

September 1941 to allow officers and SS

an exchange of views and experiences between selected

spokesmen on the 'combating of

The speakers included

partisans'.

the

Higher SS and Police Leader of Russia-Centre, SS-Gruppenfuhrer Erich von

dem

Bach-Zelewski, on the 'Taking of Commissars and Partisans', and the

head of Einsatzgruppe B (situated

in the

Minsk

Arthur Nebe, on the 'Cooperation of Army and

region),

SD

in

SS-Gruppenfuhrer

Combating Partisans',

^M

m

%

35. Hitler bids farewell to Franco following their talks at

Hendaye, on the borders of

France and Spain, on 23 October 1940. The smiles concealed the dissatisfaction

each of the dictators at the outcome of the

talks.

felt

by

36. Hitler meets the French head of state, Marshal Petain, at Montoire

1940

for talks

which produced

little

on 24 October

tangible result.

37. Ribbentrop talking to Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, at a reception in

the Hotel Kaiserhof during the latter's visit to Berlin,

12-14 November 1940. The

tough talks with Molotov confirmed to Hitler that he was right to plan for an attack

on the Soviet Union

in 1941.

38. Hitler in Berlin

Schmidt,

and the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, in the Reich Chancellery on 27 March 1941. Foreign Ministry official and interpreter Dr Paul

who

compiled the record of the meeting,

is

on

non-committal about Japanese intentions. Hitler had

the

left.

Matsuoka remained

earlier that

day given directions

to his military leaders about the invasion of Yugoslavia. 39. Hitler at his headquarters at

Monichkirchen near Graz

the Balkan campaign, talking to General Alfred Jodl

Operations

Staff.

in

(left),

mid- April 1941, during

head of the Wehrmacht

Nicolaus von Below, his Luftwaffe adjutant,

is

behind

Hitler.

40.

A

thoughtful Hitler, accompanied by head of the

Wehrmacht High Command

Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, travelling by train on 30 June 1941 to the headquarters of

Army High Command

in

Angerburg, not far from his

at the Wolf's Lair, near

own new

Fiihrer Headquarters

Rastenburg, in East Prussia.

*SSSi2SL 41.

An

Anti-Bolshevik Poster: 'Europe's victory

destroyed, the mailed

fist

of Nazi

is

Your

Prosperity'.

Germany smashes

Stalin's

With

Britain

Bolshevism.

42. Field-Marshal Walther von

Brauchitsch

weak ComArmy between

(right), the

mander-in-Chief of the

February 1938 and his dismissal

December 1 941,

in a briefing

in

with

General Franz Haider, Chief of the General Staff from 1938 to 1942.

43. Field-Marshal Keitel discussing military matters with Hitler at the

Wolf's Lair soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union.

44. Reichsfuhrer-SS and Chief of the

German (left)

Police Heinrich

Himmler

alongside his right-hand

man

SS-Obergruppenfiihrer Reinhard

Heydrich, head of the Reich Security

Head

With Hitler's authorizawere taken under in 194 1-2 to implement

Office.

tion, the steps

their aegis

the 'Final Solution of the Jewish

Question'.

'ENN-ES-DEM INTERNATIO/ NALEN -FINANZ3UDEN'

TUM-GELINGEN SOLLTE'DIE-VOLKER

NOCH-EINMAL-IN EINEN WELTKRIEG ZU -STURZEN / DANN •

WTRD-DAS-ERGEB/ NIS-NICHT-DER-SIEG

DES-3UDENTUMS SEIN-SONDERN DIE VERN ICHTUNG -DER-aU DISCHEN-RASSE IN

EUROPA ADO

HITLER

45. 'Should the international Jewish financiers succeed once again in plunging the

nations into a world war, the result will be not the victory of Jews but the annihilation

of the Jewish race in Europe' - Adolf Hitler. The 'prophecy' that Hitler had announced to the Reichstag

on 30 January 1939. The poster was produced

in

September 1941 as a

'Slogan of the week' by the central office of the Nazi Party's Propaganda Department

and distributed

to Party branches throughout the Reich.

'

* t X fa -

m^w* VS

46. (fop) Hitler salutes the coffin of Reinhard Heydrich,

Czech patriots flown the

in

from

who had

been assassinated by

Britain, at the state funeral of the Security Police Chief in

Mosaic Salon of the

New

Reich Chancellery

in Berlin

on 9 June 1942.

47. (inset) Hitler comforts Heydrich's sons at the state funeral. Privately, he critical

of Heydrich's carelessness in regard to his

own

security.

was

Other Nazi leaders

in

Kurt Daluege (head of the Ordnungspolizei); Bernhard Rust (Reich Minister for Education); Alfred Rosenberg (Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories); Viktor Lutze (SA Chief of Staff); Baldur von Schirach (Reich the photo are,

left to right:

Governor and Gauleiter of Vienna); Robert Ley (Nazi Party Organization Leader and head of the German Labour Front); Himmler; Wilhelm Frick (Reich Minister of the Interior); and Goring.

48. (top) Hitler addresses 12,000 officers and officer-candidates in the Sportpalast in Berlin

49.

Some

of the assembled

on 28 September 1942.

young

officers cheering Hitler at the meeting.

\j'\*\

s

*^-'

If 1 ]*g^m. 50.

(fe/i?)

^ Sis ^B^ y

j^Hi-'-sj^^^^F^^

Field-Marshal Fedor von Bock in 1942, as Commander-in-Chief of

Group South. During

the second half of 194 1 he

which had spearheaded the thrust to Moscow. Though increasingly military leadership, he remained a loyalist. 51. {right) Field-Marshal Erich

commander. Despite

his

Army

had commanded Army Group Centre,

von Manstein, possibly

growing differences with

Hitler's

Hitler,

critical

most

of Hitler's

gifted military

he refused to join the

conspiracy against him, stating: 'Prussian field-marshals do not mutiny.' 52. (below) Hitler speaking

on 'Heroes' Memorial Day', 15 March 1942,

Ehrenhof ('courtyard of honour') of the Arsenal on Unter den Linden

in the

in Berlin.

53-

The Eastern Front, July 1942. Motorized troops

drive

Russian village they have destroyed.

away from

a blazing

54-

{left)

heads of

Hitler's 'clients': entertaining the satellite states. Hitler greets the

Croatian head of

55. (below) Hitler sions with the

Antonescu

Dr Ante Pavelic, on 29 April 1943.

state,

in the Wolf's Lair

on

his

Romanian

way

to discus-

leader,

(centre), at Fiihrer

Marshal

Head-

quarters on 13 February 1942. Hitler's interpreter Paul Schmitt

56. Hitler greets King Boris III of Bulgaria in the Wolf's Lair

over a week after a subsequent tense of a heart attack, giving rise

is

on the

on March 1942.

left.

Little

on 15 August 1943, King Boris died suddenly to rumours abroad that Hitler had had him poisoned. visit,

57-

The turn of the Slovakian President, Monsignor Dr Josef Tiso, to visit on 23 April 1943 at the restored baroque palace of Klessheim, near Salzburg.

(left)

Hitler

58. [right) Hitler greets the Finnish leader

on 27 June 1942.

^1

Marshal Mannerheim

Keitel

is

in the

at the Wolf's Lair

background.

V «C_

••

ft.

X

59. Admiral Horthy,

Hungarian head of

Keitel,

and Martin Bormann during a

Later

the fortunes of

visits, as

war

state,

visit to

speaks with

(left to right)

deteriorated, proved less

Ribbentrop,

on 8-10 September 194 1. harmonious than this one.

the Wolf's Lair

The Over-extended Front. By 1942 demands for men and equipment across a and conditions had generated just the strategic incoherence Hitler had always feared. Norway: A 'Do 24' seaplane is deposited on land by the crane of a salvage vessel, to be towed to a repair hangar.

60. (top)

vast range of fronts

The Over-extended Front. Leningrad: A huge cannon, mounted on a train, on the besieged city. The gun weighed 145 tons, had a barrel 16.4 metres long, and had a range of 46.6 kilometres.

61. (centre) fires

62. (bottom)

The Over-extended

Front. Libya:

German tanks

in Cyrenaica.

rolling along the front

63.

The Over-extended

Front. Bosnia:

An

expedition to hunt

down

partisans.

)

,

-.*

64.

An

exhausted German soldier on the Eastern Front.

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' and the connections between the Jews and the partisan movement. The participants took

away from

and where

partisan, there's a Jew,

Such voices were

manders

insisted

message to

their 'orientation course' the plain

serve as the guideline for future 'pacification' policy:

influential.

there's a

'Where

there's a

31 Jew, there's a partisan.'

There were, however, others. 32 Some com-

on rigorous separation of the Wehrmacht from the actions

of the Security Police.

One

of these, General Karl von Roques, put out an

order at the end of July prohibiting any participation by his

on the grounds that

it

was

33

in

pogroms

and would seriously damage the

'unsoldierly'

standing of the Wehrmacht.

men

However,

order was ineffective. Cases

his

continued to occur in which 'soldiers and also officers had independently

undertaken shootings of Jews or participated

was forced

to issue another order, in

in them'. In

September, he

which he repeated that 'executive

measures', especially against Jews, were solely the province of the Higher

SS and Police Leader, and any unauthorized shootings by individual soldiers, or participation in 'executive measures' of the SS and police treated as disobedience

From soldiers

was

letters

and subjected

home from

needed

little

the front,

to disciplinary action.

it is

plain that

many

would be

34

ordinary

German

persuasion that the merciless onslaught on the Jews

Subjected for years to incessant indoctrination at school and

justified.

Youth about

in the Hitler

the Jews,

and inundated

since the beginning of

'Barbarossa' with propaganda about the horrors of 'Jewish-Bolshevism', on the

march

One

into Russia they frequently looked to confirm their prejudices.

soldier, writing

home

in July,

remarked on

his

Jewish, Bolshevik atrocities, the likes of which possible',

and promised that he and

Another wrote, also

his

in July: 'Everyone,

I

shock

at 'evidence of

have hardly believed

comrades were taking revenge. 36

even the

last

doubter,

knows today

subhumans, who've been whipped into

that the battle against these

3^

a frenzy

by the Jews, was not only necessary but came in the nick of time. Our Fiihrer has saved

Europe from certain chaos.' 37 Given such

was not surprising in the

that

many Wehrmacht

units

a mentality,

it

were themselves involved

shooting of Jews and other atrocities from the earliest phase of

'Barbarossa'.

38

In the early

gruppen and

weeks of 'Barbarossa', the

'actions'

undertaken by the Einsatz-

mainly targeted male Jews. The

their sub-units

killing,

though

was on nothing like the scale that it reached from August onwards. One particularly murderous Einsatzkommando in Lithuania, for horrifying,

example, killed nine times as

many

in

September as

it

many Jews

had done

in

August and fourteen times

in July.

39

What was

as

regarded as a

467

468

HITLER I936-I945 weeks had usually involved the shooting of rare instances more than 1,000. But by the beginning of

large-scale 'action' in the

hundreds of Jews,

in

first

October Einsatzkommando 4a, attached to Einsatzgruppe could report with cold precision:

'In retaliation for the

C in the Ukraine,

arson in Kiev,

all

Jews were arrested and on 29 and 30.9 a total of 33,771 Jews were executed.' 40 This was the notorious massacre at Babi-Yar, outside Kiev. The Jews -

many

of

them women,

children,

and old people - had been rounded up

German

few days

soldiers, a

groups to the outskirts of the

in small

forced to undress, then to stand on a

mound above

As the repeated salvoes of the killing-squads rang the victims

Women

fell

on

to the

Kiev had fallen to the

earlier, just before

Wehrmacht. They were marched

in

some hundreds of

retaliation for a series of explosions in the city, killing

city,

the ravine of Babi-Yar.

out, the lifeless bodies of

growing mound of corpses below them. 41

and children - seen as possible 'avengers' of the future - were

now, following verbal instructions passed down the by the commanders of the various included in the massacres.

42

killer

line

by Himmler then

squads during August, generally

Thus, Einsatzkommando

3

women

shot 135

4,239 Jews 'executed' during July, but 26,243 women and 15,112 43 children in the total of 56,459 Jews murdered during September 1941.

among

Taking the four Einsatzgruppen and before mid-August scale of the

million

The huge niques.

murders

who would At

Jews

a massive increase

killed

on the

in Poland, but only a tenth of the estimated half a

perish in the next four months.

number

increase in

first,

their sub-units together, the

numbered around 50,000 -

of victims

44

demanded

different killing tech-

semblance of martial law and 'execution' by firing-squad

a

was preserved. But

after a

few weeks, the

killers

took turns with a submach-

ine-gun, mowing down their naked victims as they knelt at the edge of a pit. The killing had rapidly moved 'from military procedure to mass butchery'. 45 Some Einsatzgruppen leaders claimed after the war that Heydrich had

conveyed to them in the Soviet

in his briefings the Fiihrer's

Union.

operations in the

46

first

its

in the scale of the killing

weeks, and the sharp escalation from around August

onwards, strongly suggests Soviet Jewry in

order to exterminate the Jews

But the actual variation

entirety

that, in fact,

no general mandate

to exterminate

had been issued before 'Barbarossa' began.

number of men - around 3,000

in all, the core

drawn

engaged

in the

The

heavily from the

Gestapo, criminal police, regular police (Ordnungspolizei) initially

47

,

and

SD -

Einsatzgruppen actions would, in any case, have

been incapable of implementing a

full-scale genocidal

could scarcely have been assembled with one in mind.

48

programme, and

The sharp

increase

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' in their

numbers through supplementary police battalions began

in late July.

By the end of the year, there were eleven times as many members of the killing units as

On

had been present

at the start of 'Barbarossa'.

15 August, immediately after witnessing that

of Jews near

Minsk which made him feel

49

morning an 'execution'

Himmler had told his men that

sick,

he and Hitler would answer to history for the necessary extermination of Jews as 'the carriers of

world Bolshevism'. j0

units in the east that to

month

It

was during

Himmler,

that

as

his visits to the killing

we have

seen, instructed

widen the slaughter, now to include women and children.

explicit

new

existing

mandate

What

authorization from Hitler?

51

Or did he presume

them

Had he received

that the Fiihrer's

sufficed for the massive extension of the killing operations ?

men during

passed between the two

the five days,

from 15

to 20

Himmler was staying in the Fiihrer Headquarters is not known. j2 But while in FHQ, Himmler had received minutes of the important meeting that Hitler had had on the 16th with Goring, Bormann, Lammers, Keitel, and Rosenberg. At the meeting, as we have already noted, Hitler had stated that Germany would never leave the conquered territories. All measures

July, that

necessary for a final settlement, such as shooting and deportation, ought to

be taken.

He had made the

telling

remarks that the partisan war proclaimed

by Stalin provided 'the possibility of exterminating anything opposing us

Moglichkeit auzurotten, was sicb gegen uns

{die

stellt)'

and that pacification

of the conquered territory could best be achieved by shooting dead anyone

'who even looked askance 3

iefie)'.*

(da/i

A day later, Hitler issued

security in the

newly established

man

jeden, der nur schief schaut, totsch-

a decree giving

Himmler responsibility for German rule in the east.

civilian regions of

Effectively, this placed the 'Jewish Question' as part of a

remit directly in Himmler's hands.

wider policing

j4

Within a week, Himmler had increased the 'policing' operations behind the front line in the east that

was

to follow."

by 11,000 men, the

start of the far bigger build-up

Most probably, catching

Hitler's

mood

at the time,

Himmler had pointed out the insufficiency of the forces currently available to him for the 'pacification' of the east, then requested, and been granted, the authority to increase the force to an appropriate level. as

That the Jews,

had been the case from the beginning of the campaign, were viewed

as

the

prime target group to be exterminated - under the pretext of offering

the

most dangerous opposition

no

to the occupation

- would have meant

that

mandate about their treatment within the general 'pacification' was necessary. In dealing with the Jews in the east as he saw fit, Himmler could take it for granted that he was 'working towards the Fiihrer'. specific

remit

469

470

HITLER 1936-1945

II

Hitler's

own comments about

the

Jews around

this

time would certainly

have assured Himmler of this. In the twilight hours before dawn on 10 July,

had remarked:

Hitler

'

"I feel like the

bacillus of tuberculosis

He found

Robert Koch of politics.

the

and through that showed medical scholarship new

ways. I discovered the Jews as the bacillus and ferment of all social decompoTheir ferment.

sition.

And

have proved one thing: that a

I

without Jews; that the economy, culture,

Jews and indeed

better.

That

is

the worst

blow

I

can

state

live

can exist without

art, etc. etc.

have dealt the Jews."

'

56

He retained his biological terminology when speaking - with remarkable openness - to the Defence Minister of the newly-created brutally racist state of Slovakia, Marshal Sladko Kvaternik, on 22 July.

would

revealing illogicality: not he, but Stalin,

of Napoleon.

It

was not

the

at a deep-lying uncertainty

time he had

first

about

this

made

his decision to

He had begun

a

remark which hinted

invade Russia.

weeks of the 'war of annihilation' that he had unleashed,

a

week

'bestial'. In

'criminals

them

earlier, Hitler

went on

first

to describe the Russian people as

advising Kvaternik to intervene at

and

home with an iron fist against was only one was necessary

anti-social elements', Hitler declared that there

away with

(beseitigen)

in concentration

Towards

In the

Hitler's genocidal

thing to be done with them: 'annihilate (vernichten) them!' to 'do

57

was surfacing. As in his discussions with the Japanese Ambassador

mentality

Oshima

with a

time meet with the fate

them' or,

if

It

they were not dangerous, to lock

camps from which they must never be

the end of the talks, Hitler turned to the Jews.

let

out.

He called them

58

'the

scourge of mankind'. 'Jewish commissars' had wielded brutal power in the Baltic,

he stated.

And now

the Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians were

taking 'bloody revenge' against them. as in the Soviet paradise, they

Thus Russia has become

He went on:

would put

'If

the Jews

had

free rein

the most insane plans into effect.

a plague-centre (Pestberd) for

mankind

.

.

.

For

if

among it, this would provide the new decomposition. If there were no more

only one state tolerates a Jewish family core bacillus {Bazillenberd) for a

Jews

in

Europe, the unity of the European states would be no longer

disturbed. is

Where

immaterial.'

the

Jews are sent

to,

whether to Siberia or Madagascar,

59

The frame of mind was overtly genocidal. The reference to Madagascar was meaningless. It had been ruled out as an option months earlier. But Siberia, which had in the interim come into favour, would itself have meant

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' genocide of a kind. the big increase in

Himmler

given

the conquered

was in such a frame of mind that Hitler had agreed to the number of police units in the east, and presumably It

carte blanche to operate as he should see

eastern territories of

fit

in 'cleansing'

Jews. And, from his comments to

Kvaternik, Hitler was plainly contemplating a 'solution to the Jewish Question'

not just in the Soviet Union, but throughout the whole of Europe.

No decision for the of the

whom idea

benefit

in

still

divided in July 1941 about what to do with the

they had been unable to deport to the General Government.

was

to concentrate

them

in

one huge camp which could

policed, near to the centre of coal production,

to

physical extermination

Warthegau, the biggest of the annexed areas of Poland, the

Nazi authorities were

One

- meaning the

Jews throughout Europe - had yet been taken. But genocide was

the air. In the

Jews

'Final Solution'

from

their ruthless exploitation.

and gain

easily be

maximum economic

But there was the question of what

do about those Jews incapable of working.

A memorandum sent on 16 July 1941 to Eichmann, at Reich Security Head Office, by the head of the SD in Posen, SS-Sturmbannfiihrer Rolf-Heinz Hoppner, struck an ominous note. 'There cynical report to is

Eichmann

read, 'that the

to be seriously considered

is

the danger this winter,' his

Jews can no longer

all

be fed.

It

whether the most humane solution might not

some sort of fast- working Eichmann's opinion, Hoppner concluded: 'The

be to finish off those Jews not capable of labour by preparation.' Asking for things

sound

in part fantastic,

implementation.'

On

but would in

my

view be quite capable of

60

the last day of the

month, Heydrich had Eichmann draft

a written

authorization from Goring - nominally in charge of anti-Jewish policy since

January 1939 - to prepare question in the

German

'a

complete solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish

sphere of influence in Europe'.

61

The mandate was

framed as a supplement to the task accorded to Heydrich on 24 January 1939, to solve the 'Jewish problem' through 'emigration' and 'evacuation'. Heydrich was

now commissioned to produce an overall plan dealing with the

organizational, technical, and material measures necessary.

62

This written

mandate was an extension of the verbal one which he had already received from Goring no

later

than March.

with state authorities, and laid

63

his authority in dealings

a marker for his control over the 'final - presumed imminent - had been won. 64

Hitler did not need to be consulted.

The dragnet was

enhanced

down

solution' once victory in the east

was not the

It

6i

closing on the Jews of Europe. But Heydrich's

signal to set

up death camps

in Poland.

The aim

mandate

at this point

471

472.

HITLER 1936-1945 -

remove the Jews to the east. 66 Within the next few months, recognition that the great gamble of the rapid knockout

was

a territorial solution

still

victory in the east

had

to

would irrevocably

failed

alter that aim.

Ill

With

victory apparently within

Germany's grasp, pressures

to intensify the

discrimination against the Jews and to have them deported from the Reich

were building up.

67

The growing privations of the war allowed Party activists and resentment against the Jews. The SD in Bielefeld

to turn daily grievances

reported, for instance, in August 1941 that strong feeling about the 'provocative

a

behaviour of Jews (das provozierende Verhalten der]udenY\\2id brought

ban on Jews attending the weekly markets

'in

order to avoid acts of

violence' [urn Tatlicbkeiten zu vermeideri)\ In addition, there

had been

was alleged, for an announcement in the local newspapers that Jews would receive no compensation for damage suffered as a result of the war. It was also keenly felt, it was asserted, that Jews should only be served in shops once German customers had had their turn. general approval, so

The

it

threat of resort to self-help

done hung

in the air.

and use of force against Jews

Ominously,

measures would not be enough

it

if

nothing was

was nonetheless claimed

to satisfy the population.

that these

Demands were

growing for the introduction of some compulsory mark of

identification

such as had been worn by Jews in the General Government since the start of the war, in order to prevent Jews avoiding the restrictions imposed on

them.

68

work - successfully, so it seems - in Jews. The pressure from below was music

Evidently, Party fanatics were at

up opinion against the

stirring

to the ears of Party

for their

and police leaders

Goebbels and Heydrich anxious

own reasons to step up discrimination

them altogether from Germany it

like

as

against the Jews and

soon as possible.

to be fed through

Goebbels to Hitler himself.

An

mark

when

identification it

thought

for

had been demanded it

It

remove

did not take long for

Jews was something Hitler had turned down aftermath of 'Crystal Night'. He had not

in the

expedient at the time. But he was

now

to be subjected to

renewed

pressure to change his mind. By mid-August, Goebbels had convinced

himself that the 'Jewish Question' in Berlin had again become 'acute'.

claimed soldiers on leave could not understand still

how Jews

He

in Berlin could

have 'aryan' servants and big apartments. Jews were undermining

PROPHECY

FULFILLING THE morale through comments

in

immediately recognized.

Three days ganda,

filled

He

queues or on public transport.

necessary, therefore, that they should

wear

a

thought

473

it

badge so that they could be

69

later a hastily

summoned meeting

Ministry of Propa-

at the

with Party hacks, attempted to persuade representatives from

other ministries of the need to introduce identification for the Jews. Eich-

mann, the

RSHA

had already put

representative, reported that Heydrich

proposal to this effect to Goring a short while earlier. Goring had sent back, saying the Fuhrer had to decide. his

proposal, which

about

70 it.

would be

The view from

the

sent to

it

was

apartments.

alleged,

Among

this,

Heydrich had reformulated

Bormann,

for

him

to speak to Hitler

Propaganda Ministry embroidered upon the

remarks Goebbels had entrusted to of Berlin,

On

a it

his diary a

few days

earlier.

The Jews

were a 'centre of agitation', occupying much-needed

other things, they were responsible, through their

hoarding of food, even for the shortage of strawberries in the capital. Soldiers

on leave from the

allowed such licence.

east could not

Most

comprehend

that

should be 'carted off to Russia (nach Rutland abkarren). to kill

On

them altogether (am besten ware es,

the question of 'evacuation of the

commented

that Heydrich

Jews were

had put

'It

would be

a proposal to the Fuhrer, but that this

now working on

mood

Given the alleged urgency of the need to protect the it

was announced, intended

Fuhrer at the earliest opportunity.

He

72

cities.

of the front

to seek an audience with the

73

This was the purpose of the Propaganda Minister's August.

71

Jews from the Old Reich', Eichmann

an amended proposal for the partial 'evacuation' of Jews from major

Goebbels,

best

diese iiberhaupt totzuschlagen) .'

had been refused, and that the Security Police Chief was

soldiers,

still

of the Jews were not in employment. These

encountered a Hitler recovering from

FHQ

visit to

illness, in the

on 18

middle of a

running conflict with his army leaders, in a state of nervous tension, and highly irritable.

74

In this condition, Hitler

was doubtless

all

the

more open

to radical suggestions. Eventually raising the 'Jewish problem',

Goebbels

undoubtedly repeated the allegations about Jews damaging morale, especially that of front soldiers.

He was

pushing

at

an open door. Hitler must

have been reminded of the poor morale which had so disgusted him

in Berlin

and Munich towards the end of the First World War, for which he (and many

had blamed the Jews. He granted Goebbels what the Propaganda Minister had come for: permission to force the Jews to wear a badge of others)

identification. his

According to Goebbels, Hitler expressed

Reichstag 'prophecy' -

that

'if

Jewry succeeded

his conviction that

in again

provoking

a

474

HITLER 1936-1945 world war,

would end

it

in the destruction of the

Jews' - was coming about

with a 'certainty to be thought almost uncanny'. The Jews in the east were

having to pay the

bill,

noted Goebbels. Jewry was an alien body

cultural nations. 'At any rate the a

Jews coming world,' Goebbels reported him

Next day, Goebbels wrote

will not

among

have much cause to laugh

as saying.

in

75

would now become immediately active the Fuhrer had given him permission to

that he

in the 'Jewish Question', since

worn by every Jew. Once the this Goebbels certain wore badge, was they would rapidly disappear Jews from view in public places. 'If it's for the moment not yet possible to make introduce a large yellow Star of David to be

Berlin into a Jew-free city, the

Jews must

at least

no longer appear

me

he remarked. 'But beyond that, the Fuhrer has granted

in public,'

permission to

deport the Jews from Berlin to the east as soon as the eastern campaign over.' Jews, city.

he added, spoiled not just the appearance but the

mood

is

of the

Forcing them to wear a badge would be an improvement. But, he

wrote, 'you can only stop to tackle the

On

1

six

had

for

its

it

away with them.

altogether by doing

problem without any sentimentality.'

September, a police decree stipulated that to

A week

wear the Star of David.

later,

We

have

76

all

Jews over the age of

preparing the population

introduction, Goebbels ensured that the party Propaganda Depart-

ment put out a special broadsheet, with massive circulation, in its publication Wochenspriiche (Weekly Maxims), emblazoned with Hitler's 'prophecy'. 77

According to in Party circles

approval but,

SD -

reports

- echoing

in the

in the eyes of

as the Party radicals.

Some said the Yellow Star ordinary Germans responded in

Jews.

full

should also be worn on the back. 78 Not

same way

feelings

met with general

some, did not go far enough, and needed to be

extended to Miscblinge as well as

the

main no doubt hardline

the introduction of the Yellow Star

all

There were also numerous indications

of distaste and disapproval for the introduction of the Yellow Star, along

with sympathy for the victims. According to the diary entry of one in Berlin, is

as

who had

a strong antipathy to the regime, 'the

not pleased at this

we

are.'

79

woman

mass of the people

new decree. Almost all who come across us are ashamed

The Dresden

fearful at venturing out of

intellectual Victor

Klemperer, depressed and

doors once the Star of David singled him out,

On

encountered indirect words of comfort from a tram-driver. occasion a driver, thumping his

fist

Klemperer's wife: 'Such a

mean

Deutschkron, then a young

woman

on

trick!

his control-panel,

exclaimed to

(Solch eine Gemeinheit!)

living in Berlin,

erer the devastating discriminatory isolation of the

emphasized

Yellow

another

like

m

Inge

Klemp-

Star, but recalled

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' some small

acts of kindness

who looked

at

me

and a mixture of

attitudes: 'There

sympathy; and others again looked away spontaneously.' to be certain

was

at

which was the more

typical response.

82

He

81

impossible

It is

Open support

any rate dangerous. Goebbels castigated those

for their plight, threatening

camp.

were people

with hate; there were others whose glances betrayed

for

Jews

who felt any sympathy

them with incarceration

in a concentration

turned up his antisemitic invective to an even higher volume.

Whatever the

level of

sympathy,

it

could carry no weight beside the

83

shrill

clamour of the radicals, whose demands - voiced most notably by the Reich Minister of Propaganda altogether.

targeted ever

more

removal of the Jews

at

As Goebbels had recognized, deportation had

pressure for

On

- were

it

would not

let

to wait. But the

up.

22 August, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Carltheo Zeitschel, Legation Coun-

sellor at the

German Embassy

in Paris,

produced a

memorandum

for the

Ambassador, Otto Abetz, suggesting that the newly occupied areas of the east offered the possibility of 'an ultimate (endgultigeri) satisfactory solution' to the 'Jewish problem'.

Europe into thought,

He recommended

deporting the Jews from

all

over

be sealed off for them. Transport, he

'a special territory' to

would not pose insuperable problems - Jews from

Government, he even indicated, could go by road and could be implemented even during the war.

in their

He

the General

own

-

vehicles

advocated putting his

suggestion to Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, and Himmler, as well as to Goring

who, he thought, was particularly open to ideas on the 'Jewish problem' and, after his experience in the eastern campaign,

strong support.

If

would probably

could then have Europe Jew-free in the shortest time'.

Much

of the pressure for deportation

surprisingly, the Security Police in the

had been trying

offer

these suggestions were taken up, argued Zeitschel, 'we

in vain since

came from

84

the Security Police.

Not

Warthegau, where the Nazi authorities

autumn 1939 It

to expel the Jews from the must have been towards the end of

SD

chief in Posen, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer

province, were in the front ranks.

August that Eichmann asked the

Rolf-Heinz Hoppner - the self-same Hoppner

who had

written to

July suggesting the possible liquidation of Jews in his area

him

in

who were

incapable of working during the coming winter through a 'fast-working preparation'

-

for his views

on resettlement policy and

its

administration.

Hoppner's fifteen-page memorandum, sent to Eichmann on

was not concerned

solely, or

3

September,

even mainly, with deporting Jews, but the

'Jewish problem' formed nevertheless part of his overview of the potential for extensive resettlement

on

racial lines.

His views corresponded closely

475

476

HITLER 1936-1945 with the ideas worked out under the General Plan for the East (Generalplan Ost).

He

envisaged deportations once the war was over 'out of

German

settlement space' of the 'undesirable sections of the population' from the

Great German Reich and of peoples from eastern and south-eastern Europe

deemed mate

racially unfit for

also in all states under

had

in

mind

He

Germanization.

specifically included 'the ulti-

Jewish Question', not

(endgiiltige) solution of the

just in

Germany but The areas he

German influence, in his suggestions. number of deportees were the 'large

for the vast

the current Soviet Union'.

He added

that

it

spaces in

would be pure speculation

(Phantasterei) to consider the organization of these territories 'since

basic decisions have to be taken'.

aim

certain

form

of existence, or

(ausgemerztY

the

fate of the

them permanently

a

whether they should be completely wiped out

85 .

Hoppner, aware of thinking open to ideas of idea

to establish for

is

first

however, he stated, that

essential,

from the outset about the

there should be complete clarity 'undesirables', 'whether the

was

It

some weeks

killing Jews. earlier.

But

in the

He

upper echelons of the SD, was plainly

himself, after

in early

all,

had expressed such an

September he was evidently not aware

of any decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

concerned, the goal was

still

As

far as he

was

their expulsion to the available 'spaces' in the

dismantled Soviet Union once the war was over.

IV Despite the mounting pressure for deportation, however, removal of the

Jews to the east was in Serbia tried in

at this point

still

blocked.

When the German authorities

mid-September to have 8,000 Jews deported to Russia,

Not even

they received a peremptory reply from Eichmann.

the Jews from

86

Germany could be sent there. He proposed shooting them. Any decision to allow the deportation of the Jews of Europe could only be taken by Hitler.

deport them only a few weeks

had been powerless to

He had

earlier.

act. Hitler

Without

and

He

Heydrich

September, unwilling to

Why

Hitler resisted the

had, of course, presumed

a final settlement of the 'Jewish Question'

follow upon the victorious end of a

But by

in

was mounting.

pressure up to this point can only be surmised. that deportations

Hitler's approval,

was even now,

take this step, though the pressure

to the east

rejected Heydrich's proposal to

this time, Hitler

would

war expected to last four or five months. was well aware that this expectation had been an

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' illusion.

The

old 'hostage' idea probably

played

still

part. In his

its

warped

understanding, holding Jews in his possession offered a bargaining counter with the 'Jewish-run' western 'plutocracies', especially the

USA. But

there

were more practical considerations. Where were the Jews to be sent? The areas currently under ing',

German occupation were

intended for 'ethnic cleans-

not as a Jewish reservation. Soviet Jews were

there in thousands. But

from

all

order.

how

now

being slaughtered

to deal with an influx of millions

more Jews

over Europe into the area posed problems of an altogether different

Mass

starvation

- the

the citizens of Leningrad

available for the

fate to

and

Jews to be

which Hitler was prepared

Moscow -

still

to

condemn made

required an area to be

settled until they starved to death.

This had to

be in territory intended for the 'export', not 'import', of 'undesirables'. Alternatively,

it

could only be in the battle-zone

itself,

or at least in

its

rear.

But this was simply an impracticality; moreover, the Einsatzgruppen had been deployed to wipe out tens of thousands of Jews precisely in such areas;

and from Hitler's perspective racial

enemy

to the place

So, as long as the

war

it

where

would have meant moving it

the

most potent

was most dangerous.

in the east raged, Hitler

must have reasoned, the

expulsion of the Jews to perish in the barren wastes to be acquired from the Soviet

Union simply had

like the Soviet

to wait.

And

if

deporting Jews to Russia to be shot

Jews was contemplated, the

practical

problems - even with

manpower available - of undertaking a wholesale programme through mass shootings effectively ruled out this option, at any rate as a short-term solution. Then there was the question of transport. Not enough trains were available to get supplies to the front line. That was more urgent than shipping Jews to the east. Once the war was

the greatly increased

extermination

over, the trains assigned to bring troops

millions of tons of grain the

back from the

and crate-loads of booty, could

outward journey to carry Jews

to their fate.

east,

along with

easily be used

on

87

Suddenly, in mid-September, Hitler changed his mind. There was no overt indication of the reason. But in August, Stalin the Volga

Germans -

Soviet citizens of

had ordered the deportation of

German

the eighteenth century along the reaches of the the

month

the entire population of the region

- were forcibly uprooted and deported conditions, allegedly as 'wreckers

Kazakhstan. In deportations.

all, little

88

It

and

descent

Volga

waggons under

first

Germans fell victim to the moves to destroy the Union. The news of the savage

of Stalin's terrible

nationalities in the south of the Soviet

horrific

western Siberia and northern

short of a million Volga

was the

settled in

At the end of

- more than 600,000 people

in cattle

spies', to

who had

river.

477

478

HITLER 1936-1945 deportations had become

known in Germany in early September. 89 Goebbels

90 had hinted that they could prompt a radical reaction.

It

was not long

in

coming. Alfred Rosenberg, the recently appointed Reich Minister for the

Occupied Eastern Territories,

lost little

time in advocating 'the deportation

{Verscbickung) of all the Jews of central Europe' to the east in retaliation. His liaison at

Army Headquarters, Otto Brautigam, was instructed by Rosenberg

on 14 September

to obtain Hitler's approval for the proposal. Brautigam

eventually succeeded in attracting the interest of Hitler's chief

Wehrmacht

adjutant, Rudolf Schmundt, who recognized it as 'a very important and urgent

matter' which

would be of great interest to Hitler. 91

Revenge and But

at first

reprisal invariably played a large part in Hitler's motivation.

he hesitated. His immediate response was to refer the matter to

the Foreign Office. Ribbentrop discuss

it

officer at

was

personally with Hitler.

FHQ,

92

initially

non-committal.

He wanted

Werner Koeppen, Rosenberg's

noted: 'The Fuhrer has so far

question of taking reprisals against the

still

made no

to

liaison

decision in the

German Jews on account

of the

He was said to be contemplating making move in the event of the United States entering the war. 93 The remark gives a clue to Hitler's thinking. He had continued to hold to the 'hostage' notion - embodied in his 1939 'prophecy' and aimed at

treatment of the Volga Germans.' this

USA

deterring the

from entering the war through the threat of what would

then happen to the Jews of Europe. In August, Roosevelt and Churchill had

met

for talks

on warships

off the coast of

Charter' proclaimed their

common

Newfoundland and

principles of free

in the 'Atlantic

and peaceful coexist-

ence of nations in a post-Nazi world. 94 Roosevelt had also declared on

September that the essential for

American defence.

before the United States Britain.

n

US navy would shoot on sight at Axis warships in waters became

It

seemed increasingly a matter of time

fully involved in hostilities as

The deportation of the Jews

at this juncture,

an

ally of

prompted by the Soviet

deportations of the Volga Germans, was Hitler's stark reminder to the

Americans of the

USA

his

prophecy: that European Jews would pay the price should

enter the war.

With such thoughts

95

in

mind, Hitler was

now

ready to accept the case put

by Heydrich and Himmler, reflecting demands and suggestions reaching

them from it

their

own underlings, and from the Gauleiter of the big cities, that

was urgently necessary

to put the longstanding plans for a comprehensive

'solution to the Jewish Question' into action, east

was indeed

feasible despite the unfinished

and that deportation to the

war

there.

Why

he was

now

prepared to bend to such arguments also lay partly, no doubt, in his

.

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' acceptance that an early end to the Russian campaign was not in sight.

in the east

would

stretch into 1942.

It

which he acknowledged that the war

was, in fact, precisely the juncture at

96

Tackling the

solution of the

'final

Jewish Question', he would have acknowledged, could not wait that long. If

victory over Bolshevism

had

to be delayed, he

must have concluded, the

time of reckoning with his most powerful adversary, the Jews, should be

postponed no longer. They had brought about the war; they would his

'prophecy'

It

the 'Wolf's Lair' 97

see

fulfilled.

would have been remarkable, when Himmler lunched with

raised.

now

Almost

on 16 September, had the deportation

issue not been

certainly, the Reichsfiihrer-SS pressed for the Reich's

The following

to be deported.

Hitler at

Jews

day, Ribbentrop met Hitler to discuss the

Rosenberg proposal. That evening, 17 September, Himmler paid the Foreign Minister a

98

visit.

By then, Hitler must have agreed

to the suggestions to

deporting German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to the east. Himmler

start

evidently

left

with the authorization.

He

gave notification of the decision

next day.

Again, the Warthegau played a direct part in events.

On

18 September,

Arthur Greiser, Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the Warthegau, received

from Himmler. 'The

a letter

Fiihrer wishes,' ran the missive, 'that the

Old

Reich and the Protectorate [Bohemia and Moravia] are emptied and freed of Jews that

it

from the west

was

to the east as

his intention to

soon as

which had come to the Reich two years

them

still

to the

further to the east'.

Lodz ghetto,

Around

possible.'

deport the Jews

With

this in

first

earlier,

German and Czech Jews

told Greiser

then 'next spring to expel

mind, he was sending 60,000 Jews

in Greiser's province, for the winter.

the middle of September, then, Hitler

to deport the

Himmler

into the Polish territories

99

had bowed

to the east,

to the pressure

some of them

temporary stay

in

Lodz (where the ghetto was already known

overcrowded).

It

was

the trigger to a crucial

new phase

emergence of a comprehensive programme for genocide.

in the

gradual

Initiatives

tumble out, one after the other, during the next few months

via a

to be seriously

in

would

widening the

scope of the killing.

The

to the east, while the final

German, Austrian, and Czech Jews raging, was a fateful one. It brought 'the

decision to begin deporting the

war was

still

solution of the Jewish question' throughout the whole of Europe a

massive step closer.

We

can only speculate on

how

it

was

surmise the course of the conversation between Hitler and or after lunch

on 16 September.

arrived

at,

only

Himmler during

479

480

HITLER 1936-1945 It

A

would have

stayed, almost certainly, at the level of terrible generalities.

start in the full-scale resettlement

implementing Heydrich's plan for a

programme, and,

'total solution of the

in particular, in

Jewish Question',

Himmler perhaps argued, could be made by transporting the Reich and would be a deserved retaliation for the Soviet deportation of the Volga Germans. It would meet the wishes of the Party. It would address the complaints of the Gauleiter by relieving the housing problems of the big cities. And it would - an argument sure to impress Hitler - prevent the seditious undermining of morale by Jews Protectorate Jews to the east. This

spreading disaffection on the

home

front.

Space for the deported Jews,

Himmler perhaps continued, could be found for the time being in abandoned Soviet labour camps. There, they could be put to work until they perished. Any 'dangerous elements' could be liquidated immediately, along with those Jews incapable of working. Perhaps acknowledging transport

Himmler would have accepted

that

many

difficulties,

of the Jews could only in the

first

instance be sent as far as Poland, before further dispatch to Russia the

following spring or finally

be over.

It is

summer when,

However, even when in stages, there

in eastern

it

was presumed,

the

war

would

there

unlikely that details were discussed. it

was agreed

that the Reich Jews should be deported

remained the question of what to do with the millions of Jews

Europe, particularly in Poland. Hans Frank had been promised the

speedy removal of the Jews from the General Government. Arthur Greiser

Jews from the Warthegau. If Himmler raised was probably given the green light to 'solve the problem' as he could, within Poland itself, making a start on the Jews who were

was desperate

to deport the

these issues, he best

unable to work.

The question

of the consumption of scarce food resources

was

a crucial

consideration, a vital element in the gathering whirlwind of extermination.

100

Feeding 'burdensome existences (BallastexistenzenY had been a central part of the thinking behind the 'euthanasia action' in the Reich the inhumanity towards the subjugated that the

and despised

most brutal stance imaginable was adopted on

war expanded, and

this issue.

meant As the

the problems of ensuring food supplies mounted, civilian

and military authorities pressed

all

the harder for savings to be

cost of political, ideological, and racial enemies - above

own

In the east,

itself.

'inferior peoples'

all,

made

at the

the Jews. Hitler's

made him open to any suggestion by Himmler that Jews who could not work - the elderly, the infirm, children, for example views would have

should be liquidated. 101 In these very days, Hitler was telling Goebbels that it

was necessary

for

Leningrad to 'disappear completely'.

It

would be

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' impossible, even

on taking

the food supplies

it,

to feed

its 5

million population.

Where would

and transport for them come from? he asked. The town

where Bolshevism began would be razed to the ground - a 'hard but

Jews about

about the necessary fate of the Hitler's

mount

102

nemesis of history', as Goebbels put

justifiable

this

Hitler's conclusion

it.

time was no milder.

agreement to the deportation of the German Jews was not tanta-

to a decision for the 'Final Solution'.

103

It

is

doubtful whether a

comprehensive decision of such a kind was ever made. But Hitler's

single,

authorization of the deportations opened the door widely to a whole range of

new

initiatives

from numerous

on the opportunity

Jews

start killing

now

local

and regional Nazi leaders who seized

to rid themselves of their

in their

own

areas.

own

'Jewish problem', to

There was a perceptible quickening of

tempo over the next few weeks. The speed and

the genocidal

scale of the

escalation in killing point to an authorization by Hitler to liquidate the

hundreds of thousands of Jews

in various parts of the east

who were

104

incapable of work. But there was as yet no coordinated, comprehensive programme of total genocide. This would still take some months to emerge.

Within a few days of the decision to deport the Reich Jews, Goebbels was

back

at

of the

FHQ,

seizing the opportunity to press once

Jews from

to speak

Berlin. Before his audience

more

with Reinhard Heydrich. Himmler, Neurath, and a number of

other leading figures were also in the Wolf's Lair.

The occasion

assembly of notables was Hitler's decision to

'retire'

Protector in Prague, following intrigues against

him by

Nazi administration a

in the

mounting incidence of

prompted Hitler nominally as fist all

strikes

radicals within the

capital, able to exploit reports of

and sabotage. Levels of repression had been

under Neurath.

105

to put in a hard

lost

no time

Jews from Berlin

as

Propaganda Minister that

in

reminding Heydrich of

his

wish to 'evacuate'

soon as possible. Heydrich evidently told the this

a clarification of the military all in

for the

as Reich

forms of resistance.

Goebbels the

former Czech

Neurath

But the growing disturbances now man, Security Police Chief Heydrich Deputy Reich Protector - with a mandate to crush with an

relatively constrained

iron

removal

for the

with Hitler, he had the chance

would be

the case 'as soon as

question in the east.

the end be transported into the

They

we have reached

[the

camps established by

Jews] should

the Bolsheviks.

481

482

HITLER I936-I945 These camps had been

now

that they should

During

his

up by the Jews. What was more

also be populated by the Jews.'

two-hour meeting alone with

Hitler,

fitting,

then, than

106

Goebbels had no trouble

assurance he wanted, that Berlin would soon be rid of

in eliciting the

Jews. 'The Fuhrer the

set

is

of the opinion,' Goebbels noted

down

its

next day, 'that

Jews have eventually to be removed from the whole of Germany. The

first cities

to be

made Jew-free

queue, and

in the

I

are Berlin, Vienna,

and Prague. Berlin

have the hope that we'll succeed

away

year in transporting a substantial portion of the Berlin Jews east.'

be

left less

than wholly

the end of October that a beginning

Lodz was now

officially called).

108

first

109

And

in

Heydrich that the deportations had raised more Goebbels kept up the pressure with a

entitled

newspaper reaching over 'The Jews are Guilty'.

He

He noted towards

November he difficulties

1V2 million

111

more than

have 'found a strong echo'

'We

are experiencing

he declared,

and any sympathy or regret was

At home, the

in the

article

was

entirely

article to the

said by the

SD

'little

The

article

in

provided, he said, 'compelling arguments' for the

Party member' to use

'in his

daily struggle'.

The Propaganda Minister again

114

raised the deportation of Berlin's

with Hitler during their three-hour discussion a few days

November.

to

population, though there had been criticism

from churchgoers. 113 Goebbels was pleased with the positive response Party circles.

a

explicitly cited Hitler's 'prophecy' of the

justified',

112

110

homes - on 16 November,

Goebbels ordered the widest circulation of the

troops on the eastern front.

from

Das Reich -

now the fulfilment of this prophecy.' The fate of the Jews,

'hard, but

learnt

than foreseen.

hate-filled tirade in

'annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe', stating:

misplaced.

Berlin's

place to Litzmannstadt (as

But he was soon complaining about

obstacles to their rapid 'evacuation'.

'quality'

satisfied.

had been made with deporting

Jews. Several thousand had been sent in the

was

to the

107

He was in the event to

right

is first

in the course of this

Hitler, as usual,

was

later,

easily able to assuage Goebbels.

Jews

on 21

He

told

his views on the 'Jewish Question'. He wanted an against the Jews - but one which would not 'cause unneces-

him he agreed with 'energetic policy'

The 'evacuation of the Jews' had to take place city by city, uncertain when Berlin's turn would come. When the time

sary difficulties'.

and

it

was

still

arrived, the 'evacuation' should be concluded as quickly as possible.

Once

again, as

had repeatedly been the case with Frank

in

115

Cracow and

Schirach in Vienna, Hitler had raised hopes which encouraged pressure for radical action

from

his subordinates.

That the hopes could be

fulfilled less

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' than anticipated then simply fanned the flames, encouraging the

easily

frantic quest for

Nazis'

own

an ultimate solution to the problem which nothing but the

ideological fanaticism

had created

Both Himmler and Heydrich were the

Jews

to the east; Riga, Reval,

set in train for

still

in the first place.

speaking

and Minsk were

extermination camps in Riga and,

in

October of deporting

mentioned. Plans were

all

it

116

seems, in Mogilew, some

130 miles east of Minsk. Transport difficulties and continued partisan

warfare eventually caused their abandonment.

murderous

initiatives

realized that they

117

prompted by the

But,

being undertaken by their minions

were being shown a green

light

and

who had lost

rapidly

no time

in

preparing to set localized genocides in motion, the attention of the SS leaders

was as

starting to switch to Poland,

an area

place.

in

which a

'final

which posed fewer

logistical difficulties,

solution of the Jewish Question' could take

118

The use of poison gas had already been contemplated before the deportation order was granted. More efficient, less public, and - with characteristic Nazi cynicism - less stressful (for the murderers, that is) ways of killing than mass shootings were required. in

East Prussia in 1940 to

though,

it

soon proved, had

The

use of gas-vans, already deployed

'euthanasia' victims, offered one alternative

kill its

own drawbacks. 119 Other methods,

involving

stationary killing installations, were considered. At the beginning of Sep-

tember, several hundred Russian prisoners-of-war were gassed in Auschwitz, then a concentration

camp mainly

for Poles, as

an experiment

in

connection

with a large crematorium that had been ordered in October from the Erfurt firm of J. A.

time on the

Topf and Sons. The poison-gas Zyklon-B was used for the first Soviet prisoners; it would by summer 1942 be in regular use for

exterminating the Jews of Europe, ferried by the train-load to the huge killing factory of

Once

Auschwitz-Birkenau.

120

the decision to deport the Reich Jews to the east

things began to

move

rapidly.

had been taken,

Heydrich told Gauleiter Alfred Meyer, State

Secretary in Rosenberg's Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, 4 October that attempts by industry to claim

'would

vitiate the

Jews

as part of their

on

workforce

plan of a total evacuation (Aussie dlung) of the Jews from

the territories occupied by us'.

121

Later that month, following a

visit to Berlin

by the Lublin Police Chief, SS-Brigadefiihrer Odilo Globocnik, evidently

aimed

at instigating the extermination of the

labourers were

commandeered by

eastern Poland. Experts

Jews

in his district, Polish

the SS to construct a

camp

at Belzec in

on gassing techniques used on patients

'euthanasia action' followed a few weeks later,

now

redeployed

in

in the

Poland

483

484

HITLER 1936-1945 to advise

on the gas chambers being erected

122

at Belzec.

Initially, the

aim

whose murderous capacity was in the early months Jews from the Lublin area who were 123 Only gradually did the liquidation of all Polish Jews incapable of work. become clarified as the goal - embodied in what, with the addition of two was

to use Belzec,

relatively small, for the gassing of

other camps, Sobibor and Treblinka, in spring 1942,

known

as 'Aktion Reinhardt'.

In the

came eventually

to be

124

autumn, too, Eichmann was sent to Auschwitz for discussions

125 with Rudolf Ho£, the commandant there, about gassing installations.

Mass-killing operations at Belzec began in the spring of 1942, in Auschwitz in the

summer. They had been preceded by developments

There, the to

first

of twenty transports in

in the

Warthegau.

autumn 1941 bringing German Jews authorities in Lodz had at first

Lodz had arrived on 16 October. The

more Jews. Government Presi-

objected vehemently to the order in September to take in

Himmler was implacable. He sharply reprimanded

the

dent of Lodz, Friedrich Uebelhoer, himself the bearer of an honorary SS rank. But alongside the reprimand, the

Lodz

authorities

had evidently been

assuaged by being told that those Jews incapable of working would soon be liquidated.

Mass

already taking place in the

head of a Special

by shooting and gassing

killings

autumn weeks. At the same

Command which had

(in

gas-vans) were

time, Herbert Lange,

been deployed

earlier

at

Soldau in

East Prussia to gas the inmates of mental asylums, began looking for a suitable location to set

up operations

the Jews of the Warthegau.

for the systematic extermination of

126

At some point, Gauleiter Greiser asked - and was given - Himmler's permission to liquidate 100,000 Jews in his area. indication that Greiser's request

127

There

went beyond Himmler.

It

not have been necessary to take the request further, had Hitler

had already accorded

it

been

his general authorization for the

in the

initiative

no

direct

would, of course,

of Jews in Poland. That Hitler's approval, however broad,

can be read out of a further

is

known mass

was

that

killing

essential

coming from the head of government

Warthegau. When, some months

later,

Wilhelm Koppe, Higher SS

and Police Chief in the Warthegau, wrote to Himmler

in

support of Greiser's

request to extend the killing to 30,000 Poles suffering from incurable tuberculosis,

the answer given

by the Reichsfuhrer's personal adjutant, SS-

Sturmbannfiihrer Rudolf Brandt, was that 'the

last decision in this

must be taken by the Fuhrer'. 128 Greiser's

revealing

need to consult Hitler was:

'I

own

matter

comment on

the

myself do not believe that the Fuhrer needs to

be asked again in this matter, especially since at our

last discussion

with

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' regard to the Jews he told

my own Hitler's

judgement.'

129

me

that

I

could proceed with these according to

Such a response would indeed have been typical of

approach. But the episode does suggest that,

if it

were necessary

to

have Hitler's approval for the extermination of 30,000 Poles with incurable tuberculosis,

it

would have been

have had

essential to

When

authorization for the killing of 100,000 Jews. to Hitler directly

The most

about the Jews

in his area

was before

likely date

at least his blanket

exactly Greiser spoke

cannot be precisely determined.

was taken

the decision

to exterminate

the 100,000 Jews referred to in the initial correspondence with Himmler. Whether Hitler was consulted on the precise developments or not, his overall

approval was evidently necessary. By the

Chelmno, first

a gas-van station in the south of the

extermination unit to

The Warthegau was not

commence

them

operations.

130

Chelmno commenced, the first transports of The initial intention was to send a concentration camp outside the city prior to

arrived in the Baltic.

to Riga, to be placed in

further deportation eastwards. Hitler local

1941,

Warthegau, had become the

the only area scheduled to receive the deportees.

Shortly before the killing in

German Jews had

week of December

first

had approved proposals from the

commander of the Security Police, SS-Sturmbannfiihrer Dr Otto Lange,

to set

up the concentration camp. Lange had, however, proposed erecting

camp

for Latvian Jews. This

was turned,

Fiihrer, into the construction of a 'big

Germany and there,

the Protectorate.

en route,

Nazi leaders, meant.

When

it

was

at least,

said, for

still

concentration camp' for Jews from

first

mid-December

penalty'.

east,

Some

deportation to the east

to the deportation of

Jews

many

cases

he said

it

was

'in

scarcely begun.

arrive in Riga

An

from the Reich, the

improvised solution had to be

found. Instead of heading for Riga, the trains were diverted to Lithuania. Between 25 and 29

taken from

131

132

Jews were due to

camp had

now what

east'.

pressing to have the Jews of Berlin deported as

from the occupied part of France to the

By the time the

to be interned

an eventual destination 'farther

quickly as possible, referred in

synonymous with the death

a

accordance with a 'wish' of the

Some 25,000 were expected

were well aware by

Goebbels,

building of the

in

November,

five trains arriving in

terrified

Kowno from

Kowno

in

and exhausted Jews were

Berlin, Frankfurt,

Munich,

Vienna, and Breslau and, without any selection on grounds of ability to

work, promptly taken out and shot by members of the locally based Einsatz-

kommando. The same in

fate

awaited 1,000

German Jews who

then did arrive

Riga on 30 November. They were simply taken straight out into the forest

and shot, along with some 14,000 Latvian Jews from the Riga ghetto.

485

.

486

HITLER 1936-1945 Himmler had

earlier in the

Jeckeln, 'that

all

the

Jews

exterminated {vernichtetY

However

month

in the Ul

certain Jeckeln

leaders in the east

still

had

told the police chief in the area, Friedrich

down

Ostland

was of

to the very last

one must be

murderous mandate, other Nazi

his

their doubts. Hinrich Lohse,

Reich Commissar

for the Eastern Region {Ostland), and Wilhelm Kube, General Commissar

that Reich

who were

were among those

for Belorussia (Weifiruthenien),

Jews were meant to be included

less sure

mass shootings and

in the

indiscriminately slaughtered together with the Jews from the east.

now

Eastern Territories and from Reich Security the

They

sought urgent clarification from the Reich Ministry for the Occupied

Wehrmacht

Head

Office. Lohse, pressed

whether or not economic

criteria

were relevant

in

determining whether Jews

were to be liquidated. In Minsk, where 12,000 Jews from the

had been shot by the Security Police Jews, Kube

to

by

wanted guidance on

to retain Jewish skilled workers,

make way

local ghetto

for an influx of

protested that 'people coming from our

own

German

cultural sphere'

should be differently treated than the 'native brutish hordes {bodenstandigen vertierten Horden)'.

made

134

He wanted

for part-Jews {Mischlinge),

'aryan' partners.

to

know whether

exceptions were to be

Jews with war decorations, or Jews with

Other protests and queries,

reflecting

both unease and lack

of clarity over the intended fate of the Jews from the Reich, reached the

Ostministerium and RSHA. These prompted Himmler to intervene on 30 November to try to prohibit the liquidation of the train-load of 1,000 German Jews - many of them elderly, some bearers of the Iron Cross First Class - sent to Riga. His telephone-call came too late. By then the Jews had already been slaughtered by Jeckeln's killing-squads.

The previous

November, Heydrich had

day, 29

several State Secretaries

and

to take place close to the Berlin,

RSHA's

sent out invitations to

to selected SS representatives to a conference

Wannsee,

a beautiful lake

on 9 December. Heydrich wanted

ministries in the

135

on the western rim of

to inculcate relevant

plans to deport to the east

all

government

the Jews within

Germany's grasp throughout Europe. 136 In addition, he was keen to ensure, in line

with the commission he had requested and been granted at the end

was recognized day before the conference was

of July, that his primacy in orchestrating the deportations

by

all

parties involved.

137

On

8

December, the

scheduled to take place, Heydrich had

it

postponed to 20 January 1942.

The postponement was caused by the dramatic events unfolding in the Pacific and in eastern Europe. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December would, as Heydrich knew, bring within days a German declar-

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' ation of

war on

USA. With

the

European war would become

that, the

world war. Meanwhile, the opening of the the

Red Army on

5

major counter-offensive by

first

December had blocked

a

for the forseeable future any 138

Both developments

carried important consequences for the deportation

programme. Their

prospect of mass deportations into Soviet territory.

impact soon became evident. Plans to bring about a

'final solution' to

the 'Jewish Question' were about

new phase - one more murderous than

to enter a

ever.

VI Hitler's responsibility for the genocide against the

Yet for

tioned.

all his

incitement to ever his

public tirades against the Jews, offering the strongest

more

radical onslaughts of extreme violence,

dark hints that his 'prophecy' was being

fulfilled,

keen to conceal the traces of his involvement Perhaps even at the height of his possibility

Jews cannot be ques-

one day of

in the

own power

and for

all

he was consistently

murder of the Jews. theirs, and the

he feared

their 'revenge'. Perhaps, sensing that the

German

people were not ready to learn the deadly secret, he was determined - his

own

general inclination to secrecy was, as always, a

marked one - not

to

speak of it other than in horrific, but imprecise, terms. Whatever the reasons,

Himmler was like to

he could never have delivered the sort of speech which, notoriously,

would

give in Posen

two years

see 1,000 corpses lying side

later

when he

described what

by side and spoke openly of

'the

it

extermination

(Ausrottung) of the Jewish people' as a 'glorious page in our history that

has never been written and

is

never to be written'.

139

Even

in his inner circle

Hitler could never bring himself to speak with outright frankness about the killing of the

Jews. Full knowledge of their murder was evidently not to be

touched upon directly

in his presence,

even

among the close band of criminal

conspirators.

Even

so,

public nor

compared with the first years of the war when he had neither in - to go from Goebbels's diary accounts - in private made much

mention of the Jews, Hitler did now,

in the

months when

their fate

was

being determined, refer to them on numerous occasions. Invariably, whether

comments

monologues

in his

East Prussian headquarters, his remarks were confined to generalities

- but

in public

speeches or during

in his late-night

with the occasional menacing allusion to what was happening.

At lunch on 6 October, conversation focused mainly on eliminating Czech

487

HITLER 1936- 1945 appointment on 27 September

resistance following Heydrich's

Reich Protector. Hitler spoke of ways

'to

ten hostages for every act of sabotage

make

Deputy

as

the Czechs small'. Shooting

where the perpetrator could not be

found was one method. Another - as usual, the carrot as well as the

was

improve food-rations

to

in factories

-

where there was no case of sabo-

His third means was the deportation of the Jews.

tage.

stick

He was

speaking

about three weeks after he had agreed to their deportation from the Reich

and the Protectorate. His comments reveal

at least

one of the reasons why

he agreed to deport them: he continued to believe in the Jews as dangerous

among

'fifth-columnists', spreading sedition

what he had thought of

World War.

'All

the role of the

away

in

Jews must be removed from the Protectorate,' he declared

around the lunch-table, 'and not straight

It was exactly Germany during the First

the population.

Jews

just into the

further to the east. This

because of the great

demand

is

at present

of the military for

with the Protectorate's Jews,

all

the

General Government, but not practical merely

means of

transport.

Along

Jews from Berlin and Vienna should

The Jews are everywhere the pipeline through enemy news rushes with the speed of wind into all branches of the

disappear at the same time.

which

all

population.'

On 21

140

October, a month after the deportation order, as part of a diatribe

comparing 'Jewish Christianity' with 'Jewish Bolshevism', he compared the of

fall

Rome

with latter-day Bolshevization through the Jews.

'If

we

eradi-

cate (ausrotten) this plague,' he concluded, 'we will be carrying out a

deed for mankind, of the significance of which our

no conception.' 141 Four days visitor to the

143

good

out there can have

were Himmler

Wolf's Lair during these weeks) and Heydrich.

sation again revolved mainly ity.

later his guests

men

142

(a

frequent

The conver-

around the connections of Jewry and Christian-

Hitler reminded his guests

and

his regular

entourage of his 'prophecy'.

two million dead of the World War on its he went on, and 'now again hundreds of thousands. Don't

'This criminal race has the conscience,'

anyone

tell

me we can't

then, about our people?

us that will

we

be a

send them into the marshes (Morast)\ It's

good when the horror

are exterminating Jewry.

failure.'

144

These notes of

The attempt

Who bothers,

(der Schrecken) precedes to

Hitler's rantings

found a Jewish

were

state

disjointed. But,

although lacking coherence, they point to his knowledge of the attempts eventually given up

them

the First

more

-

in the

World War and

drown Jewish women by

driving

Hitler's allocation of guilt for the

dead of

summer

into the Pripet marshes.

145

the current

to

war

to the Jews,

and the recourse once

to his 'prophecy', underline his certainty that the destruction of Jewry

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' was imminent. But, other than the reference

was no suggestion

extermination, there

With Himmler and Heydrich dissemble.

However, no

of any reference.

146

to the efficacy of

rumours of

of the looming 'Final Solution'.

as his guests,

was

it

scarcely necessary to

significance ought to be attached to the absence

By mid-October the consequences flowing from the

month had

deportation order of the previous

to

still

merge into the

full

genocidal programme.

On

the evening of

5

November, remarks about

the English lower class led Hitler once

Jews. As usual, he linked the British

it

more

to the war. This

the 'racial inferiority' of

into a

was

monologue about

the 'most idiotic war' that

had ever begun, he ranted, and would lead

outbreak of antisemitism

in Britain

in defeat to

which would be without

end of the war, he proclaimed, would bring 'the

the

fall

parallel.

of the Jew'.

147

He

an

The then

unleashed an extraordinary verbal assault on the lack of ability and creativity of

Jews

walk of

in every

building will collapse

moment,

if

life

he

but one: lying and cheating. is

The Jew's

over. I've always said the Jews are the most stupid devils They don't have a true musician, thinker, no art, nothing, nothing. They are liars, forgers, deceivers. They've only got

it's all

that exist.

absolutely

anywhere through the simple-mindedness of those around them.

filth.

The

We

can

links, as

live

live

without

Jew

his eyes 148

us.'

he saw them, between the Jews and the war that they had

allegedly inspired,

the Jews,

without the Jews. But they can't

the

If

were not washed by the Aryan, he wouldn't be able to see out of for

'entire

refused a following,' he went on. 'In one

now

also, after years in

found a prominent place

rhetorical flourishes,

which he had scarcely mentioned

in his public speeches. But,

whatever the propaganda motive

in

whatever the

appealing to the

antisemitic instincts of his hard-core supporters in the Party, there cannot

be the slightest doubt, on the basis of his private comments, that Hitler believed in

what he

said.

In his speech to the

1941, Hitler pressed

'Old Guard' of veterans of the Putsch, on

home

the

theme of Jewish

the victories of the previous year, he stated, he his recognition that

guilt for the

had

still

8

November

war. Despite

worried because of

behind the war stood 'the international Jew'. They had

poisoned the peoples through their control of the press, radio, theatre; they

had made sure that rearmament and war would

business and financial interests; he instigators of

had come

to

know

it

and

benefit their

Jews

as the

world conflagration. England, under Jewish influence, had

been the driving-force of the 'world-coalition against the

But

the

film,

had been inevitable that the Soviet Union,

German

people'.

'the greatest se'rvant of

489

45>0

HITLER 1936-1945 Jewry',

would one day confront

the Reich. Since then it had become plain was dominated by Jewish commissars. Stalin, too, was instrument in the hand of this almighty Jewry'. Behind him

that the Soviet state

no more than 'an stood

those Jews

'all

who

in

thousandfold ramification lead

this

empire'. This 'insight', Hitler suggested, had weighed heavily

and compelled him

to face the danger

from the

east.

powerful

upon him,

149

Hitler returned to the alleged 'destructive character' of the

Jews when

talking again to his usual captive audience in the Wolf's Lair in the small

hours of 1-2 December. Again, there was a hint, but no more than that, of

what

Hitler

destroys

saw

life,

as the natural justice being

meted out to the Jews:

And

exposes himself to death.

'he

nothing other than

happening to them' - to the Jews. 1M) The gas-vans of Chelmno would killing the

Jews of the Warthegau

in those very days.

151

In Hitler's

who

this

is

start

warped

was natural revenge for the destruction caused by the Jews above all in the war which he saw as their work. His 'prophecy' motif was evidently never far from his mind in these weeks as the winter crisis was unfolding in the east. It would be at the forefront of his thoughts in the wake of Pearl Harbor. With his declaration of war on the USA on n December, Germany was now engaged in a 'world war' - a term used up to mentality, such killing

then almost exclusively for the devastation of 1914-18. In his Reichstag

speech of 30 January 1939, he had 'prophesied' that the destruction of the

Jews would be the consequence of

had now

On of

in his view,

arrived.

12 December, the day after he had announced Germany's declaration

war on

the

USA,

audience of around

Much

new world war. That war,

a

Hitler addressed the Reichsleiter

and Gauleiter - an

persons - in his rooms in the Reich Chancellery.

fifty

of his talk ranged over the consequences of Pearl Harbor, the

the east, and the glorious future awaiting also spoke of the Jews.

And once more

Germany

war

after final victory.

in

He

he evoked his 'prophecy'.

'With regard to the Jewish Question,' Goebbels recorded, summarizing Hitler's

comments,

'the

Fuhrer

{reinen Tisch zu machen).

is

determined to make a clear sweep of

world war, they would experience

was no empty

it

He prophesied that, if they brought about another

talk (keine Phrase).

their annihilation (Vernichtung).

The world war

is

there.

The

of Jewry must be the necessary consequence. This question

is

That

annihilation to be

viewed

without any sentimentality. We're not there to have sympathy with the Jews, but only sympathy with our

now

sacrificed

German

around 160,000 dead

people.

If

the

in the eastern

of this bloody conflict will have to pay for

it

German people has

again

campaign, the originators

with their

own lives.' 152

FULFILLING THE The tone was more menacing and vengeful than

ever.

PROPHECY The original - in Hitler's

'prophecy' had been a warning. Despite the warning, the Jews

view - had unleashed the world war. They would Hitler

had

still

his 'prophecy' in

now pay

mind when he spoke

the price.

privately to Alfred

Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories, on 14 December,

two days

after his address to the Gauleiter. Referring to the text of a

forthcoming speech, on which he wanted Hitler's advice, Rosenberg

remarked that his 'standpoint was not to speak of the extermination (Ausrot-

The Fiihrer approved this stance and war and brought about the destruction

said they

tung) of Jewry. us with the

would be

they

The party

the

first

to feel the consequences.'

it

was no wonder

who had heard Hitler speak on 12 December in war now against the USA and unfolding crisis on

eastern front understood the message.

No

He

war.

made one way

On

had come.

or another.'

about their destruction

to Hitler's 'prophecy'

the

16 December,

to leading figures in the administration of the

General Government. 'As regards the Jews,' he began, Til openly: an end has to be

the

order or directive was necessary.

readily grasped that the time of reckoning

Hans Frank reported back

if

153

chieftains

dramatic context of

They

so

had burdened

He

tell

you quite

referred explicitly

event of another world

in the

repeated Hitler's expression in his address to the Gauleiter that

sympathy with the Jews would be wholly misplaced. The war would prove to be only a partial success

on.

'I

will therefore

should the Jews in Europe survive

proceed

in principle

it,

Frank went

regarding the Jews that they will

They must go,' he declared. He said he was still negotiating about deporting them to the east. He referred to the rescheduled Wannsee Conference in January, where the issue of deportation would be discussed.

disappear.

'At any event,' he 'But,'

commented,

he asked: 'what

accommodated Berlin:

why

are

to

is

'a

great Jewish migration will commence.'

happen

to the

Jews?

in village settlements in the

you giving us

all this

Do you

trouble?

We

find

.

.

.

We

them and wherever

ing this about

know how to us

it

was was

it is

possible to

evidently, however, to happen.

2.5 million

and what goes with million Jews,

we

it,

either. Liquidate

must destroy (vernichten) the Jews wherever we

A programme for bringunknown to Frank. He did not

do so still

.

.

.'

'The Jews are also extraordinarily harmful

through their gluttony,' he continued. 'We have

ment an estimated

in

can't do anything with

them in the Ostland or in the Reich Commissariat [Ukraine] them yourselves!

believe they'll be

Ostland? They said to us

now

- perhaps with those 3.5 million

can't poison them, but

in the

General Govern-

closely related to

Jews

We

can't shoot these 3.5

we must

be able to take steps

Jews.

491

492-

HITLER 1936-1945 leading

The

somehow

to a success in extermination (Vernichtungserfolg)

.' .

l34

.

- meaning the physical extermination of the Jews of emerging. The ideology of total annihilation was now

'Final Solution'

Europe - was

still

taking over from any lingering economic rationale of working the Jews

'Economic considerations should remain fundamentally out of

to death.

consideration in dealing with the problem' 18

December

was

the answer finally given on

from

to Lohse's inquiry about using skilled Jewish workers

the Baltic in the

armaments

industry.

133

On

the

same day,

in a private

discussion with Himmler, Hitler confirmed that in the east the partisan war, in the autumn, provided a useful framework They were 'to be exterminated as partisans (Als Partisanen auszurotten)\ Himmler noted as the outcome of their dis6 cussion.^ The separate strands of genocide were rapidly being pulled

which had expanded sharply for destroying the Jews.

together.

On

20 January 1942, the conference on the

'final solution',

postponed

from 9 December, eventually took place in a large villa by the Wannsee. Alongside representatives from the Reich ministries of the Interior, Justice, and Eastern Plan,

and

Territories, the Foreign Office,

from

the

General

from the

Government,

office of the

Gestapo

sat

Four- Year chief

SS-

Gruppenfuhrer Heinrich Muller, the commanders of the Security Police the General

Government and

together with Adolf

Eichmann

Latvia, Karl Schoengarth (the

RSHA's

deportation expert,

the task of producing a written record of the meeting).

in

and Otto Lange,

who had

137

Heydrich opened the meeting by recapitulating that Goring had given

him

responsibility

preparing 'the

aimed to

-

final

clarify

mandate of the previous July - for solution of the European Jewish question'. The meeting a reference to the

and coordinate organizational arrangements. (Later

in the

meeting an inconclusive attempt was made to define the status of part-Jews {Mischlinge) in the

framework of deportation

plans.)

138

Heydrich surveyed

the course of anti-Jewish policy, then declared that 'the evacuation of the

Jews to the

east has

now

emerged, with the prior permission of the Fiihrer,

as a further possible solution instead of emigration'. 'practical experience' in the process for 'the

Jewish question', which would embrace as

Europe Britain

(stretching, outside

German

He spoke

coming

many

as

of gathering

final solution

of the

n million Jews across

current territorial control, as far as

and Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, and French north African

programme, the German-occupied would be combed from west to east. The deported Jews would work in large labour gangs. Many - perhaps most - would die in

colonies). In the gigantic deportation territories

be put to

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY' the process.

have

'to

The

particularly strong

and hardy types

who

survived would

be dealt with accordingly'.

Though

there was, as

Eichmann

later testified, explicit talk at the confer-

ence - not reflected in the minutes - of 'killing and eliminating and extermin-

(Toten und Eliminieren und Vernicbten)\

159

Heydrich was not programme of mass extermination in death-camps. But the Wannsee Conference was a key stepping-stone on the path to that terrible genocidal finality. A deportation programme aimed ating

orchestrating an existing and finalized

Jews through forced labour and starvation

at the annihilation of the

in

occupied Soviet territory following the end of a victorious war was rapidly giving

way

to the realization that the

Jews would have to be systematically

destroyed before the war ended - and that the main locus of their destruction

would no longer be the Soviet Union, but the

territory of the General

Government. 160

That the General Government should become the the 'Final Solution'

first

area to implement

was directly requested at the conference by its representa-

tive, State Secretary Josef Biihler. He wanted the 2V2 million Jews in his area - most of them incapable of work, he stressed - 'removed' as quickly as

possible.

The

the process.

161

authorities in the area

Buhler's hopes

would do

would be

all

fulfilled

they could to help expedite

over the next months.

regionalized killing in the districts of Lublin and Galicia

The

was extended by

spring to the whole of the General Government, as the deportation-trains

human

began to ferry their

cargo to the extermination camps of Belzec,

programme of systematic annihilation of the Jews embracing the whole of Germanoccupied Europe was rapidly taking shape. By early June a programme had been constructed for the deportation of Jews from western Europe. 162 The transports from the west began in July. Most left for the largest of the extermination camps by this time in operation, Auschwitz-Birkenau in the annexed territory of Upper Silesia. The 'final solution' was under way. The industrialized mass murder would now continued unabated. By the end of Sobibor, and Treblinka. By this time, a comprehensive

1942, according to the SS's

dead.

Hitler

knew

own

calculations, 4 million

Jews were already

163

it

Wannsee Conference. Probably he but even this is not certain. There was no need

had not been involved

was taking

place;

in the

He had signalled yet again in unmistakable terms in December 1941 what the fate of the Jews should be now that Germany was embroiled in another world war. By then, local and regional killing initiatives

for his involvement.

had already developed

their

own momentum. Heydrich was more

than

493

494

HITLER 1936-1945 happy to

to use Hitler's blanket authorization of deportations to the east

expand the

killing operations into

now

an overall programme of Europe-wide

genocide.

On

30 January 1942, the ninth anniversary of the 'seizure of power',

Hitler addressed a packed Sportpalast.

the past weeks, he invoked once in these

months

striking -

is

he wrongly dated

it

As he had been doing

privately over

more - how often he repeated

the emphasis

30 January 1939. As always,

his 'prophecy' of

day of the outbreak of war with the attack on

to the

war can only end

either with

the extermination of the aryan peoples or the disappearance of

Jewry from

Poland.

'We

are clear,' he declared, 'that the

He went

on: 'I already stated on 1 September 1939 in the German Reichstag and I refrain from over-hasty prophecies - that this war will not come to an end as the Jews imagine, with the extermination of the

Europe.'

European-Aryan peoples (namlich

dafl die europaisch-arischen

gerottet werden), but that the result of this

(Vernichtung) of Jewry. For the

first

war

time the old Jewish law will

applied: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth

when

most

the

least for a

evil

world-enemy of

thousand

years.'

The message was not

lost

.

.

.

And

the hour will

time will have played out

be

come

its role,

at

his audience. The SD — no doubt picking by avid Nazi supporters - reported that his

on

all

'interpreted to

mean

that the Fiihrer's battle against the

to the

end with merciless consistency, and

Jews would be followed through that very soon the last

all

now

164

up comments made above

words had been

Volker aus-

will be the annihilation

Jew would disappear from European

163

soil'.

VII When

Goebbels spoke to Hitler

commenced

their grisly operations.

Hitler remained 'pitiless', the

must get out of Europe,

was

his view.

A week

if

now

166

As regards the 'Jewish Question',

Propaganda Minister recorded. 'The Jews

need be through use of the most brutal means,'

167

later,

Goebbels

implied. 'From the General are

March, the death-mills of Belzec had

in

left

no doubt what

most brutal means'

Government, beginning with Lublin, the Jews

being deported to the east.

described in any greater detail,

is

A

fairly barbaric

them must be

procedure, not to be

being used here, and not

remains of the Jews themselves. In general, that 60 per cent of

'the

it

much more

can probably be established

liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be

FULFILLING THE 'PROPHECY'

A

put to work ...

judgement

is

being carried out on the Jews which

is

The prophecy which the Fiihrer gave them bringing about a new world war is beginning to become

barbaric, but fully deserved.

along the true in the

way

for

most

terrible fashion.

we

in these things. If

No sentimentality can be allowed to prevail them

didn't fend

(vernichteri) us. It's a life-and-death struggle

Jewish bacillus.

No

Jews would annihilate

off, the

between the aryan race and the

other government and no other regime could produce

the strength to solve this question generally. Here, too, the Fiihrer

unswerving champion and spokesman of a radical solution

,' .

Goebbels himself had played no small part over the years a 'radical solution'.

He had

is

the

168

.

in

pushing for

been one of the most important and high-placed

on numerous occasions to take radical action on the 'Jewish Question'. The Security Police - Heydrich's role was, if anything, probably more important even than Himmler's - had been of the Party activists pressing Hitler

instrumental in gradually converting an ideological imperative into an

extermination plan.

Many

others, at different levels of the regime,

had

contributed in greater or lesser measure to the continuing and untrammelled process of radicalization. Complicity leadership and captains of industry

minions, and ordinary

was massive, from

down

Germans hoping

the

Wehrmacht

to Party hacks, bureaucratic

for their

own

material advantage

through the persecution then deportation of a helpless, but unloved, minority which had been deemed to be the inexorable enemy of the

new

'people's community'.

But Goebbels knew what he was talking about in singling out Hitler's role.

This had often been indirect, rather than overt.

authorizing

more than

directing.

And the hate-filled

It

had consisted of

tirades,

though without

equal in their depth of inhumanity, remained at a level of generalities. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt about

and indispensable

power

in the

it:

Hitler's role

road to the 'Final Solution'.

had been decisive

Had

he not come to

1933 and a national-conservative government, perhaps a military dictatorship, had gained power instead, discriminatory legislation against in

Jews would

in all probability

still

have been introduced

in

Germany. But

without Hitler, and the unique regime he headed, the creation of a pro-

gramme

to bring

about the physical extermination of the Jews of Europe

would have been unthinkable.

495

II LAST BIG

'If I

don't get the

THROW

oil

of

OF THE DICE

Maykop and Grozny,

then

I

must

Hitler, spring 1942

finish this war.'

'Overall picture: have

we extended

the risk too far?'

General Haider, ij August 1942

'You can be

from

sure,'

he added, 'that nobody will get us away

this place again!'

Hitler, speaking

'How

of Stalingrad, 30 September 1942

can someone be so cowardly?

So many people have to besmirches others.'

in the last

Hitler,

on

die.

I

don't understand

Then such

a

man

it.

goes and

minute the heroism of so many 1

February 1943 on hearing of the

surrender of Field-Marshal Paulus at Stalingrad

Snow

2

He

was not

felt

far

at the

Wolf's Lair.

icy

wind gave no

respite

first

signs

1

away. Hitler could not wait for the awful winter to

he had been

let

down by

his military leaders, his logistical

planners, his transport organizers; that his faint-hearts, not

An

end of February 1942, there were the

cold. But, at the

that spring pass.

on the ground

lay

still

from the

army commanders had been

tough enough when faced with

crisis;

that his

own

strength

of will and determination had alone staved off catastrophe. Every crisis in his

own mind amounted

different.

Coming through

comparable as he saw the

to a contest of will.

it

it

The winter

crisis

had been no

had been yet another 'triumph of the

will',

with winning power against the odds in 1933. That

gamble of knocking out the Soviet Union within

a

few months had been

absurd, or that the overall strategy of 'Barbarossa' had been flawed from the outset, never entered his head; nor that his

own

constant interference

had compounded the problems of military command. The winter sharpened

his sense,

just against external

enemies, but against those

incapable, or even disloyal, in his

own

of Napoleon's troops.

It

a psychological

was necessary now

mortally weakened

They had survived

blow

to the

had

in

inadequate,

his

had been

army from

the fate

the Russian winter. This in

itself

enemy, which had also suffered grievously.

to attack again as

enemy

who were

ranks. But the crisis

surmounted. His leadership, he believed, had saved

was

crisis

never far from the surface, that he had to struggle not

one

soon as possible; to destroy

final great

heave. This

was how

this

his

thoughts ran. In the insomniac nights in his bunker, he was not just wanting to erase the

memories of the

hardly wait for the

new

crisis-ridden cold, dark months.

offensive in the east to start

-

He

could

the push to the

Caucasus, Leningrad, and Moscow, which would wrestle back the

initiative

500

HITLER I936-I945 once more.

3

It

would be

a colossal gamble.

Should

it fail,

the consequences

would be unthinkable. For those planning, daily

was

life

walk

Fuhrer Headquarters not preoccupied with military

in the

dull

and monotonous.

to the next village

Hitler's secretaries

would go

for a

and back. Otherwise, they whiled away the

hours. Chatting, a film in the evenings, and the obligatory gathering each

afternoon

Tea House and

in the

again for tea

late at night

day. 'Since the tea-party always consists of the

stimulation from

outside,

made up

same people, there

and nobody experiences anything on

is

the

no

a personal

level,'

Christa Schroeder wrote to a friend in February 1942, 'the conver-

sation

is

often apathetic and tedious, wearying, and irksome. Talk always

runs along the same vision of the world

monologues - outlining

lines.' Hitler's

- were reserved

his expansive

for lunch or the twilight hours.

At the

afternoon tea-gatherings, politics were never discussed. Anything connected

with the war was taboo. There was nothing but small-talk. Those present

had no independent views, or kept them

either

presence dominated. But

it

invariably tired, but found

it

seldom hard to

to go to bed. His entourage often

now

sleep.

did

much

The tedium for Occasionally, it was relieved

wished he would do

evenings by listening to records

He was

to animate.

His insomnia made him reluctant

those around him seemed at times incessant. in the

to themselves. Hitler's

so.

- Beethoven symphonies,

from Wagner, or Hugo Wolf's Lieder. Hitler would

listen

selections

with closed eyes.

But he always wanted the same records. His entourage knew the numbers

He would

off by heart. to

call out: 'Aida, last act,'

and someone would shout

one of the manservants: 'Number hundred-and-something.' 4

The war was

all

cocooned

that mattered to Hitler. Yet,

world of the Wolf's Lair, he was increasingly severed from at the front

and

at

Even towards those years, there

home. Detachment ruled out in his

own

entourage

was nothing resembling

all

who had

in the strange

its realities,

been with him for

human

many

real affection, let alone friendship;

genuine fondness was reserved only for his young Alsatian. 5 described the

both

vestiges of humanity.

being the previous autumn as no more than

lous "cosmic bacterium" (eine lacherliche "Weltraumbakterie")'

'.

He had 'a ridicu6

Human

and suffering was, thus, of no consequence to him. He never visited a field-hospital, nor the homeless after bomb-raids. He saw no massacres, went near no concentration camp, viewed no compound of starving prislife

oners-of-war. His enemies were in his eyes like vermin to be stamped out.

But

his

profound contempt for

human existence extended to his own people. made -

Decisions costing the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers were

LAST BIG perhaps

any

it

was only thus

make them - without

possible to

human plight. As he had

told

THROW

OF THE DICE

consideration for

Guderian during the winter

crisis, feelings

of sympathy and pity for the suffering of his soldiers had to be shut out.

7

For Hitler, the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed were merely an

and

abstraction, the suffering a necessary

justified sacrifice in the 'heroic

struggle' for the survival of the people.

Among ordinary soldiers, amid the brutality and barbarization, less heroic views of war could be encountered. in

One

peacetime, had attended the Party

soldier

on the eastern front who,

Nuremberg, mourned the

rallies at

death of a comrade at the end of January.

'Why must

struggle, victory, death!' he lamented.

the heroic death then the ideal of

this globe?.'

8

A

young

recruit

'Is

it

always

be: sacrifice,

from Cologne, by no means opposed

to the

regime, wrote in his diary a few weeks later, while in training in East Prussia before being sent to the eastern front: 'I'm convinced that, this really

had

a meaning,

more. But for what?

For what and for

I

whom

ties

knew

that

could and would voluntarily achieve

ask myself. For what and for

whom

all

much

must we perish?

be a slave? For what starve, freeze, and then finally

croak? For what? For what?

The

I

if I

A

9 thousand questions - no answer.'

which had bound a high proportion of the German population

to Hitler since 1933

were starting to loosen.

SD

reports

from

early 1942

still

declared that people craved shots of Hitler in the newsreels. 'A smile of the Fuhrer. His look

itself gives

us strength and courage again.' Such effusions

were mentioned as commonplace remarks. 10 But Hitler was becoming a remote

figure, a distant

warlord. His image had to be refashioned by

Goebbels to match the change which the Russian campaign had brought about.

The premiere

allowed Goebbels to

new

of his lavish stylize Hitler

film,

The Great King,

in early

1942

by association as a latter-day Frederick

the Great, isolated in his majesty, conducting a heroic struggle for his people

against mighty enemies

emerge triumphant.

11

It

and ultimately overcoming

was

a portrayal

and calamity to

which increasingly matched

self-image during the last years of the war.

Hitler's

12

But the changed image could do nothing to people's bonds with Hitler were to

crisis

alter reality: the

weaken immeasurably

German

as victories turned

into defeats, advances into retreats, expansion into contraction, as the death-toll

mounted

catastrophically, allies deserted,

widely recognized as leading to inevitable disaster. inexorably against Germany, Hitler cast around

all

and the war came to be

And

the

as the

more

war turned

for scapegoats.

501

502

HITLER 1936-1945

I

An early complication in Dr

Todt,

Fritz

1942 arose with the loss of his armaments minister,

in a fatal air-crash

on the morning of

8

February, soon after

taking off from the airfield at the Fiihrer Headquarters.

Todt had masterminded the building of the motorways and the Westwall 13 In March 1940 he had been been given the task, as a Reich for Hitler.

weapons and munitions. 14 Yet

Minister, of coordinating the production of

major

a further in his

had come

office

his

way

in July

1941 with the centralization

hands of control over energy and waterways.

15

In the second half of

German

signs of serious labour shortage in

industry

the year, as the

first

became

Todt was commissioned with organizing the mass deploy-

evident,

ment within Germany of Soviet prisoners-of-war and ers.

16

The accumulation of

indication of Hitler's high esteem for

was

civilian forced labour-

war economy was an Todt. This was reciprocated. Todt

offices pivotal to the

a convinced National Socialist.

massive armaments potential of the

But by

USA

late 1941, fully

and appalled

aware of the

at the logistical

incompetence of the Wehrmacht's economic planning during the eastern campaign, he had become deeply pessimistic, certain that the war could not be won.

17

His public statements naturally betrayed none of his private doubts. during December and January, he had taken the

with industry

in drastically rationalizing

production. Hitler,

who had

vital steps in

And

conjunction

and concentrating armaments

been made aware of the gross inefficiencies

in

weaponry and was anxious to maximize the turn-out of armaments during 1942, backed the changes. 18 The decisive alteration was to give greater scope and incentive to industry to improve its own efficiency the production of

armaments production from intervention from the military and Four- Year Plan Organization and some of the stifling bureaucratic as well as freeing

controls which had been imposed

on

19

that

At the same time, the priorities had been accorded the Luftwaffe and navy, when it was presumed the

war

in the east

the army.

On

would

easily

it.

and quickly be won, were reversed to favour

20

the

morning of 7 February, Todt flew to Rastenburg to put to which had arisen from his meeting a few days earlier with

Hitler proposals

representatives of the his

armaments

industries.

meeting with Hitler that afternoon

present,

is

21

What

else transpired

not known.

No

one

during

else

was

and no notes or minutes were made. Later speculation that Todt

THROW

LAST BIG demanded more

OF THE DICE

was prepared

extensive powers than Hitler

to grant him,

threatened resignation, or expounded defeatist views on the war rested on 22 guesswork and some unreliable evidence. But the meeting was plainly

anything but harmonious. In depressed mood, and after a restless night,

Todt His

left

next morning to head for

own

plane, a Junkers 52,

borrowed

the Heinkel

the Luftwaffe.

It

test-flight shortly

-

Munich

twin-engined Heinkel in.

in a

was currently under

and he had - from

repair,

the personal plane of Field-Marshal Sperrle

was flown by Todt's usual before take-off.

pilot,

who

took

it

on

a brief

23

Shortly after leaving the runway, the plane turned abruptly, headed to

land again, burst into flames, and crashed. others

An

The bodies

of

Todt and four

on board were yanked with long poles from the burning wreckage.

official

inquiry ruled out sabotage.

24

But suspicion was never

fully

2i

What caused the crash remained a mystery. Hitler, according to witnesses who saw him at close quarters, was deeply moved by the loss of Todt, whom, it was said, he still greatly admired and needed for the war allayed.

economy. 26 Even

if,

as

was

later often claimed, the

breach between him and

Todt had become irreparable on account of the Armaments Minister's forcefully expressed conviction that the

altogether obvious

why

Hitler

war could not be won,

would have been so desperate

having Todt killed in an arranged air-crash

at his

circumstances guaranteed to prompt suspicion.

Had

own

it

is

not

as to resort to

headquarters in

he been insistent upon

dispensing with Todt's services, 'retirement' on ill-health grounds would

have offered a simpler solution. The only obvious beneficiary from Todt's demise was the successor Hitler

now

appointed with remarkable haste: his

highly ambitious court architect, Albert Speer. But Speer's relationship with

Todt had been

excellent.

And

the only 'evidence' later used to hint at any

involvement by Speer was his presence

in the Fiihrer

Headquarters

at the

time of the crash and his rejection, a few hours before the planned departure, of an offer of a that killed

lift

in

Todt's aeroplane.

Todt - and

the speed with

hushed up naturally fuelled suspicion the second rank of Nazi leaders

and a personal favourite of the

27

Whatever the cause of the crash

which Hitler had the investigation it

brought Albert Speer,

and known only

had rested on shrewd exploitation of

the would-be architect Hitler's building mania, coupled with his

ambition and undoubted organizational

me,

and has a

intelligent,

spirit

then in

Fiihrer, into the foreground.

Speer's meteoric rise in the 1930s

artist

till

as Hitler's court-architect

own driving

talent. Hitler liked Speer.

akin to mine,' he said. 'He

is

'He

is

an

a building-person like

modest, and not an obstinate military-head.'

28

Speer later

503

504

HITLER 1936-1945 remarked that he was the nearest Hitler came to having a Speer was in exactly the right place

-

close to Hitler

29

friend.

- when

Now,

a successor to

Todt was needed. Six hours after the Reich Minister's sudden death, Speer 30 was appointed to replace him in all his offices. The appointment came as a surprise to many - including, if we are to take his own version of accounts at face value, Speer himself.

Todt

in construction

31

But Speer was certainly anticipating succeeding

work - and

possibly more.

32

At any

rate,

he

lost

no

time in using Hitler's authority to establish for himself more extensive

powers than Todt had ever enjoyed. battle his

33

Speer would soon enough have to

way through the jungle of rivalries and

intrigues

which constituted

the governance of the Third Reich. But once Hitler, the day after returning to Berlin for Todt's state funeral

on 12 February

(at

which he himself

delivered the oration as his eyes welled with, perhaps crocodile, tears),

armaments production

publicly backed Speer's supremacy in

armaments

to leaders of the

thirty-eight years of age,

practically initiated,

on

his

what

found that

wanted'.

I

adding his

industries, the

3j

'I

new

minister,

in a

still

34

had

speech

not quite

could do within the widest limits

Building on the changes his predecessor had

own organizational flair and ruthless drive, and drawing

favoured standing with Hitler, Speer proved an inspired choice. Over

two years, despite intensified Allied bombing and the fortunes of war ebbing strongly away from Germany, he presided over a doubling of the next

armaments output. 36 Hitler

was

length with

full

of confidence

him during his

when Goebbels had

the chance to speak at

stay in Berlin following Todt's funeral. After the

travails of the winter, the Dictator

had reason

to feel as

if

the corner

was

turned. During the very days that he

was

two mighty blows

Three German battleships, Gneisenau,

to their prestige.

in Berlin the British

were suffering

Scharnhorst, and Prinz Eugen, had steamed out of Brest and, under the very noses of the British, passed through the English Channel with minimal

damage, heading for

safer

moorings

at

Wilhelmshaven and

Kiel. Hitler

could scarcely contain his delight. 37 At the same time, the news was coming in

from the Far East of the imminent

admiration for the Japanese. 38 But British

were losing

their

fall it

of Singapore. Hitler expressed his

was tinged with

a feeling that the

Empire when they could have accepted

his 'offer'

and fought alongside instead of against Germany. 'This is wonderful, though perhaps also sad, news,' he had said to the Romanian leader Antonescu a few days

on the said.

earlier.

fall

39

He

told

Ribbentrop not to overdo the pronouncements

of Singapore. 'We've got to think in centuries,' he apparently

'One day the showdown with the yellow race

will come.'

40

Goebbels

LAST BIG

THROW

OF THE DICE

noted a degree of resignation that the Japanese advances meant 'the driving-

back of the white man'

Far East.

in the

41

But, despite his racial prejudices,

Hitler took a pragmatic view. 'I'm accused of sympathizing with the Japanese,' his secretary recalled

him

'What does sympathizing mean? The

saying.

Japanese are yellow-skinned and slit-eyed. But they are fighting against the 42 Americans and English, and so are useful to Germany.' His enemy's enemy

was

words.

his friend, in other

Most

of

all,

Hitler

was content about

the prospects in the East.

The

problems of winter had been overcome, and important lessons learned. 'Troops

who

can cope with such a winter are unbeatable,' Goebbels noted.

Now the great thaw had set in.

'The Fiihrer

is

planning a few very hard and

crushing offensive thrusts, which are already in good measure prepared

and

will doubtless lead gradually to the

conveyed the same enthusiasm

in a

smashing of Bolshevism.'

on

The world had been

15 February.

opposed to Frederick the Great and Bismarck. 'Today, be this enemy,' he declared, 'because the

German

Hitler

morale-boosting speech to almost 10,000

trainee officers in the Sportpalast

power out of

43

I

am

I

have the honour to

attempting to create a world

He was proud beyond measure

Reich.'

that

Providence had given him the opportunity to lead the 'inevitable struggle'.

They should be proud

him

to be part of such

He

a rapturous reception.

and wild cheering ringing

left

momentous

events.

total

backing of

his

in his ears.

4

^

He

returned to his headquarters

young officers and men. For

by Hitler's rhetoric, the newly commissioned ness of

what awaited them on

They gave

the huge hall with storms of applause

assured as ever that, whatever his problems with the High

had the

44

officers

Command,

their part,

had

little

he

enthused

real

aware-

active service in the east.

II

On

15

winter

March, Hitler was back again

made

it

in Berlin.

essential that he attend the

Memorial Day. Only

commemoration of

at the

end of

the dead. For the

The

serious losses over the

midday ceremony on Heroes'

his speech did Hitler

come

to the

most part he offered no more than

his

usual regurgitation of the responsibility of the 'Jewish-capitalist world

war and heroization of the struggle - aimed, he asserted, portrayed the previous months as a struggle above elements in a winter the like of which had not been seen for

conspirators' for the at a lasting peace. all

against the

46

He

almost a century and a

half.

47

'But one thing

we know

today,' he declared.

505

506

HITLER 1936-1945 'The Bolshevik hordes, which were unable to defeat the

and

their allies this winter, will

summer.

German

be beaten by us into annihilation

soldiers

this

coming

,40

Many people were

too concerned about the rumoured reductions in food

pay much attention to the speech.

rations to

food supplies had reached

a critical

49

Goebbels was well aware that

point and that

it

would need

a

'work

of art' to put across to the people the reasons for the reductions.

acknowledged that the cuts would lead to a

'crisis in

Propaganda Minister to

ration-cuts

were announced.

his 32

He

the internal mood'.

Hitler, in full recognition of the sensitivity of the situation,

the

30

51

had summoned

headquarters to discuss the issue before

Goebbels had so many problems to bring to

knew where he should begin. 53 His view was that the deterioration in morale at home demanded tough measures to counter it. People would understand the hardships of war if they fell equally on all the population. But as it was - Goebbels's own class resentments Hitler's attention that he scarcely

came

strongly into play

- the

better-off

were able through the black market

and 'connections' to avoid serious deprivations. Goring had signed a law banning the black market. But

its

severity

had been reduced through the

intervention of the Economics Minister. Goebbels the matter to the Fiihrer,

was determined

to take

and hoped for the support of Bormann and the

more radical measures. 54 On his return to Berlin on 18 March after some days away in the 'Ostmark'

Party in getting Hitler to intervene to back

and Bavaria, Goebbels had been appalled station

where

soldiers travelling to the eastern front

in the corridors

naturally

was

a

had

at a 'scandalous scene' in the

were having to stand

of trains 'while fine ladies, returning sunburnt from holiday,

What was needed, he against known National

their sleeping-compartments'.

law under which

'all

offences

principles of leadership of the people in

war

will be

claimed, Socialist

punished with corre-

sponding retribution'. 53 That, too, he was going to put before Hitler during his visit to the Fiihrer

a radical

Headquarters. But Goebbels

approach to the law, necessary

in total

by representatives of the formal legal system.

demands

felt that, as

things were,

war, was being sabotaged

He approved of Bormann's And he took it

for tougher sentences for black-marketeering. 56

upon himself to

press Hitler to change the leadership of the Justice Ministry, which since Gurtner's death the previous year had been run by the State Secretary, Franz Schlegelberger. 'The bourgeois elements

still

dominate

there,'

he commented, 'and since the heavens are high and the Fiihrer far

away,

it's

listlessly

extraordinarily difficult to succeed against these stubborn and working authorities.' 57 It was in this mood - determined to persuade

THROW

LAST BIG

Hitler to support radical measures, attack privilege,

bureaucracy (above

judges and lawyers)

all

-

OF THE DICE

and castigate the

state

that Goebbels arrived at the

58 Wolf's Lair on the ice-cold morning of 19 March.

He met a Hitler showing clear signs of the strain he had been under during the past months, in a state of

in

Germany, and

mind

that

left

He needed no

Goebbels's radical suggestions.

him more than open

instruction about the

the impact the reduction in food rations

to

mood

would have. 59

Lack of transport prevented food being brought from the Ukraine, he complained. The Transport Ministry was blamed for the shortage of locomotives.

He was

determined to take tough measures. Goebbels then

lost

no

time in berating the 'failure' of the judicial system. Hitler did not demur.

Here, too, he was determined to proceed with 'the toughest measures'.

Goebbels paraded before Hitler

his suggestion for a

new comprehensive law

to punish offenders against the 'principles of National Socialist leadership

of the people'.

He wanted the Reich Ministry of Justice placed in new hands,

and pressed for Otto Thierack,

real

'a

National

Socialist',

an SA-

Gruppenfiihrer, and currently President of the notorious People's Court {Volksgerichtshof)

- responsible

for dealing with cases of treason

serious offences against the regime

Five

months

wanted, and,

later, Hitler

would make

in Thierack's

the police state

-

and other

to take the place left by Gurtner.

the appointment that Goebbels

60

had

hands, the capitulation of the judicial system to

would become complete. 61

For now, Hitler placated Goebbels with a suggestion to prepare the

ground for and having evil-doers

a radical assault it

on

bestow upon him

know

that he

is

social privilege

'a special

by recalling the Reichstag

plenipotentiary power' so that 'the

covered in every

way by the

people's community'.

Given the powers which Hitler already possessed, the motive was purely populist.

An

in society

-

functions'

attack

on the

or, as Hitler

- could not

fail

servants and judges, and

civil

put

it,

'saboteurs'

to be popular with the masses.

judges could not be dismissed

still

the privileged

Up

in public

to this point,

- not even by the Fuhrer. There were

too, to his rights of intervention in the military sphere.

General Erich Hoepner

upon

and 'neglecters of duty

The

limits,

case of Colonel-

rankled deeply. Hitler had sacked Hoepner in

January and dismissed him from the army

in disgrace for retreating in

disobedience to his 'Halt Order'. Hoepner had then instituted a law-suit against the Reich over the loss of his pension rights

new powers, military

and

this

could never happen

again.

- and won. With Hitler's

Examples could be

set in the

and

'clear the

civilian sector to serve as deterrents to others

507

508

HITLER 1936-1945 'In

such a mood,' wrote Goebbels the next day, 'my suggestions for the

radicalization of our war-leadership naturally effect

on the

Fiihrer.

I

way. Everything that

had an absolutely

only need to touch a topic and I

put forward individually

by the Fiihrer without contradiction.'

is

I

positive

have already got

my

accepted piece for piece

63

The encouragement of Hitler to back

the radicalization of the home-front

continued after Goebbels's return from the Wolf's Lair. Apart from the

Propaganda Minister,

On

26 March, the

SD

it

came

in particular

reported on a

failure of the state to take a

'crisis

from Bormann and Himmler.

of confidence' resulting from the

tough enough stance against black-marketeers

and their corrupt customers among the well-placed and privileged. Himmler, it it.

seems, had directly prompted the report;

Three days

publicizing

two

was on

It

later,

audience in

Bormann made

Hitler

Goebbels castigated black-marketeering

instances of the death-penalty being imposed

in

on

aware of

Das Reich, profiteers.

64

same evening, that of 29 March, Hitler treated his small the Wolf's Lair to a prolonged diatribe on lawyers and the this

deficiencies of the legal system, concluding that 'every jurist

by nature, or would become so

in time'.

must be defective

65

This was only a few days after he had personally intervened in a blind rage with acting Justice Minister Schlegelberger and, tory, with the

more eagerly compliant Roland

when he proved

Freisler (later the

dila-

infamous

President of the People's Court as successor to Thierack but at this time

Second State Secretary for a

in the Justice Ministry), to insist

man named Ewald

Schlitt.

on the death penalty

This was on no more solid basis than the

reading of a sensationalized account in a Berlin evening paper of

Oldenburg court had sentenced for a horrific physical assault

had

- according

led to the death of his wife in

because

it

how

an

Schlitt to only five years in a penitentiary

to the

newspaper account - that

an asylum. The court had been lenient

took the view that Schlitt had been temporarily deranged.

Schlegelberger lacked the courage to present the case fully to Hitler, and to

defend the judges

at the

same

time. Instead, he promised to

severity of sentencing. Freisler

wishes.

The

original sentence

had no compunction

was overturned.

In a

new

in

improve the

meeting Hitler's

hearing, Schlitt

was

duly sentenced to death, and guillotined on 2 April. 66

had been so enraged by what he had read on the Schlitt case which matched all his prejudices about lawyers and fell precisely at the time Hitler

when the judicial system was being made the scapegoat for the difficulties on the home front - that he had privately threatened, should other 'excessively lenient' sentences be

produced,

'to

send the Justice Ministry to the devil

THROW

LAST BIG through a Reichstag law'. service as a pretext to

law

67

As

OF THE DICE

was, the Schlitt case was brought into

it

demand from

the Reichstag absolute powers over the

itself.

on 23 April

Hitler rang Goebbels

to

deliver the speech to the Reichstag he

him

tell

had

for long

undertook to make the necessary arrangements to for 3p.m.

on Sunday, 26

April.

had now decided to

that he

had

in

mind. Goebbels

summon

the Reichstag

68

Goebbels went round to the Reich Chancellery for lunch shortly Hitler's arrival in Berlin at

and feeling

in

good form, though

in a

of air-defences to protect the Heinkel

bombing

raid, following the

a devastating attack

criticism

and

its

25th.

works

in

Rostock from damage

in a

opening of the British bombing offensive with

on Liibeck

from the Luftwaffe

after

He found him looking well particularly sour mood at the failure

midday on the

at the

end of March.

69

Hitler extended his

to the lack of initiative of the

lack of any 'leadership of stature'.

70

'unmodern' navy

But, as regards the eastern front,

he was confident that the lessons of the winter had been learned and

coming

of optimism about the

offensive,

preparation. Reports had been handed to

cannibalism

among

and the abysmal

level of

- something he would Union was almost on

Germany would

army and

the

civilian

now him

in

and

detailing starvation

population of the Soviet Union,

equipment of the Red Army's

soldiers.

persistently claim throughout 1942 its last legs.

full

an advanced stage of

Goebbels was clearly

attain decisive successes in the

-

71

It

seemed

that the Soviet

less certain that

summer. And Hitler himself

gave an indication that total victory in the east would not be attained in 1942, speaking of building a

when

supplies for the

more

German

solid line of defence in the

He soon launched into one of his favourite obsessions Much of the remainder of the 'discussion' consisted of a dangers of meat-eating.

73

coming winter,

troops would no longer pose a problem.

In the war, Hitler

vegetarianism. lecture

remarked, there was

done about upturning eating methods. But he intended

72

on the

little

to see to the

to be

problem

once the war was over. Similarly with the question of the Christian Churches

- one of Goebbels's pet themes, which he brought up once more:

it

was

commented Hitler, not to react to the 'seditious' showdown' would be saved for a 'more advantage74 war' when he would have to come as the 'avenger'.

necessary for the time being, actions of the clergy; 'the

ous situation after the

In a shortened lunch next day, just before Hitler's Reichstag speech, a

good deal of the renewed

British

talk revolved

raid - the

around the devastation of Rostock

heaviest so far.

Much of the

housing

in a

in the centre

of the Baltic harbour-town had been destroyed. But the Heinkel factory had

509

5IO

HITLER 1936-I945 lost

only an estimated 10 per cent of

retaliation to British raids

productive capacity.

its

75

had consisted of attacks on Exeter and Bath.

Goebbels favoured the complete devastation of English 'cultural Hitler, furious at the

German

centres'.

76

new attack on Rostock, agreed, according to Goebbels's

account. Terror had to be answered with terror. English 'cultural centres', seaside resorts,

and 'bourgeois towns' would be razed to the ground. The

psychological impact of this

- and

that

was

the key thing

- would be

far

greater than that achieved through mostly unsuccessful attempts to hit

armaments

factories.

German bombing would now

had already given out the such

lines.

begin in a big way.

He

directive to prepare a lengthy plan of attack

on

77

Goebbels raised - during the midday meal, not the 'Jewish Question' once more.

By

this

in private discussion

time some

if

not

all

—

of the

slaughterhouses in Poland were in operation. Hitler's remarks remained, as always, menacingly unspecific.

He

briefly restated,

his 'pitiless {unerbittlichy stance: 'he

of Europe'. this

meant.

The Propaganda Minister knew,

He

had, after

unmistakable terms in his

now

added.

Why

Hitler

subject of

as did other 'insiders',

referred to the liquidation of the

all,

own

what

Jews

in

month earlier. 78 The on the Jews was 'still too mild',

diary entry only a

'hardest punishment' that could be inflicted

he

according to Goebbels,

wants to drive the Jews absolutely out

79

had chosen

much

this

moment

speculation and

But the background to

it

summon

the Reichstag

and the coming assault on the

was

judicial

80

afternoon. Hitler spoke for

the

system

secrets. What turned out to be the last German Reichstag began punctually at 3p.m.

remained closely guarded session of the Great

to

rumour among the mass of the population.

little

over an hour.

He was

nervous

ever that

at the

beginning, starting hesitantly, then speaking so fast that parts of his speech

were scarcely

81

Much

was taken up with the usual longwinded account of the background to the war. This was followed by a description of the struggle through the previous winter - with a strong hint intelligible.

of

it

war would not be over before a new winter had to be faced. 82 He then came to the centrepoint of his address. He implied that transport, that the

administration, and justice had been found lacking. There

was

a side-swipe

(without naming names) at General Hoepner: 'no one can stand on their well-earned rights', but had to

know

'that

today there are only

duties'.

He

requested from the Reichstag, therefore, 'the express confirmation that

I

possess the legal right to hold each one to fulfilment of his duties' with rights to dismiss

from

office

without respect to 'acquired

rights'.

Using the

Schlitt

LAST BIG

THROW

case as his example, he launched into a savage attack

From now

judiciary.

'who

dismiss judges

As soon

as Hitler

visibly fail to recognize the

had

on the

would intervene

on, he said, he

finished speaking,

OF THE DICE failings of the

such cases and

in

demands of

the hour'.

83

Goring read out the 'Resolution

(BeschlufiY of the Reichstag. This unusual

form of decree -

a proposal by

members of the Reichstag - had then composed, by Lammers at breakneck speed before the

the Reichstag President for approval by the

been suggested,

session in order to obviate any constitutional problems but also to underline

powers

the formal granting by the popular assembly of such far-reaching Hitler.

84

to

According to the 'Resolution', Hitler was empowered 'without

being bound to existing legal precepts', in his capacity as 'Leader of the

Nation, Supreme

Commander

of the Wehrmacht,

Head

of

Government

and supreme occupant of executive power, as supreme law-lord (oberster Gerichtsberr) and as Leader of the Party' (the last an addition specifically inserted by

Lammers), to remove from

status, failing to carry

office

and punish anyone, of whatever

out his duty, without respect to pensionable rights,

and without any stipulated formal proceedings. 85 Naturally, the 'Resolution' of constitutionality

Many

was unanimously approved. 86 The

had been torn

apart. Hitler

now was

last

shreds

the law.

people were surprised that Hitler needed any extension of his

powers. They wondered what had gone on that had prompted his scathing attacks that

on the

internal administration.

no immediate actions appeared

judges,

and

civil

Disappointment was soon registered

to follow his strong words.

87

Lawyers,

servants were not unnaturally dismayed by the assault

on

and standing. What had caused it was in their eyes a The Fiihrer had evidently, they thought, been crassly misin88 formed. The consequences were, however, unmistakable. As the head of the judiciary in Dresden pointed out, with the ending of all judicial autonomy Germany had now become a 'true Fiihrer state'. 89 their professions

mystery.

Hitler could ignore the predictable lamentations

from judges and lawyers

who, with few exceptions, would nevertheless continue

to

comply with

demanded of them. In futile attempts to defend status and would more readily than ever bend over backwards to accommodate every inhumane initiative, thereby undermining precisely what they hoped to preserve - a state based upon the rule of law, however everything

authority, they

harsh, and the

power of

Hitler's populist instincts

the judiciary to interpret

and impose that law.

had not deserted him. Less elevated

the population enthused over his assault

on rank and

sections of

privilege.

90

This

had successfully allowed him to divert attention from more fundamental

511

512

HITLER 1936-1945 questions about the failures of the previous winter and to provide a much-

needed morale-booster through easy attacks on cheap After his speech, Hitler,

warmed by

targets.

the euphoria in the Reichstag, the

enthusiasm of the crowds lining the streets back to the Reich Chancellery,

and the fawning congratulations of his entourage, could

relax, look

forward

to a break in his alpine retreat, and unfold his plans for the great refashioning

of Linz into Hhe city on the Danube', a cultural metropolis to outshine

Vienna.

91

For the mass of the German people, only the prospect of the peace that final victory

would bring could

sustain morale for any length of time.

Many

'despondent souls', ran one Party report on the popular mood, were 'struck only by one part of the Fuhrer's speech: where he spoke of the preparations for the winter

campaign of 1942-43. The more the homeland has become

aware of the cruelty and hardship of the winter struggle

more

the longing for an end to

in sight.

Many

briefly raised

way

it

has increased. But

now

wives and mothers are suffering as a

in the east, the

the end

result.'

92

is still

not

The hopes

by the successes of the summer offensive would rapidly give

to despair in the calamities that the

coming autumn and winter would

bring.

Ill

Hours

after his Reichstag speech, Hitler left for

Berghof and a meeting with Mussolini.

He was

Munich, en route in

expansive

lunchtime at his favourite Munich restaurant, the Osteria. 93

to the

mood

next

He held forth to

Hermann Giesler, one of his favoured architects, and his companion-in-arms from the old days of the Party's early struggles in Munich, Hermann Esser, on

his plans for

double-decker express trains to run at 200 kilometres an hour on four-metre-wide tracks between Upper Silesia and the Donets Basin. Naturally, there

would be

difficulties in

bringing about this

he admitted, but one should not be put off by them.

94

rail

Two

programme,

days

later, at a

snow-covered Berghof with Eva Braun acting as hostess, he was regaling his supper guests with complaints about the lack of top Wagnerian tenors in

Germany, and the deficiencies of leading conductors Bruno Walter and Hans Knappertsbusch. Walter, a Jew who had become renowned as the director of the Bavarian State Opera and Leipziger Gewandhaus before being forced out by the Nazis in 1933 an^ emigrating to America, was an 'absolute nonentity', claimed Hitler,

who had

ruined the orchestra of the

LAST BIG Vienna State Opera to the extent that music'.

it

THROW

was capable only of playing

Although Walter's arch-rival Knappertsbusch,

had the appearance of

a

OF THE DICE

model 'aryan' male,

tall,

'beer

blond, blue-eyed,

listening to

him conduct an

punishment' to Hitler's mind, as the orchestra drowned out

opera was

'a

the singing

and the conductor performed such gyrations that

was painful

it

Only Wilhelm Furtwangler, who had turned the

to look at him.

Berlin

Philharmonic into such an outstanding, magnificent orchestra, one of the regime's most important cultural ambassadors, and acknowledged maestro in

conducting the Fiihrer's

and Wagner, met with

own

favourite Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner,

his unqualified approval.

Between monologues, he had had

93

'discussions' with Mussolini in the

baroque Klessheim Castle, once a residence of the Prince Bishops of Salzburg,

now luxuriously refurbished with furniture and carpets removed from

France to

was

make a Nazi guest-house and conference-centre. 96 The atmosphere looked tired to Ciano, and bearing the signs of the strains

cordial. Hitler

of the winter. His hair, Ciano noticed,

was turning

grey. Hitler's

aim was to convey optimism to Mussolini about the war

primary

in the east.

97

Ribbentrop's message to Ciano, in their separate meeting, was no different:

had mastered the

the 'genius of the Fiihrer'

evils of the

Russian winter; a

coming offensive towards the Caucasus would deprive Russia of fuel, bring the conflict to an end,

amounted

The

and force Britain to terms;

to 'a colossal bluff'.

talks continued the next day,

the Berghof.

How much

British

hopes from America

98

now

with military leaders present, at

of a genuine discussion there

Ciano's description: 'Hitler talks, talks, talks,

talks,'

was

and forty minutes. Mussolini, used himself to dominating had to suffer

is

plain

from

non-stop for an hour all

conversation,

in silence, occasionally casting a surreptitious glance at his

watch. Ciano switched off and thought of other things. Keitel yawned and struggled to keep awake. Jodl did not

on a

finally fell asleep

sofa.

99

manage

apparently, satisfied with the meetings. In reality, they

had no concrete

a rosy-hued account of the

industrial capacity

Red Army had

had

war

assumption that

if

'after

an epic

100

results. Hitler

had, as usual, begun with

fallen sharply

and that the military

He drew

North

Africa.

calibre of the

the conclusion, typically, that

way become worse, but only

better'.

101

He

'it

repeated his

Russia were defeated, Britain's hopes would have gone.

But he went on to indicate the dangers of a British landing in

struggle', he

in the east, giving the impression that Soviet

also diminished.

can therefore in no

it:

Mussolini, overawed as always by Hitler, was,

With

either eventuality in

in the west, or

mind, there was need, he urged,

513

514

HITLER 1936-1945 for great caution in dealing with France,

opportunistic. In

North Africa,

would support an

it

whose collaboration was merely

had to be reckoned that the French colonies

The Axis powers had

Allied invasion.

therefore to be

ready, he stressed to Mussolini, to seize unoccupied France at any critical

moment.

Hitler

was half-hearted about the

assault

on Malta. As

priority

was

coming North African an attack on Malta. the

102

what

limited support he could to

Back

His eyes were, however, on the declared.

own

forth-

east.

That

is

where

103

at the Berghof, after the Italian party

how

his

Rommel's

soon to be launched. This had to precede

offensive,

war on land would be decided, he

lunchtime ensemble

an early

Mediterranean was concerned,

far as the

to provide

Italians' plans for

had

Hitler told his

left,

impressed he had been by

Hermann

Giesler's

spacious refurbishment of Klessheim. 'Generous ideas' about spaciousness

needed to be incorporated by architects into town-planning

Then

the higgledy-piggledy housing complexes of

Bitterfeld

in

Germany.

Zwickau, Gelsenkirchen,

and other towns 'without any culture' could be avoided.

'It

was,

was recorded as stating, 'to see to it that the smallest town and that as a result the

therefore, his firm resolution,' he

comes even

a bit of culture

into

appearance of our towns slowly reaches an ever-higher

A

week

sive.

The

later, first

directive of 5

on

8

targets for

April,

Wehrmacht began Manstein's nth Army,

May,

the

its

level.'

104

planned spring offen-

as laid

down

in Hitler's

were the Kerch peninsula and Sevastopol

in

the

Crimea. l0S The directive stipulated the drive on the Caucasus, to capture the oil-fields

and occupy the mountain passes that opened the route to the

main goal of the summer offensive

Persian Gulf, as the

named

'Blue'.

The removal

weakened over the winter - would, east.

must

it

- thought

I

don't get the

oil

of

factor

Maykop and

finish {liquidieren) this war.'

catastrophically

was presumed, bring

There, Hitler had reasserted in planning the

war would be decided. 106 The key oil. 'If

war-economy and

of the basis of the Soviet

the destruction of remaining military forces

to follow, code-

summer

was no longer

And

Fiihrer'.

108

It

but

Grozny,' Hitler admitted, 'then

I

107

contradict the

any case, they had no better alternative to recommend.

the lack of a coordinated

tition for Hitler's

operations, the

'living space',

The Wehrmacht and Army High Commands did not strategic priority. In

victory in the

command

structure meant, as before,

compe-

approval - a military version of 'working towards the

was not

a matter of Hitler

imposing a dictat on

leaders. Despite his full recognition of the gravity of the

his military

German

losses over

the winter, Haider entirely backed the decision for an all-out offensive to

THROW

LAST BIG 109

destroy the basis of the Soviet economy.

bore his clear imprint.

110

And

The

OF THE DICE

April directive for 'Blue'

despite the magnitude of their miscalculation

the previous year, operational planners, fed by highly flawed intelligence, far

from working on the

backed the

basis of a 'worst-case-scenario',

opti111

mism about

the military and economic weakness of the Soviet Union. Whatever the presumptions of Soviet losses - on which German intelligence remained woefully weak - the Wehrmacht's own strength, as Haider

knew only too well, had been drastically weakened. Over a million of the 3.2 million men who had attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 were by

now

of

army

Hitler

dead, captured, or missing. divisions

were

on 21 April were

lost since the

112

At the end of March, only

chilling in the

5

per cent

113

The figures that Haider gave extreme. Some 900,000 men had been

fully operational.

autumn, only 50 per cent replaced (including the call-up of

all

and serious inroads into the labour-force

at

available twenty-year-olds,

home). Only around 10 per cent of the vehicles

weapons were

had been replaced

lost

(though most of the losses of tracked vehicles could be

made good) Losses of .

At the beginning of the spring offensive, the

also massive.

was short of around 625,000 men. 114 Given such massive everything was poured into bolstering the southern offensive

eastern front

short-

ages,

in the

Soviet Union. forty-eight

Of the sixty-eight divisions established on this part of the front,

had been

entirely,

and seventeen

Poor Soviet intelligence meant the Red the

German

assault

when

it

came.

116

at least partly, reconstituted.

Army was

115

again unprepared for

By 19 May, the Kerch offensive was and a great deal of booty.

largely over, with the capture of 150,000 prisoners

A heavy Soviet counter on Kharkhov had been, if with difficulty, successfully fended in a

off.

117

By the end of May,

notable victory,

men and owing

a

the battle at

to Hitler's refusal, fully endorsed

Bock, since mid-January

Hitler

Commander

and take up

had reason to

feel

hours behind closed doors

118

This was

of

Army Group

a defensive position.

no small measure

South, to break off 119

when he spoke

for

two

Reich Chancellery to the Reichsleiter and

May. He had come

of Carl Rover, Gauleiter of Weser-Ems, which 120

in

by Haider, to allow Field-Marshal

pleased with himself

in the

Gauleiter on the afternoon of 23

day.

also resulted

with three Soviet armies destroyed, and over 200,000

huge quantity of booty captured.

the planned offensive

Kharkhov had

After a difficult period, also on the

to Berlin for the funeral

had taken place the previous

home front, he evidently could not

miss the opportunity to bolster the solidarity and loyalty of his long-standing Party stalwarts, a vital part of his power-base.

was prepared

to speak with

some candour about

And

in

such company, he

his aims.

515

516

HITLER 1936-1945

One

was the

of these

comrade

as

Party's

own work. The

death of such a valued

Rover was an indication that successors

now

generation,

for Party leaders of his

aged between forty-five and sixty years old

dead

(the

Gauleiter had been born in 1889), needed to be cultivated. But they

would

not be able to tackle problems which the 'sworn community' of the original Party leadership had eschewed. of time and mortality.

fully solved.

no one

else

off.

He hoped

would be

his usual fixation

They had been destined

problems which the National

Nothing must be put

was

It

war

transport, the judiciary,

its difficulties.

in the east.

and the

He

this

was

leaders

had

He was

described the winter

civil service.

122

lost their nerve in this situation.

the gist of his remarks

front, the counter to their 'insidious'

- had, through

and for the Party

124

He

123

He had

praise for

backbone of the home

He was

determined, after

behaviour during the winter, he said, doubtless playing here to

him by Goebbels and

the other Gauleiter, to

mA

revolution against the

destroy the Christian Churches after the war.

regime would never occur, he declared,

He had

given

if

rebellious elements

Himmler express

were dealt

orders, should there be a

danger of the Reich 'sinking into chaos', to 'shoot the criminals concentration camps'.

Hitler said he recognized in Stalin a

'man of

stature

Anglo-Saxon powers'.

Goebbels reported him as saying,

'that the

who towered above He naturally knew,

Jews are determined under

circumstances to bring this war to victory for them, since they

means

for

in all

126

the democratic figures of the

defeat also

Some -

alone

his unyielding refusal of

as the

doubts and pessimism.

on the many complaints fed

with in time.

crisis,

Japan's intervention had facing catastrophe.

requests to retreat, prevented 'a Napoleonic debacle'. the Waffen-SS in the east,

convinced that

121

Wehrmacht, the organizers of

when Germany was

been a blessing, at a time

to the fore.

inconvenient, the issues must be success-

able to master

Hitler turned to the

army

had brought

himself to survive the war.

castigating the failings of the leaders of the

established

(auserseben) to solve the

Socialist revolution

However

with the question

know

all

that

them personal liquidation'. It was a more forthright - on this occasion unmistakably and explicitly

version of his 'prophecy' linking

it,

in

Goebbels's understanding of what was intended, with the

physical liquidation of the Jews. 127 Hitler emphasized that the

war

in the past. It

was not

war

in the east

was not comparable with any

a simple matter of victory or defeat, but of

'triumph or destruction {Triumph oder UntergangY

He was aware of the enormous capacity of the American armaments programme. But the scale .

THROW

LAST BIG no way be

of output claimed by Roosevelt 'could in

right'.

information on the scale of Japanese naval construction.

American navy when

serious losses for the 128

He

fleet.

took the view 'that

now

Preparations were

Union

Soviet

He

enemy's

oil supplies.

And he had good He reckoned on

clashed with the Japanese

it

we have won

winter

launch the offensive

in place to

to cut off the

off the Soviets in

in the past

OF THE DICE

in the

the war'.

south of the

He was determined to

finish

129 the coming summer.

who had

looked to the future. His vision was very familiar to those

been his lunch or supper guests in the Wolf's Lair. Hitler was frank about his imperialist aims.

gaining coal, grain,

The Reich would massively extend

oil,

and above

all

its

land in the east,

national security. In the west, too, the

Reich would have to be strengthened. The French would 'have to bleed for that'.

But there

it

was

a strategic, not

an ethnic, question. 'We must solve

Once

the ethnic {volkiscben) questions in the east.' the consolidation of

Europe was

in

German hands,

build a gigantic fortification, like the limes of

from Europe. He went on with farmer-soldiers, building

up

a

should not be

difficult,

later generations gaining

would be

sacrifice of

from

to acquire a

coffee, 'our colonial territory

would

is

it

It

blood could only be

The National

Socialist

waving

justified

cornfields.'

few colonies to provide rubber or

in the east.

the future with the vaguest notion of

that the

by

also be the actual

the blessing of

There are to be found

fertile

He ended

his vision of

what he understood

as a social

black earth and iron, the bases of our future wealth.'

A new

separate Asia

he claimed, to preserve the ethnic-German (volkisch)

meaning of this war. For the serious

revolution.

his intention to

safe against all future threats.

character of the conquered territories. 'That

it

was

his vision of a countryside settled

Then Germany would be

Nice though

it

Roman times, to

population of 250 million within seventy or

eighty years.

through

the territory needed for

Movement, he

had

said,

to

make

sure

war did not end in a capitalist victory, but in a victory of the people. would have to be constructed out of the victory, one resting

society

not on money, status, or name, but on courage and

(Bewahrung).

He was

'business in the east' 'then the

war

is

confident that victory

was

finished

practically

won

-

in the

for us.

test of

character

would be Germany's. Once summer,

Then we

it

was

to be

the

hoped -

will be in the position of

conducting a large-scale pirate-war against the Anglo-Saxon powers, which in the

long run they will not be able to withstand.'

Little

over a week

later, Hitler

was back

130

in Berlin again, this

ally,

he struck a different tone. But essentially

it

offered the

time to

May. Natursame images of

address around 10,000 young officers in the Sportpalast on 30

517

518

HITLER 1936-1945 and the power and prosperity of

the dire spectre of a Bolshevik victory

Kerch and Kharkov were, he told them, merely the

imperialist conquest. 'prelude' to

-

what was

to follow in the

succeed, he declared.

If

the

summer. Germany would - and must

enemy proved

victorious, then 'our

German

people would be exterminated (ausgerottet) Asiatic barbarity would plant .

itself in

German woman would

Europe. The

be

fair

game

for these beasts.

The intelligentsia would be slaughtered. Whatever gives us the characteristic features of a higher form of mankind would be exterminated and annihilated {vernicbtei)

Victory for the Reich, on the other hand, and the acquisition

.'

of 'living-space',

rubber, and Hitler in the

would

wood

had been

give future generations grain, iron, coal,

abundance.

in

in ebullient

mood when Goebbels saw him

Reich Chancellery on the day before his speech to the

the advance to the Caucasus, he told his

at

lunchtime

officers.

Propaganda Minister,

With be

'we'll

Adam's Apple.' 132 He thought the Kerch and Kharkov were not reparable; Stalin was

pressing the Soviet system so to say

new

oil, flax,

131

Soviet losses at

on

its

reaching the end of his resources; there were major difficulties with food-

was poor. 133 He had concrete

supplies in the Soviet Union; morale there

plans for the extension of the Reich borders also in the West. a matter of course that Belgium, with

Flanders and Brabant, would be split into

He

took

it

as

ancient Germanic provinces of

its

German

Reicksgaue. So would,

whatever the views of Dutch National Socialist leader Anton Mussert, the Netherlands.

Two

days

134

earlier,

on 27 May, one of

Hitler's

most important henchmen,

Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and since the previous

autumn Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, had been fatally wounded in an assassination attempt carried out by patriotic Czech exiles who had been flown from London - with the aid of the British subversive warfare agency, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - and parachuted into the vicinity of Prague. Heydrich's

morning, he

left his

own

palatial residence at

security

had become

lax.

That

Panenske Brezany, around twelve

miles from Prague, to drive to his headquarters at the

Hradcany Castle

in

the capital without bodyguard, in an open Mercedes, alone with his chauffeur.

He

always took the same route. The two assassins, and their comrade

who would was

serve as the look-out,

a little late leaving that

had observed him

morning.

It

was

regularly.

just after 10.30a.m.

Heydrich

when

the

look-out flashed the signal by mirror that his car was approaching the hairpin bend where it would be forced to slow down, and where the attempt would be made. As the car slowed, the first Czech agent, Josef Gabcik,

THROW

LAST BIG

OF THE DICE

stepped out, pulled a sten-gun from under his coat, and pressed the trigger.

The gun jammed. But Gabcik's companion, Jan Kubis, ran towards the car and lobbed his grenade at it. The bomb hit the back wheel and exploded. Heydrich, injured in the blast, tried to pursue his assailant, before collapsing. Kubis, also

wounded by

on

the explosion, escaped

Gabcik

a bicycle.

appeared on a crowded tram after shooting Heydrich's chauffeur

The look-out walked away

legs.

the

most powerful men

both

By the wrecked Mercedes, one of

quietly.

in Hitler's

in

dis-

Reich lay mortally injured.

13j

no doubt that the power would provoke a

Hitler always favoured brutal reprisals. There could be

on one of the key representatives of

attack

his

ferocious response.

The

assassins themselves

another Czech

SOE

were betrayed, for

a large

money reward, by

agent. Eventually trapped by the SS, they

committed

suicide after engaging in a gun-battle. But their deaths contributed

towards satiating the Nazi blood-lust.

To

this end,

little

over 1,300 Czechs, some

200 of them women, were eventually rounded up by the SS and executed.

On

10 June the entire village of Lidice

Czech

-

the

name had been found on

a

SOE agent arrested earlier- was to be destroyed, the male inhabitants women taken to Ravensbriick concentration camp, the children

shot, the

removed. 136 Hitler's

mood was

ripe for

Goebbels to bring up once more the question

of the deportation of Berlin's remaining Jews.

The involvement

number

of a

of young Jews (associated with a Communist-linked resistance group led by

Herbert Baum) in the arson attempt at the anti-Bolshevik exhibition 'The Soviet Paradise' in Berlin's Lustgarten

May

on 18

Minister to emphasize the security dangers

reckoned were

still

in the

his

more

radical Jewish policy' and, he said,

who

have as

earlier, to

from

Fiihrer,'

enabled the Propaganda

the 40,000 or so

Reich capital were not deported.

doing his best, he had noted a day

domain 'shipped

if

off to the east'.

138

'I

push

many Jews as possible now pleaded for 'a

Jews

armaments

in the event of a

war, something Hitler had touched upon 140

If

the danger

became

in his

acute, he

repeated, the prisons 'would be emptied through liquidations' to

prevent the possibility of the gates being opened to loose

in the

139

Talk moved to the dangers of possible internal revolt speech to the Gauleiter a few days earlier.

been

an open door with the

at

industry with 'foreign workers' as soon as possible.

now

Jews he

He had

Goebbels

told Speer to find replacements for the

critical situation in the

137

on the people.

141

But

in contrast to

from the German workers, remarked

let

the 'revolting

mob'

1917 there was nothing to fear

Hitler. All

German workers

desired

519

520

HITLER I936-I945 victory.

him

They had most to lose by defeat and would not contemplate stabbing Germans take part in subversive movements only

in the back. 'The

when

the

Jews

them

lure

into

Goebbels had Hitler saying. 'Therefore

it,'

one must liquidate the Jewish danger, cost what civilization only

West-European

takes.'

it

provided a facade of assimilation. Back in the ghetto, Jews

soon returned to type. But there were elements among them

who

operated

'with dangerous brutality and thirst for revenge (Rachsucht)\ 'Therefore,'

recorded Goebbels, 'the Fuhrer does not wish at

that the

all

Jews be

evacuated to Siberia. There, under the hardest living conditions, they would doubtless again represent a vigorous element.

them

would rate,

certainly not

it is

the

make them

He would most

There they would

resettled in Central Africa.

strong and capable of resistence. At any

aim of the Fuhrer

make Western Europe

to

Jews. Here they can no longer have any home.'

in

that

Jews had already been slaughtered

now

Russia and were

entirely free of

142

Did such remarks mean that Hitler was unaware that the

was under way,

like to see

live in a climate that

'Final Solution'

in their

thousands

being murdered by poison gas in industrialized

mass-killing centres already operating in

Chelmno,

and

Belzec, Sobibor,

Auschwitz-Birkenau (with Treblinka and Maidanek soon to follow)? That seems inconceivable, even of

what was taking

if

extermination camps. As in the

regular basis. In

December

partisans'.

And

we have

USSR had

Einsatzgruppen

Jews - meaning,

he did not need to be informed of the

place, or for that matter of the very

March

inspiration behind the

1942, Goebbels

9 April 1942., a time

- were

Himmler

to be 'exterminated as

had referred

to Hitler as the

when

Jews from the Lublin the deportations

district.

from western European

countries to the gas-chambers of Poland were also getting under way,

Frank told

his underlings in the

liquidation of the Jews

that

'radical solution' of the 'Jewish question', in

referring to the liquidation of the

On

been requested to be sent to Hitler on a

1941, he had explicitly affirmed to

most

the

noted, reports of the slaughter by the

certainly, those in the east in

fine detail

names of

Hans

General Government that orders for the

came 'from higher authority'. 143 Himmler himself was

to claim explicitly in an internal, top-secret, letter to

Gottlob Berger, Chief of the SS

Main

Office,

SS-Obergruppenfuhrer

on 28 July 1942, that he was

operating directly under Hitler's authority: 'The occupied Eastern territories are being

made

free of Jews.

this very difficult

How much one indication

order on

detail Hitler

The Fuhrer has placed

my

shoulders.'

asked

for,

at the very least, that

or

the implementation of

144

was

given, cannot be

known.

But,

he was aware of the slaughter of huge

THROW

LAST BIG numbers of Jews,

him

is

provided by a report which Himmler had drawn up for

end of 1942 providing

at the

OF THE DICE

statistics

on Jews 'executed'

southern

in

Russia on account of alleged connection with 'bandit' activity. Having

ordered

mid-December

in

combated

that partisan 'bands' were to be

'by the

most brutal means (mit den allerbrutalsten Mitteln)\ also to be used against

women and

was presented by Himmler with

children, Hitler

statistics for

southern Russia and the Ukraine on the number of 'bandits' liquidated in the three

months of September, October, and November 1942. The

under suspicion of being connected with

for those helping the 'bands' or

them

363,211 'Jews executed'.

listed

was an obvious sham. Others i4^57-*

The connection with

subversive activity

same category 'executed'

totalled 'only'

Himmler would have an abbreviated

after this, in April 1943,

report on 'the Final Solution of the Jewish Question' sent to

statistical

mass

in the

45

Four months

Hitler.

figures

Aware

of the taboo in Hitler's entourage on explicit reference to the

killing of the

Jews, Himmler had the

camouflage language. The

fiction

had

the term 'Special Treatment' (itself a

statistical report

to be maintained.

euphemism

presented in

Himmler ordered

for killing) deleted

the shortened version to be sent to Hitler. His statistician,

from

Dr Richard

Korherr, was ordered simply to refer to the 'transport of Jews'. There was

Jews being

reference to

unnamed camps. The camouflage-

'sluiced through'

language was there to serve a specific purpose. Hitler would understand

what

it

meant, and recognize the Reichsfiihrer-SS's 'achievement'.

When he spoke at lunchtime on 29 May

146

1942 to Goebbels and to his other

guests at his meal-table about his preference for the 'evacuation' of the to Central Africa, Hitler

even in his 'court in the east. fiction,

147

was sustaining

circle' that the

Goebbels himself,

which had

resettled

in his diary entry,

though he knew only too well

diary indicates

the fiction

Jews were being

- what was happening

-

to be

Jews

upheld

and put to work

went along with the

as an earlier explicit entry in his

to the

Jews

in

Poland.

148

Hitler, as

we

noted in the previous chapter, had spoken in early 1941 of deporting the

Jews to the

east.

The Madagascar

Plan,

if

he had ever taken

had by then been abandoned for some time.

In

now

authorized the deportation of the Jews to the east. Speaking the

Jews

indicated

to central Africa,

how

juncture, there

more than had by

little

when only

interest

now

seriously,

a fortnight earlier he

of sending

had once more

he had in overseas colonies and when, at

was no prospect of

a fig-leaf to cover

it

September 1941 he had

attaining territory there,

what he knew was

amounted

actually happening.

149

internalized his authorization of the killing of the Jews.

this

to

no

Hitler It

was

521

522

HITLER 1936-1945 way

typical of his either

of dealing with the 'Final Solution' that he spoke of

it

by repeating what he knew had long since ceased to be the case; or

by alluding to the removal of Jews from Europe (often

some

'prophecy') at

in the

context of his

distant point in the future.

Hitler's preoccupation

with secrecy remained intense. Nowhere

is

there

an explicit indication, even in discussions with adjutants or secretaries, of his

150 knowledge of the extermination of the Jews. The subject was probably

mentioned,

at all, only privately to

if

Himmler and

in general

terms

(as in

on 18 December 1941), and otherwise darkly hinted

their discussion

at in

camouflaged remarks, whose meanings were perfectly well understood by those aware of

Why was uphold the is

what was happening. Himmler adopted

the

same

strategy.

Hitler so anxious to maintain the fiction of resettlement,

'terrible secret'

even

151

and

among his inner circle? A partial explanation

doubtless to be found in Hitler's acute personal inclination to extreme

secrecy

which he translated into

'Basic Order' of

culties in the

gift to

152

of rule, as laid

down

in his

Knowledge of extermination could provide

enemies, and perhaps

occupied

stir

up unrest and

territories, particularly in

regards public opinion in the Reich that the

mode

January 1940, that information should only be available on

a 'need-to-know' basis.

propaganda

a general

western Europe.

153

And

as

the Nazi leadership believed

itself,

German people were not ready

a

internal diffi-

for the gross inhumanity of the

extermination of the Jews. 154 Hitler had agreed with Rosenberg in mid-

December 1941, directly following the declaration of war on the USA, that 15 ^ it would be inappropriate to speak of extermination in public. Late in 1942,

Bormann was keen to quell rumours circulating about the 'Final 156 Himmler would later, speaking to SS leaders, refer

Solution' in the east. to

it

was

as 'a never to be written glorious

page of our

history'.

157

Evidently,

it

a secret to be carried to the grave.

In his public statements referring to his 1939 'prophecy', Hitler could

now

lay claim to his place in 'the glorious secret of

our history' while

detaching himself from the sordid and horrific realities of mass

Beyond

that, a further incentive to secrecy

bureaucratic and legal interference.

He had

was

that Hitler

and bureaucracy sensitivity

Himmler

in the

it.

towards such interference. 159

wanted no

and the prob-

His tirades about the judicial system

spring of 1942 were a further indicator of his

explicitly refused in the

define 'a Jew'.

158

experienced this in the 'eutha-

nasia action', necessitating his unique written authorization,

lems which subsequently arose from

still

killing.

To

summer

avoid any

legalistic

meddling,

of 1942 to entertain attempts to

LAST BIG In addition, there

was probably, however,

a

THROW

OF THE DICE

deep psychological underlay

to Hitler's obsessive secretiveness about the fate of the Jews.

Reich was mighty, but even run, not so mighty as the

which he

whom the

still

now perhaps, power of

fervently believed.

He

the

still

The Third

so his warped thinking must have Jews - the 'world conspiracy' in

had no means of tackling the Jews

he believed to be behind the war with Britain and, above

USA. Whatever

his public

optimism, there

is

all,

with

the occasional veiled hint

that he entertained the thought, in the darkness of his insomniac nights,

might prevail.

that he might lose the war, that his enemies

160

Some ordinary

Germans, swallowing Nazi propaganda and betraying their ingrained prejudices, voiced their worries

Jews'

if

Germany were

by the middle of the war of the 'revenge of the

to lose

its

struggle.

161

It

seems hardly conceivable

that Hitler did not also entertain such a concern in the recesses of his mind.

Withholding associates,

his

knowledge of the

would ensure

'Final Solution', even

from

his close

that such information could not reach his arch-

enemies.

IV Manstein's Blue'

-

difficulties in

taking Sevastopol held up the start of 'Operation

the push to the Caucasus

Hitler need have

-

until the

end of June.

no doubts that the war was going

But

well. In the Atlantic, the first six

evening of 21 June came the stunning news that brilliant tactical

163

And on the Rommel had taken Tobruk.

of 1941, and far fewer U-boats had been lost in the process.

Through

at this point,

months of 1942, more shipping tonnage than during the whole

U-boats had met with unprecedented success. In the they had sunk almost a third

162

manoeuvring during the previous three weeks,

Rommel had outwitted the ineffectively led and poorly equipped British 8th Army and was then able to inflict a serious defeat on the Allied cause by seizing the stronghold of British

Tobruk, on the Libyan

coast, capturing 33,000

and Allied prisoners-of-war (many of them South African) and

a

164

It was a spectacular German victory and a disaster The doorway to German dominance of Egypt was wide open. All at once there was a glimmering prospect in view of an enormous pincer of Rommel's troops pushing eastwards through Egypt and the Caucasus army sweeping down through the Middle East linking forces to

huge amount of booty. for the British.

wipe out the British presence immediately promoted

in this crucial region.

Rommel

165

Hitler, overjoyed,

to Field-Marshal. Italian

hopes of German

523

524

HITLER 1936-I945 support for an invasion of Malta were year. Hitler

now

finally shelved until later in the

backed instead Rommel's plans to advance to the Nile. Within

German troops were in striking distance of Alexandria. 166 One dark cloud on an otherwise sunny horizon was, however, the damage being caused to towns in western Germany by British bombing raids. On 30 May, Hitler had said that he did not think much of the RAF's threats of heavy air-raids. Precautions, he claimed, had been taken. The Luftwaffe had so many squadrons stationed in the west that destruction from the air

days,

would be doubly

repaid.

devastated by the

first

167

That very

1,000-bomber

night, the city centre of

The

raid.

Luftwaffe's

Cologne was

own

claims that

only seventy British bombers were involved, of which forty-four had been shot down, were regarded even by the Nazi leadership as absurd. Hitler believed the

more

realistic reports

from the Party regional

office in

Cologne.

Goebbels had himself telephoned Fuhrer Headquarters to give an estimate of 250-300

bombers taking

part.

168

Hitler

was enraged

at the failure of the

Luftwaffe to defend the Reich, blaming Goring personally for neglecting the construction of sufficient flak installations.

169

Despite the bombing of Cologne, the military situation put Hitler and his

entourage Hitler

in excellent

was flown

mood

On the first day of the month Machine' - a spacious, four-engined Focke-

in early June.

in his 'Fuhrer

Wulff, with simple interior and few special features other than a writing

desk in front of his

own

seat

-

to

Army Group

South's headquarters at

Poltava to discuss with Field-Marshal Bock the timing and tactics of the

coming

offensive.

Apart from Manstein,

all

the

commanders were present

as Hitler agreed to Bock's proposal to delay the start of 'Operation Blue' for

some days

in order to take full

advantage of the victory

at

destroy Soviet forces in adjacent areas. Hitler informed the that the

outcome of

Wolf's Lair, he told blue-eyed, blonde racial views.

171

'Blue' his

decisive for the war.

170

to

commanders Back

in the

lunchtime gathering next day that the number of

women

He had

would be

Kharkov

he had seen in Poltava had slightly shaken his

been astonished

at

how

well-fed and -clothed the

people of the area were. There could be no talk there of famine. 172

On 4 June, Hitler paid a surprise visit - it had been arranged only the previous day - to Finland. Officially, the visit was to mark the seventy-fifth birthday of the Finnish military hero, Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf von Mannerheim, supreme commander of the Finnish armed forces. How pleased Mannerheim was to have his birthday party hijacked by Hitler can

only be surmised. But the Finns had

little

choice other than to comply.

Despite their growing unease at the alliance with Germany, which they

LAST BIG had entered into prior to 'Barbarossa' tutelage

was

available.

OF THE DICE

in the expectation of a swift

comprehensive victory of the Wehrmacht,

man

THROW

173

no current

and

alternative to Ger-

For Hitler, some sense of the significance he

attached to the meeting can be judged from the fact that, apart from a

number of

trips to Italy

and Franco

in 1940,

direct

German

it

and

was

control.

his meetings in southern

France with Petain

had travelled

the only time he

to an area outside

174

The aim of the informal visit was to bolster Finnish solidarity with Germany through underlining for Mannerheim - a veteran of struggles with the Red Army - the immensity of the threat of Bolshevism. The Finns would same time be warned about any possible considerations of leaving

at the

German the visit Allies.

'protection'

and putting out

would head

any possible

off

Union. In addition,

feelers to the Soviet ties

of Finland with the western

175

The meeting took place in Mannerheim's special train in the middle of woods near the air-field at Immola. 176 First came the ceremonials - Hitler presented Mannerheim with the Great Golden Cross of the German Order of the Eagle - followed by lunch. Then the main participants withdrew for a confidential meeting.

usual account of the

Mannerheim,

For an hour and

war

a half, Hitler ran

and

State President Risto Ryti,

Shorn of

Keitel.

hectoring and guttural tone, his Austrian accent helped to

on the tape-recorded

first

eleven minutes

comments recorded without

Hitler's

-

to

make

his

its

usual

his rhetoric

a unique survival of political

knowledge - sound more

engaged than a written precis might make

was

through

for his almost entirely silent small audience of

it

appear.

177

lively

and

His main concern

emphasize the growing danger from the Soviet Union -

far greater

than had been imagined even at the start of 'Barbarossa' - and the inevitability

Of

of the conflict.

He

German

underscored the consistency of

course, he held to the version that

Germany had been

that point to

no more than

a

178

forced to act

through a preventive war to head off imminent Soviet aggression.

monologue amounted by

policy.

179

Hitler's

broad survey of the

He had no intention of entering into any discussion of future military plans. He never once, for instance, mentioned the coming offensive. The war.

Finns were only informed of that one day before heim's return

visit.

The meeting had no concrete Hitler

it

began, during Manner-

180

results.

That was not

its

aim. For now,

had reassured himself that he had the Finns' continued support. He

was well

satisfied

superficially

good

with the

181

visit.

relations with

For their part, the Finns maintained their

Germany, while keeping

a watchful eye

on

525

526

HITLER 1936-1945 The course of

events. clear

the

war over

months conveyed

the next six

message to them to begin looking for alternative

loyalties.

its

own

182

While Hitler was en route to Finland, news came through from Prague

had died of the wounds he had suffered

that Reinhard Heydrich

attack on 27

May. 183 Back in his headquarters, Hitler put it down to

in the

'stupidity

or pure dimwittedness (reinen StumpfsinnY that 'such an irreplaceable

man

Heydrich should expose himself to the danger' of assassins, by driving

as

without adequate bodyguard in an open-top car, and insisted that Nazi leaders

mood it

comply with proper

184

Hitler

was

in reflective

on 9 June. So soon after the loss of Todt, was not far from the truth - as if the Party

at the state funeral in Berlin

seemed

and

security precautions.

to

him - and,

in fact,

state leadership only

assembled for state funerals.

18

He

^

spent time in

the evening reminiscing with Goebbels about the early days of the Party,

how hard

it

had been

to

book

a hall in

Munich, the

Circus Krone, his relief at speaking for the

first

difficulties in filling the

time in the Sportpalast to

an audience that neither smoked nor drank, and paid attention. 'The Fiihrer is

very happy in these memories,' remarked Goebbels. 'He lives from the

past,

which seems to him

like a lost paradise.'

186

summer offensive in the south, began on 28 A week earlier, a German plane carrying operational plans for June. 188 'Blue' had crashed behind enemy lines. Stalin thought it was deliberate 189 disinformation and ignored it, as he did warnings from Britain. The 'Operation Blue', the great 187

offensive, carried out

by

five

armies in two groups against the weakest part

Taganrog on the Sea of 'Barbarossa' had done the previous year -

of the Soviet front, between Kursk in the north and

Azov

in the south,

was

able

-

as

to use the element of surprise to

on

1

make

impressive early gains.

July, finally, the fall of Sevastopol

190

Meanwhile,

brought immediate promotion to

Field-Marshal for Manstein. 191 After the

initial

Voronezh ended the

in the

lines, the

rapid advance on

capture of the city on 6 July. This brought, however,

new campaign between Hitler and his generals. was an unimportant target. But a Soviet counter-attack had down two armoured divisions in the city for two days. This slowed the

first

confrontation of the

Voronezh tied

break through the Russian

itself

Don and allowed enemy Bock had ignored his instructions

south-eastern advance along the Hitler

was enraged

that

forces to escape. that the advance

THROW

LAST BIG was

of the panzer divisions in

to proceed without any hold-ups to the

maximum

order to allow

destruction of the Soviet forces. In fact,

he had flown to Bock's headquarters at Poltava on far less

dogmatic and clear

3 July, Hitler

Volga

when

had been

in face-to-face discussion

with the field-marshal

192

But that did not save

map-room

than he was in the

OF THE DICE

of the Wolf's Lair.

Bock. Hitler said he was not going to have his plans spoiled by field-marshals as they

had been

in

autumn

Bock was dismissed and replaced by

1941.

Colonel-General Freiherr Maximilian von Weichs.

To

be closer to the southern front, Hitler

new

July to a

Ukraine.

runway them on

194

moved

name 'Werwolf,

location, given the

headquarters on 16

his

near Vinnitsa in the

Sixteen planes, their engines already whirring, waited on the

at the

Wolf's Lair that day for Hitler and

a three-hour flight to their

new

rutted roads, they finally arrived at the

were to be

193

their

homes

damp, mosquito-infested huts

for the next three

Wolf's Lair began to seem

idyllic.

and a half months.

1Sb

At the 'Werwolf, the days were

summer,

hot, the nights, even in high

entourage to take

his

surrounds. After a car-ride along

distinctly chilly.

an even greater plague than they had been

that

Even the stiflingly

The mosquitoes were Everyone had to

in East Prussia.

take each day a bitter-tasting medicine called Atibrin as a precaution against malaria. Haider

was pleased enough with

quarters. Hitler's secretaries

were

As

little

at

Rastenburg, they had

less

to

the layout of the

happy with

new head-

cramped

their

do and were bored.

A

quarters.

visit to a local

abattoir and meat-processing plant, collective farm, or decrepit theatre in

town was, apart from watching old films, the closest thing to For Hitler, the daily routine was unchanged from that in the Wolf's Lair. At meals - his own often consisted of no more than a plate of vegetables with apples to follow - he could still appear open, relaxed, the nearby

escapism.

engaged.

on

a

196

19

As always, he monopolized dinner-table

wide variety of topics that touched on

topics of conversation

his interests or obsessions.

throughout the eastern

These

motorway system

included the evils of smoking, the construction of a

territories, the deficiencies of the legal system, the

achievements of Stalin as a latter-day Ghengis Khan, keeping the standard of living

low among the subjugated peoples, the need

Jews from German

cities,

and the promotion of private

than a state-controlled economy.

Away from

his military leaders.

make ground. But

diminished. This

was

the

remove the

last

initiative rather

198

the supper soliloquies, however, tension

between Hitler and to

to

The

mounted once more

military advance continued

numbers of Soviet prisoners captured

endlessly discussed at

FHQ.

199

Hitler's

steadily

military

527

528

HITLER 1936-1945 advisers were worried.

They took

that the Soviets were pulling back their

it

forces in preparation for a big counter-offensive, probably

the Stalingrad region. at the front that the

200

Haider had warned

as early as 12 July of

enemy, recognizing German envelopment

avoiding direct fight and withdrawing to the south.

however, that the Red

more

the

all

on the Volga,

Army was

end of

close to the

for a speedy advance.

201

tether.

concern

tactics,

was

view was,

Hitler's

its

in

He

pressed

202

His impulsive, though sometimes - as the Voronezh episode had shown

- unclear or ambiguous command-style caused constant difficulties for the operational planners. But the essential problem was more far-reaching. two imperatives:

Hitler felt compelled by

time,

and material resources. The

had to be completed before the might of Allied resources came

offensive

fully into play.

And

possession of the Caucasian oil-fields would, in his

view, both be decisive in bringing the

war

in the east to a successful

conclusion, and provide the necessary platform to continue a lengthy against the Anglo-Saxon powers. said, the

his

own

war would be logic, Hitler

lost for

203

If this oil

Germany within

three months.

in

if

some

204

Following

had, therefore, no choice but to stake everything on

the ambitious strike to the Caucasus in a victorious

Even

war

were not gained, Hitler had

sceptical voices could be heard,

Army High Command had

summer

offensive.

20 ^

Haider and the professionals

favoured the offensive. But the gap, already-

opened up the previous summer, between them and the dictator was rapidly

What Hitler saw as the negativity, pessimism, and timidity of Army High Command's traditional approaches drove him into paroxysms of rage. Army planners for their part had cold feet about what increasingly

widening.

seemed

to

and more strategy

had

The

a reckless

end

gamble carried out by

dilettante

methods, more

now

pull out of the

A

catastrophe at

But they could not

in disaster.

which they had been party to implementing.

Stalingrad effort

them

likely to

was the heavy set in train its

price that

own

would soon be

self-destructive

risk of military disaster

was

paid.

The German war

dynamic.

seriously magnified by Hitler's Directive

No. 45 of 23 July 1942. Thereafter, a calamity was waiting to happen. Unlike the April directive, in which Haider's hand had been visible, this directive rested squarely to prevent.

206

on

The

a decision

by Hitler, which the General Staff had sought

directive for the continuation of 'Blue',

now renamed

'Operation Braunschweig', began with a worryingly unrealistic claim: 'In a campaign of little more than three weeks, the broad goals set for the southern flank of the eastern front have been essentially achieved.

forces of the

Timoshenko armies have succeeded

Only weak enemy

in escaping

envelopment

LAST BIG and reaching the southern bank of the Don. reinforcement from the Caucasus area.'

We

THROW

OF THE DICE

have to reckon with their

207

month, Hitler had divided Army Group South into

Earlier in the

a

northern sector (Army Group B, originally under Field-Marshal von Bock, then, after his sacking, under Colonel-General Freiherr

southern sector (Army original intention,

von Weichs) and

Group A, under Field-Marshal Wilhelm

under

his Directive

No. 41 of 5

April,

List).

had been

208

a

The

to advance

on the Caucasus following the encirclement and destruction of Soviet forces in the vicinity

of Stalingrad. This

was now

altered to allow attacks

Caucasus and Stalingrad (including the taking of the

Army Group A was

simultaneously. List's stronger

was

alone. This

left

on the

proceed

to destroy

enemy

Rostov area, then conquer the whole of the Caucasus region

forces in the

the

city itself) to

to include the eastern coast of the Black Sea, crossing

Kuban and occupying

the heights

around the

controlling the almost impenetrable Caucasian

oil-fields

of

Maykop,

mountain passes, and driving

south-eastwards to take the oil-rich region around Grozny, then Baku, far

The attack on Stalingrad was left to the weaker Army Group B, which was expected thereafter to press on along the 209 lower Volga to Astrakhan on the Caspian. The strategy was sheer lunacy. to the south

on the Caspian

Sea.

Only the most incautiously optimistic assessment of the weakness of the Soviet forces could have justified the scale of the risk involved. But Hitler

took precisely such a view of enemy strength. Moreover, he was as always

temperamentally predisposed to a

risk-all strategy,

with alternatives

dis-

missed out of hand and boats burned to leave no fall-back position. As always, his self-justification could be bolstered by the dogmatic view that there

was no

strength,

alternative. Haider,

aware of more

and the build-up of forces

upon

exert any influence frustrated at his

own

Hitler,

realistic appraisals of Soviet

in the Stalingrad area,

was by now both

impotence.

210

On

but unable to

seriously concerned

23 July, the

and

day that Hitler issued

No. 45, Haider had written in his diary: 'This chronic tendency enemy capabilities is gradually assuming grotesque proportions and develops into a positive danger. The situation is getting more and more

his Directive

to underrate

intolerable. is

There

is

no room

for

any serious work. This so-called leadership

characterized by a pathological reacting to the impressions of the

and a

total lack of

possibilities.'

211

On

any understanding of the

moment

command machinery and

its

15 August, Haider's notes for his situation report began:

'Overall picture: have

we extended

well warranted. But the insight

the risk too far?'

had come rather

By mid-August, Army Group

A

212

The question was

late in the day.

had swept some 350 miles

to the south,

529

530

HITLER 1936-1945 over the north Caucasian plain. 213

of the northern

hills

were

left in ruins,

Soviet forces.

21J

was now

far separated

exposed flank, and formidable

B, with a lengthy

ensuring supplies.

It

problems of

now slowed markedly in the wooded foot214 Caucasus. Maykop was taken, but the oil-refineries

Its

advance

systematically and expertly destroyed by the retreating

The impetus had by now been lost.

when he spoke privately to Goebbels on

of realism

from Army Group

logistical

Hitler

mer, securing Germany's

little

He wanted

the Caucasus, he said, were going extremely well.

possession of the oil-wells of

showed

Maykop, Grozny, and Baku during supplies

oil

sense

19 August. Operations in to take

the

sum-

and destroying those of the Soviet

Union. Once the Soviet border had been reached, the breakthrough into the

Near East would follow, occupying Asia Minor and overrunning and

wanted

commence

to

the big assault

the city completely, leaving logically

and

on

He

Stalingrad.

no stone on top of another.

militarily necessary.

The

forces deployed

sufficient to capture the city within eight days.

intended to destroy It

was both psycho-

were reckoned to be

216

These were scarcely signs of waning self-confidence. reaction,

two days

later,

German

placed the

flag

Iraq, Iran,

Within two or three days, he

Palestine, to cut off Britain's oil supplies.

when news reached him

that

217

But

his over-

mountain troops had

on the Elbrus, highest mountain of the Caucasus

range at 5,630 metres, suggests that his self-confidence was a front, perhaps

above

all

for himself. Beneath the facade, his nerves

were edgy,

his anxiety

about the offensive growing. The troops presumably thought he would be pleased. In fact, he feat

was furious

at

what he saw

as a pointless

mountaineering

devoid of military purpose. 218 Speer later wrote that he had seldom seen

him so enraged, fuming

for days at 'these

to be put before a military court. In the idiotic

mad

mountaineers'

who

middle of a war, he ranted, their

ambition had driven them to climb an idiotic peak, when he had

ordered everything to be concentrated on the taking of Suchum. truth a

minor escapade. But from

seemed, Speer recalled, as

The

deserved

if

Don due

was

they had ruined his entire operational plan.

last significant successes

encircling

It

Hitler's near-hysterical over-reaction

of

Army Group

B,

in it

219

meanwhile, had been

in

and destroying two Russian armies south-west of Kalac, on the west of Stalingrad, on

220

Advancing in punishing heat and hindered through chronic fuel shortage, on 23 August, the 6th Army, under General Friedrich Paulus, succeeded in reaching the Volga, north of

Amid heavy Soviet The summer offensive had,

Stalingrad. halt.

two months. 222 As

early as 26

8

August.

defences, the advance ground rapidly to a as

it

turned out, run

its

course in

less

than

August Haider was noting: 'Near Stalingrad,

THROW

LAST BIG

on account of superior counter-attacks of the enemy. Our

serious tension divisions are strain.'

223

no longer very strong. The command

The

Army was, however,

6th

the next weeks,

was only

OF THE DICE

it

is

heavily under nervous

able to consolidate

its

position.

Over

even gained the advantage. But the nightmare of Stalingrad

just beginning.

While the southern part of the massively extended front was running out

Army now bogged down at Stalingrad and List's in the Caucasus, Kluge's Army Group Centre had

of steam, with the 6th

Army Group A

stalled

encountered a damaging setback, suffering horrendous casualties

150 miles west of for a

an

in

attempt ordered by Hitler to wipe out Russian forces at Sukhinichi,

ill-fated

Moscow, from where

renewed drive on the

it

was hoped on

capital. Kluge,

to establish the basis

a visit to

'Werwolf on

7

August, had asked Hitler to remove two armoured divisions from the

them against

offensive at Sukhinichi to deploy

attack in the

Rzhev

area. Hitler

for the Sukhinichi offensive.

had refused,

Kluge had marched out saying 'You,

therefore assume responsibility for this.'

And assault ively

in the north,

and

finally

my Fiihrer,

224

by the end of August expectations of launching an

taking the hunger-torn city of Leningrad had been mass-

dented through the Soviet counter-offensive south of Lake Lagoda.

Manstein's

nth Army had been brought up from

the planned final assault offensive. Instead

There was no

The

a threatening Soviet counter-

insisting that they be retained

last

it

on Leningrad

found

itself

engaged

possibility of capturing

chance of that had gone.

22 ^

in

in the

'Northern Lights'

fending off the Soviet strike.

Leningrad and razing

Hitler's

it

to the ground.

outward show of confidence

in

mounting inner anxiety. His temper

victory could not altogether conceal his

was on

the southern front to lead

September

in

became more common. 226 He

a short fuse. Outbursts of rage

cast

around as always for scapegoats for the rapidly deteriorating military situation in the east.

It

did not take

him long

to find them.

Relations with Haider had already reached rock-bottom. the worsening situation at

24 August,

Rzhev had prompted the Chief of the General

Staff to urge Hitler to allow a retreat of the 9th

shorter line. In front of

On

Army

to a

more

defensible

those assembled at the midday conference, Hitler

all

rounded on Haider. 'You always come here with the same proposal, that of withdrawal,' he raged. as

from the

'I

demand from

the leadership the

front-soldiers.' Haider, deeply insulted,

the toughness,

my

Fiihrer.

are falling in thousands

same toughness

shouted back:

'I

have

But out there brave musketeers and lieutenants

and thousands

situation simply because their

as useless sacrifice in a hopeless

commanders

are not allowed to

make

the

531

532.

HITLER 1936-1945 227 only reasonable decision and have their hands tied behind their backs.'

'What can you, who sat in the same chair (DrebWorld War, too, tell me about the troops, Herr Haider, 228 Appalled, you, who don't even wear the black insignia of the wounded?' and embarrassed, the onlookers dispersed. Hitler tried to smooth Haider's ruffled feathers that evening. But it was plain to all who witnessed the scene Hitler stared at Haider.

schemel) in the First

were numbered. 229

that the Chief of Staff's days

Even

made

and devoted Jodl, was now

Hitler's military right hand, the loyal

On

to feel the full impact of his wrath.

for Jodl to be been sent to

Army Group A

September

5

List

the Sea of Azov, to discuss the further deployment of the 39th

the

230

The visit took purpose was to urge

Corps.

Caucasus thin for

place

two days

From

later.

List to accelerate the

time. But far

advance on the largely

that evening with a devastating account of conditions.

mountain

could be achieved, with greater mobility and

was

a last attempt to reach

more angry with every the

army

leadership;

bearing bad news.

sentence.

was

It

fully

But Jodl stood

backed

List's

his

maximum

He

was no longer The most that

concentration of Sea. Hitler

grew

lashed out at the 'lack of initiative' of first

time attacked Jodl, the messenger

the worst crisis in relations between Hitler and

previous August.

his military leaders since the

rage.

It

passes.

Grozny and the Caspian

and now for the

231

stalled

had been extremely

from bringing back positive news, Jodl returned

possible to force the Soviets back over the

forces,

Mountain

Hitler's point of view,

front. Hitler's patience at the lack of progress

some

had asked

headquarters at Stalino, north of

ground.

It

232

Hitler

was

in a

towering

turned into a shouting-match.

assessment of the position. Hitler exploded.

He

233

Jodl

accused

Jodl of betraying his orders, being talked round by List, and taking sides

with the

Army Group. He had not sent him to the Caucasus, he said, to among the troops. 234 Jodl retorted that List was

have him bring back doubts

faithfully adhering to the orders Hitler himself

had

given.

235

Beside himself

with rage, Hitler said his words were being twisted. Things would have to be different.

He would have

to ensure that he could not be deliberately

misinterpreted in future. 236 Like a prima out, refusing to shake

hands

(as

donna

in a pique, Hitler

stormed

he invariably had done at the end of their

meetings) with Jodl and Keitel. 237 Evidently depressed as well as angry, he said to his

Wehrmacht

can take off the

war

in

adjutant

this detestable

Schmundt

uniform and trample on

Russia since none of the aims of

The anxiety about

that night,

Army

it.'

be glad

was

when

He saw no end

summer 1942 had been

the forthcoming winter

the other hand,' noted

'I'll

238

I

to

realized.

dreadful, he said. 'But on

Adjutant Engel, 'he will retreat nowhere.'

239

LAST BIG Hitler

now

THROW

OF THE DICE

shut himself up in his darkened hut during the days.

refused to appear for the

communal

few present as possible, took place not in the headquarters of the

meals.

The

in a glacial

Wehrmacht

military briefings, with as

atmosphere

And

staff.

own

in his

stenographers was by

upon

insisted

from the Reichstag (where the need

now

hardly pressing), arrived at

FHQ.

Hitler

with Jodl, Hitler dismissed

after the confrontation

command

forces, of

of

Army Group

He was now commander

A.

one branch of those armed

forces,

At the same time, Keitel was deputed to relieved of his post. Keitel himself for dismissal.

had

240

List.

strating his distrust of his generals, he himself for the time being

the

typists,

for active

a record of all military briefings being taken so that he could

not again be misinterpreted.

The day

hut,

he refused to shake

hands with anyone. Within forty-eight hours, a group of shorthand practised stenographers

He

241

Demon-

took over

of the

armed

and of one group of that branch.

tell

Haider that he would soon be

and Jodl were also rumoured

to be slated

Jodl admitted privately that he had been at fault in trying

to point out to a dictator

where he had gone wrong. This, Jodl

could

said,

only shake his self-confidence - the basis of his personality and actions. Jodl

added that whoever

his

own

replacement might be, he could not be more of

a staunch National Socialist than he himself was. In the event, the

worsening conditions

242

at Stalingrad

and

in the

Mediter-

ranean prevented the intended replacement of Jodl by Paulus and Keitel by Kesselring.

243

But there was no saving Haider. Hitler complained

Below that Haider had no comprehension of the

was devoid of ideas

for solutions.

He

maps and had 'completely wrong going.

244

bitterly to

difficulties at the front

and

coldly viewed the situation only from

notions' about the

way

things were

Hitler pondered Schmundt's advice to replace Haider by Major-

General Kurt Zeitzler, a very different type of character - a small baldheaded, ambitious, dynamic forty-seven-year-old, firm believer in the Fuhrer,

who had

been put

in

by Hitler

west and, as Rundstedt's chief of

in April to

staff, to

shake up the army

in the

build up coastal defences.

Goring, too, encouraged Hitler to get rid of Haider.

245

246

That point was reached on 24 September. A surprised Zeitzler had by then been summoned to FHQ and told by Hitler of his promotion to full

General of the Infantry and of his

was

to be his last military briefing,

new

responsibilities.

247

of his post. His nerves, Hitler told him, were gone, and his also strained.

It

was necessary

for

After

what

Haider was, without ceremony, relieved

own

nerves

Haider to go, and for the General Staff

to be educated to believe fanatically in 'the idea'. Hitler,

Haider noted

in

533

534

HITLER 1936-1945 his final diary entry,

The

now

was determined

to enforce his will, also in the army.

traditional General Staff, for long such a powerful force,

discarded like a spent cartridge, had arrived at

of capitulation to the forces to which

it

symbolic

its

had wedded

itself in

248

its

Chief

final

point

1933. Zeitzler

began the new regime by demanding from the members of the General Staff belief in the Fiihrer.

249

He

would soon

himself

realize that this alone

would

not be enough.

VI The

was by now looming. Both

battle for Stalingrad

critical

it

would

be.

The German

sides

on entry

Fiihrer orders that

population should be done away with

Command

into the city the entire

male

Wehrmacht High thoroughly Communist

(beseitigt),' the

recorded, 'since Stalingrad, with is

on the Volga were

had held about Leningrad and

similar to the annihilatory intentions he

population of a million,

how

leadership remained optimistic.

Hitler's plans for the massively over-populated city

Moscow. 'The

were aware

its

especially dangerous.'

250

Haider noted simply,

without additional comment: 'Stalingrad: male population to be destroyed (vernichtet), female to be deported'.

251

When he visited FHQ on n September, General von Weichs, Commander of Army Group B, had told Hitler he was confident that the attack on the inner city of Stalingrad could begin almost immediately and be completed

within ten days.

252

Indeed, the early signs were that the

fall

of the city would

not be long delayed. But by the second half of September, the contest for Stalingrad had already turned into a battle of scarcely imaginable intensity

and by at

ferocity.

street,

The

fighting

was taking place often

at

point-blank range, street

house by house. German and Soviet troops were almost

each other's throats. The

more than

a shell of

final

smoking

literally

taking of what had rapidly become

ruins,

it

was coming

little

to be realized, could take

weeks, even months. 253 Elsewhere, too, the news was at El

Alamein

less

in the direction of the

on 2 September, only three days confident, both publicly

and

than encouraging. Rommel's offensive

Suez Canal had to be broken off already after

in private,

it

had begun. Rommel remained

over the next weeks, though he

reported on the serious problems with shortages of weapons and equipment

when he saw reality,

Hitler on

1

October to receive

his Field-Marshal's baton.

254

In

however, the withdrawal of 2 September would turn out to be the

LAST BIG

THROW

2 beginning of the end for the Axis in North Africa. ^

Its

OF THE DICE

morale revitalized

under a new commander, General Bernard Montgomery, and date armour replaced by

new Sherman

autumn prove more than

match

a

for

Rommel's

limited forces.

had

In the Reich itself, the British nightly raids

Bremen, Diisseldorf, and Duisburg were among the serious destruction.

257

Hitler said he

was glad

if

of

Munich

had told Goebbels

in

it

238

suffered

spared - obviously

waking up the population

in

had another good

Air-raids

side,

mid- August: the enemy had 'taken work from

destroying buildings that would in any case have had to be torn to allow the

betrayed

it

had been attacked. He

the rest of the city

to the realities of the war.

Munich,

now

own apartment in Munich

his

thought the raid might have a salutary effect

out-of-

256

intensified.

cities that

had been badly damaged; he would not have liked

would not have looked good -

its lost,

Army would by

tanKs, the 8th

he

us' in

down

improved post-war town planning. 2 ^ 9 Such remarks scarcely

much

feeling for the suffering of ordinary people in the raids.

these, the wail of the sirens, disturbed nights in air-raid shelters,

- exaggerated or not - of the horrors

in other cities tore at the nerves.

the helplessness of the Luftwaffe to defend their cities

confidence in the leadership.

260

Hitler

felt his

For

and rumours

And

shook people's

own impotence

to

respond as

he would have liked: by revenge through even greater destruction of British cities.

But there was a shortage of German bombers. The Heinkel 177 had,

as Hitler

had long predicted, proved unsuccessful, with repeated engine

failures preventing its active use. in sufficient

to

And

the Junkers 88 could not be produced

numbers, since priority had to be accorded to

do much against the mounting threat from the

fighters.

Powerless

skies, Hitler said

he trusted

Goring's assurances that things would soon be improved in the Luftwaffe.

At the end of September, Hitler flew back to

Berlin.

261

He had promised

Goebbels to use the opening of the Winter Aid campaign to address the nation during the second half of September. to sustain

morale

He looked after

Once more,

it

was important

at a vital time.

well

when Goebbels saw him

at a late

lunch on 28 September,

speaking to 12,000 young officers in the Sportpalast.

optimistic than Goebbels city

262

would soon be taken,

He was more

had imagined he would be about Stalingrad. The Hitler claimed.

Then

the advance

on the Caucasus

could proceed again, even during the winter. Goebbels did not share the

optimism.

263

It

was

as

if

Hitler

felt

unable to deviate, even in private, from

adjutant,

was going well in the eastern campaign. His Luftwaffe Below, thought Hitler was by now starting to deceive himself

about the

realities of the situation.

the fiction that

all

264

535

536

HITLER 1936-1945 Next day, Hitler spoke

to a small group of generals, along with

and Speer, about the dangers of an invasion

Goring

though

in the west. Fiasco

it

had been, the attempted landing of Canadian troops in Dieppe in midAugust had been a new reminder of the

new Atlantic Wall with

its

be immune, he claimed.

But by the spring, when the

threat.

15,000 bunkers was constructed, the Reich would

265

on 30 September combined a glorification of German military achievements with a sarcastic, mocking attack on Churchill Hitler's Sportpalast speech

and Roosevelt.

266

audience lapped

This was nothing new, though the hand-picked Sportpalast it

cast of the speech, perils of the last

up. They,

and the wider audience

listening to the broad-

took especial note when Hitler suggested

that, after the

winter had been surmounted, the worst was

now

behind

them, and the economic benefits of the occupied territories would soon be

Germany

flowing to

to

improve the standard of

repeat his prophecy about the Jews rhetorical

armoury -

Jews used to laugh, they're

of

I,

Germany

too, can

now

them everywhere. And

weapon

too, about

my

prophecies.

I

'The

far used:

don't

to

in his

know

if

only offer the assurance: the laughter will go out I

will also be right in

speech was most notable of Stalingrad.

He went on

a regular

laughing today, or whether the laughter has already gone out of

still

them. But

267

most menacing phrases he had so

in the

in

- by now

living.

The metropolis on

my

268

prophecies.'

But the

for his assurances about the battle for

all

the Volga, bearing the Soviet leader's

name,

was being stormed, he declared, and would be taken. 'You can be sure,' he added, 'that nobody will get us away from this place again!'

269

His public display of optimism was unbounded, even in a more confined

forum, when he addressed the Reichs- and Gauleiter for almost three hours the following afternoon.

company

had told Goebbels his generals. in

them

I

He

felt

in

wouldn't

'The Gauleiter,' he

my most know whom

loyal

and

to trust.'

reliable colleagues. If

271

Union

He

in a

its oil.

completely different direction, towards

relatively uninteresting for us'.

those oil-wells captured in a ruined state in

capture of Stalingrad,' recorded Goebbels,

could

still

take a

said,

lost trust

He

said he

little

time.

'is

Once

first

Maykop for

that

Moscow

'which

priority

was

is

now

to get

flowing again. 'The

him an established

was

had

had pushed the

But he was certain that Germany would

gain possession of the oil-fields of Grozny, while a

if it

I

outlined the plans to thrust

from

off

to undertake that the previous year, but Brauchitsch

campaign

even

270

mid-August, 'never cheat me' - unlike, he had

'They are

to the Caucasus, to cut the Soviet

wanted

he told the gathering, in the

at ease,

of his most long-standing Party comrades.

fact,'

attained, Astrakhan

THROW

LAST BIG would be the next weeks

Middle

were

East.

272

on the

set

British oil supplies

Iraq, Iran,

and

several

Palestine),

from Mesopotamia and the

Surveying the position of his enemies, Hitler came to the

remarkable conclusion that side,

had already told Goebbels

(when he had spoken of overrunning

earlier

his sights

by the Luftwaffe of the key

target, then the destruction

Soviet oil-fields of Baku. Thereafter, as he

OF THE DICE

war was

'the

practically lost for the opposing

no matter how long

upheaval

in

it was in a position to carry it on'. Only an internal Germany could snatch victory for the enemy. It was the Party's

job to see that that could never happen.

He had

effusive praise for the

The longer the war went on, commented Goebbels, came to the Party. 273

Party's work.

the Fiihrer

absurd optimism

Hitler's

at the

the closer

beginning of October scarcely accorded

with the growing anxieties of his military advisers about the situation

was now no longer

Stalingrad. Winter Zeitzler

all

now

by

far off. Paulus,

in

Weichs, Jodl, and

favoured pulling back from a target which, largely in ruins, had

lost all significance as a

communications and armaments

centre,

and taking up more secure winter positions. The only alternative was to pour in

in

heavy reinforcements.

mid-August - was

On

in peacetime.

Hitler's

view - he had said so to Goebbels

that this time winter

that the soldiers in the east

done

274

would be

had been so well prepared

living better

for

than most of them had

273

6 October, after Paulus had reported a temporary halt to the attack

because his troops were exhausted, Hitler ordered the 'complete capture' of Stalingrad as the key objective of

Army Group

B.

276

There might indeed

have been something to be said for choosing the protection of even a ruined city to the

open, exposed steppes over the winter had the supplies situation

been as favourable as Hitler evidently imagined

it

to be,

had the supply

been secure, and had the threat of a Soviet counter-offensive been

However, the indicators 6th

Army had

front,

intelligence

was coming

might pose

real

and

far

now

overstretched on an

from secure on the northern

flank.

in of big concentrations of Soviet troops

And

which

danger to the position of the 6th Army. Withdrawal was

the sensible option. Hitler

are that only insufficient winter provision for the

been made. Supply-lines were

enormously long

lines

less large.

277

would not hear of

Jodl heard him for the the danger of being

first

it.

At the beginning of October, Zeitzler and

time, in outrightly rejecting their advice about

bogged down

losses, stress that the

in

house-to-house fighting with heavy

capture of the city was necessary not just for oper-

ational, but for 'psychological' reasons: to

show

the world the continued

537

538

HITLER 1936-1945 German arms, and to boost the morale of the Axis

strength of

than ever contemptuous of generals and military advisers

allies.

who

278

More

lacked the

necessary strength of will, and convinced that he alone had prevented an

ignominious

through

full-scale retreat

now

fast the previous winter, he

withdrawal from Stalingrad. But

had

tactical merit.

This time,

his

unbending insistence on standing

refused to countenance any suggestion of his 'halt order' of the previous winter

had none. Fear of

it

over from military reasoning. Hitler's

loss of face

had

had taken

too public statements in the

all

Sportpalast and then to his Gauleiter had meant that taking Stalingrad had

become

bore Stalin's

would

And, though he claimed the 280

name was of no significance, retreat from compound the loss of prestige.

fact that the city

precisely this city

clearly

In the

among

meantime, Hitler was starting to acknowledge mounting concern about the build-up of Soviet forces on the

his military advisers

northern banks of the the

279

a matter of prestige.

Don -

the weakest section of the front, where

Wehrmacht was dependent on

Romanians, Hungarians, and

the resolution of

Italians.

its

allied

armies - the

281

The situation in North Africa was by this time also critical. Montgomery's 8th

Army had begun

its

big offensive at El Alamein

had quickly been sent back from sick-leave

and prevent a breakthrough.

the Axis forces

Rommel would

on 23 October. Rommel

to hold together the defence of Hitler's initial confidence that

hold his ground had rapidly evaporated. Lacking fuel and

munitions, and facing a numerically far superior enemy, to prevent

Rommel was unable

Montgomery's tanks penetrating the German front in the renewed

massive onslaught that had begun on 2 November. The following day, Hitler sent a telegram in response to

Rommel's depressing account of

position and prospects of his troops. 'In the situation in which yourself,' ran his

to stick

it

would not be the

and

to

throw every weapon and available

Everything would be done to send reinforcements.

first

time in history that the stronger will triumphed

over stronger enemy battalions. But you can

way than

victory or death.'

Anticipating what arrived. Generals

it

would

282

Rommel had

be, he

all

not waited for Hitler's reply.

had ordered a

crisis at

retreat hours before

the beginning of the year.

German people - only weeks

hero - was

show your troops no other it

had been peremptorily dismissed for such insubordination

during the winter with the

the find

message to Rommel, 'there can be no other thought than

out, not to yield a step,

fighter into the battle.' 'It

you

that

now

earlier,

Rommel's standing

he had been feted as a military

saved him from the same ignominy.

By 7 November, when Hitler travelled to Munich to give

283

his traditional

THROW

LAST BIG

OF THE DICE

address in the Lowenbraukeller to the marchers in the 1923 Putsch, the news

from the Mediterranean had dramatically worsened. En route from Berlin to

Munich,

284

his special train

him

Forest for

to receive a

armada assembled about

a

at Gibraltar,

probable landing

It

would bring the

in

Europe.

was halted

at a small station in the

Thuringian

message from the Foreign Office: the Allied

which had

in Libya,

for days given rise to speculation

was disembarking in

Algiers and Oran.

commitment of American ground-troops

first

to the

28j

war

286

Hitler immediately gave orders for the defence of Tunis. But the landing

had caught him and reach of

his military advisers off-guard.

German bombers, which gave

rise to a

incompetence of the Luftwaffe's lack of planning. at

Bamberg, Ribbentrop joined the

train.

He

And Oran was

new 287

out of

torrent of rage at the

Further

down the

pleaded with Hitler to

track,

let

him

put out peace feelers to Stalin via the Soviet embassy in Stockholm with an offer of far-reaching concessions in the east. Hitler brusquely dismissed the

moment

suggestion: a

an enemy.

288

November, peace.

It

was not

In his speech to the Party's 'Old

will

no more

offer of peace.'

Not only had he nothing

place in the midst of a military

down

when Munich to

exactly

arrival in

Guard' on the evening of

reference to his earlier 'peace offers', he declared: 'From

Brown House

at

Hitler

would have chosen

Goebbels even had

for a big

had

to take

difficulty in

pinning

positive to report; the speech

crisis.

now

the speech should start. Hitler needed time after his orientate himself

and decide what to do. 290 4p.m.

He was

He

on the Allied landing

still

North Africa

arrived in the

discussed the position of France and Italy with

Rome, and Vichy. No

calls

were made to

decision could be arrived at in the brief time

before the speech, which had been put back from begin, eventually, at 6p.m.

in

when he

uncertain

Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, and Keitel. Telephone Paris,

its

scheduled time to

291

According to Goebbels, the news on the radio of the Allied landing Africa had 'electrified' the Party gathering. 'Everyone are

pushed down a certain path, we are standing

war.'

292

Hitler

But

if

on the

assaults

8

289

was hardly the atmosphere which

speech.

the time for negotiations with

Hitler then publicly ruled out any prospect of a negotiated

With

on there

of weakness

knows

that,

if

at a turning-point of the

the Party's 'Old Fighters' expected any enlightenment situation, they

were

to be disappointed.

on Allied leaders and blustering parallels with the

before the 'seizure of power' were

all

the will to fight, determination to

he had to

in

things

offer.

The

from

usual verbal

internal situation

Refusal to compromise,

overcome the enemy, the lack of any

539

540

HITLER 1936-1945 and the certainty of

alternative to complete success, for the very existence of the

Unlike the Kaiser,

who had

final victory in a

war

German people formed the basis of the message. capitulated in the First World War at 'quarter

to twelve', he ended, so he stated, 'in principle always at five past twelve'.

He

again held out the prospect of imminent victory in Stalingrad.

to take

it

and, you know,

tiny places there.' If

to avoid a second

North

was

it

And the Army was

advanced somewhere

are modest:

still

Verdun.

taking a

He

we have

little

time,

did not touch

retreat forced

Africa.

British 8th

we

it.

it

upon

last

the Allied landings in

'If

advanced a few times

time in the year, Hitler invoked his 'prophecy'

had

towards the enemy within.

any understanding with them

It

(so Hitler

now

said,

though

'And these internal enemies, they have been eliminated the Jews. 'Another

Germany, has meanwhile

not empty talk. That

is

the

out

referred to his to

at the

force;

come

to

time he

and got

(beseitigt),

it.

he said.

power too, which was once very present

learnt that National Socialist prophecies are

main power which we have

to thank for

misfortune: international Jewry.

You

Reichstag in which

Jewry somehow thinks

I

just ruled

had been impossible

had made a point of not seeking one). They had wanted

in

the

they say they

294

compromise and any peace-offer with external enemies. He

Then he came to

few

was because he wanted

about the Jews. At that point in his big speech, he

earlier stance

a

upon Rommel's Afrika Korps by

in the desert; they've already

For the fourth and

wanted

There are only

passed over in a single sentence:

and have had to pull back again.'

'I

293

declared:

If

will

still

remember

all

the

the meeting of the it

can bring about

an international world war to exterminate European races, then the result will be

not the extermination of the European races but the extermination

{Ausrottung) of Jewry in Europe. I've always been laughed at as a prophet.

Of those who laughed then, countless ones are no longer laughing And those who are still laughing, will also perhaps not be doing so long

(in einiger Zeit).'

today.

before

295

The speech was not one of Hitler's best. He had been a compelling speaker when he had been able to twist reality in plausible fashion for his audience. But now, he was ignoring unpalatable facts, or turning them on their head. The gap between rhetoric and reality had become too wide. To most

SD reports were making apparent, Hitler's speeches could no more than a superficial impact. Even those momentarily roused by his verbal show of defiance were quickly overwhelmed once more by the concerns of everyday existence - food supplies, labour shortages, work Germans,

as

longer have

conditions, worries about loved ones at the front, air-raids.

And

the

news

LAST BIG

THROW

of the Allied landing in North Africa cast a deep pall of

OF THE DICE

gloom about mighty

Germany in a war whose end seemed even farther away than ever. This came on top of growing unease, whatever Hitler had said, about Stalingrad. Criticism of the German leadership for embroiling people in such a war was now more commonplace (if necessarily for the most part carefully couched), and often implicitly included Hitler - no forces stacked against

longer detached, as he used to be, from the negative side of the regime. Hitler's popularity

had sagged. Rumours that he was physically or mentally

had suffered a nervous breakdown, had

ill,

doctors, and carpet,

had

that the

to be permanently attended by

into such frenzies of rage that he resorted to biting the become widespread since the summer of 1942. 2% The implication fell

German

leader and his regime were out of control

was uncomfort-

ably close to the truth.

But Hitler's key audience had, primarily, been not the millions glued to their radio-sets, but his oldest Party loyalists inside the hall.

to reinforce this

backbone of

hold together the

home

tap

Hitler's personal

front. Here,

among

297

It

was essential

power, and of the

this audience, Hitler

298

much of the enthusiasm, commitment, and fanaticism of old. The music was a familiar tune. But everyone

the chords to play.

have recognized - and

in

some measure shared -

will to

could

still

He knew

there

must

a sense of self-deception

in the lyrics.

He

stayed in the

until three in the

held forth,

company

of his Gauleiter, his most trusted paladins,

morning. Every conceivable topic was discussed. Hitler

among

other things, on his theory that cancer was caused by

smoking. Only the war was not touched upon. That was perhaps for the

commented Goebbels. 299 Hitler's real concern that evening was the reaction of the French to the events in North Africa; the Ministerial Council was meeting in Vichy at that very time. He initially told Ambassador Abetz to press the Vichy regime to declare war on the British and Americans. But, realizing that the French would play for time, when time was of the essence, he was then forced to soften his demands and not insist upon a formal declaration of war. The best in the circumstances,

telephone wires between Munich, Vichy, and

Rome were

buzzing

all

evening, but no conclusive steps were agreed. At that point, Hitler decided

upon

a

meeting

in

Munich with Laval and Mussolini. By then, news was 300 resistance was crumbling in French North Africa.

coming in that the initial

The landing had been secured. By the time Ciano arrived in Munich - Mussolini felt unwell and declined to go - Hitler had heard that General Henri Giraud had put himself at the

541

542.

HITLER 1936-1945 service of the Allies

North

Africa.

and been smuggled out of France and transported

Commander

of the French 7th

Army

1940 and imprisoned since that time, Giraud had escaped captivity and

unoccupied France

to

now

earlier in the year.

to

before the debacle of

The danger was

fled

would

that he

provide a figurehead for French resistance in North Africa and a focus

of support for the Allies. Suspicion, which soon proved justified,

was

also

mounting by the hour that Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, too, head of the French armed forces, was preparing to change

won Darlan him

as

who

sides.

over just before the 'Torch' landings with an offer to recognize

head of the French government. Inevitable

favoured de Gaulle, was to be obviated

chist assassinated

Hitler, as

The Americans had

we

Darlan

just before

when

Christmas.

conflict

a

with the

British,

young French monar-

301

noted, had stressed the need to be ready to occupy southern

France in his talks with Mussolini at the end of April. The concern about

now meant that any thought of concessions to the French

Giraud and Darlan

had been dissipated. When Ciano met Hitler on the evening of 9 November - Laval was travelling by car and expected only during the night - he had

made up

his

mind. Laval's input would be irrelevant. Hitler would not

'modify his already definite point of view: the total occupation of France, landing in Corsica, a bridgehead in Tunisia'.

302

When

he eventually arrived,

Laval, looking like a minor French provincial worthy, out of place the military top brass

was

and trying

treated with scarcely

among

to pass pleasantries about his long journey,

more than contempt.

Hitler

demanded landing

points in Tunisia. Laval tried to wring concessions from Italy. Hitler refused

waste time on such deliberations. Laval, anxious to avoid responsibility

to

for yielding territory to the Axis, suggested he should be faced with a fait

accompli.

He

apparently had not realized that this was precisely what was

intended. in the next room having a smoke, Hitler gave the order occupy the remainder of France next day - 11 November, and the

While Laval was to

anniversary of the Armistice of 1918. Laval ing.

303

n

on

was

to be informed next

morn-

In a letter to

Marshal Petain and

November,

Hitler justified the occupation through the necessity to

a proclamation to the French people

defend the coast of southern France and Corsica against Allied invasion from the

new base

in

North

Africa.

304

That morning, German troops occupied

southern France without military resistance, in accordance with the plans for 'Operation Anton'

which had been

At the Berghof for a few days,

laid

Hitler's

down

mask

in

May. 305

of ebullience slipped a

Below found him deeply worried about the Anglo-American

little.

actions.

He

THROW

LAST BIG was

OF THE DICE

also concerned about supplies difficulties in the Mediterranean,

submarines had

British

He was German

intensified.

His trust

in the Italians

movement

sure that they were leaking intelligence about the

supply ships to the British.

The

which

had disappeared. of

deficiencies of the Luftwaffe also

preoccupied him. Goring, Below heard, was not on top of things. Hitler

Hans Jeschonnek about

preferred to deal with the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff

depended too much on planes that

detailed matters. Defence of the Reich

were

in the

More

wrong

flak artillery

place, or prevented

was needed

the eastern front, he

from

flying

through bad weather.

German cities. As regards new surprises', but feared a

in the vicinity of

was hoping

for 'no

was imminent. 306

large-scale Soviet offensive

VII On

19

November,

Zeitzler told Hitler that the Soviet offensive

had begun.

Immediately, the Soviet forces to the north-west and west of Stalingrad

broke through the weak part of the front held by the Romanian 4th Army. General Ferdinand Heim's 48th Panzer Corps was sent the breach. Furious, Hitler dismissed

Heim. He

later

in,

but failed to heal

ordered him to be

sentenced to death - a sentence not carried out only through the intervention 307

The next day the Red Army's 'Stalingrad Front' broke through the divisions of the Romanian 4th Army south of the city and met up on 22 November with the Soviet forces that had penetrated from north and west. With that, the 220,000 men of the 6th Army were completely of Schmundt.

encircled.

308

had decided

Hitler

to return to the Wolf's Lair that evening. His train

journey back from Berchtesgaden to East Prussia took over twenty hours,

owing

to repeated lengthy stops to telephone Zeitzler.

The new Chief of the

General Staff insisted on permission being granted to the 6th

way out of Stalingrad. Hitler did not give an November he had sent an order to Paulus: '6th Army

their

of temporary encirclement.'

'The army

and

its

is

On

the evening of 22

Commander-in-Chief and know that

it

and

The

to relieve

6th 311

it.'

it

will

Army

to fight

Already on 21

to hold, despite danger

November, he ordered:

temporarily encircled by Russian forces.

this difficult situation.

to help

310

inch.

309

I

know

conduct

the 6th

itself

Army

bravely in

Army must know that I am doing everything He thought the position could be remedied.

Relief could be organized to enable a break-out. But this could not be

overnight.

A plan

was

hastily devised to deploy Colonel-General

done

Hermann

543

544

HITLER 1936-1945 Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, south-west of Stalingrad, to prepare an attack to relieve the 6th

Army. But

would take about

it

ten days before

it

could be

attempted. In the meantime, Paulus had to hold out, while the troops were supplied by

air-lift. It

assured Hitler that Zeitzler, itself,

had

it

was

a major,

and highly risky operation. But Goring

could be done. Jeschonnek did not contradict him.

however, vehemently disagreed.

And from

within the Luftwaffe

who

Colonel-General Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen,

Hitler's ear, raised the gravest

normally

doubts both on grounds of the weather

(with temperatures already plummeting, icy mists, and freezing rain icing

up the wings of the planes) and of the numbers of available chose to believe Goring.

aircraft. Hitler

312

Hitler's decision to air-lift supplies to the 6th

Army

until relief arrived

was taken on 23 November. By then he had heard from Paulus that stores of food and equipment were perilously low and certainly insufficient for a defence of the position. Paulus sought permission to attempt to break out.

Weichs, Commander-in-Chief of Staff Zeitzler also fully

evidently acting

on the

informed Weichs

backed

Army Group

this as the

only

B,

and Chief of the General

realistic option.

313

Zeitzler,

basis of a remarkable misunderstanding, actually

at za.m.

on 24 November that he had 'persuaded the

Fuhrer that a break-out was the only possibility of saving the army'. Within four hours the General Staff had to transmit exactly the opposite decision

by Hitler: the 6th air until relief

was

Army had

could arrive.

to stand fast

314

The

fate of

and would be supplied from the almost quarter of a million

men

sealed with this order.

Hitler

was not

totally isolated in military support for his decision. Field-

Marshal von Manstein had arrived that morning, 24 November,

at

Army

Group B headquarters to take command, as ordered by Hitler three days earlier, of a new Army Group Don (which included the trapped 6th Army). The main objective was to shore up the weakened front south and west of Stalingrad, to secure the lines to Army Group A in the Caucasus. He also took command of General Hoth's attempt to relieve the 6th Army. 31 But in contrast ^

to Paulus, Weichs,

and

Zeitzler,

Manstein did not approve an attempt to

break out before reinforcements arrived, and took an optimistic view of the chances of an

air-lift.

Manstein was one of

Hitler's

His assessment can only have strengthened Hitler's

most trusted

own

generals.

judgement.

316

By mid-December, Manstein had changed his view diametrically. Richthofen had persuaded him that, in the atrocious weather conditions, an adequate

air-lift

was impossible. Even

if

the weather relented, air supplies

could not be sustained for any length of time. 317 Manstein

now

pressed on

LAST BIG numerous occasions

THROW

for a decision to allow the 6th

Army

OF THE DICE to break out.

But by then the chances of a break-out had grossly diminished; Hoth's

attempt was held up

relief

from Stalingrad and some days 319

non-existent.

On

in

heavy fighting some

19 December, Hitler once

more

rejected

Army,

now

all

became

pleas to

indicated that

weakened and surrounded by mighty Soviet

greatly

once

kilometres

later finally forced back, they rapidly

consider a break-out. Military information in any case the 6th

in fact,

fifty

318

forces,

would be able to advance a maximum of thirty kilometres to the south-west - not far enough to meet up with Hoth's relief Panzer army. 320 On 21 December, Manstein asked Zeitzler for

Army

on whether the 6th

a final decision

should attempt to break out as long as

it

could

still

link with the 57th

Panzer Corps, or whether the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe could guarantee air-supplies over a lengthy period of time. Zeitzler cabled back

Goring was confident that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army,

that

now

though Jeschonnek was by inquiry of the 6th

Army Command about

advance towards the south that there

was

of a different opinion. Hitler allowed an

fuel for

twenty kilometres, and that

hold position for long. Hoth's army was

no decision was taken.

Still

taking one],' noted the

the distance

it

could expect to

The reply came would be unable to

the other fronts could be held.

if

as

'It's

OKW's

if

still

it

fifty-four kilometres

the Fiihrer

is

no longer capable

Helmuth Greiner.

war-diarist

away.

321

[of

322

Army Command itself described the tactic of a mass break-out without

6th

from the outside - 'Operation Thunderclap' -

relief

solution' ('Katastrophenlosung')

323

as 'a catastrophe-

That evening, Hitler dismissed the

.

idea:

Paulus only had fuel for a short distance; there was no possibility of breaking out.

324

Two days later, on 23

Hoth's 4th Panzer

With

that,

Hoth had

stein

still

back

to pull

the siege of Stalingrad

Paulus

December, Manstein had to remove units from

Army to hold the crumbling left flank of his Army Group. had

his

failed.

325

weakened

The

6th

forces.

The attempt

to break

Army was doomed.

sought permission to break out. But by Christmas Eve,

had given up trying

to persuade Hitler to give approval to

Man-

what by

this

move of sheer desperation, without hope of success. The main priority was now to hold the left flank to prevent an even worse catastrophe. 326 This was essential to enable the retreat of Army Group time could only be seen as a

A from the Caucasus. 327 Zeitzler had put the urgency of this retreat to Hitler on the evening of 27 December. Hitler had reluctantly agreed, then changed initial

his

mind.

approval.

had become a

It

The

was too retreat

late. Zeitzler

had telephoned through

later

Hitler's

328 from the Caucasus was under way. Stalingrad

lesser priority.

329

545

546

HITLER 1936-1945 Preoccupied though he was with the eastern front, and in particular with the

now

inevitable catastrophe in Stalingrad, Hitler could not afford to

what was happening

neglect

in

North

worried about the resolve of his Italian

Montgomery had

Africa.

And

he was increasingly

allies.

Rommel's Afrika Corps into headlong retreat, Italian army out of Libya altogether during

forced

and would drive the German and January 1943.

Rommel had

330

Encouraged by Goring, Hitler was now convinced that

lost his nerve.

331

But

rushed to Tunis in

Italian troops

at least the 50,000 German and 18,000 November and December had seriously

held up the Allies, preventing their rapid domination of North Africa and ruling out an early assault

on the European continent

itself.

332

Even

so,

knew the Italians were wobbling. Goring's visit to Rome at the end 333 of November had confirmed that. Their commitment to the war was by 334 now in serious doubt. And when Ciano and Marshal Count Ugo Cavalero, Hitler

the head of the Italian

December

armed

catastrophic the previous

collapse

of

the

it

Italian

two days by the Soviet

Don. Hitler concealed

his fury

Wolf's Lair on 18

forces, arrived at the

for three days of talks,

was

in the

Army, overwhelmed during

8th

offensive

and dismay

weakness of his Axis partner, alluding only setbacks. His chief interest in the talks

was

immediate wake of the

on the middle

stretches of the

what he saw

as the military

at

in a single sentence to the Italian in pressing

upon

the Italians the

urgent need to intensify efforts - through greater sacrifices from the civilian

population - to ensure sufficient transport for

North

Africa, emphasizing that this

Italian point of view, the central

the time

had come

Soviet Union. It

was the

Prussia.

to

end the war

was

vital supplies to the forces in

'decisive for the war'.

From

the

concern was to suggest to Hitler that

in the east

and seek

a settlement with the

335

first

time a summit with the Italians had taken place in East

Ciano referred to

collective living in the

'the sadness of that

Command

damp

forest

and boredom of

barracks'. 'There isn't a spot of colour,'

he continued, 'not one vivid note. Waiting-rooms

filled

with people smoking,

eating, chatting. Kitchen odour, smell of uniforms, of boots.' 336

The talks that was constructive for either side. When Ciano put Mussolini's case for Germany coming to terms with the Soviet Union in order to put maximum effort into defence against the western powers, Hitler was dismissive. Were he to do that, he replied, he would be forced within a short produced

little

time to fight a reinvigorated Soviet Union once more. 337

were non-committal towards

The

Italian guests

Hitler's exhortations to override all civilian

considerations in favour of supplies for North Africa. 338

THROW

LAST BIG

OF THE DICE

For the German people, quite especially for the many German families with loved ones

A

in the 6th

radio broadcast linking

Army, Christmas 1942 was a depressing festival. troops on all the fighting fronts, including Stalin-

many a family gathered around the men at the 'front on the Volga' joined their comrades in singing 'Silent Night'. The listeners at home did not know 339 Nor did they know that 1,280 German soldiers the link-up was a fake. 340 They were, however, died at Stalingrad on that Christmas Day in 1942. grad, brought tears to the eyes of

Christmas tree back home, as the

aware by then of an ominous

The

fate

hanging over the 6th Army.

triumphalist propaganda of September and October, suggesting that

victory at Stalingrad

was

just

around the corner, had given way

following the Soviet counter-offensive to

in the

weeks

more than ominous silence. however, to make plain that

little

Indications of hard fighting were sufficient,

Rumours of the encirclement of the 6th Army - passed on through despairing letters from the soldiers entrapped there 341 swiftly spread. It soon became evident that the rumours were no less than things were not going to plan.

the truth. struggle

As the sombre mood the

in

streets

of

at

home deepened by

Stalingrad

the day, the terrible

headed towards

inexorable

its

denouement.

home confirmed the worst fears. 'Please don't be sad and me, when you receive this, my last letter,' wrote one captain to his

Last letters

weep

for

wife in mid-January. 'I'm standing here in an icy storm in a hopeless position in the city of fate, Stalingrad.

the last fight,

man

Encircled for months,

against man.'

342

we will tomorrow

begin

Another soldier compared the miserable

reality of

death in Stalingrad with the imagery of heroism: 'They're falling

like flies,

and no one bothers and buries them. Without arms and

without eyes, with stomachs ripped open, they

lie

'We're completely alone, without help from outside,' ran another

home.

'Hitler has left us in the lurch. This letter

is

in

still

is

legs

and

around everywhere.'

343

last letter

going off while the

airfield

in the north of the city. The men of my know it as certainly as I do. This, then, is 344 like.' Some clutched vainly, even now, to final strands

our possession. We're

battery guess

it,

too, but don't

what the end looks

of belief in Hitler. 'The Fuhrer solidly promised to get us out of here. That's

been read out to us and I

have to believe

eight years of in

it,

in

we

firmly believed

something ...

always

in the

I

it. I still

have believed

Fuhrer and his word.

believe

my It's

it

entire

today, because life,

horrible

or at least

how they're

doubt here, and shameful to hear words spoken that you can't contradict

because they're in rare indeed

line

among

with the

facts.

34j

Such sentiments were by

this

time

those fighting, suffering, and dying in the hell-hole of

547

548

HITLER 1936-1945 Stalingrad. Far letter

more

was

typical

the wretchedness expressed in the last

of another despairing soldier:

you should know the

truth.

It is

love you, and

'I

The

in this letter.

nation, doubt, despair,

crime

lessness, not to say

A

and horrible dying

can give no greater proof of

I

.

Hitler listened without

.

.

.

I'm not cowardly, just sad

Don't be so quick to forget me.' 346 officers in the 6th

He showed them

Nicolaus von Below.

knowledge of

bravery than to die for such point-

were received by

detail,

Army, describing

their

Hitler's Luftwaffe Adjutant,

to Hitler, reading out key passages.

comment, except once commenting inscrutably

Army

'the fate of the 6th

.

from senior

series of letters

plight in graphic

.

my

the

is

Misery, hunger, cold, resig-

the hardest struggle in a hopeless situation.

that

you love me, and so

truth

for all of us a deep duty in the fight for the

left

freedom of the our people'.

347

that

Below had the impression

war

by this time that victory in a two-front

that Hitler realized

against the Russians and the

Americans could not be won. But Hitler betrayed no outward sign of

He

weakening.

felt

obliged to maintain the charade, even in his inner circle,

that the

war would be won - and he was

to those

around him. What he

able

really thought,

still

to convey his

optimism

no one knew. 348

After Paulus had rejected a call to surrender, the final Soviet attack to

destroy the 6th

Army began on

10 January.

An

emissary to the Wolf's Lair,

seeking permission for Paulus to have freedom of action to bring an end to

went unheeded by

the carnage

Hitler.

On

15 January, he

commissioned

Field-Marshal Erhard Milch, the Luftwaffe's armaments supremo and

mastermind of

all its

transportation organization, with flying 300 tons of

supplies a day to the besieged army.

was pure fantasy - though

It

partly

based on the inaccurate information that Zeitzler complained about on

more than one occasion. Snow and ice on tures often prevented take-offs last airstrip in the vicinity

be dropped from the constant heavy

By

fire,

this time, the

air.

the

and landings.

was

of Stalingrad

The remaining

runways In

in sub-arctic

tempera-

any case, on 22 January the

lost.

Supplies could

now

only

frozen, half-starved troops, under

were often unable to salvage them. 349

German people were already being prepared for the Wehrmacht report on 16 January

worst. After a long period of silence, the

had spoken against the

ominous terms of a 'heroically courageous defensive struggle enemy attacking from all sides'. 350 After Goebbels had visited the in

Wolf 's

Lair

of the

home

on 22 January, and obtained Hitler's backing for a radicalization front in a drive for 'total war', the press

instructed to speak of 'the great

and

was immediately

stirring heroic sacrifice

encircled at Stalingrad are offering the

German

which the troops

nation'. This

was now

to be

LAST BIG

THROW

OF THE DICE

brought into the direct context of mobilizing the population for Hitler

at

There was scarcely a hope of rescuing the troops.

a

drama of German

history'.

302

News came

the rapidly deteriorating situation. Hitler

'deeply shaken'.

He complained about

303

illusory.

was

himself.

Only

304

Schmundt

promises

its

separately told Goebbels that these

Goring's staff had given him the optimistic picture they

on to the Fiihrer. 000 It was a dictatorship - up to and including Hitler

afflicted the entire

positive messages

meant realism) was a the

in as they talked, outlining

said by Goebbels to have been

about the Luftwaffe, which had not kept

presumed he wanted, and he had passed problem that

was

It

But he did not consider attaching any blame to himself.

bitterly

levels of supplies.

had been

3M

had bluntly described the plight of the 6th Army to Goebbels

their meeting.

'heroic

'total war'.

this

were acceptable. Pessimism (which usually

sign of failure. Distortions of the truth

communications system of the Third Reich

were

at every level

built into

- most of

all

in the top echelons of the regime.

Even more than he contempt for the

felt let

Soviet counter-attack.

worst of

all

down by his own Luftwaffe, Hitler voiced utter German allies to hold the line against the

failure of the

The Romanians were bad,

the Italians worse, and

were the Hungarians. 306 The catastrophe would not have

occurred had the entire eastern front been controlled by he had wanted.

The German

would this

units, as

bakers' and baggage-formations, he fumed,

had performed better than the divisions.

German

elite Italian,

Romanian, and Hungarian

But he did not think the Axis partners were ready to desert.

dance out of

'like to

line';

though as long as Mussolini was

could be ruled out. The Duce was clever enough to

know

that

it

Italy

there,

would

mean the end of Fascism, and his own end. Romania was essential to Germany for its oil, Hitler said. He had made it plain to the Romanians what would come their way should they attempt anything stupid. 3o Hitler still hoped - at least that is what he told Goebbels - that parts of the 6th

Army

better than

could hold out until they could be relieved.

anyone that there was not the

On

Army was on

its last legs.

had

with Hitler at

his talks

surrender. Hitler rejected to allow the 6th

it.

slightest

308

knew The 6th

In fact, he

chance of

it.

22 January, the very day that Goebbels had

FHQ,

He

Paulus had requested permission to

then rejected a similar plea from Manstein

Army's surrender. As

a point of honour, he stated, there

could be no question of capitulation. In the evening, he telegraphed the 6th

Army

to say that through

in the greatest struggle in

the last soldier

and the

its

struggle

German

last bullet'.

it

had made an

history. 360

309

historic contribution

The army was

to stand fast 'to

549

550

HITLER 1936-1945

Army had been

Since 23 January the 6th split in

two

as Soviet troops cutting

the city joined forces.

complete.

361

One

beginning to break up.

It

was

through from the south and the west of

By 26 January the

Army was

division of the 6th

on the

section raised the white flag

29th.

The same

day,

Paulus sent Hitler a telegram of congratulations on the tenth anniversary of his

takeover of power on the 30th.

The

Germany

'celebrations' in

triumph

in

362

January 1933 were

for the anniversary of Hitler's

in a

to

Goebbels to read out

to Stalingrad:

his

All bunting

He remained

Hitler did not give his usual speech. left it

low key.

proclamation.

364

day of

was banned. 363

in his headquarters

and

A single sentence referred

'The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a

warning for everybody

to

do the utmost

maintenance of our entire continent.'

365

Germany's

for the struggle for

freedom and the future of our people, and thus

wider sense for the

in a

In Stalingrad itself, the

end was

Army

approaching. Feelers were put out by the remnants of the 6th

to the

Soviets that very evening, 30 January 1943, for a surrender. Negotiations

took place next day.

366

On

that day, the

announcement was made

Paulus had been promoted to Field-Marshal.

367

He was

struggle with a hero's death. In the evening, he surrendered. later,

that

expected to end the 368

Two

on 2 February, the northern sector of the surrounded troops

days

also gave

The battle of Stalingrad was over. Around 100,000 men from twenty-one German and two Romanian divisions had fallen in battle. A further 113,000 German and Romanian soldiers were taken prisoner. Only a few thousand would survive their captivity. 369 in.

VIII Hitler

made no mention

leaders at the

of the

human

midday conference on

1

tragedy

February.

the prestige lost through Paulus's surrender.

comprehend, and impossible to

forgive. 'Here

when he met his military What concerned him was

He found it impossible to a man can look on while 50-

60,000 of his soldiers die and defend themselves bravely to the

last.

How

can he give himself up to the Bolsheviks?' he asked, nearly speechless with anger at what he saw as a betrayal. 370

who

like that.

pull

He could have no respect for an officer 'How easy it is to do something What sort of cowardice does it take to

chose captivity to shooting himself. 371

The

pistol

back from

-

372

it?'

that's simple.

'No one

else

is

being

made

field-marshal in this war,'

he avowed (though he did not keep to his word). 373

He was

certain

-

it

THROW

LAST BIG proved an accurate presumption other captured generals

that, in Soviet hands, Paulus

lock

them up

and two days

softened-up (miirbe) that they'll talk straight

so cowardly? a

man

others.

I

and there

they'll

don't understand

it.

away

be eaten by

.

rats.

.

immortality, and he prefers to go to

all

have them so

now come

They'll

.

How can someone be

So many people have to

could release himself from

That's crazy.'

he said: 'They'll

later they'll

Then such heroism of so many

goes and besmirches in the last minute the

He

Russian prisons that

in

in the volkiscb press since the early 1920s, in the rat-cellar,

into the Lubljanka,

and the

would within no time be promoting anti-German

propaganda. Drawing on horror-stories of tortures

had circulated

OF THE DICE

die.

misery and enter eternity, national

Moscow.

How

can there be a choice?

374

For the German people, Paulus's missed chance to gain immortality was scarcely a central concern. Their thoughts,

announcement -

false to the last

soldiers of the 6th

Army had

- on

3

when

they heard the dreaded

February that the

fought to the

and

officers

shot and 'died so that

final

Germany might live', were of the human tragedy and the scale of the military 375 disaster. The 'heroic sacrifice' was no consolation to bereft relatives 376 and friends. The women of Nuremberg were among those with many husbands, fathers, sons, or brothers in the 6th Army. As the news broke on 3

February they tore copies of newspapers out of the hands of

shouting and wailing, beside themselves with

Nazi leadership. 'Hitler has

Gestapo men mingled individuals

in the

grief.

lied to us for three

Men

sellers,

hurled abuse at the

months,' people raged.

crowds. But none of them intervened to arrest

from the distraught and angry crowds.

they had been instructed to hold back.

It

was rumoured

that

377

The SD reported that the whole nation was 'deeply shaken' by the fate of the 6th Army. There was deep depression, and widespread anger that Stalingrad had not been evacuated or relieved while there was still time. People asked

how

such optimistic reports had been possible only a short

time earlier. They were

of the underestimation

critical

winter - of the Soviet forces.

Many now

-

as in the previous

thought the war could not be won,

and were anxiously contemplating the consequences of defeat. Hitler

had

been largely exempted from whatever

until Stalingrad

cisms people had of the regime. That ity for

the debacle

was

evident. 'For the

a genuine leadership crisis

.

.

.

criti-

now altered sharply. 379 His responsibilfirst

time,' as Ulrich

noted, 'the critical murmurings relate directly to him. is

378

The

sacrifice of

the sake of pointless or criminal prestige

is

To

von Hassell

this extent there

most precious blood

again plain to

see.'

380

for

People had

551

552

HITLER 1936-1945 381 expected Hitler to give an explanation in his speech on 30 January. His

obvious reluctance to speak to the nation only heightened the criticism. The regime's opponents were encouraged. Graffiti chalked on walls attacking Hitler, 'the Stalingrad Murderer',

was not

extinct.

Appalled

and highly-placed

officers

dormant

since 1938-9.

Munich,

In

382

a

at

civil

were a sign that underground resistance

what had happened,

a

number of army

servants revived conspiratorial plans largely

383

group of students, together with one of

their professors,

whose idealism and mounting detestation of the criminal inhumanity of the regime had led them the previous year to form the 'White Rose' oppositiongroup,

now

openly displayed their attack on Hitler. The medical students

Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl had formed the

initial driving-force,

and had soon been joined by Christoph Probst, Sophie Scholl (Hans's Willi Graf,

whose

and Kurt Huber, Professor of Philosophy

critical attitude to the

discussions. All the students

at

Munich

regime had influenced them

came from

sister),

University,

in lectures

and

conservative, middle-class back-

grounds. All were fired by Christian beliefs and humanistic idealism. The horrors on the eastern front, experienced for a short time at

when

Graf, Schmorell, and

Hans

first

hand

Scholl were called up, converted the lofty

idealism into an explicit, political message. 'Fellow Students!' ran their final

manifesto (composed by Professor Huber), distributed in

on 18 February. 'The nation

men

of Stalingrad.

The

is

Munich University

deeply shaken by the destruction of the

genial strategy of the

World War

[I]

corporal

has senselessly and irresponsibly driven (gehetzt) three hundred and thirty

thousand German men to death and ruin. It

was

a highly courageous

show

Fiihrer,

we thank

of defiance. But

and Sophie Scholl were denounced by a porter

it

was

you!'

384

suicidal.

at the university

Hans

(who was

subsequently applauded by pro-Nazi students for his action), and quickly

was picked up soon afterwards. Their trial before the 'People's Court', presided over by Roland Freisler, took place within four days. The verdict - the death-sentence - was a arrested by the Gestapo. Christoph Probst

foregone conclusion. All three were guillotined the same afternoon. Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, and Alexander Schmorell suffered the same fate

months

later.

some

Other students on the fringe of the movement were sentenced

to long terms of imprisonment. 385

The regime had been badly It

would

hint of opposition.

about to

stung. But

lash back without scruple

rise

The

it

was not

and with

level of brutality

at the point of collapse.

utter viciousness at the slightest

towards

its

sharply as external adversity mounted.

own

population was

THROW

LAST BIG If

the

Hitler felt any personal remorse for Stalingrad or

Army and

dead of the 6th

in his close

human sympathy

their relatives, he did not let

proximity could detect the signs of nervous

privately at his

worry that

his health

OF THE DICE

strain.

would not stand up

for

show. Those

it

386

He

hinted

to the pressure.

387

His secretaries had to put up with even longer nocturnal monologues as his

insomnia developed chronic proportions. The topics were much the same as ever: his

youth

in

Vienna, the 'time of struggle', the history of mankind,

the nature of the cosmos. secretaries,

who

There was no

now knew

by

relief

from the boredom

for his

more or

less off

outpourings on

his

all

topics

by heart. There were not even any longer the occasional evenings listening to records to break

weeks a

drug for

talk

up the tedium.

- about more or

from

Hitler, as he

now no longer wanted to listen to him. He told one of his doctors two

earlier,

where every division was

389

at Stalingrad.

invincibility.

still

No

bunker of

in the

be won.

390

led to

head-

But outwardly, even

crack could be allowed to show. Hitler remained true to

A hint of weakness, in his thinking, was a gift A crevice of demoralization would then swiftly

and subversives.

widen to

chasm. The military, and above

therefore, never be allowed a

There was not when he spoke to

391

He

home

told

them

more than

'the catastrophe

for the failings.

known

around for scapegoats. The it

now

From

front'.

Hitler did

393

of his earliest remarks on politics trait

392

he left no doubt where in beginning the of his political career -

view the

is

beginning of his

While he said he naturally accepted

his

real fault lay.

at his

Then he described what

on the eastern

responsibility for the events of the winter,

from

own resolution.

two hours

at the very

ever.

full

what

his

the Reichs- and Gauleiter for almost

Goebbels referred to as

indeed, from

the Party, leaders must,

a trace of demoralization, depression, or uncertainty

address that he believed in victory

not look close to

all else

glimmer of any wavering in

headquarters on 7 February.

was too embedded

that, for the first time,

in his

- he had

cast

psyche for him

an unmitigated national disaster

had to be explained. Addressing the Party leadership,

as in his private

discussion with Goebbels a fortnight or so earlier, he once

blame

his

and strength.

to enemies

to stray

mind

entourage at the Wolf's Lair, he had to sustain the facade of

his creed of will

a

like

As Below guessed, the bad news

own room

war could

quarters, about whether the

in his

from the eastern front must have

as well as

serious doubts, in the privacy of his

his

Talking was

years later that he had to

pondering troop dispositions and seeing

from the North African

among

388

anything other than military issues - to divert him

less

sleepless nights

had told Goebbels some

music.

for the disaster at Stalingrad squarely

more placed

on the 'complete

the

failure' of

553

554

HITLER 1936-1945 Germany's

allies

- the Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians - whose fighting

powers met with

his 'absolute contempt'.

394

The consequence of the collapse

of Germany's allies in the defensive front had been to endanger the Caucasus

army. This had necessitated the 'extraordinarily

much Army

'to

Army

should stand

difficult order,

fast

and bind

involving

in the

Red

prevent the catastrophe gripping the entire eastern front'. Dreadful

weather conditions, he as

6th

sacrifice', that the

had been presumed

said,

had prevented

possible. Hitler

it

being supplied from the

took the view that the

terms, could be taken to be mastered. 'The Caucasus

through the

sacrifice of the 6th

Army

in Stalingrad.'

crisis, in

air,

broad

army had been saved

395

Not just the search for scapegoats, but the feeling of treachery and betrayal was entrenched in Hitler's thinking. Another strand of his explanation for the disaster at Stalingrad was the prospect of imminent French betrayal, forcing him to retain several divisions, especially SS-divisions, in the west when they were desperately needed in the east. 396 But Hitler had the extraordinary capacity, as his Luftwaffe adjutant Below noted, of turning negative into positive, in

and convincing

his audience of this.

397

A

landing by the Allies

France would have been far more dangerous, he claimed, than that

which had taken place occupation of Tunis. the U-boats,

and

398

in

North Africa and had been checked through the

He saw grounds

in Speer's

for optimism, too, in the success of

armaments programme enabling

better flak

defence against air-raids together with full-scale production by the of the Tiger tank.

Much

summer

399

of the rest of Hitler's address

was on the 'psychology' of war. instincts in demanding the rad-

Goebbels had shrewdly played on Hitler's icalization of the

the

'home

front'

and the move

Propaganda Minister found

Gauleiter.

The

declared, and

crisis

their

was more of

echo

to 'total war'.

The

urgings of

in Hitler's rallying-call to his

a psychological than a material one, he

must therefore be overcome by 'psychological means'.

the Party's task to achieve this. struggle'. Radical

The

measures were

Gauleiter should

now

remember

It

was

the 'time of

needed. Austerity, sacrifice, and the

end of any privileges for certain sectors of society was the order of the day.

The

setbacks but eventual triumph of Frederick the Great

-

the implied

400 Hitler's own leadership was plain - were invoked. The setbacks now being faced - solely the fault of Germany's allies - even had

comparison with

their

own

psychological advantages. Propaganda and the Party's agitation

could awaken people to the fact that they had stark alternatives: becoming

master of Europe, or undergoing

'a total

liquidation and extermination'.

401

Hitler pointed out one advantage which, he claimed, the Allies possessed:

THROW

LAST BIG that they

OF THE DICE

were sustained by international Jewry. The consequence, Goebbels

was 'that we have to eliminate Jewry not only from the whole of Europe'. Goebbels noted approv-

reported Hitler as saying,

from Reich

territory but

ingly that Hitler

had again adopted

foreseeable future there

towards Jewry which

his

own

viewpoint, and that within the

would be no more Jews

[Hitler] impresses

on

all

'has long since been the political order of the

day

Hitler categorically ruled out, as he always capitulation.

403

He

in Berlin.

'The ruthlessness

Gauleiter,' Goebbels added, in Berlin.'

402

had done, any

stated that any collapse of the

possibility of

German Reich was out was

of the question. But his further remarks betrayed the fact that he

contemplating precisely that. The event of such a collapse 'would represent the ending of his

the scapegoats

life',

would

he declared.

It

was

plain

German people

be: the

who,

in

such an eventuality,

themselves. 'Such a collapse

could only be caused through the weakness of the people,' Goebbels recorded Hitler as saying. 'But

if

would deserve nothing

German people turned out

the

to be

weak, they

than to be extinguished by a stronger people;

else

then one could have no sympathy for them.'

404

The sentiment would

stay

with him to the end.

To

the Party leadership, the

in this all

backbone of

way. The Gauleiter could be

fanatics as Hitler himself was.

The

rallied

his support, Hitler could

ears. In

after

They were part of his 'sworn community'.

responsibility of the Party for the radicalization of the

music to their

speak

by such rhetoric. They were

'home

any case, whatever private doubts

(if

front'

was

any) they

harboured, they had no choice but to stick with Hitler. They had burnt their boats with him.

He was

the sole guarantor of their power.

The German people were viceroys.

When

Stalingrad,

he spoke

on the occasion (which

possibly avoid) of Heroes'

gave

less easily

placated than Hitler's immediate

in Berlin to the

nation for the

first

this year, of all years,

time since

he could not

Memorial Day on 21 March 1943, his speech than any Hitler speech since he had become

rise to greater criticism

Chancellor.

405

The speech was one of Hitler's only fifteen pages long; British air-raid that

it

shortest.

Goebbels was pleased that

was feared and

predicted.

406

it

an old propagandist, he

was the

made

was

Hitler told Goebbels that

he wanted to use the speech for another fierce attack on Bolshevism. like

it

lessened the chances of being interrupted by the

said:

anxiety, as Goebbels

propaganda meant

had hinted, about

repetition.

407

He

Perhaps

a possible air-raid

Hitler race through his speech in such a rapid

felt

which

and dreary monotone.

Whatever the reason, the routine assault on Bolshevism and on Jewry

as the

555

556

HITLER 1936-1945 force behind the 'merciless war' could

was profound. Rumours others that

it

had been

enthusiasm. Disappointment

stir little

revived about Hitler's poor health

who had

a substitute

- along with

spoken, while the real Fuhrer

was under house-arrest on the Obersalzberg suffering from a mental breakdown after Stalingrad. Extraordinary was the fact that Hitler never even directly

mentioned Stalingrad

memory And his passing German dead in

of the fallen

and

at a

rank incredulity.

to be devoted to the

time where the trauma was undiminished.

reference, at the

the

ceremony meant

in a

end of

war was presumed

his speech, to a figure of 542,000

to be far too

low and received with

408

Reactions to the speech were a clear indicator that the

German

people's

bonds with Hitler were dissolving. This was no overnight phenomenon. But Stalingrad

was no

was

the point at

which the

rebellion in the air; Hitler

sullenly depressed, anxious

was

became unmistakable. There

right

about

that.

The mood was

about the present, fearful of the future, above

weary of the war; but not

all else

signs

rebellious.

To

all

but the few

who had

served the regime from the inside, had contacts in high places with recourse to the

power of

the military, and were

now

actively conspiring to bring

about Hitler's downfall, thoughts of overthrowing the regime could scarcely be entertained.

The regime was

far too strong,

far too great, its readiness to strike

becoming even more so

The

down

all

waned and

as positive support

reserves of hard-core

capacity for repression

its

opposition far too evident (and

Nazi support were

loyalties

substantial.

still

weakened).

They could

be found especially - though here, too, there were unmistakable signs of erosion

- among members of a younger generation

ideals in school,

among many

to a ray of hope, and, naturally,

combined fervent cult,

who had

belief

that

had swallowed Nazi

ordinary front soldiers desperately clinging

most of

with careerism.

all

409

among

Party activists

who had

Fanatical devotees of the Fuhrer

who were

not wavered in their adulation of Hitler, or

implicated in the crimes against humanity which he had inspired, remained in control of the

home

front, itching to resort to

any measures, however

up the regime's foundations. For was no alternative to struggling on.

ruthless, to shore lation, there

In this, at least, the dictator

more and more ordinary

and the people he led were

citizens

that might have brought

now

clear to

at one. Hitler, as

recognized, had closed off

compromise peace. The

increasingly seen in a different light. There

seemed

the bulk of the popu-

was no end

growing numbers of ordinary

all

avenues

earlier victories in sight.

But

citizens that Hitler

it

were

now

had taken

LAST BIG them

into a

There was

war which could only end still

would rebound

What was

revealed after Stalingrad

and

disaster.

months the miseries of war

on the population of Germany

itself.

would become over those months ever

clearer: for all the lingering strength of support, the affair

OF THE DICE

in destruction, defeat,

far to go, but over the next in ever greater ferocity

THROW

German

people's love

with Hitler was at an end. Only the bitter process of divorce remained.

557

BELEAGUERED

'We have not only

a "leadership crisis", but strictly speak-

ing a "Leader crisis"!' Speer, recalling Goebbels's assessment in late

February 1943

'Germany and sea. It

its allies

was obvious

to get off

were

in the

same boat on

a stormy

that in this situation anyone wanting

would drown immediately.' Admiral Hortby of Hungary,

Hitler, speaking to

April 1943

'Herr Feldmarschall:

we

are not master here of our

own

decisions.'

Hitler to Field-Marshal von Kluge, 26 July 1943, after the fall

of Mussolini the previous day

'A glorious page in our history, and one that has never been written and never can be written right,

we had

.

.

.

We

had the moral

the duty to our people, to destroy this people

which wanted to destroy

us.'

Himmler, speaking 'Final Solution

to

SS leaders

in

Posen about the

of the Jewish Question', 4 October 1943

'The English claim that the Fiihrer,'

Goebbels declared.

rhetorical questions 'total

German people have It

was

lost their trust in the

the opening to the

towards the end of

his

fifth

of his ten

two-hour speech proclaiming

war' on the evening of 18 February 1943. The hand-picked audience

in Berlin's Sportpalast rose as

allegation.

A

one

man

to

denounce such an outrageous

chorus of voices arose: 'Fiihrer command,

we

tumult lasted for what seemed an age. Orchestrating the frenzied perfection, the

propaganda maestro eventually broke

in the Fiihrer greater,

more

your readiness to follow him to bring the

war

faithful,

in all his

to a triumphant

in his bid to quell

world the

futility

his

in to ask: 'Is

mood

your

ways and

to

to

trust

and more unshakeable than ever?

Is

do everything necessary

end absolute and unrestricted?' Fourteen

thousand voices hysterically cried out Goebbels

The

will obey.'

in

doubters at

unison the answer invited by

home and

of any hope of inner collapse in

to relay to the outside

Germany. Goebbels ended

morale-boosting peroration - which had been interrupted more than

200 times by clapping, cheering, shouts of approbation, or thunderous applause

— with

the

words of Theodor Korner, the

time of Prussia's struggle against Napoleon: burst forth!'

The

great hall erupted.

anthem 'Deutschland, Deutschland Wessel-Lied' rang out.

The

Amid iiber

patriotic poet

'Now people,

arise

the wild cheering the national alles'

and the Party's 'Horst-

spectacle ended with cries of 'the great

Leader Adolf Hitler, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.'

from the

- and storm

German

1

The speech was intended to demonstrate the complete solidarity of people and leader, conveying Germany's utter determination to carry on, and even intensify, the fight until victory

impression temporarily

left

was

2

attained. But the solidarity, despite the

by Goebbels's publicity spectacular, was by

this

;6l

HITLER 1936-1945 time shrinking

fast, the belief in Hitler

seriously undermined.

audience

'a

What

among

the mass of the population

Goebbels' did, in fact, was to

from

solicit

his

kind of plebiscitary "Ja" to self-destruction' 3 in a war which

Germany could by now neither win nor end through a negotiated peace. The dwindling hopes of victory had already turned, for those with any sense of realism, into the near certainty of ultimate defeat.

months, the German people, the Nazi regime, and ever

more beleaguered. Friends and

its

would

allies

crumble, ever-intensifying air-raids lay waste

Over the next

Leader would become

desert, territorial gains

German

the insur-

cities,

mountable Allied superiority of manpower and weaponry manifest ever

more

and indications

plainly,

at

home

itself

begin to multiply that, whatever

Goebbels's rhetoric might suggest, loyalties towards the regime, and even

towards Hitler personally, had become severely weakened. Nevertheless, the defiance

up by new

and resolve evoked

levels of

in

Goebbels's Sportpalast speech, shored

draconian repression as support for the regime dwindled,

helped to rule out any prospect of collapse on the

home

front. This in turn

would drag out the demise of the regime for a further two years, ensuring that death and devastation were to be maximized during a prolonged backs-to-the-wall struggle against increasingly impossible odds.

was attempting

In the spirit he

Goebbels was

one with

at

to evince through his Sportpalast speech,

Hitler. Goebbels's

advocacy of the need to

the fanatical will to victory in the entire people and to mobilize the front psychologically into accepting the struggle for the nation's survival

most radical measures

in

instil

home

an all-out

had met with Hitler's approval on

a

number

of occasions during the previous months. Whether, as he usually did, the

Propaganda Minister had shown the text of of the Sportpalast meeting field

is

his speech to Hitler in

not altogether clear.

4

Hitler

was

advance

visiting his

headquarters in the Ukraine at the time of the speech. Communication

with him, Goebbels remarked, was ary since the

he did not

main propaganda

listen to the

difficult but,

lines

he

felt, in

had already been

any case unnecess-

established.

J

Though

broadcast, Hitler immediately asked for the text to

be sent to him and praised

it

shortly afterwards to Goebbels in glowing

terms. There was, indeed, nothing in the speech to

which Hitler might have

taken exception. 6

However, Goebbels's hopes that the speech would bring him authorization to concentrate the direction of 'total war' in his

Hitler's

own hands

were swiftly dashed. The Propaganda Minister had long pressed for practical measures to radicalize the war course, predominantly

effort.

His

own approach

concentrated, of

on psychological mobilization. Others, prominent

BELEAGUERED among them

more squarely on

still

the

and the problem of how to squeeze out remaining reserves of

industry,

labour.

Wehrmacht leadership, focused their attention manpower needs of the armed forces and armaments

Speer and the

What

they understood by 'total war' included the deployment of

unused female labour

in industrial

knew

production, which they

their

enemies had accomplished. Hitler, shored up by Goring, had, however, resisted

imposing increased hardship and material

population.

He was

sacrifice

on the

civilian

conscious as ever of the collapse of morale on the

home

World War, certain that this had undermined and paved the way for revolution. 7 His anxiety about

front during the First

the

military effort

the

impact on morale of their men-folk at the front, coupled with

his traditional-

women, had led him to oppose the work in the hard-pressed armaments

views about the domestic role of

ist

conscription of female labour to 8

had

industries. Nevertheless, during the Stalingrad crisis he

the

finally

conceded

aim of the complete mobilization of all conceivable labour and resources

of the

home

front,

and some

initial

measures had been introduced.

Goebbels had, however, miscalculated. Direction of the

'total

largely bypassed him. His ambitions to take control of the

were ignored. The move to

'total

his chieftains

below

Hitler, the

(besides

German Labour

Goebbels himself) Goring,

Front), Fritz Sauckel (Pleni-

potentiary for Labour Deployment), and not least position to occupy the

arising

new spheres of control

that

Bormann - jockeyed

for

were opening up. 10 Unable

any rational or systematic fashion

to adjudicate in

front

was an unrivalled master. 'Behind the move unleashed new power games as

- prominent among them

Speer, Robert Ley (boss of the

war' effort

home

war' extended far more widely than

psychological mobilization, where he throne', at the level

9

in the inevitable conflicts

from overlapping and sometimes contradictory spheres of com-

own power, Hitler never allowed on the home front. The 'total war'

petence, but careful as always to protect his

Goebbels the authority the effort juddered

on

latter

of strong, consistent leadership

what Goebbels lamented as policy'.

11

It

craved

to partial successes in individual areas. But the absence

'a

from the top on the home front produced

complete lack of direction

in

German domestic

axiomatically ruled out coherent, well-organized, and clearly

coordinated planning - and with that any illusions that the Propaganda Minister might have had that he would be given a free hand in domestic affairs.

When,

eventually, Hitler did

'Plenipotentiary for Total late in the

day and,

circumscribed.

12

in

War

become prepared

to appoint

Deployment', on 20 July 1944,

it

Goebbels

was very

any case, even then the powers granted were heavily

563

564

HITLER 1936-1945 The

Goebbels's big speech, therefore, in terms of his

results of

ambitions to take control of the all its

'total

war'

effort,

bombast, the Sportpalast spectacular had

was soon

anew

to learn

own

were disappointing. For

little

lasting effect.

Goebbels

the lesson that, mighty though he was, he remained

only one player in the power-games to try to secure the backing of Hitler's unqualified authority.

He would

also rapidly realize again, in the aftermath

of the speech, that although the dictator's his physical absence,

own authority was undiminished,

preoccupation with military matters, and sporadic,

semi-detached involvement in the day-to-day governance of the Reich meant

was more than ever exposed to the influence of those in his presence - 'the entire baggage of court-idiots and irresponsible agitators' 13 - incapable that he

of reconciling or overriding the competing interests of his feuding barons.

Even had he been

willing, therefore, he

clear strands of authority to

was completely unable

combat the already advanced

to

impose

signs of disinte-

gration in government and administration.

For Hitler, the months

after Stalingrad intensified the familiar, ingrained

The facade of often absurd optimism remained largely intact, even among his inner circle. The show of indomitable will continued. The flights of fantasy, detached from reality, took on new dimensions. But the mask slipped from time to time in remarks revealing deep depression and fatalism. It was fleeting recognition of what he already inwardly acknowledged: he had lost the initiative for ever. The recognition invariably brought new torrents of rage, lashing any who might bear the brunt of the blame - most of all, as ever, his military leaders. They were all liars, disloyal, character-traits.

opposed to National Socialism, reactionaries, and lacking appreciation, he ranted.

in

any cultural

He yearned to have nothing more to do with them. 14

would blame the German people themselves, whom he would see as too weak to survive and unworthy of him in the great struggle. As setback followed setback, so the beleaguered Fuhrer resorted ever more

Ultimately, he

readily to the search for ruthless revenge

and

retaliation,

both on his external

saw the demonic figure of the Jew and on any within who might dare to show defeatism, let alone 'betray' him. There were no personal influences that might have moderated his fundamental inhumanity. The man who had been idolized by millions was friendless - apart from (as he himself commented) Eva Braun and his dog,

enemies - behind whom,

Blondi.

as always, he

15

The war, and

the hatreds Hitler

had invested

in

it,

consumed him ever He ate on his

more. The musical evenings had stopped after Stalingrad. 16

own

a

good deal of the time,

to avoid having to converse with his generals.

BELEAGUERED Outside the war and his buildings mania, he could rouse

little interest.

He

how he longed to be able to go to the theatre or see cinema among people as he used to be, to enjoy life once more when

told Goebbels

again, to be

war was ended. 17 This was mere nostalgia in the midst of a war of which, though he failed to see it, he was the main author, and which had been at the

the centre of his thoughts for

two decades. He was by now

an empty, burnt-out

an individual. But

shell of

And

of will remained extraordinary.

in

many

his resilience

respects

and strength

in the strangely shapeless

over which he presided, his power was

still

regime

immense, unrestricted, and

uncontested.

As the war that Hitler had unleashed 'came home dictator - now

rapidly ageing,

showing pronounced

more from

to the Reich', the

becoming increasingly a physical wreck, and - distanced himself ever

signs of intense nervous strain

his people.

It

was

as

if

he could not face them

now

that there

were no more triumphs to report, and he had to take the responsibility for the

mounting losses and misery. Even before the Stalingrad calamity, in early

November

when

1942,

had by chance stopped

his train

directly alongside a

troop train returning from the east carrying dejected-looking, battle-weary soldiers, his only reaction

down

had been

to ask

one of

his

manservants to pull

18

As Germany's war fortunes plummeted between 1943 and 1945, the former corporal from an earlier great war never sought to experience at first hand the feelings of ordinary soldiers. the blinds.

The number

of big public speeches he delivered constituted a plain

indicator of the widening gulf between Fiihrer and people. In 1940 Hitler

had given nine big public addresses,

in 1941 seven, in 1942 five. In 1943 he gave only two (apart from a radio broadcast on 10 September) - on 'Heroes'

Memorial Day' on 21 March, and in

Munich,

as usual,

on

8

to the

Old Guard

November. 19 The bulk of

in the

Lowenbraukeller

was spent well Wilhelmstrafs'e - and well his time

away from the government ministries in Berlin's away from the German people - at his field headquarters, or at his mountain eyrie above Berchtesgaden. He spent no more than a few days in Berlin mainly in May - during the whole of 1943. For some three months in all he was

at the Berghof.

During the

rest of the

time he was cooped up in his

headquarters in East Prussia, leaving aside a number of short Ukraine.

Goebbels lamented the masses. These,

in July

1943 the

commented

the

way

Hitler

had cut himself

and

trust that

off

from

Propaganda Minister, had provided the

acclaim on which his unique authority had rested. belief

visits to the

20

He had

given

them the

had been the focal point of the regime's support. But

565

$66

HITLER 1936-1945 now,

in

with

it

critical

Goebbels's eyes, that relationship was seriously endangered - and the stability of the regime.

tone of the letters

-

half of

Propaganda Ministry. 'Above these letters,' he

suffered

why

from

all,

pointed to the large number and

them anonymous -

the question

went on, 'why the

air-raids,

He

I

why Goring

regard

as

it

arriving at the

again and again raised in

which have

Fiihrer never visits the areas

never shows himself, but especially

the Fiihrer does not even speak to the

current situation.

is

German people

most necessary that the

to explain the

Fiihrer does that,

despite his burden through the events in the military sector. neglect the people too long. Ultimately, they are the heart of our If

the people

German us

were once to lose

leadership, then the

would have been

created.'

their strength of resistance

most serious leadership

crisis

and

One war

can't

effort.

belief in the

which ever faced

21

I

The move

to 'total war', introduced during the Stalingrad crisis, provided

the final demonstration that

no semblance of

rational decision-making within the Reich

collective

government and

was compatible with

Hitler's

personal rule.

The drive to mobilize all remaining reserves from the home front - what came to be proclaimed as 'total war' - had its roots in the need to plug the huge gap in military manpower left by the high losses suffered by the Wehrmacht during the first months of 'Barbarossa'. As early as December 1941, Keitel had demanded a weeding out of superfluous personnel from the bureaucracies of government ministries, the economy, and the Wehrmacht 22 itself. This had led to attempts to release personnel for the army by simplifying the extraordinarily unwieldy and

administration.

ment state

the

The

cumbersome governmental

proliferation of 'special authorities' alongside govern-

ministries and the Party-State dualism - direct products of the Fiihrer - alongside the new administrative tasks created by the demands of

war had

led to a colossal

expansion of bureaucracy, churning out

hundreds of regulations, decrees, and ordinances. The amount of red tape involved was suffocating. There was huge resentment at what was dubbed a 'paper war'.

Hitler's tirades against all

those

who came

administrators

government bureaucracy were well known to

into contact with him. His scorn for legally

knew no bounds. He took

the view that their

minded

number could

BELEAGUERED be cut by two- thirds. dices.

It

was easy

23

So there was no

pandering to

difficulty in

his preju-

to gain his support for the action to reduce bureaucracy.

To implement any such measures was a different matter. Hitler's own stance was

in practice often hesitant, contradictory,

conservative.

government results

And

and ultimately,

in the

main,

despite Hitler's backing, attempts to cut the personnel of

offices rapidly

ran up against powerful vested interests.

were predictably meagre.

24

The manpower demands of

The

the front

however, forced renewed efforts to squeeze out any surplus

inevitably,

personnel back home. In the autumn of 1942, Hitler had commissioned

General Walter von Unruh,

who had

earlier

been relatively successful

in

freeing personnel from military and civilian bureaucracies in the eastern

occupied

territories, to sift

armaments economy. 25 But

through the this, too,

civil

administration and even the

had produced

little

as

government

ministers successfully fended off the worst inroads into their personnel.

when General von Unruh attempted

to

the Fuhrer's grandiose building projects (including sixty-eight thirty-five

And

claw back some of those engaged on

men aged

or under employed in the planning office for the intended

rebuilding of

much

of the centre of Munich) Hitler predictably decided that ,

they could not be released.

26

Before the failure of Unruh's efforts had become clear, Hitler had, at

Christmas 1942, given the orders for more radical measures to raise man-

power

for the front

and the armaments

industries.

commissioned to undertake the coordination of the with

Head

Martin Bormann was

efforts, in collaboration

Lammers. 27 Goebbels

of the Reich Chancellery Hans-Heinrich

and Sauckel were immediately informed. The aim was

to close

down

all

whose trade was in 'luxury' items or was otherwise not necessary war effort, and to redeploy the personnel in the army or in arms

businesses for the

production.

men

Women were to

for front-service

replace

them

be subject to conscription for work. Releasing

was impossible,

in a variety of

it

was agreed,

unless

women

could

forms of work. According to the Propaganda

number of women working had dropped by some 147,000 28 And of 8.6 million women in employment at the 29 end of 1942, only 968,000 worked in armaments. In the spring of 1942, Hitler had rejected outright the conscription of women to work in war Ministry, the

since the start of the war.

industries. Industrialists their

had been pressing

for this,

and Speer had taken up

demand. But Sauckel, jealously guarding his own province and claiming

responsibility for labour

deployment was

his alone,

had held Speer

at bay,

backed by Goring and calling upon the support of the Fuhrer. Probably,

as

Speer suggests, Sauckel had therefore solicited Hitler's rejection of female

567

568

HITLER 1936-1945 conscription. ideological.

31

30

According to Sauckel's version, Hitler's reasons had been

The

would be threatened and

birth-rate of the nation

consequence Germany's racial strength undermined.

women would

be exposed to moral danger.

He

as a

also thought that

32

But by early 1943, the labour situation had worsened to the extent that Hitler

was compelled

to concede that the conscription of

women

could no

longer be avoided. Even the forced labour of, by this time, approaching 6 million foreign workers and prisoners-of-war could not compensate for the 11 million or so

men who had been

called

up to the Wehrmacht. 33 The most

he could do to limit what he regarded as a

was

to raise the age of eligibility

government ministers involved,

move

from sixteen

to seventeen.

34

likely to

damage morale

years, as agreed by the

In

an unpublished Fiihrer

Decree of 13 January 1943, women between seventeen and fifty years old 33 were ordered to report for deployment in the war effort. There was little enthusiasm criteria

among

- including

those affected.

Women made

use of the exemption

and employment in agricul- and any personal connections to avoid duty where Where that was impossible, they headed in the main for light responsibility for children,

ture or the civil service

they could.

desk jobs, leaving the armaments industries

still

short of women employees.

36

Even before Hitler signed the decree, the wrangling over spheres of competence had begun

in earnest. In order to retain a firm grip

on the

'total

war' measures and prevent the dissipation of centralized control, Lammers,

backed by the leading Friedrich

Wilhelm

civil

servants in the Reich Chancellery, Leo Killy and

Kritzinger, suggested to Hitler that

all

measures should

be taken 'under the authority of the Fiihrer', and that a special body be

up to handle them. The idea was to create a type of small 'war 'Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich', as

we noted

set

cabinet'; the in

an

earlier

chapter, had potentially constituted such, but had never functioned as one in practice,

and had long

fallen into desuetude.

Lammers thought

the

most

appropriate arrangement would be for the heads of the three main executive

arms of the Fuhrer's authority - the High

Command of the Wehrmacht, the

Reich Chancellery, and the Party Chancellery - to act

in close collaboration,

meeting frequently, keeping regular contact with Hitler himself, and standing above the particularist interests of individual ministries. Hitler agreed.

He

evidently

ment.

On

saw no

possible threat to his position

the contrary: the three

Bormann - could be guaranteed

to uphold his

of any possible over-mighty subjects. Hitler's thinking

was

from such an arrange-

persons involved -

An

own

Keitel,

Lammers, and

interests at the

expense

indication that this was, indeed,

the exclusion of Goring, Goebbels, and Speer from

BELEAGUERED the coordinating erausscbufl).

2' 7

body - soon known

This was to

'Committee of Three' {Drei-

as the

last until the

autumn before withering away - a power that might

further casualty of Hitler's refusal to concede any actual

with his authority as Fiihrer, and of his unsystematic, dilettante

conflict

style of rule.

From

the very outset, the

Committee was only empowered

to issue

enabling ordinances in accordance with the general guidelines he had laid

down.

was given no autonomy. 38

It

decision

on anything of significance

Speer later claimed that the

Committee

Hitler reserved, as always, the final

to himself.

It

was an exaggeration when

had been the intention of the three members of

it

to control Hitler's

power.

39

The

loyalty of

subservience to Hitler's will, was beyond question.

which might have conflicted with

practice

all

three,

and

their

They did nothing

Hitler's wishes.

in

And, though

Speer emphasized Bormann's plans to use the Committee to further his

own

power-ambitions, the head of the Party Chancellery seems to have been largely content in practice to leave the bulk of the routine business to

Lammers - hardly a man aiming to take over the Reich. 40 The 'Committee of Three' had, in all, eleven formal meetings between January and August 1943. The heads of government departments were invited, but the meetings did not

of the cabinet.

power

as a

41

amount,

The Committee,

body operating

for

in close

as Speer later claimed, to a revival

all its

potential for aggrandizement of

proximity to the Fiihrer, rapidly ran up

against deeply ingrained vested interests both in government ministries and in

Party regional offices concerned to hold on to their personnel and to their

spheres of competence which might have been threatened in any

and simplify the regime's tangled

centralize little

chance of breaking

down

the fiefdoms

move

to

It

had

rule rested,

and

lines of administration.

on which Nazi

42

soon revealed that any hopes of bringing any order to the Third Reich's

endemic administrative chaos were

utterly illusory.

Nevertheless, Hitler's mightiest subjects were determined to do everything they could to sabotage a development which they

own

saw

as inimical to their

power-positions - and from which they had been excluded. The

first

notions of a challenge to the role of the 'Committee of Three' were intimated

during the reception in Goebbels's residence following his

on 18 February. Nine days and tea

in

later,

Goebbels's stately apartments - gloomy

had been removed to comply with the new

what could be done. 43 Soon afterwards, travelled

from Berlin down

'total

war' speech

Funk, Ley, and Speer met again over cognac

at the

'total

now

that the light-bulbs

war' demands - to see

beginning of March, Goebbels

to Berchtesgaden to plot with

Goring a way of

569

570

HITLER 1936-1945 sidelining the

Committee. Speer had already sounded him out. 44 In

lasting five hours at Goring's palatial villa

talks

on the Obersalzberg, partly with

45 Speer present, the Reich Marshal, dressed in 'somewhat baroque clothes',

was quickly won

over.

The 'Committee of Three', which he scornfully labelled 'the three kings', 46 was a worry to him too. He detested Lammers as a 'super bureaucrat' who wanted

to put the Reich leadership

necessary to open the Fiihrer's eyes.

own

back

in the

hands of the government

thought Goring, had not seen through Lammers.

officials. Hitler,

Bormann was,

of course, following his

ambitious ends. Keitel was a complete nonentity.

between Goring and Goebbels were waved

was

It

47

Former

differences

aside. Goring's considerable

ego

had been much deflated through losing favour with Hitler on account of the

bombing of German cities. Goebbels same time reproached him for allowing the Minis-

Luftwaffe's failure to prevent the

him, and at the

flattered terial

Council for the Defence of the Reich to

ganda Minister's

was give

plan -

actually

it

had

to revive the Ministerial Council, it

the

membership

to turn

it

initally

The Propa48 been suggested by Speer -

fall

into disuse.

under Goring's chairmanship, and to

into an effective

body

to rule the Reich,

leaving Hitler free to concentrate on the direction of military affairs. Goebbels

spoke of

policy'.

49

'the total lack of a clear leadership in

Goring said that the Fiihrer seemed to him to have aged

years since the start of the war. a mentally

to be

domestic and foreign

He had

fifteen

shut himself off too much, and had

and physically unhealthy lifestyle. But there was probably nothing

done about

that.

Goebbels couched

50

his

arguments

in

terms of loyalty to Hitler, and the

need to relieve him of oppressive burdens to free him for military leadership. Hitler's depressed

held no fears for

mood -

he had indicated from time to time that death

him - was,

said Goebbels, understandable;

all

the

more

reason, then, for his 'closest friends' to form 'a solid phalanx around his person'.

is

He reminded Goring

of

if

the

war were

lost:

all

that have burnt their boats fight,

than those that ing. it

what threatened

as regards the Jewish Question, we are in it so deeply that there no getting out any longer. And that's good. A Movement and a people

'Above

52

And

in the

would

if

still

have a chance of

Goring could

hands of

from experience, with fewer constraints

Hitler's

now

most

surely be in agreement.

retreat.'

51

The Party needed

revitaliz-

reactivate the Ministerial Council

and put

loyal followers, argued Goebbels, the Fiihrer 53

Goebbels suggested that he and Goring approach the appropriate persons. But none of these should be initiated into the actual intention of sidelining

BELEAGUERED the

'Committee of Three' and transferring authority to the Ministerial

Council.

They would choose

moment

their

to put the proposition to Hitler

knew, not be easy, despite Goebbels's repeated

himself. This would, they

would be happy about the idea. Goebbels and work on Hitler in the interim. Goring and Goebbels Speer undertook to would meet again in a fortnight. They did not doubt that they would swiftly M master the problem of 'the three kings'. protestations that the Fuhrer

The problem, however,

Goebbels saw

especially as

was

went beyond

it,

problem of Hitler himself. Naturally, Goebbels's own ambitions to take over the direction of the home front - to

the 'Committee of Three':

instil a

it

a

revolutionary drive into the 'total war' effort

- played an important

part in his scheming. But there

was more

won. The prospect of losing

did not bear thinking about.

war

it

father-figure.

Berlin, his

But he saw

had

military matters, and, above

all,

matter of military In his diary,

how

To

rescue the

needed. Goebbels remained

for years regarded as an almost deified

his

-

A consummate

-

his

absence from

almost total preoccupation with

his increasing reliance

everything concerning domestic matters

scarcely understand

than that. The war had to be

in Hitler's leadership style

detachment from the people,

governance of the Reich.

it

home was

effort, stronger leadership at

utterly loyal to the person he

to

a

on Bormann

fundamental weakness

politician himself,

for

in the

Goebbels could

Hitler could neglect politics for the subordinate

command. 55

Goebbels complained of a 'leadership

crisis'.

He

thought the

problems among the subordinate leaders were so grave that the Fuhrer 36 ought to sweep through them with an iron broom. 'Look

at the Minister

of the Interior,' he fumed. 'At 67 years of age, he [Frick] spends three quarters of the entire year at the Chiemsee'

- the

biggest of the beautiful

Bavarian lakes, some sixty miles south-east of Munich - 'instead of carrying out his duties in Berlin. Goring

is

to be

found

at Karinhall,

Bouhler

NuEdorf,' their country houses. 'The entire Reich and Party leadership

on holiday.' The Fuhrer

carried, indeed, a crushing

in is

burden through the war.

But that was because he would take no decisions to

alter the

personnel so

would not need bothering with every trivial matter. i7 Goebbels thought - though he expressed it discreetly - that Hitler was too weak to that he

do anything. 'When a matter wrote, 'the Fuhrer decisions.

needed

He

there.'

When

is

is

put to him from the most varied

sides,'

sometimes somewhat vacillating (scbwankend)

also doesn't always react correctly to people.

A

he

in his

bit of help

is

58

he had spoken privately in his residence to Speer, Funk, and Ley

571

572-

HITLER 1936-1945 just

over a week after his 'total war' speech, he had gone further. According

Goebbels had said on that occasion: 'We have not

to Speer's later account,

only a "leadership crisis", but strictly speaking a "Leader others agreed with him.

what we have in

my

'I

Berlin.'

With Bormann given the felt

title,

him the

politically,'

most urgent

Goebbels added that Hitler had

which Bormann controlled by conveying

politics,

the impression to the Fuhrer that he

the sense, acutely

him about

through Bormann. Hitler must be

area. Everything goes

on domestic

can't influence

I

can't even report to

persuaded to come more often to lost his grip

still

on 12

held the reins tightly in his grasp.

by Goebbels, that the Party Chancellery chief was 60

Goebbels and Speer might lament that Hitler's hold on domestic

had weakened. But when they saw him

him

that

in early

moved back visit

Goring should head

a

dered,

to Vinnitsa in the Ukraine,

on

5

home

front,

March

raids

way

for a

in Vinnitsa three

days

to pave the

on German towns had

left

Hitler in a foul

towards Goring and the inadequacies of the Luftwaffe.

moment

propitious

nonetheless that they had to

lively

the generals 62

the attempt.

a

Marshal

Goebbels thought

61

their first meeting, over lunch, Hitler, looking tired but otherwise well,

and more

so.

make

mood

was hardly

It

to broach the subject of reinstating the Reich

to the central role in the direction of domestic affairs.

At

was they

it

The continued, almost unhin-

away, Speer urged caution.

bombing

to put

revamped Ministerial

Speer had flown to Hitler's headquarters, temporarily

by Goebbels. The Propaganda Minister arrived

later. Straight

affairs

March, intending

Council for the Defence of the Reich to direct the

who proved weak.

59

April, of 'Secretary of the Fuhrer',

'managing' Hitler was even further enhanced.

their proposition to

The

are sitting here in Berlin. Hitler does not hear

to say about the situation.

Goebbels bemoaned. measures

'We

crisis"!'

He

than of

late,

launched as usual into a

bitter

onslaught on

who, he claimed, were cheating him wherever they could do

carried

on

in the

same vein during

alone with Goebbels that afternoon.

a private four-hour discussion

He was

furious at Goring, and at the

entire Luftwaffe leadership with the exception of the Chief of the General

Staff

Hans Jeschonnek. Characteristically, German cities being reduced

Hitler thought the best

responding with 'terror from our

side'.

63

way

of

to heaps of rubble was by

preventing

Despite his insistence to Speer that

they had to go ahead with their proposal, Goebbels evidently concluded

during his discussion with Hitler that of the general mood,' he noted,

'I

it

would be

regard

it

fruitless to

do

so. 'In

view

as inopportune to put to the

Fuhrer the question of Goring's political leadership;

it's

at present

an

BELEAGUERED moment.

unsuitable

Any hope sat

We

somewhat

until

later.'

64

when Goebbels and Speer night was dashed when news

of raising the matter, even obliquely,

with Hitler by the

came

must defer the business

in of a

fireside until late in the

heavy air-raid on Nuremberg. Hitler

fell

into a towering rage

about Goring and the Luftwaffe leadership. Speer and Goebbels, calming Hitler only with difficulty, postponed their plans. rected.

Goebbels and Speer had they

They were never

resur-

65

felt

failed at the first hurdle.

Face to face with Hitler,

unable to confront him. Hitler's fury over Goring was enough to

veto even the prospect of any rational discussion about restructuring Reich

government. But the problem went further. Goebbels and Speer, blaming

command

distraction through the

ousness, thought that Hitler

of military strategy and Bormann's devi-

was unable or unprepared

the jungle of conflicting authorities

wanted him

to. In this,

radicalize the

to

sweep through

home

front as they

they were holding to the illusion that the regime was

reformable, but that Hitler fully

and

was unwilling

to reform

it.

What

they did not

grasp was that the shapeless 'system' of governance that had emerged

was both the inexorable product of

Hitler's personalized rule

and the

guarantee of his power. In a

modern

state, necessarily resting

on bureaucracy and dependent upon

system and regulated procedure, centring of one

man - whose

leadership style

was

all

spheres of

power

approach to rule was completely unsystematic, resting as nation of force and propaganda

amid

a

in the

utterly unbureaucratic it

hands

and whose

did on a combi-

- could only produce administrative chaos

morass of competing authorities. But

this

same organizational

incoherence was the very safeguard of Hitler's power, since every strand of authority its

was dependent on him. Changing

focal point

was impossible.

Hitler

the 'system' without changing

was incapable of reforming

nor, in any case, could he have any interest in doing so. ever, to intervene wilfully

and

arbitrarily in a

He

his Reich;

continued, as

wide array of matters, often

of a trivial nature, undermining as he did so any semblance of governmental

order or rationality.

Goebbels and Speer did not immediately give up their

efforts.

Together

with Ley and Funk, they met Goring for three hours on 17 March, going over

much

the Reich

of the

same ground

Marshal

earlier in the

that they

month

had covered when they had met

in

Berchtesgaden.

The upshot was

no more than an agreement that Goring would propose to the Fiihrer near future that he 'activate

somewhat

the

German

resurrecting the Ministerial Council and adding to

in the

leadership at home' by it

Speer, Ley,

Himmler,

573

574

HITLER I936-I945 and Goebbels. The Propaganda Minister even manipulated Goring into accepting him as his deputy in the running of the intended weekly meetings. 66

came of

Predictably, nothing

Lammers, with

it.

During April, Goring was included by

Hitler's approval, in

two meetings of

the 'Committee of

Three', dealing with the application of the Fuhrer Decree on Total

largely to have evaporated.

way to

67

As so

to

thereafter

often, Goring's initial energy

soon gave

lethargy. In any case, his star

had sunk so deep

heavy air-raids that he must have realized of gaining Hitler's backing for any

War

Committee seems

the occupied territories. His antagonism to the

new

how

in the

wake

position of authority.

of further

hope he had

little realistic

A

diplomatic

- whether or not associated with his sizeable daily intake of narcotics 68 April ended with him prescribed bed-rest is not known - came to his aid. 69 As Speer was to comment laconically, it was only in by his doctor. illness

Nuremberg, on

trial for his life,

Goebbels was

still

came

fully to life again.

talking as late as September of finding

Lammers's attempt

to block

that Goring

(as the

enough support

Propaganda Minister saw

authority to himself on the back of a Fuhrer decree

it)

to arrogate

empowering him

to

review any disputes between ministers and decide whether they should be

taken to Hitler.

71

But by that time, there was scant need of intrigue to stymie

the 'Committee of Three'.

It

had already atrophied

into insignificance.

down on bureaucracy, simplify government adminismanpower were largely vitiated by Hitler himself. When

Proposals to cut tration,

and save

faced with a decision on proposals to abolish a districts (Landkreise)

and merge them with

number

of local government

their neighbours, Hitler's anti-

way to cautious conservatism. The districts The office of the Landrat (district prefect) was important during wartime, wrote Bormann - doubtless echoing

bureaucratic instincts gave

would

stay as they were.

especially

Hitler

- in

a letter to Reich Minister of the Interior

Wilhelm Frick on

15 June

The wartime regulation of the economy {Zwangsbewirtschaftung) had greatly increased the public's need for access to the Landrafs office. Any trace of popular unrest had to be avoided. And, in any case, the manpower 72 savings would be small. Hitler saw the 'home front', as always, mainly in terms of morale and would rule out any measures that might weaken it. He similarly blocked, 1943.

partly at

Lammers's suggestion, attempts

to simplify regional

government

and Lander administration. 73 Even plans to dissolve the Prussian Finance Ministry, where there

was extensive and unnecessary duplication with

the

Reich Finance Ministry, came to nothing. Hitler said he could not decide on the matter without consulting Goring about

it.

Goring implied he preferred

BELEAGUERED Bormann was left isolated in pleading for Lammers was able to garner support for its

reduction to abolition. By June, the abolition of the Ministry.

retention, without personnel reductions.

74

Almost the only achievement of lasting effect by the 'Committee of Three' during

new

its

nine months or so in action

civil service posts.

7i

Its

was

a

attempts to close

moratorium on the creation of

down

small businesses

deemed

unnecessary for the war effort came up with negligible results - and attained at a

massive cost of alienation of those whose livelihood was threatened.

Reports from the

SD

reflected the

antagonism

small traders faced

felt as

ruin through their shops being shut and the public, denied

and already limited

leisure pursuits,

bars and restaurants.

Franconia, gravely

77

One

summed up

damaged by

the

local

SD

and labour deployment

smashed pictures of the

The

futility

consumer

outlets

were alienated through the closure of report,

from Bad Kissingen

mood: 'The regard

for the

NSDAP

in

Lower

has been

the intervention of the Party in the business closures in the province.

comrades stricken by closures and by

government

76

According to rumour, national

loss of relatives

Fiihrer in their homes.'

down and

have pulled

78

of the Committee's efforts and the hopeless irrationality of

in the Fiihrer state

deliberations, lasting six

were revealed

months

in all at

in all their starkness

one of the most

by the

critical junctures

of the war, about whether to ban horse-racing. Goebbels tried to instigate a

ban following complaints

(he claimed)

from Berlin workers about racing

He demanded

taking place on Sundays while they had to work.

from

Hitler.

Bormann and Lammers persuaded

should not be denied one of the limited forms of entertainment

But after a

visit

still

available.

by Goebbels to Fiihrer Headquarters, Hitler changed

mind and favoured parties.

a directive

the dictator that workers

Lammers

a ban.

He was now

eventually passed on a ruling that specific

courses were to be kept open. Gauleiter) in these areas

The Reich Defence Commissars

named (all

this.

The

race-

of them

had permission to ban any race-meetings

thought the needs of morale demanded

his

belaboured by various interested

if

they

rest of the racecourses

-

along with bookies' offices — were to be closed. Unsurprisingly, protests

were immediately voiced by provincial Party bosses

who felt their own areas

were disadvantaged.

A

dispute in

architect,

Munich between

Hermann) and

Weber, one of

Gauleiter Paul Giesler (brother of court-

the corrupt, roughneck city councillor Christian

Hitler's longest-standing cronies,

Fiihrer himself to find

Party's early days in

its

resolution.

Munich.

A

Weber was

had

to

go as far as the

a classical product of the

former pub-bouncer and beer-hall bruiser,

575

576

HITLER I936-I945 he had been elevated in the Third Reich to a host of honorary offices in the 'capital city of the

Movement', with an apartment

He was

inhabited by the Kings of Bavaria. flaunted the wealth and

Some

power

scurrilously thought his

unwelcome

secrets

about the

to keep

him from

way he

indirect blackmail.

Munich

spilling

But Hitler

Fiihrer's lifestyle in the early years.

certainly rendered Hitler valuable service in the rise to local riches

Kesidenz formerly

favour with Hitler had brought him.

his

advancement was

would have had other ways of handling such His

in the

detested locally for the

Weber had

street-fighting days.

and notoriety was simply a particularly colourful

expression of the gross corruption that was an endemic feature of the Third Reich. But at any rate, as an 'Old Fighter' times,

-

literally

- from

the earliest

and owner (among many other things, including a monopoly of the

regional bus service) of the racecourse at Riem, So, however, did Giesler, Hitler's

was

to be placated.

most important lieutenant

in Bavaria,

79

and

war' drive. Hitler's judgement-of-Solomon

a fanatical supporter of the 'total

'decision'

Weber had

that racing should be

banned

at

Riem

(on the grounds that

it

could only be reached by car and bus, thus causing unnecessary petrol usage), but allowed in the city centre

on the Theresienwiese.

Shortly afterwards he noticed a newspaper advertisement for horse-racing in Berlin

and remarked to Bormann that Munich should not be disadvan-

taged against the Reich capital. Racing was again to be permitted in Riem.

As the

issue

rumbled on, various authorities became involved. Lammers and

Bormann exchanged

letters.

His opinion sought yet again, Hitler came up

with the intriguing macro-economic reflection that betting absorbed surplus spending power. The Gauleiter continued their complaints. Finally, after six

months of wrangling on an

and Lammers agreed,

in

issue of such breathtaking triviality,

Bormann

accordance with 'an expression of will of the

Fuhrer', to permit horse-racing and

bookmaking

in general

terms - but to

leave the decision in each individual case to the respective Reich Defence

Commissar. 80 Ultimately, therefore, no decision had been taken, other than to leave matters to the Little

whim

of the Party bosses.

could demonstrate more clearly the absurdity of the dictatorship's

patterns of rule (or lack of them) Hitler's

power was

had been sought on several occasions by

all

.

could

settle the matter.

intact.

His imprimatur

parties concerned.

No

one

decision, could Hitler. His wavering, fluctuating interventions

-

often evi-

dently following the advice of the last person to have spoken to

dragged out the

head of

state

affair.

else

But nor, except by the ultimate retreat from a

But

it

was

scarcely rational in the

first

him -

place that a

and commander of the armed forces should be repeatedly

BELEAGUERED bothered

in the

middle of a world war by various underlings involved

disputes over horse-racing.

The problem was, here

had delegated no genuine authority turn had to call

upon him

to the

at every point;

in petty

as in other instances: he

'Committee of Three'; they

and

this

in

was frequently necessary,

was no central Reich body to reach and impose them as government policy. The failed

as in the horse-racing case, because there

sensibly agreed decisions

experiment of the 'Committee of Three' showed conclusively that, however

weak

their structures, all

forms of collective government were doomed by

the need to protect the arbitrary 'will of the Fiihrer'. But

impossible for this of a

modern

'will' to

alone one operating under the

state, let

it

was

increasingly

be exercised in ways conducive to the functioning crisis

conditions of a

major war. As a system of government, Hitler's dictatorship had no future.

II

home were far from Hitler's primary concern in the spring and He was, in fact, almost solely preoccupied with the course war. The strain of this had left its mark on him. Guderian, back in

Matters at

summer of the

of 1943.

favour after a long absence, was struck at their

first

meeting, on 20 February

1943, by the change in Hitler's physical appearance since the last time he

mid-December

had seen him, back

in

months he had aged

greatly.

and

his

His manner was

speech was hesitant; his

When

1941: 'In the intervening fourteen

left

less

assured than

it

had been

hand trembled.' 81

President Roosevelt, at the end of his meeting to discuss

strategy with Churchill

and the Combined Chiefs of

Staff at

war

Casablanca

in

French Morocco between 14 and 24 January 1943, had - to the British Prime Minister's surprise

- announced

at a

concluding press conference that the

would impose 'unconditional surrender' on their enemies, matched Hitler's Valhalla mentality entirely. 82 For him, the demand

Allies

nothing. stance

It

was

it

had

altered

merely added further confirmation that his uncompromising right.

As he told

liberated as a result

his Party leaders in early February,

from any attempts

negotiated peace settlement.

83

It

to persuade

had become,

as he

him

still

felt

to look for a

had always asserted

would, a clear matter of victory or destruction. Few, even of followers, as Goebbels admitted, could

he

it

his closest

inwardly believe in the former.

But compromises were ruled out. The road to destruction was opening

up ever more

plainly.

For Hitler, closing off escape routes had distinct

advantages. Fear of destruction was a strong motivator.

577

578

HITLER 1936-1945 Some

of Hitler's leading generals, most notably Manstein, had tried to

persuade him immediately after Stalingrad that he should,

command had

if

not give up the

of the army, at least appoint a supremo on the eastern front

his trust.

who

Manstein was the obvious candidate for the post of 'Supreme

Commander in the East'. But Hitler was having none of it. He knew, he 84 said, no commander whom he could trust to take such a command. Probably, as Guderian suspected, Manstein was too independent and forthright in his views for Hitler. After the bitter conflicts over the previous

months, he preferred the compliancy of a Keitel to the sharply couched counter-arguments of a Manstein.

8

^

It

many's military potential. But Hitler's Stalingrad

was not

meant

a further

weakening of Ger-

instinctive reaction to the disaster at

to concede anything; he

had

to wrest

back the

initiative

on the eastern front without delay. Manstein's push to retake Kharkhov and reach the Donets by mid-March

had been It

a

much-needed

had suggested yet again

up.

87

Over 50,000 Soviet troops had perished. 86 Hitler that Stalin's reserves must be drying

success.

to

His confidence boosted, he returned

the Wolf's Lair, as

Warlimont put

clearly considering himself

and

it,

in

mid-March from Vinnitsa

to

'with the air of a victorious war-lord,

his leadership primarily responsible for the

favourable turn of events in the East which had temporarily ended the

withdrawal

after Stalingrad.'

88

When

Goebbels saw him on 19 March,

'looking extraordinarily fresh and healthy', he

was

succeeded in again completely closing the front'. to

go on the offensive.

still

It

was important

German

'very

happy that he has

Immediately, he wanted

to strike while the

smarting from the reversal at Kharkhov.

a signal to the

89

It

was

Red Army was

also necessary to send

population, deeply embittered by Stalingrad, and to

the Reich's allies, that any doubts in final victory were wholly misplaced.

At

this point, the split in military

planning between the army's General

Staff, directly responsible for the eastern front,

and the operations branch

Wehrmacht High Command (in charge of all other theatres) surfaced once more. The planners in the High Command of the Wehrmacht favoured of

a defensive ploy

on

all

fronts to allow the gradual build-up

and mobilization

The Army High Command thought differently. It wanted a limited but early offensive. The danger of the defensive strategy, army leaders argued, was the need to commit extensive German forces to the eastern front as long as the Soviet of resources throughout Europe for a later grand offensive.

Union posed ranean and the

first

a threat, thus

in

weakening the defences, notably

in the

Mediter-

western Europe. Stabilizing the eastern front was, therefore,

priority.

A

successful offensive

was needed

to achieve this. Chief of

BELEAGUERED the

Army

General Staff Kurt Zeitzler had devised an operation involving

and destruction of

the envelopment

a large

number

of Soviet divisions on a

some 500 miles south armies were located within the westward bulge in

big salient west of Kursk, an important rail junction

Moscow.

of

the front,

Five Soviet

around 120 miles wide and 75 miles deep,

campaign of 1942-3.

If

victorious, the operation

Soviet offensive potential.

left

from the winter

would gravely weaken

the

90

There was no question which strategy would appeal to

Hitler.

He

swiftly

supported the army's plan for a decisive strike on a greatly shortened front - about 150 kilometres compared with 2,000 kilometres in the 'Barbarossa'

The

invasion of 1941. in

German ambitions

limited scope of the operation reflected the reduction

June 1941. Even

in the east since

so, a tactical victory

through destruction of the Soviet bulge centred on Kursk would have been of great importance.

It

would,

have eliminated the prospect

in all likelihood,

German

of any further Soviet offensive in 1943, thereby freeing

redeployment

in the increasingly threatening

troops for

Mediterranean theatre. The

order for what was to become 'Operation Citadel', issued on 13 March,

foresaw a pincer attack by part of Manstein's

Army Group from

and Kluge's from the north, enveloping the Soviet troops his

in the bulge.

confirmation order of 15 April, Hitler declared: 'This attack

importance.

It

must be

a quick

initiative for this spring

and conclusive

and summer

.

.

success.

Every

.

officer,

be convinced of the decisive importance of this attack.

must shine

like a

beacon to the world.'

92

It

was

to

It

do

is

91

In

of decisive

must give us the

every soldier must

The

so.

the south

victory of

Kursk

But hardly as Hitler

had imagined. 'Citadel'

was scheduled

to begin in

years, significant delays set in success.

These were not

reveal the serious

'Citadel'.

93

in the military

They arose from

leading generals involved.

as in the previous

which were damaging

directly of Hitler's

problems

of decision-making.

mid-May. But,

On 4 May,

two

to the operation's

making. But they did again

command-structure and process

among the Munich to discuss

disputes about timing

Hitler

met them

in

Manstein and Kluge wanted to press ahead

as

soon as possible.

This was the only chance of imposing serious losses on the enemy. Otherwise, they argued,

it

was

better to call off the operation altogether.

They

were seriously worried about losing the advantage of surprise and about the build-up of Soviet forces should there be any postponement.

The heavy

defeat at Stalingrad and weakness of the southern flank deterred other

new large-scale offensive so quickly. 94 Colonel-General Walter Model - known as an especially tough and capable

generals from wishing to undertake a

579

580

HITLER 1936-1945 commander, which had helped make him one of Hitler's favourites, and Army's assault from the north - recommended a

detailed to lead the 9th

delay until reinforcements were available.

rolling off the production lines,

Germany with

initiative.

96

Hitler

He

picked up on the belief of

with Hitler, that the heavy Tiger tank,

Zeitzler, also high in favour

provide

9^

and the new,

lighter,

just

Panther tank would

the decisive breakthrough necessary to regaining the

had great hopes of both tanks. He gave Model

his back-

ing.

Manstein equivocated. Kluge

now came

Guderian, supported by Speer, opposed

out in favour of Zeitzler's plan.

it,

pointing out that the

known

deficiencies of the Panther could not be ironed out before the offensive,

repel the inevitable invasion the following year in the west.

days

and

any case, reserves should be spared for the priority of preparing to

that, in

Guderian

later,

in the east

When,

a

few

persuade Hitler that an offensive that year

tried to

was unnecessary, he had

the impression that the Fiihrer

non-committal. Perhaps Hitler was indeed getting cold

feet

was

about the oper-

show of half-heartedness was merely to 97 avoid confrontation with Guderian. As the weeks rolled by, with further delays, the deteriorating situation in North Africa gave Hitler cause for worry. Would he need to rush troops to the southern theatre who were tied ation by this time. Or, perhaps, his

up

in 'Citadel'?

At any

rate,

98

on 4 May, he postponed 'Citadel' until mid-June. It was then underway only in early July. Even by

further postponed, eventually getting

that date, fewer Tiger and Panther tanks were available than

envisaged.

within the

And the

Soviets, tipped off by British intelligence

Wehrmacht High Command, had

built

up

had been

and by

a source

their defences

and

were ready and waiting. 99

North Africa was giving grounds

for the

of Hitler's closest military advisers, Jodl

among

Meanwhile, the situation gravest concern.

Some

in

them, had been quietly resigned to the complete loss of North Africa as

December

10 °

Hitler himself had hinted at one point that he was contemplating the evacuation of German troops. 101 But no action had followed. He was much influenced by the views of the Commander-in-Chief

early as

1942.

South, Field-Marshal Kesselring, one of nature's optimists and, like most in

high places in the Third Reich, compelled in any case to exude optimism

whatever reality.

102

mentality

and however bleak the situation was in dealings with Hitler - as with other top Nazi leaders whose

his

In

true sentiments

was attuned

to his

-

it

seldom paid to be a

realist.

Too

easily,

realism could be seen as defeatism. Hitler needed optimists to pander to

BELEAGUERED him -

yet another

form of 'working towards the

Fiihrer'. In the military

arena, this reinforced the chances of serious strategic blunders. In

March, buoyed by Manstein's success

that the holding of Tunis It

would be 103

was, therefore, a top priority.

at

Kharkhov, Hitler had declared

decisive for the

With the

withdrawal, the next military disaster beckoned. the end of the

month

to view the

When Below

to hide the fact that

North African command from the exhausted and

same opinion.

flew south at

Tunis could not be

Rommel, was staff were even more pessimistic: they saw

Kesselring's

dispirited

no chance of successfully fending off an Allied crossing from Tunis to once - which they regarded

as a certainty

Below reported back, Hitler that he

had already written

said off

little. It

- North

Africa had fallen.

seemed to

his

Sicily

When

Luftwaffe adjutant

North Africa and was inwardly preparing

himself for the eventual defection of his Italian partners to the enemy.

had spent the best part of four days

In early April, Hitler

to

von Arnim, who had taken over the

held. Colonel-General Hans-Jiirgen

of the

any

North African front and report back

was unable

Hitler, even Kesselring

outcome of the war.

refusal to contemplate

104

at the restored

baroque palace of Klessheim, near Salzburg, shoring up Mussolini's battered morale - half urging, half browbeating the Duce to keep up the

fight,

knowing how weakened he would be through

blow

soon to descend

in

depression, Mussolini, a

the massive prestige

Worn down by the strain of war and stepping down from his train with assistance, looked

North

Africa.

'broken old man' to Hitler.

105

on interpreter Dr Paul Schmidt

The Duce

also

made

a

subdued impression

compromise

as he pleaded forlornly for a

peace in the east in order to bolster defences in the west, ruling out the possibility of defeating the

Hitler

USSR. 106 Dismissing such

reminded Mussolini of the threat that the

for Fascism in Italy.

other salvation for

He

left

him with

him than

fall

a notion out of hand,

of Tunis

would pose

the impression 'that there can be

to achieve victory with us or to die'.

107

no

He

exhorted him to do the utmost to use the Italian navy to provide supplies for the forces there.

The remainder

of the

visit

at stiffening Mussolini's resistance. this

had been achieved.

The

Hitler

was subsequently

satisfied that

109

talks with Mussolini

his allies that Hitler

108

mono- aimed

consisted largely of

logues by Hitler — including long digressions about Prussian history

amounted

to

one of a

series of

conducted during April, while staying

meetings with

at the Berghof.

King Boris of Bulgaria, Marshal Antonescu of Romania, Admiral Horthy of Hungary, Prime Minister

Vidkun Quisling of Norway, President Tiso of

Slovakia, 'Poglavnik' (Leader) Ante Pavelic of Croatia, and Prime Minister

581

582

HITLER 1936-1945 Pierre Laval

from Vichy France

end of the month.

110

all visited

the Berghof or Klessheim by the

In each case, the purpose

was

to stiffen resolve

- partly

by cajoling, partly by scarcely veiled threats - and to keep faint-hearts or waverers tied to the Axis cause. Hitler

let

Antonescu know that he was aware of tentative approaches

made by Romanian

ministers to the Allies.

He posed, as usual, a stark choice

of outright victory or 'complete destruction' in a fight to the end for

argument, increasingly, in

'living space' in the east. Part of Hitler's implicit

attempting to prevent support from seeping away was to play on complicity in the persecution of the

of the Jews for the that boats

Jews. His

war and

own

paranoia about the responsibility

all its evils easily

led into the suggestive threat

had been burned, there was no way out, and retribution

war would be

event of a lost

terrible.

The

hint of this

was

in the

implicit in his

disapproval of Antonescu's treatment of the Jews as too mild, declaring that the

Jews.

more

radical the measures the better

it

was when tackling

In his meetings with

Horthy

at

more brusque. Horthy was berated

Klessheim on 16-17 April, Hitler was for feelers to the

enemy

by prominent Hungarian sources but tapped by German

was

the

111

told that

sea. It

'Germany and

was obvious

its allies

were

that in this situation

drown immediately.'

112

in the

secretly put out

He

intelligence.

same boat on

a stormy

anyone wanting to get off would

As he had done with Antonescu, though

in far

harsher terms, Hitler criticized what he saw as an over-mild policy towards the Jews.

Horthy had mentioned

and the black market were the

Jews were

to blame.

Jews.

He had

them

all killed.

still

that, despite

tough measures, criminality

flourishing in Hungary. Hitler replied that

Horthy asked what he was expected

to

do with the

taken away their economic livelihood; he could scarcely have

Ribbentrop intervened

at this point to say that the

must be 'annihilated (vernichtetY or locked up

in concentration

There was no other way. Hitler regaled Horthy with

statistics

Jews

camps.

aimed

at

showing the strength of former Jewish influence in Germany. He compared the 'German' city of Nuremberg with the neighbouring 'Jewish' town of 113

Wherever Jews had been left to themselves, he said, they had produced only misery and dereliction. They were pure parasites. He put Furth.

forward Poland as a model. There, things had been 'thoroughly cleaned

up'.

Jews did not want to work 'then they would be shot. If they could not work, then they would have to rot (verkommen) .' As so often, he deployed If

a favourite bacterial simile. 'They bacilli

from which

a healthy

would have

to be treated like tuberculosis

body could become

infected. This

would not

BELEAGUERED be cruel deer,

if it

were considered that even innocent creatures,

had to be

ism be spared?'

killed.

and

like hares

Why should the beasts that want to bring us Bolshev-

114

emphasis on the Jews as germ-bacilli, and as responsible for the

Hitler's

war and the spread of Bolshevism, was of course nothing new. And

power

deep-seated belief in the demonic the

Jews

the

first

as they

his

purportedly in the hands of

were being decimated needs no underlining. But

this

was

time that he had used the 'Jewish Question' in diplomatic discussions

to put heads of state

measures.

under pressure to introduce more draconian anti-Jewish

What prompted

He would have 1943.

still

this?

been particularly alerted to the 'Jewish Question'

in April

The previous month, he had finally agreed to have what was left of 115 Jewish community deported. In April, he was sent the breakdown,

Berlin's

already mentioned, prepared by the SS's statistician Richard Korherr of

almost a million and a half Jews 'evacuated' and 'channelled through (durchgeschleustY Polish camps.

116

From

the middle of the month, he

increasingly frustrated by accounts of the battle raging in the ghetto,

where the Waffen-SS, sent in

to raze

it

to the ground,

ing desperate and brave resistance from the inhabitants.

117

was

Warsaw

were encounter-

Not

least,

only

days before his meeting with Horthy, mass graves containing the remains of thousands of Polish officers, murdered in 1940 by the Soviet Security Police, the

NKVD, had been discovered in the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk.

Hitler immediately gave Goebbels permission to

ganda capital out of the

issue.

118

He

make maximum propa-

also instructed Goebbels to put the

'Jewish Question' at the forefront of propaganda. Goebbels seized

Katyn case

as

an excellent opportunity to do

Hitler's directive to

just this.

upon

the

119

Goebbels to amplify the propaganda treatment of the

persecution of the Jews, and his explicit usage of the 'Jewish Question' in his

He

meetings with foreign dignitaries, plainly indicate instrumental motives.

as

had done, unquestioningly

believed, as he always

value of antisemitism.

He

told his Gauleiter in early

propagated by the Party

the core message.

He

propaganda had, he

said, to begin

leaders of Bolshevism

conflict built into the war.

was speaking,

its

propaganda

had once more

to

become

spread in Britain. Antisemitic

from the premiss that the Jews were the

and prominent

to get out of Europe. This

Hitler

in earlier years,

held out hopes of

in the

May that antisemitism,

in

western plutocracy. The Jews had

had constantly to be repeated in the political

120

In his meetings with

as always, for effect.

Antonescu and Horthy,

As we have noted, he hoped

to

bind his wavering Axis partners closer to the Reich through complicity in

583

584

HITLER 1936-1945 the persecution of the Jews. In the autumn, in speeches held in Posen,

Himmler would

complicity in the

Though

more explicit,

use the 'Jewish Question' in similar, but even

fashion to hold the Nazi leadership ever

more

tightly together

through their

mass murder of the Jews.

satisfied

with the outcome of his talks with Antonescu, Hitler

make an impact on Horthy. Goebbels suspected that Hitler's harsh tone had not been helpful. The Hungarians, he remarked, recognized Germany's weak position and knew wars were not won simply he had failed to

felt

with words. ing

121

Hitler told the Gauleiter that he

Horthy of the need

had not succeeded

for tougher measures against the Jews.

persuad-

in

Horthy had

put forward what Hitler described - only from his perspective could they be seen as such - as 'humanitarian counter-arguments'. Hitler naturally dismissed them. As Goebbels summarized there can be

no

talk of humanity.

it,

Hitler said:

Jewry must be

up on

Earlier in the spring, Ribbentrop, picking

partners about their future under

cast

'Towards Jewry

down to the ground.' 122

fears expressed

German domination, had put

loose notions of a future

European federation. 123

the Dictator can be seen

from

by Axis

to Hitler

How little ice this cut with

his reactions to his April meetings

of state and government - particularly the unsatisfactory Horthy. He drew the consequence, he told the Gauleiter in

with heads

discussion with early

May,

that

the 'small-state rubbish (Kleinstaatengeriimpeiy should be 'liquidated as

soon as possible'. Europe must have a new form - but under German leadership. 'We

live today,'

destroying and being destroyed.'

He

will

could only be

'in a

world of

expressed his certainty 'that the Reich

one day be master of the whole of Europe', paving the way for world

domination.

He

hinted at the alternative. 'The Fuhrer paints a shocking

picture for the Reichs-

the event of a

determine to

and Gauleiter of the

German

place in our thoughts. fight

it

defeat.

possibilities facing the

Reich in

Such a defeat must therefore never

We must regard

to the last breath.'

Speaking to Goebbels on 6

May

find a

from the outset as impossible and

it 124

in Berlin,

the state funeral of SA-Chief Viktor Lutze

where he had come

(who had been

accident), Hitler accepted that the situation in Tunis

The

this

he went on,

inability to get supplies to the troops

was

to attend

killed in a car

'fairly hopeless'.

meant there was no way

out.

Goebbels summarized the way Hitler was thinking: 'When you think that 150,000 of our best young people are

still

of the catastrophe threatening us there.

in Tunis,

It'll

you rapidly

get an idea

be on the scale of Stalingrad,

and certainly also produce the harshest criticism among the German people.'

12 '

But when he spoke the next day to the Reichs- and Gauleiter,

BELEAGUERED Hitler never

mentioned Tunis, making no reference

that Allied troops

the harbour

had penetrated

was already

Axis troops were, in a

week, on

13

number taken

in British

hands.

and that

126

by then giving themselves up

fact,

May, almost

news

at all to the latest

as far as the outskirts of the city

a quarter of a million of

so far by the Allies, around half of

in droves.

them -

Within

the largest

them German, the

127 remainder Italian - surrendered. Only about 800 managed to escape.

North Africa was

lost.

The catastrophe

left

the Italian Axis partner reeling.

For Mussolini, the writing was on the wall. But for Hitler, too, the defeat

was nothing short of calamitous. One short

step across the Straits of Sicily

by the Allies would mean that the fortress of Europe was breached through southern underbelly.

its

In the Atlantic,

meanwhile, the battle was

in reality lost,

even

if it

took

The resignation on 30 January 1943 as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of Grand-Admiral Raeder, exponent of what Hitler had come to recognize as an outmoded naval strategy based upon a big surface battle fleet, and his replacement by some months

for this to

become

fully apparent.

Karl Donitz, protagonist of the U-boat, had signalled an important shift in priorities.

weapon

128

to cut through the arteries

view, at the very beginning of 129 it.

its

development.

if I

expected great things of

The Atlantic is my western approach

have to wage a defensive there,

defend on the coast of Europe.'

He

it's

But, in fact, that very lost in the Atlantic

- and

the

number

-

month

from

thirty to forty a

forty-one U-boats carrying 1,336

the highest losses in any single

month. 130

men had been

month during

the

war

of vessels in operation at any one time had already passed

peak. In the light of the losses, Donitz ordered the U-boats

the Atlantic

(Vorfeld),

better than only being able to

immediately agreed to Donitz's request

to increase the construction rate of U-boats

its

He

At the end of the month, he told Donitz: 'There can be no question of

easing up on the U-boat war.

and

on 7 May that the U-boat was the of the enemy. This weapon was, in his

Hitler told his Gauleiter

away from

131 convoy routes and moved them to south-west of the Azores.

The deciphering of German codes by

British intelligence, using the 'Ultra'

decoder, was allowing U-boat signals to be read.

It

was

possible to

know

with some precision where the U-boats were operating. The use of longrange Liberators, equipped with radar, and able to cover 'the Atlantic Gap'

- the 600-mile

stretch of the

ocean from Greenland to the Azores, previously

out of range of aircraft flying from both British and American shores - was a second strand of the

The

crucial supplies

132 mounting Allied success against the U-boat menace.

between North America and

Britain, gravely imperilled

585

586

HITLER

I

9 3

6-1945

over the previous two years, could flow with increasing security. Nothing

could hinder the Reich's increasing disadvantage against the material might of the western Allies. Hitler's greatest worry,

once Tunis had

was

fallen,

the condition of his

Wehrmacht High Command's Operations Staff had outlined probably at Hitler's request - a scenario 'should Italy withdraw from the war'. It posited the likelihood of the Allies forcing their way on to the European continent longest-standing

ally.

Immediately after the

of Tunis, the

fall

through the unstable and weakly defended Balkans. Hitler,

in part

it

seems

misled by a false lead given by British intelligence, which had deliberately

planted disinformation on a corpse disagreed with his

own

staff

left

floating off the Spanish coast,

and with Mussolini

landing would be attempted not in

Sicily,

133

thinking an Allied

in

but in Sardinia. Contingency plans

were made to move forces from both the western and eastern fronts to the Mediterranean, and to put

command

in Italy

Rommel - now

largely restored to health

should an Italian collapse take place.

By the time he heard

on the situation

a report

-

in

134

mid-May from

in Italy in

Konstantin Alexander Freiherr von Neurath, son of the former Foreign

Rommel's Afrika Korps,

Minister, and one-time Foreign Office liaison to Hitler

was deeply gloomy. He thought

sabotaged the war-effort

in Italy

the monarchists and aristocracy had

from the beginning. He blamed them

preventing an Italian declaration of solidarity with a declaration

had been forthcoming, he

Germany

asserted, the British

in 1939. If

for

such

would not have

hastened to sign the Guarantee for Poland, the French would not have gone

along in their wake, and the war would not have broken out. there

was no longer

thought

Whatever the Duce's personal strength of

and Hitler continued to detach him from it

He

the will in Italy to transport troops to Sicily to defend

against an Allied landing.

-

133

was being sabotaged.

his

will

-

savage criticism of the Italians

136

There was a big question mark, he thought, over Mussolini's health - he

had suffered from a stomach ulcer since September of the previous year and

his age,

now approaching

sixty, told against

him. Hitler was sure that

the reactionary forces associated with the King, Victor

whose nominal powers

as

head of

state

must be made to be

to defend the

he did not say.

still left him as - would triumph over

A collapse had to be reckoned with.

Mediterranean without

done with an offensive imminent

III

had nevertheless

focus of a potential alternative source of loyalty

revolutionary forces of Fascism.

Emmanuel

in the east

Italy.

138

How

137

-

the the

Plans

this

was

and no troops to spare,

BELEAGUERED had intended around

Hitler

postponement of

this

move back

time to

own

made him

his

a short stay at the

Wolf's Lair to the Obersalzberg.

end of June. During

Germany's

district,

health

from the

in the

He remained

incalculable.

the 'dam-buster' raids, the

Had As

it

major

they been sustained, the

cities

of Duisburg, Diisseldorf, laid

waste

bombardment. The inadequacy of the air-defences was powerlessness to do anything about his face, touring the

service in his

home town

it

bombed-out

in intensive night all

too apparent.

was exposed. Goebbels cities,

his

at least

speaking at a memorial

of Elberfeld, and at a big rally in

Hitler stayed in his alpine idyll.

Bochum,

on Goring and the Luftwaffe. 140 But

Hitler continued to vent his bile

showed

damage done

was, the dams could be repaired. Since

Dortmund, and Wuppertal-Barmen had been

own

there

Bavarian Alps, the Ruhr

had been spectacular attacks on the big dams

there

that supplied the area's water.

would have been

weeks

139

industrial heartland, continued to suffer devastation

May

skies. In

his

But the

Mediterranean,

decide suddenly to return from

and problems with

until the

to Vinnitsa.

'Citadel', the precarious situation in the

Dortmund. 141

The Propaganda Minister thought

a visit

by the Fuhrer pyschologically important for the population of the Ruhr.

Though Goebbels had been impressed by the positive response he had encountered during his staged tour, more realistic impressions of morale provided

in

SD

reports painted a different picture.

failure to protect

them was widespread. The

Anger

at the regime's

'Heil Hitler' greeting

had

almost disappeared. Hostile remarks about the regime, and about Hitler personally, were

commonplace. 142

Hitler promised Goebbels towards the end of June that he

extended the

visit to

week

the devastated area.

after that'. Hitler

knew

It

was

would pay an

to take place 'the next week, or

only too well that this was out of the

He had by then scheduled the beginning of 'Citadel' for the first And he expected the Allied landing off the Italian coast at any The human suffering of the Ruhr population had, ultimately, little

question.

week time.

in July.

meaning for him. 'As regrettable 'they

as the personal losses are,' he told Goebbels,

have unfortunately to be taken on board

war-effort (Kriegfubrung)

.'

in the interest of a superior

143

While on the Obersalzberg, Hitler was

chiefly

preoccupied with the

prospect of an imminent invasion by the Allies in the south, and the

approaching 'Citadel' offensive

He was

still

in his

in the east.

thought that the Allied landing would come

in Sardinia. Sicily

view secure enough, and could be held. (Since most of the island's

defenders were Italian, Hitler must have been either less confident than he

587

HITLER 1936-1945 seemed, or have amended his normally scathing assessment of the Italian

armed

forces.)

He was

determined not to retreat from

There would

Italy.

be no withdrawal as far as the Po Valley, even were the Italians to pull out of the war.

It

was the

first

rule of the

from the homeland. He thought the in deals

Duce

war

of

to fight

away bit

with the enemy than to capitulate outright. His confidence

in

still

finally

evaporated.

young and

fit.

It

would be

likely to give in bit

different, he thought,

were

But he was old and worn out. The royal family

could not be trusted an inch.

-

more

by

Mussolini had the

German conduct

Italians

And - he added

a characteristic last reflection

Jews had not been done away with (beseitigt) in Italy, whereas in Germany (as Goebbels summarized) 'we can be very glad that we have the

followed a radical policy. There are no Jews behind us

f,i44 rom

who

could inherit

us.

As the war had turned remorselessly against Germany, the beleaguered Fiihrer

had reverted ever more

for the conflagration. In his

to his obsession with Jewish responsibility

Manichean world-view, the fight to the finish evil - the Aryan race and the Jews - was

between the forces of good and reaching

its

climax. There could be no relenting in the struggle to wipe out

Jewry. Little

month

over a

earlier, Hitler

had talked

at length,

prompted by

Goebbels, about the 'Jewish Question'. The Propaganda Minister thought it

one of the most interesting discussions he had ever had with the

Fiihrer.

14i

Goebbels had been re-reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion — the crude Russian forgery purporting to outline a Jewish conspiracy to rule the

world - with an eye on

its

use in current propaganda.

He

raised the matter

over lunch. Hitler thought antisemitic propaganda would play an important part in the

war

effort, particularly in its

impact on the

certain of the 'absolute authenticity' of the Protocols.

British.

He was

The Jews, he thought,

were not working to a fixed programme; they were following, as always, their 'racial instinct'.

146

The Jews were the same

all

over the world, Goebbels

noted him as saying, whether in the ghettos of the east 'or palaces of the City [of London] or Wall Street', and

would

in the

bank

instinctively

work The question could well be posed, he went on (according to Goebbels's summary of his comments), as to why there were Jews at all. It was the same question - again the familiar insect analogy - as why there were Colorado beetles {Kartoffelkdfer). His most basic belief - life as struggle - provided, as always, his answer. 'Nature is ruled by the law of follow the same aims and use the same methods without the need to

them out

together.

struggle.

There

will

always be parasitic forms of existence to accelerate the

BELEAGUERED struggle

weak

and

between the strong and the

intensify the process of selection

... In nature,

life

always works immediately against parasites;

existence of peoples that the Jewish danger. So there

in the

From that results modern peoples than to

not exclusively the case.

is is

nothing

else

open to

exterminate the Jews (Es bleibt also den modernen Volkern nicbts anderes iibrig, als die

Juden auszurotten).'

The Jews would

use

all

means

14.

to defend themselves against this 'gradual

V emicbtungsproze$)\ One

process of annihilation (allmahlicben

methods was war.

148

It

was

same warped

the

embodied

vision

'prophecy': Jews unleashing war, but bringing about their

World Jewry,

in the process.

view,

in Hitler's

was on

commented

downfall.

World Jewry

world victory

'to cast

them out of

thinks

it is

on the verge of

come. Instead there

will not

The peoples who have

earliest recognized

instead accede to world domination.'

Four days

He was presumably USA, when he their

our historic mission, which cannot be held up, but only

is

accelerated, by the war. victory. This

destruction

reach, especially in the

some decades would be needed

that

power. That

German

its

the verge of a historic

downfall (gescbichtlicben Sturz). This would take time. alluding to Jews out of

own

of

in Hitler's

a

world

will be a

world

and fought the Jew

on 16 May, SS-Brigadefiihrer

after this conversation,

will

149

Jiirgen

Warsaw is no more! The hours when the Warsaw synagogue

Stroop telexed the news: 'The Jewish quarter of

grand operation terminated

was blown up

.

.

.

The

according to record,

is

total

at 20.15

number of Jews apprehended and destroyed,

56,065

.

.

,15 ° ,

A

force of around 3,000 men, the vast

majority from the SS, had used a tank, armoured vehicles, heavy machineguns, and artillery to fiercely

blow up and

set fire to buildings

which the Jews were

defending and to combat the courageous resistance put up by the

ghetto's inhabitants,

armed with little more than pistols, grenades, and Molo-

The month-long ghetto uprising had exacerbated Hitler's mounting frustration with Hans Frank's inability to maintain order in the General Government amid increasing unrest caused by SS attempts to uproot and deport 108,000 Poles from the Zamosc district in the Lublin area in order

tov cocktails.

to resettle

it

with Germans.

131

His long-standing readiness to link Jews with

subversive or partisan actions destruction. After

made

Hitler

all

the keener to hasten their

Himmler had discussed the matter with him on

19 June, he

noted that 'the Fuhrer declared, after my report {Vortrag) that the evacuation ,

of the Jews, despite the unrest that

would thereby

still

arise in the next 3 to 4

months, was to be radically carried out and had to be seen through'.

Such discussions were always private. Hitler

still

m

did not speak of the fate

589

590

HITLER 1936-1945 among his inner to avoid. To think of course, anathema. The only

of the Jews, except in the most generalized fashion, even circle. It

was

which

a topic

criticizing the

company knew

all in his

treatment of the Jews was, of

time the issue was raised occurred unexpectedly during the two-day the Berghof in late June of Baldur his wife, Henriette.

Henriette had

The daughter

known

visit to

von Schirach, Gauleiter of Vienna, and

of his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann,

Hitler since she

was

a child. She thought she could

speak openly to him. Her husband had, however, fallen from favour somewhat, partly following Hitler's disapproval of the modern paintings on

show year.

an

in

153

which Schirach had staged

art exhibition

Henriette told Baldur on the

to let Hitler

know what

in

Vienna

earlier in the

to Berchtesgaden that she

wanted

she had witnessed recently in Amsterdam, where

she had seen a group of Jewish

deported.

way

An SS man had

women

brutally herded together

and

offered her valuables taken from the Jews at a

knock-down price. Her husband told her not to mention it. Hitler's reactions were unpredictable. And - a typical response at the time - in any case she could not change anything.

Already during the

prompt an angry

to

first

154

day of

riposte

their visit, 23 June, Schirach

from Hitler with

policy in the Ukraine might have paid dividends.

was

an

in

irritable

mood

House. The atmosphere was they gathered around the

155

Next afternoon,

during the statutory afternoon icy.

fire in

1^6

It

had managed

a suggestion that a different

remained tense

visit to

Hitler

the

when

in the evening,

the hall of the Berghof. Henriette

was

Tea

sitting

next to Hitler, nervously rubbing her hands, speaking quietly. All at once, Hitler I

jumped up, marched up and down the room, and fumed: 'That's

need, you coming to

these Jewish

women

me

with

to you?'

this sentimental

The

other guests did

There was a protracted, embarrassed

silence.

all

What concern are not know where to look.

twaddle.

The

logs could be heard

crackling in the fireplace.

When on

Goebbels arrived, he turned the scene to

Hitler's aversion to Vienna. Hitler

praising the achievements of Berlin castigating his Gauleiter's said

it

was

work

a mistake ever to

in

his

advantage by playing

rounded on the hapless Schirach,

- Goebbels's domain, of course - and

Vienna. Beside himself with anger, Hitler

have sent Schirach to Vienna

at all, or to

have

taken the Viennese into the Reich. Schirach offered to resign. 'That's not for

You are staying where you are,' was Hitler's response. was four in the morning. Bormann let it be known to the Schirachs would be best if they left. They did so without saying their goodbyes,

you

By then that

it

and

in

to decide.

it

high disgrace. 157

BELEAGUERED The week before

the Schirach incident, Hitler

had

finally

decided to press

ahead with the 'Citadel' offensive. His misgivings can only have been increased by Guderian's reports that the 'Panther' tank

weaknesses and was not ready for front-line action. the month, he was presented with the

increasing chance that

it

limited success split

when

between the

the

Allied offensive in it

was dangerous

the chief danger at that time lay elsewhere. Again, the

OKW

and army leadership came into

Guderian suspected that

persuading Hitler to go ahead.

Wehrmacht's Operations

July, then

'Cita-

was an

in the interests of, at best, a

the army's Chief of the General Staff, objected to interference.

that there

back from leave, agreed that

and foolhardy to commit troops to the east

middle of

in the

recommendation that

It

the Mediterranean. Jodl, just

had major

still

And

was now running so late would clash with the expected

should be cancelled.

del'

OKW's

158

postponed one

last

159

Zeitzler's influence

At any

play. Zeitzler,

what he regarded

was

as

decisive in

rate, Hitler rejected the advice of

Staff. Citadel's

opening was scheduled for

time for two more days.

3

160

Despite Guderian's warnings, Hitler confidently told Goebbels in late

June that the Wehrmacht had not been so strong they were to wait 'for a few

that

if

new

'Panthers'

at present'.

and a good number of the

He had

in the east since 1941,

more weeks

yet' they

'Tiger', 'the best

would have

tank

in the

and the

world

given up his plans for the Caucasus and Middle East.

There could be no dreams of pushing ahead to the Urals. The unreliability

had forced

this. If

they had held

Caucasus would have been occupied and the

loss of

North Africa

of Germany's out, the

allies, especially

the Italians,

would then probably have been avoided. But

Hitler thought the Soviet

Union would one day collapse through starvation. The

him the

'decisive front'.

At the end of June, Hitler returned to the Wolf's Lair of 'Citadel'.

On

1

east

remained for

161

July, he addressed his commanders.

for the beginning

He

explained the

delay partly by the need to await the panzer reinforcements which, he

claimed,

now

partly

unconvincingly) by the danger of a successful Allied landing in the

(if

offered for the

first

time superiority over the Soviets, and

Mediterranean had the offensive come

was determined, he in the year.

A

partners, and

month.

was

earlier.

The

decision to go ahead

by the need to forestall a Soviet offensive

military success

on morale

offensive in the east '

stated,

at

finally

would

home.

162

later

also have a salutary effect

on Axis

Four days

German

launched.

It

later,

the last

was the beginning of a

disastrous

591

592.

HITLER 1936-1945

ill

Bombardment from

Soviet heavy artillery just before the offensive began

Army had

gave a clear indication that the Red 'Citadel.'

163

They faced

At

least 2,700 Soviet tanks

number of German

a similar

history raged for over a week.

good inroads,

if

164

At

been alerted to the timing of

had been brought tanks.

first

The

in to

mightiest tank battle in

both Model and Manstein made

with heavy losses. The Luftwaffe also had

But Guderian proved correct

defend Kursk.

initial successes.

warnings of the deficiencies of the

in his

Most broke down. Few remained in action after a week. Manstein's drive was hindered rather than helped by the tank in which such high hopes had been placed. The ninety Porsche 'Tiger' tanks deployed by Model also revealed major battlefield weaknesses. They had no machine-guns, so were ill-equipped for close-range fighting. They were unable, therefore, to 'Panther'.

neutralize the enemy.

own

their

165

In the

offensive against the

middle of the month, the Soviets launched

German

bulge around Orel to the north of

the 'Citadel' battlefields, effectively to Model's rear. still

advancing, the northern part of the pincer was

On

13 July, Hitler

Commanders,

to assess the situation.

had

premature end.

signally failed in

"Citadel"

we had

its

166

The

objectives.

in

come.'

167

Army Group

for continuing. Kluge

on. Reluctantly, Hitler brought

Guderian summed up: 'By the

suffered a decisive defeat.

equipment and would

endangered.

Soviet losses were greater. But 'Citadel'

reformed and re-equipped with so much

and

now

Kluge, the two

Manstein was

army could not carry

stated that Model's 'Citadel' to a

summoned Manstein and

Though Manstein was

now

effort,

failure of

The armoured formations, had lost heavily both in men

be unemployable for a long time to

Warlimont's view was similar: 'Operation Citadel was more than

a battle lost;

handed the Russians the

it

again right up to the end of the war.'

initiative

and we never recovered

it

168

Equally dire events were unfolding in the Mediterranean. Overnight from

9-10

July, reports

Hitler, as

we

came

in of

an armada of ships carrying large Allied

from North Africa

assault forces

to Sicily.

now

caught him unawares. The

only two divisions - were too few in

all

relied heavily

upon

number

German

The

troops in Sicily -

to hold the entire coast.

Italian forces. Allied air superiority

And alarming news came in weapons and fleeing. Though heavy

too evident.

their

landing had been expected.

noted, had thought Sardinia the most likely destination.

precise timing

Defence

A

was soon

of Italian soldiers casting

away

fighting continued throughout

BELEAGUERED July, within 169

German

it

forces alone'.

'as far as

was

two days

was

plain that the Allied landing

had been success-

Kesselring reported on 13 July that Sicily 'could not be held with

ful.

Two

can be foreseen

urgent.

On

days

later,

Jodl went further and declared that

cannot be

Sicily

held'.

170

A meeting with Mussolini

18 July Hitler left his East Prussian headquarters for the

Berghof. Early the following day he flew to see Mussolini in Feltre, near Belluno, in northern Italy.

171

was

It

to prove the last time he set foot

on

Italian soil.

After landing at Treviso, Hitler and Mussolini travelled in the Duce's train to a station near Feltre,

and then

still

had an hour's drive

in

open-top

cars in the sweltering heat until they reached the villa chosen for the meeting,

which began

at

noon.

No sooner had Hitler begun to speak than news came

heavy air-raid on Rome, the

in of a

among

first

the city

had

suffered, causing panic

and encouraging the recognition that the Fascist

the population

regime was on the verge of collapse. Hitler spoke non-stop for two hours. Mussolini, tired and unwell, could not follow

Duce's entourage understood

little

devoid of substantive proposals.

propaganda, aimed Italy

It

amounted

at bolstering the

agreeing a separate peace.

It

all

was

that he

saying.

The

or nothing. In any case, the speech was to

no more than

a battery of

Duce's faltering morale and preventing

was embarrassingly

present. Hitler avoided putting the concrete proposals

thin to

some of those

wanted by his military

command structure of the Axis forces in Sicily. Mussolini his own military advisers by his feebleness. He commented subthat he had felt his own willpower ebbing away as Hitler spoke.

staff for a unified

disgusted

sequently

After the speech Hitler spoke privately over lunch with Mussolini, telling

him

that

Germany had improved U-boats

in preparation

along with secret

Then

weapons capable of razing London

to the

was time

back to Treviso aerodrome. Hitler's

for the tedious journey

ground within

a week.

generals thought the visit had been a wasted effort. Hitler himself

it

- con-

vinced still of the power of his own rhetoric - probably thought he had once 172 He was soon more succeeded in stirring Mussolini's fighting spirits. shown an talks, he was the Feltre evening after disabused. On the very intelligence report sent

to replace Mussolini

on by Himmler that

a

coup

by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.

d'etat

was being planned

173

During the course of Saturday, 24 July, reports started to come in that Grand Council had been summoned for the first time since early

the Fascist

looked as

the Fascist old guard were going to press Mussolini

in the

war.

to lay

down some of his accumulated offices

It

if

energy to the war effort.

174

Probably, this

is

of state in order to devote

more

what Mussolini himself thought.

593

594

HITLER 1936-1945

He may

also have been looking for a pretext to break with

Germany.

Mussolini's ill-health perhaps combined with an over-confidence that he

would ultimately have

little difficulty in

manipulating the Grand Council.

Whatever the reasons, the way he responded

to his increasingly strident

meeting was strangely apathetic, dulled, and supine. The

critics at the

Council began

its

deliberations at 5p.m. that evening. These lasted in

all

for

ten hours, culminating in an astonishing vote of nineteen to seven to request

the King to seek a policy

more capable of saving

Even then the Duce did not about

whom

fully see the danger.

Italy

He went

army morale was

collapsing,

weeks had had plans for

was bundled

members of

King -

to see the

war appeared

Marshal Badoglio would take over

prime minister. As a stunned Duce for

*

During Mussolini's audience, the King

to befall him.

abruptly interrupted him, announcing that, since the

as

1

he had far fewer doubts than did Hitler - later that morning,

unaware of what was

who

from destruction.

left

his arrest,

lost

the royal chambers the police,

put them into

effect.

Mussolini

ambulance and, accompanied by

into a waiting

and

his offices

several

the carabinieri, driven off at speed to house arrest, temporarily

on the Mediterranean island of Ponza. He was told the island had entertained

some famous prisoners

in the past

- among them Nero's mother,

a sixth-

century Pope, and in later times a Grand Master of the Freemasons.

While Hitler was holding

what was

July,

filtering

his regular military briefing at

through from

Rome

still

amounted

1

6

midday on 25 to little more

than rumours. Walther Hewel, Ribbentrop's liaison at

FHQ, passed on the

news

Cremona and former Grand Council.

that Roberto Farinacci, the radical Fascist boss of

Party Secretary, had been behind the Hitler

summoning

of the

remarked that Farinacci was lucky he had done

it

in Italy,

not in

Germany. He would have had him immediately picked up by Himmler.

come out of it, anyway?' he asked. 'Twaddle' was his own answer. 177 The meeting - and especially its outcome - can only have reinforced his 'What'll

Nazi Party Senate to come into existence. By the time of the evening military briefing in the Fiihrer Headquarters,

satisfaction at never allowing a

the sensational

complete

tions. Since Italy in

news from

clarity.

Almost the

Italy

had broken, though there was

entire session

was taken up with

still

not

the implica-

had not pulled out of the war, plans to occupy the country

such an event - code-named 'Alarich' - could not be put into operation.

But

in a highly agitated

Rome and

mood,

demanded immediate action to occupy He denounced what had taken place as

Hitler

depose the new regime.

'naked treachery', describing Badoglio as 'our grimmest enemy'.

had

belief in

Mussolini -

so long as he

1

"8

He

was propped up by German

still

arms.

BELEAGUERED Presuming the Duce

remedied.

He fumed

arrest the 'rabble'

he wanted him brought straight away to

at liberty,

still

Germany. He was confident that that he

- the

in that event the situation

would send troops

to

Rome

still

be

the next day to

government, the King, the

entire

could

Crown

Prince,

Badoglio, the 'whole bunch'. In two or three days there would then be

another coup.

179

He had Goring -

had repeatedly stated

at

'ice-cold in the

most serious

midday, the Reich Marshal's

crises', as

failings as

Luftwaffe temporarily forgotten - telephoned and told him to quickly as he could to the Wolf's Lair.

180

Rommel was

he

head of the

come

as

located in Salonika

and summoned to present himself without delay. Hitler intended to put him

command

in overall

in Italy.

181

He wanted Himmler

contacted.

182

Goebbels,

too, was telephoned and told to leave straight away for East Prussia.

The

Goebbels acknowledged, was 'extraordinarily

situation,

Ribbentrop,

critical.'

183

not recovered from a chest infection, was ordered up from

still

Fuschl, his residence in the

Salzkammergut near Salzburg. 184 Soon

midnight, Hitler met his military leaders for the third time in

little

after

over

twelve hours, frantically improvising details of the evacuation from Sicily

and the planned occupation of Rome, together with the seizure of the

members of

the

new

Italian

government.

At ten o'clock that morning, 26 just arrived in

FHQ.

18i

July, Hitler

met Goebbels and Goring,

Ribbentrop joined them half an hour

later.

Goebbels

had already been exchanging views on the situation with Himmler and

Bormann.

It

was

only possible to guess at what had happened. But

still

Goebbels was close to the mark

in his

own assumptions about how the coup

How a regime that had been in power for twenty-one years

had taken place.

could be overthrown so quickly from within gave him pause for thought.

186

closer to home? Hitler gave his own He presumed that Mussolini had been forced

Could something similar take place interpretation of the situation.

out of power. Whether he was

still

alive

saw the forces work behind the scenes - behind the plot. Ultimately, coup was directed at Germany since Badoglio would cer-

certainly be unfree. Hitler

by Mussolini but he claimed, the tainly

come

was not known, but he would of Italian freemasonry - banned

still

to an

at

arrangement with the British and Americans to take

would now look

Italy

moment for a landing in Italy - perhaps in Genoa in order to cut off German troops in the south. Military precautions to anticipate such a move had to be taken. out of the war.

The

British

for the best

Hitler explained, too, his intention of transferring a parachute division,

currently based in southern France, to the city.

The King, Badoglio, and

Rome

the

move to occupy new government

as part of the

members

of the

595

$$6

HITLER 1936-1945 would be arrested and flown to Germany. Once they were in German hands, things would be different. Possibly Farinacci, who had escaped arrest by fleeing to the German embassy, and was now en route to FHQ, could be

made head

of a puppet government

rescued. Hitler

saw

if

Mussolini himself could not be

the Vatican, too, as deeply implicated in the plot to oust

Mussolini. In the military briefing just after midnight he had talked wildly of occupying the Vatican and 'getting out the whole lot of swine'.

187

Goebbels

and Ribbentrop dissuaded him from such rash action, certain to have

damaging international repercussions. Hitler

still

pressed for rapid action

who by then had also arrived in FHQ and was earmarked for supreme command in Italy, opposed the improvised, high-risk, panicky response. He favoured a carefully preto capture the

new

Italian

government. Rommel,

pared action; but that would probably take some eight days to put into 188

The meeting ended with the way through the crisis still unclear. were coming in of anti-fascist demonstrations on the streets of Rome. There were evident signs, too, of marked unease and uncertainty among the German population. Nazi supporters were shocked at Mussolini's overthrow. Illegal opposition groups saw a ray of hope. The notion that something similar could take place in Germany 'can be heard

place.

By

this time, reports

constantly', according to the

that the in

SD's soundings of popular opinion:

form of government thought

Germany,

Reich to be unshakable could

in the

too, suddenly be altered,

is

'the idea

very widespread.'

189

Goebbels's

propaganda machine faced problems. As Goebbels recognized, he could not tell

the truth that

'it

was

a matter of a far-reaching organizational

ideological crisis of Fascism, perhaps even of

its

liquidation'.

and

Knowledge of

circumstances incite some Germany who perhaps believed they could contrive the same with us that Badoglio and company have contrived in Rome'. Hitler did not think there was much danger of that. But he commissioned Himmler just the same to suppress any indications with maximum ruth-

what was happening

in Italy 'could in certain

subversive elements in

lessness.

190

The midday moving troops

military conference to Italy to secure

was again taken up with

above

all

the issue of

the north of the country, and

with the hastily devised scheme to capture the Badoglio government. 191 Field-Marshal von Kluge,

who had

flown

in

from Army Group Centre -

desperately trying to hold the Soviet offensive in the Orel bulge, to the north of Kursk

- was abruptly

told of the implications of the events in Italy for

the eastern front. Hitler said he needed the crack Waffen-SS divisions

currently assigned to Manstein in the south of the eastern front to be

BELEAGUERED transferred immediately to Italy. forces to reinforce Manstein's out,

though to no

avail, that this

impossible. But the positions retreat

by

That meant Kluge giving up some of

weakened

his troops to

his

Kluge forcefully pointed

front.

would make defence

Orel region

in the

on the Dnieper being prepared

for an orderly

be taken up before winter were far from ready.

What

he was being asked to do, protested Kluge, was to undertake 'an absolutely overhasty evacuation'. 'Even so, Herr Feldmarshall: of our

own

decisions,' rejoined Hitler.

Meanwhile, Farinacci had and

his criticism of

192

Kluge was

we left

arrived. His description of

are not master here

with no choice.

what had happened

henchmen

Hitler spoke individually to his leading after a hectic

Any

Mussolini did not endear him to Hitler.

using him as the figurehead of a German-controlled regime

idea of

was discarded. 193

before, in need of a rest

twenty-four hours, retiring to his rooms to eat alone.

He

returned for a lengthy conference that evening, attended by thirty-five persons. But the matter

was taken no

further.

determined to act without delay, 'whatever 'generous improvisation' to 'systematic things in Italy to

become too

work

it

195

Next day, he was

might

cost'.

He

starting too late

consolidated'. But

the planned military operations.

194

still

preferred

and allowing

Rommel was sceptical about

So were Jodl and Kesselring.

196

Within

a

few days, Hitler was forced to concede that any notion of occupying

Rome and

sending in a raiding party to take the members of the Badoglio

was both precipitate and The plans were called off. Hitler's attention focused now On discovering the whereabouts of the Duce and bringing him into German hands as soon as possible. In the meantime, he left for him in the government and the

Italian royal family captive

wholly impracticable.

19

possession of Kesselring a copy of the collected works of Nietzsche as a

birthday present. Evidently, he presumed that the Duce, once

sixtieth

would have the time and

located,

power'.

inclination to reflect

on the

'will to

198

With the to a close

Italian crisis

amid

still

at its height, the disastrous

the heaviest air-raids to date.

Royal Air Force's Bomber

Command,

month

of July drew

Between 24 and 30 July, the

using the release of aluminium strips

Gomorrha' - a series of Hamburg, outdoing in death and destruction anything previously experienced in the air-war. Waves of incendiaries whipped up

to blind

German

radar, unleashed 'Operation

devastating raids on

horrific fire-storms, turning the city into a raging inferno,

thing and everybody in their path. People cellars or

were burnt

lost their lives;

to cinders

on the

over half a million were

streets. left

consuming every-

suffocated in their

An

thousands

in

estimated 30,000 people

homeless; twenty-four hospitals,

597

598

HITLER 1936-1945 and 277 schools lay in ruins; over 50 per cent of the city 199 As usual, Hitler revealed no sense of remorse at

fifty-eight churches,

was completely

He was chiefly concerned about the psychological impact. was given news that fifty German planes had mined the Humber

any human

When

he

gutted.

losses.

German people

in this situation:

mined; 50 planes have laid mines! That has no

effect at all ...

estuary, he exploded: that's

You

'You can't

tell

the

We

have to have counter-attacks.

of a people with

whom he had lost touch. What

only break terror through terror!

Everything else

is

rubbish.'

Hitler mistook the

200

mood

they wanted, in their vast majority,

was

less the retaliation that

was

Hitler's

only thought than proper defence against the terror from the skies and

above

— an end

all else

their lives.

SD

to suppress,

population.

to the

reports caught

and spoke -

201

the ruins of

202

was costing them

- of

Kaufmann

Germany's second

services.

that

their

homes and

rumours of unrest which the police had had

recalling 191 8

Gauleiter Karl

even receive a party of those

emergency

war

-

a

'November mood' among

repeatedly requested Hitler to

largest city.

the

visit

But the Fuhrer would not

who had performed

outstanding feats in the

Goebbels pleaded for Hitler to speak on the radio,

even for only a quarter of an hour. 'The Fuhrer has not spoken to the public since Heroes'

Memorial Day

[21

March],' Goebbels added. 'He has

disappeared somewhat into the clouds. That's not good for the practical

war

effort.' Hitler

203 Naturally, agreed to speak - probably later in the week.

nothing came of it. That Hitler would not speak to the people was incomprehensible to Goebbels. 'At any rate, the unrest

grown

to such an extent that only a

clarify matters,'

word from

among

the broad masses has

the Fuhrer himself can again

he ruminated. But Hitler adjudged the current situation

unsuitable as could be imagined'.

204

In any case, he remained, as he

throughout the agony of Hamburg, more taken up with events

Remarkably enough, despite the

'as

had been

in Italy.

frenetic urgency of the crisis meetings

following Mussolini's deposition, the major military decisions had, in fact,

been postponed or were

produced

little.

post haste from

The war all

left

unimplemented. The

flurry of activity

had

summoned The spontaneous

council to which his acolytes had been

over the Reich had

left

matters in the

air.

- amid outbursts of menac- came in the main to nothing,

'decisions' taken in the lengthy military briefings

ing invective towards the Badoglio 'clique'

or were toned

down in the light of calmer professional judgement. Badoglio's

commitment to the war was unchanged meant that Germany had to move cautiously. Wiser counsels had prevailed over Hitler's impulsive urge to occupy Rome and depose the government. And though protestations that Italy's

BELEAGUERED had

Hitler

should not

still

rejected any evacuation of Sicily, insistent that the

set foot

on the

Italian

enemy

mainland, Kesselring had taken steps to

prepare the ground for what proved a brilliantly planned evacuation on the night of

n-12

August, catching the Allies by surprise and allowing 40,000

German and 62,000 Italian troops, with their equipment, to escape to safety. The last German troops in Sicily were finally given the order to undertake 2(b The split command a fighting withdrawal to the mainland on 17 August. between Kesselring place.

left in

206

in the

Rommel

south and

north of Italy had been

in the

But as August drew on, suspicions mounted that

not be long before the Italians defected.

an

directives for action in the event of

And

at the

Under the pressure of the events

drawer for

'Axis',

were

had

finally

in Italy, Hitler

would

end of the month,

Italian defection, in the

months and now refashioned under the code-name

it

issued.

207

made one

overdue move at home. For months, egged on by Goebbels, he had expressed his dissatisfaction

whom

with the Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick,

he contemptuously regarded as 'old and worn-out'.

think of no alternative.

this

On

was

that the time

had come

man

he could depend upon to

close at hand.

20 August he appointed Reichsfiihrer-SS Heinrich Himmler as the

new Reich Minister tacit

him

on the home front and eliminate any prospect of poor

morale turning into subversive action. The

do

But he could

He continued to defer any decision until the toppling

of Mussolini concentrated his mind, persuading to stiffen the grip

208

of the Interior.

The appointment amounted

recognition that his authority at

home now

rested

on police repression,

not the adulation of the masses he had once enjoyed. usual, Frick

was allowed

to remain a Reich Minister

- seemingly given an important new

post, replacing

to Hitler's

209

To

save face, as

and 'kicked

upstairs'

Neurath (who had not

functioned in the post since September 1941) as Reich Protector of Bohemia

and Moravia. Even here, to ensure that Frick's powers remained nominal, State Secretary Karl for

Hermann Frank was

Bohemia and Moravia and enhanced

On

3

September the

first

given a

new

authority.

title

of State Minister

210

British troops crossed the Straits of

Messina to

landing at Reggio di Calabria. That same day, the Italians secretly

Italy,

signed their armistice with the Allies which became public knowledge

days

later.

On to

8

five

211

September Hitler had flown for the second time within a fortnight

Army Group

South's headquarters at Zaporozhye, on the lower Dnieper

north of the Sea of Azov, to confer with Manstein about the increasingly critical situation

on the southern flank of the eastern

front.

It

was

to be the

599

6oO

HITLER I936-I945 last

time he set foot on territory captured from the Soviet Union.

earlier,

withdrawal from the Donets Basin - so important for

- and from the

A few days

following Soviet breakthroughs, he had been forced to authorize rich coal deposits

its

Kuban bridgehead over the Straits of Kerch, the gateway to Crimea. Now the Red Army had breached the thin seam which had the

knitted together Kluge's and Manstein's

Army Groups and was pouring

through the gap. Retreat was the only possible course of action. 212 Hitler found a tense atmosphere at the Wolf's Lair

on

his return.

What

he had long anticipated - despite reassuring noises to the contrary from Kesselring,

and from the German Embassy

and American newspapers had that morning, that the capitulation of the Italian

the

news was hardening. At 6p.m.

BBC

by the

in

Rome - was

in

8

army was imminent. By

wet weather provided

know

because he might

Philip of Hesse, the

in

216

too

King of

some weeks, promptly Konigsberg.

that evening the stories were confirmed

a fitting backdrop.

21 ^

214

Italy's son-in-law,

to

The unseasonably

Partly

much and prove dangerous,

who had

from

spite, partly

Hitler

been

had Prince

at

FHQ

for

arrested and deposited in Gestapo Headquarters in

The order had meanwhile been

motion. 'The Fiihrer,' wrote Goebbels,

rasa in Italy.'

the afternoon,

London. 213 Once again, Nazi leaders were summoned

Fiihrer Headquarters for a crisis-meeting next day. cold,

reality. British

September, carried reports

given to set 'Operation Axis'

determined to make a tabula

'is

21

The BBC's premature announcement gave the OKW's Operations Staff start. Sixteen German divisions had been moved to the Italian mainland by this time. The battle-hardened SS units withdrawn from the a

head

eastern front in late July Sicily,

and early August and troops withdrawn from

Corsica, and Sardinia were in position to take control in central Italy.

By 10 September,

Rome was in German hands.

Italian troops

were disarmed.

Small pockets of resistance were ruthlessly put down; one division that held out until 22 September ended with 6,000 dead. Over 650,000 soldiers entered

German

captivity.

Only the bulk of the small navy and

escaped and were given over to the

occupied by

Hours

its

former Axis partner.

Allies.

ineffective air-force

Within a few days

Italy

was

218

after the Italian capitulation, the Allies

Salerno, thirty miles or so south-east of Naples.

had landed

in the

Gulf of

The dogged German

resist-

ance they encountered for a week before reinforcements enabled them to

break out of their threatened beachhead - linking forces with troops from

Montgomery's 8th Army advancing northwards from Reggio di Calabria, and entering Naples on 1 October - was an indicator of what was in store

BELEAGUERED for the Allies during the

was

more

Wehrmacht made them

the

mounting pressures on both the eastern and the southern

saw the need looming western

Allies.

trop took the

fight

German leadership, however, that it would be even new situation, for the armed forces to cope with the

plain to the

difficult, in

as the

northward progression.

for every mile of their It

coming months

fronts.

to seek peace with either the Soviet

219

Goebbels

Union or the

He suggested the time had come to sound out Stalin. Ribbenline. He had tentative feelers put out to see whether the

same

Soviet dictator

would

bite.

220

But Hitler dismissed the idea.

If

anything, he

he preferred to look for an arrangement with Britain - conceivably

said,

open to one. But,

as always, he

would not consider negotiating from

a

position of weakness. In the absence of the decisive military success he

needed, which was receding ever more into the far distance, any hope of persuading

him

to consider an

approach other than the remorseless

continuation of the struggle was bound to be illusory.

At

least

Goebbels, backed by Goring, successfully

German

Hitler to speak to the

people.

To

221

this

time pleaded with

the last minute before recording

He wanted

the broadcast,

on 10 September, Hitler showed

his reluctance.

to delay, to see

how

went through the

things turned out. Goebbels

text with

him line by line. Eventually, he got the Fiihrer to the microphone. The speech itself - largely confined to unstinting praise for Mussolini, condemnation of Badoglio and his supporters, the claim that the 'treachery' had been foreseen

and every necessary step taken, and

a call to maintain confidence

and sustain

- had nothing of substance to offer, other than a hint at coming 222 retaliation for the bombing of German cities. But Goebbels was satisfied.

the fight

Reports suggested the speech had gone morale.

He

223

He

down

And

FHQ. such a

he wrung out of him a promise to speak soon in the

Sportpalast to open the Winter Aid campaign.

him back the

visit to

his chest after

had, he said, achieved the main purpose of his

thought Hitler was relieved to get the speech off

long time.

and helped revive

well,

taste for

coming

He

'directly in contact

thought he could give

with the people'.

224

Once

more, he would be disappointed.

As

far as the situation in Italy itself

was concerned,

Hitler

was

at this

time resigned to losing any hold over the south of the country. His intention

was

to

withdraw

to the Apennines, long foreseen by the

Staff as the favoured line of defence.

advancing from

Italy

through the Balkans. By autumn,

persuade him to change his mind and defend

A

consequence was to

tie

down

OKH

Operations

However, he worried about the Italy

this

Allies

concern was to

much further to the south.

forces desperately needed elsewhere.

225

6oi

602

HITLER I936-1945 The Wehrmacht's provided some

rapid successes in taking hold of Italy so speedily

relief.

when

Hitler's spirits- then soared temporarily

the

stunning news came through on the evening of 12 September that Mussolini,

whose whereabouts had been recently discovered, had been freed from his captors in a ski hotel on the highest mountain in the Abruzzi through an extraordinarily daring raid by parachutists and SS-men carried in by glider and

by the Austrian SS-Hauptsturmfiihrer Otto Skorzeny. 226 The

led

euphoria did not

last long. Hitler

greeted the ex-Duce

warmly when Musso-

lini,

no longer the preening dictator but looking haggard and dressed soberly

in a

dark

and black overcoat, was brought to Rastenburg on 14 Sep-

suit

tember. But Mussolini, bereft of the trappings of power, was a broken man.

The

series

appointed'.

of private talks they had 227

Three days

new

begin forming his

Hitler

'extraordinarily

dis-

Mussolini was dispatched to Munich to

later,

regime.

left

228

By the end of September he had

set

up

his

reconstituted Fascist 'Repubblica di Salo' in northern Italy, a repressive,

brutish police state run by a combination of cruelty, corruption, and thug-

gery

- but operating unmistakably under

The one-time bombastic Hitler's

dictator of Italy

tame puppet, and

living

As autumn progressed, the worsened. Even

the auspices of

was now

on borrowed

situation

German

plainly

masters.

229

no more than

time.

on the eastern front predictably

September, speaking only to Goebbels

in private in late

(allowed to join the Fiihrer's morning walk with his Alsatian, Blondi), Hitler

had been remarkably

optimistic.

would be

to the Dnieper

He was confident that the rapid withdrawal

successful

and leave defences that would be

impenetrable over the winter. The shortening of the front by some 350 kilometres

would

same time

at the

release troops for a floating reserve of

thirty-four divisions, capable of being rushed at short notice to whichever

front most needed them. Hitler's

optimism was soon shown to be

ment of troops offensive.

And

to Italy

costly.

utterly misplaced.

weakened the chances of staving

The

redeploy-

off the Soviet

the failure to erect the 'eastern wall' of fortifications along

the Dnieper during the

proved

230

two years

The speed of

that

it

had been

in

German hands now

the Soviet advance gave

no opportunity

to

231

By the end of September the Red Army been had able to cross the Dnieper and establish important bridgeheads on the west banks of the great river. The German bridgehead at Zaporozhye construct any solid defence

was

lost in early

line.

October. By then, the Wehrmacht had been pushed back

about 150 miles along the southern front. German and Romanian troops

were also cut off on the Crimea, which Hitler refused to evacuate fearing,

BELEAGUERED as of old, the opportunities

would

it

give for air-attacks

oil-fields,

and concerned about the message

Bulgaria.

By the end of the month,

the big

bend of the Dnieper

in the

it

would send

on Romanian to

Red Army had pushed

the

Turkey and so far over

south that any notion of the Germans

To the north, the German hands, Kiev, was recaptured on 5-6 November. Manstein wanted to make the attempt to retake it. For Hitler, the lower holding their intended defensive line was purely fanciful.

largest Soviet city in

Dnieper and the Crimea were more important. Control of the lower Dnieper held the key to the protection of the

German

the

steel industry.

Crimea, the Romanian air.

232

And

oil-fields

manganese ores of Nikopol,

should the Red

new

occasions as vital to the

'New

war

the

military successes, the reality

limitless granaries of the

industrial heartlands of the northern Caucasus, seen

prosperity in the

again control the

would once more be threatened from

But, whatever Hitler's thirst for

was that by the end of 1943, the

Army

vital for

Ukraine and the

by Hitler on so many

effort (as well as the source of future

Order'), were irredeemably lost.

German

233

IV Not

however, was the war against the Jews -

lost,

authors of the entire world conflagration. As

we

in Hitler's eyes, the

noted, Hitler had agreed

in June to Himmler's wish to complete the 'evacuation' of the Polish Jews. By autumn 1943, 'Aktion Reinhardt' was terminated: in the region of 1V2 million Jews had been killed in the gas chambers of extermination camps at

Belzec, Sobibor,

now

and Treblinka

in eastern

Poland.

234

The SS

leadership were

pressing hard for the extension of the 'Final Solution' to

corners of the Nazi imperium likely to

- even those where

have diplomatic repercussions.

Among

all

remaining

the deportations were

these were

Denmark and

Italy.

The Nazi authorities were well aware that any move against Danish Jews was likely to result in public protests and sour relations with the occupying power. There was little antisemitism in the land. The tiny Jewish minority was fully integrated into Danish society. An attack on the Jews would be seen widely as an assault on Danish citizens. Even so, the SS leadership

decided in tiary in

summer that the time was ripe. Werner Best, the Reich Plenipoten-

Denmark, pressed

complied with

for action to be taken. In September, Hitler

his request to

have the Danish Jews deported, dismiss-

ing Ribbentrop's anxieties about a possible general strike and other

civil

603

604

HITLER 1936-1945 disobedience.

Though

these did not materialize, the round-up of Danish

Jews was a resounding failure. Several-hundred - under ten per cent of the Jewish population - were captured and deported to Theresienstadt. Most escaped. Countless Danish citizens helped the overwhelming majority of their

Jewish countrymen -

in all 7,900 persons, including a

non-Jewish marital partners -

Sweden In

in the

Sound

to flee across the

few hundred

to safety in neutral

most remarkable rescue action of the war. 235

October, Hitler accepted Ribbentrop's recommendation to have

Rome's 8,000 Jews sent 'as hostages' to the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen. This followed moves by the Reich Security Head Office Berlin,

which wanted

to deport

them

to

Upper

at

in

be 'liquidated'.

Italy to

Anticipating possible problems with the Vatican, Ribbentrop appears to

have modified the SS's intentions

in suggesting the deportation to

hausen. Again, the 'action' to round up the Jews misfired.

community were non-Jewish

able to avoid capture.

citizens.

Thousands found

Vatican

asteries, or in the

itself.

Some were hidden by

shelter in

A

disgusted

Rome's convents and mon-

In return, the

maintain public silence on the outrage.

Maut-

Most of the Jewish

Papacy was prepared to

strong and unequivocal protest

from the Pontiff might well have deterred the German occupiers, unsure of the reactions, their

and prevented the deportations of the Jews they could

hands upon. The Germans were expecting such a protest.

It

lay

never

came. Despite Hitler's directive, following his Foreign Minister's advice, those Jews captured were not, in fact, sent to Mauthausen.

Jews who Auschwitz.

fell

into

German hands,

Of

the 1,259

the majority were taken straight to

236

compliance with SS demands to speed up and finish off the 'Final was unquestionably driven by his wish to complete the destruction

Hitler's

Solution'

of those he held responsible for the war. the 'prophecy' he

had declared

more so than turn up the volume of But, even

in

He

wanted,

now

as before, to see

1939 and repeatedly referred

in the spring

to, fulfilled.

when he had encouraged Goebbels

antisemitic propaganda, there

was

to

also the need,

with backs to the wall, to hold together his closest followers in a sworn

'community of

fate',

bonded by

their

own knowledge

of and implication in

the extermination of the Jews.

On

Himmler spoke openly and town hall Warthegau. He said he was 'referring to the

4 October, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich

frankly about the killing of the Jews to SS leaders gathered in the in Posen, the capital of the

Jewish evacuation programme, the extermination of the Jewish people'. l

It

was, he went on, a glorious page in our history, and one that has never

BELEAGUERED we know how

been written and never can be written. For

have made

it

for ourselves

the deprivations of war,

if,

we

on top of the bombing

German people

in every town as secret would now probably have

We

the

Jews were

still

part of the body of the

The mentality was identical with Hitler's. we had the duty to our people,' Himmler concluded,

(Volkskorper).'

'We had the moral 'to

when

we would

burdens and

had Jews today

still

saboteurs, agitators, and troublemakers.

reached the 1916-17 stage

difficult

raids, the

right,

destroy this people which wanted to destroy us

.

.

.

We

do not want

in

we have exterminated a bacillus, to become ill through the 237 bacillus and die.' The vocabulary, too, was redolent of Hitler's own. Himmler did not refer to Hitler. There was no need to do so. The key point

the end, because

for the Reichsfiihrer-SS

was not

The

his speech

purpose of

crucial

that they

Two

were

days

the Reichs-

together.

all in it

to assign responsibility to a single person.

was

to stress their joint responsibility,

238

same Golden Hall

later, in the

and candid

gave, as Goebbels recorded, an 'unvarnished

treatment of the Jews.

should

we do with

239

the

men -

that

is

Himmler

I

'We faced

declared:

women and

completely clear solution. the

Himmler addressed

in Posen,

and Gauleiter of the Party. The theme was the same one. He

children?

The

them or have them had

difficult decision

sion of the killing to

what

did not regard myself as justified in exterminating

to say, to kill

disappear from the earth.'

the question:

decided here too to find a

I

the avengers in the shape of the children to

grandchildren.

picture' of the

- and

to allow

for our sons

to be taken to

Himmler seemed

women and

killed

grow up

have

this

and

people

to be indicating that the exten-

children had been his initiative.

He

immediately, however, associated himself and the SS with a 'commission' (Auftrag)

-

'the

most

difficult

which we have had so

far.'

240

The

Gauleiter,

among them Goebbels who had spoken directly with Hitler on the subject so many times, would have had no difficulty in presuming whose authority lay behind the 'commission'. Again, the

disclosures

who had

on the taboo subject was

purpose of the remarkably frank

plain.

not attended his speech or noted

Himmler's speeches, ensuring that

his

Himmler marked on its

contents.

own

a

list

those

241

subordinates and the Party

leadership were fully in the picture about the extermination of the Jews,

had been - there can be no doubt about approval.

The very next day

it

after listening to

-

carried out with Hitler's

Himmler, the Gauleiter were

ordered to attend the Wolf's Lair to hear Hitler himself give an account of

That the Fiihrer would speak explicitly on the 'Final was axiomatically ruled out. But he could now take it for granted

the state of the war.

Solution'

605

606

HITLER 1936-1945 was no way out. Their knowledge underlined

that they understood that there their complicity. Unusually,

published

Goebbels made no diary entry that day. Only the

communique on the meeting survives. But it is not unenlightening.

'The entire German people know,' Hitler had told the Reichs- and Gauleiter, 'that

whether they

a matter of

it is

exist or

been destroyed behind them. Only the

When

(for the last time, as

it

do not

The

exist.

way forward

remains.'

bridges have 242

turned out) Hitler addressed the Party's

'Old Guard' in Munich's Lowenbraukeller on the Putsch anniversary,

November, he was

as defiant as ever.

broadcast on the radio, went

down

243

According to

well

- though

for the in five

main only among

was again temporarily

by the strong hints of imminent retaliation against Britain

bombing terror - to be unleashed during the second half of November 244 Few others could find in the empty major raids on Berlin itself.

bombast any consolation

homes war which they

for lives of loved ones sacrificed in vain,

destroyed, cities laid waste, hardship and misery, and a

recognized as to

all

intents

to voice such sentiments

and purposes

By

But those careless enough

on

his

psyche - and no undermining of the

home. Any overheard subversive or

this

repulsed,

would cost the person making it his or her head. 246 time - though of course he made no hint of it in his speech - Hitler would

a

looming new grave military

result in

threat,

coming

the east remains,' ran his preamble to his Directive 'but a greater danger

is

looming

enemy succeeds here

front, the

one which,

if

not

Germany's destruction: what he took to be the

certainty of an invasion in the west during the

the

defeatist remark,

clear,

was anxious about

If

retribution. Their fate

There would be no capitu-

no repeat of 191 8, he had declared once again — the nightmare of

front by subversion at

was

24 ^

in Hitler's speech.

that year indelibly imprinted

it

lost.

had to reckon with swift

had been expressly indicated lation,

8

reports, the speech,

in the

Party fanatics and fervent believers. Their morale lifted, especially

SD

in

in the west: the

year. 'The danger in

No. 51 on

3

November,

Anglo-Saxon landing!

.

.

.

breaking through our defence on a broad

consequences within a short time are unforeseeable. Everything

suggests that the enemy, at the latest in spring but perhaps even earlier, will

move

To

to attack the western front of Europe.'

247

on 20 December, he said he was certain that the would take place some time after mid-February or early March. The next months would be spent in preparation for the coming great assault his military advisers,

invasion

in the west. This, Hitler

remarked, would 'decide the war'.

248

13 HOPING FOR MIRACLES

'There are so the coalition

many disagreements on is

bound

to fall apart

the

enemy

side, that

one day.'

Hitler, speaking to Field-Marshal

von Manstein, 4 January 1944

'I

wish these prognoses of the Fuhrer were

We've

right.

been so often disappointed recently that you

feel

some

scepticism rising up within you.'

Goebbels, 4

'The Fuhrer did not

would occur, but

know whether

the English

or

March 1944

when an

invasion

had adopted measures which

could only be maintained for 6-8 weeks and a serious

would break out

He would

in

England

then deploy

new

effective within a radius of

if

crisis

the invasion did not occur.

technical

weapons which were

250-300 kilometres and would

transform London into a heap of ruins.' Hitler, speaking to Mussolini, 22 April

'If

we

repel the invasion, then the scene in the

war

1944

will be

completely transformed. The Fuhrer reckons for certain

with

this.

He

has few worries that this couldn't succeed.'

Goebbels, 7 June 1944

'The year 1944 will make tough and severe demands of course of the war, in

We

year.

all its

enormity, will reach

are fully confident that

and the prospect of new

bombed-out

ruins,

proclamation

was

in 1944.

we

cities rising all

Hitler

will successfully

Germans. The

all

its critical

point during this

surmount

to offer readers of his

Fewer than ever of them were able

New

The

military crisis of 1943

in

North Africa and the

following the overthrow of Mussolini. But the greatest

east

Year

was no

had been brought about, he told them,

by sabotage and treachery by the French

history

the

to share his

confidence. For the embattled soldiers at the front, Hitler's message different.

This,

war from

resplendently after the

had

1

it.'

had been, 'Bolshevism has not achieved

its

goal.'

German

crisis in

had been triumphantly mastered. However hard the

He

Italians

fighting in the

glanced at the

western Allies, and at the future: 'The plutocratic western world can undertake

its

Since

threatened attempt at a landing where

Germany had been

setbacks, Hitler

it

wants:

it

will fail!'

forced on to the defensive, experiencing only

had not changed

his tune.

His stance had become immobil-

ized, fossilized. In his view, the military disasters

had been the consequence

of betrayal, incompetence, disobedience of orders, and, above

He conceded

not a single error or misjudgement on his

all,

own

weakness. part.

No

no repeat of 1918; hold out at all no surrender; no whatever the odds: this was the unchanging message. Alongside this

capitulation; costs,

2

went the belief- unshakeable

retreat;

(apart, perhaps,

and bouts of depression during

from

sleepless nights) but

his

innermost thoughts

an item of blind

faith,

not resting on reason - that the strength to hold out would eventually lead

6lO

HITLER 1936-1945 and

to a turning of the tide,

Germany's

to

final victory. In public,

he

expressed his unfounded optimism through references to the grace of Providence. As he put

to his soldiers

it

on

January 1944,

1

after

overcoming the

defensive period then returning to the attack to impose devastating blows

on the enemy, 'Providence most to earn intact.

will

bestow victory on the people that has done

His instinctive belief in reward for the strongest remained

it.'

therefore, Providence grants

'If,

life

as the prize to those

who

have

fought and defended the most courageously, then our people will find mercy

from the

who

just arbiter

at all times

gave victory to the most meritorious.' 3

However hollow such sentiments sounded

to

men

at the various fronts,

suffering untold hardships, enduring hourly danger, often realizing they

would never

see their loved ones again, they were, for Hitler himself, far

from mere cynical propaganda. certainly

down

to the

summer

He had of 1944,

to believe these ideas if

The

not longer.

public and private, to 'Providence' and 'Fate' increased as his

over the course of the war declined.

which he expressed

4

The views on

to his generals, to other

- and

did,

references, in

own

control

war

the course of the

Nazi leaders (including private

conversations with Goebbels), and to his immediate entourage gave no inkling that his

way

own

resolve

was wavering, or

resigned to the prospect of defeat.

brilliantly sustained,

'It is

1944. less

who saw

then

it

was one

what

Goebbels

certainty the

in his diary in early

Hitler frequently, in close proximity,

June

and were

6

impressionable than Goebbels, thought the same. Without the inner

would have been unable

conviction, Hitler

continued so often to do, to find

engaged so fanatically it,

act,

impressive, with

Fiihrer believes in his mission,' noted

Others

was an

any

in

and remained substantially unchanged whatever the

context or personnel involved.

5

If it

had become

that he

new

in bitter conflicts

he would have been incapable, not

sway those around him,

to

resolve.

Without

it,

as he

he would not have

with his military leaders. Without least,

of sustaining in himself the

capacity to continue, despite increasingly overwhelming odds.

The

astonishing optimism did not give way, despite the mounting crises

and calamities of the

first

colossal. Hitler lived increasingly in a

year wore on ever invasion,

when

it

was

half of 1944. But the self-deception involved

more desperately

at

world of

illusion, clutching as the

whatever straws he could

find.

The

came, would be repulsed without doubt, he thought.

He

placed enormous hopes, too, in the devastating effect of the 'wonder-

weapons'.

When

they failed to match expectations, he

would remain con-

vinced that the alliance against him was fragile and would soon as

had occurred

in the

Seven Years

War two

fall

apart,

centuries earlier following the

HOPING FOR MIRACLES indomitable defence of one of his heroes, Frederick the Great. Even at the very end of a catastrophic year for

happening.

this

He

He would

still

Germany, he would not

give

up hope of

be hoping for miracles.

had, however, no rational ways out of the inevitable catastrophe to

offer those

who,

had lavished

in better times,

Albert Speer, in a pen-picture

their adulation

drawn immediately ways out of

earlier 'genius' at finding 'elegant'

after the

upon him.

war, saw Hitler's

eroded by relentless

crises

overwork imposed on him by war's demands, undermining the which had required the more spacious and leisured artistic

temperament. The change

in

intuition

lifestyle suited to

an

work-patterns - turning himself,

against his natural temperament, into an obsessive workaholic, preoccupied

by

detail,

unable to relax, surrounded by an unchanging and uninspiring

entourage - had brought

in its train,

thought Speer, enormous mental strain

together with increased inflexibility and obstinacy in decisions which had closed off

was

It

all

but the route to disaster.

7

certainly the case that Hitler's entire existence

had been consumed

by the prosecution of the war. The leisured times of the pre-war years

were gone. The impatience with

detail,

detachment from day-to-day

issues,

preoccupation with grandiose architectural schemes, generous allocation of time for relaxation, listening to music, watching films, indulging in the indolence which had been a characteristic since his youth, had indeed given

way the

to a punishing

work-schedule

in

which Hitler brooded incessantly over

most detailed matters of military

tactics, leaving little

or no space for

anything unconnected with the conduct of war in a routine essentially

unchanged day

in

and day

out. Nights with

little

sleep; rising late in the

mornings; lengthy midday and early evening conferences, often extremely stressful,

with his military leaders; a

taken alone

in his

spartan diet, and meals often

room; no exercise beyond

Alsatian bitch, Blondi; the night monologues to try to age), reminiscing

strict,

about

a brief daily

same surroundings, wind down

(at

the

walk with

same entourage;

his

late-

the expense of his bored entour-

his youth, the First

World War, and

the 'good old

times' of the Nazi Party's rise to power; then, finally, another attempt to find sleep: such a routine

the Berghof

- could not but be

scarcely conducive to All

- only marginally more relaxed when he was

who saw him

in the

long run harmful to health and was

calm and considered, rational

pointed out

had once appeared vigorous,

Hitler

reflection.

had aged during the war. 8 He

of energy, to those around him.

Now,

his

eyes were bloodshot, he walked with a stoop, he

hair

was greying

had

difficulty controlling a

fast, his

full

how

at

trembling

left

arm; for a

man

in his mid-fifties,

6ll

il2

HITLER 1936-I945 he looked old.

9

Despite his mounting hypochondria, Hitler had in fact

enjoyed extremely robust health during the 1930s. But his health had started

from 1941 onwards. Even then he spent scarcely a day bedridden through illness. But the increased numbers of pills and injections

to suffer notably

provided every day by Dr Morell - ninety varieties

and twenty-eight different deterioration.

And beyond

had increasingly come

man -

a sick

unwell. Cardiograms, the 11

in all

first

at times

during the year extremely

taken in 1941, had revealed a worsening heart

the chronic stomach

and

to plague him, Hitler

symptoms, becoming more pronounced

in 1944,

uncontrollable trembling of the

since 1942 developed

which point with some

although the strains of the is

arm, jerking in his

left

who saw him

were unmistakable to those last

Most

rages and violent

frequency in the

his

and

a shuffling

toll

12

But

on him, there

mental capacity was impaired.

mood-swings were final

left leg,

notably, an

at close quarters.

phase of the war took their

no convincing evidence that

problems that

intestinal

had

medical certainty to the onset of Parkinson's Syndrome.

gait,

during the war

each day - could not prevent the physical

10

By 1944, Hitler was condition.

pills

13

Hitler's

inbuilt features of his character, their

phase of the war a reflection of the

rapidly deteriorating military conditions and his

own

stress

from the

inability to

change

them, bringing, as usual, wild lashings at his generals and any others on

whom

he could lay the blame that properly began at his

own

door.

overwork inappro-

In looking to the loss of 'genius' through pressures of

priate to Hitler's alleged natural talent for improvisation, Speer

ing

it

in the

'demonic' figure of Hitler.

over-burdensome direct

was

offering

and misleading explanation of Germany's fate, ultimately personaliz-

a naive

style of

14

The adoption

of such a harmfully

working was no chance development.

outcome of an extreme form of personalized

rule

It

was the

which had already

by the time war began seriously eroded the more formal and regular structures of states.

so

government and military command that are

No other war leader - not Churchill,

essential in

modern - was

Roosevelt, or even Stalin

consumed by the task of running military affairs, so unable to delegate The breakdown of governmental structures in Germany had gone

authority.

yet further than their erosion in the Soviet state under Stalin's despotism.

The

reins of

power were

by major power bases.

among

the military,

figures in the state

them -

entirely held in Hitler's hands.

None

existed

some leading

- whatever

industrialists,

bureaucracy about the road

He was

still

backed

the growing anxieties

and

a

number of senior he was taking

down which

that could bypass the Fuhrer. All vital measures, both in military

HOPING FOR MIRACLES and

in

domestic

affairs,

needed

his authorization.

There were no overriding

coordinating bodies - no war cabinet, no politburo. But Hitler, forced entirely

on to the defensive

in

paralysed in his thinking, and often in his actions. to the

'home

now

running the war, was

And

often almost

matters relating

in

while refusing to concede an inch of his authority he

front',

was, as Goebbels interminably bemoaned, nevertheless incapable of more than sporadic, unsystematic intervention or prevaricating inaction.

Far more gifted individuals than Hitler would have been overstretched

and incapable of coping with the problems involved

in the

foreign policy in the 1930s, then as

from

his 'artistic genius' (as Speer

skill

in exploiting the

and nature of the administrative

scale

conduct of

world war.

a

war

saw

it),

Hitler's

leader until 1941,

triumphs

had not arisen

but in the main from his unerring

weaknesses and divisions of

opponents, and

his

through the timing of actions carried out at breakneck speed. Not genius', but the gambler's instinct

when

instincts

But once the gamble had

worked failed,

'artistic

playing for high stakes with a good

hand against weak opponents had served Hitler well

Those aggressive

in

in those earlier times.

as long as the initiative could be retained.

and he was playing

a losing

hand

in a

long-drawn-out match with the odds becoming increasingly more hopeless, the instincts lost their effectiveness. Hitler's individual characteristics fatefully

merged,

in conditions of

mounting

now

disaster, into the structural

weaknesses of the dictatorship. His ever-increasing distrust of those around him, especially his generals, was one side of the coin. The other was his

unbounded egomania which pronounced else

cholerically expressed itself

as disasters started to

accumulate -

was competent or trustworthy, and

His takeover of the operational

-

all

more

the

in the belief that

no one

that he alone could ensure victory.

command

army

of the

in the

winter

crisis

of

1941 had been the most obvious manifestation of this disastrous syndrome. Speer's explanation

was even more

deficient in ignoring the fact that

Germany's catastrophic situation in 1944 was the direct consequence of the steps which Hitler - overwhelmingly supported by the most powerful forces within the country, and widely acclaimed by the masses

when his Not changes in

years

'genius' (in Speer's perception)

had been

his work-style, but the direct result of a

of the military leadership

- had wanted meant

less

in the

constrained.

war he - and much

that Hitler could find no

'elegant' solution to the stranglehold increasingly

coalition

- had taken

imposed by the mighty

which German aggression had called into being. He was

therefore, with

no choice but

hold fast to illusions.

to face the reality that the

war was

lost,

left,

or to

613

Il4

HITLER 1936-1945 Ever fewer Germans shared Hitler's undiminished fatalism about the

outcome of the war. The dictator's had

rhetoric, so

powerful in 'sunnier' periods,

sway the masses. Either they believed what he said; or own eyes and ears - gazing out over devastated cities,

lost its ability to

they believed their

reading the ever-longer

lists

of fallen soldiers in the death-columns of the

newspapers, hearing the sombre radio announcements (however they were dressed up) of further Soviet advances, seeing no sign that the fortunes of

war were turning. Hitler sensed that he had lost the confidence of his people. The great orator no longer had his audience. With no triumphs to proclaim,

German people any

he did not even want to speak to the

between the Fiihrer and the people had been a

longer.

The bonds

vital basis of the

regime in

times. But now, the gulf between ruler and ruled had widened to a

earlier

chasm.

During 1944 Hitler would distance himself from the German people still further than he had done in the previous two years. He was physically detached - cocooned for the most part in his Prussia or in his

mountain

in newsreels, for ordinary

On

eyrie in

Bavaria - and

field

headquarters in East

scarcely

now

visible,

even

Germans. 15

not a single occasion during 1944 did he appear in public to deliver a

When, on 24 February, the anniversary of the proclamation Programme of 1920, he spoke in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich

speech.

of the

Party

to the

closed circle of the Party's 'Old Guard', he expressly refused Goebbels's

exhortations to have the speech broadcast and no mention

speech in the newspapers.

16

was made of the

Twice, on 30 January 1944 and early on 21 July,

he addressed the nation on the radio. Otherwise the

German people

did not

hear directly from their Leader throughout 1944. Even his traditional address to the 'Old Fighters' of the Party

on

8

November was

read out by Himmler.

He was

out of

and for most, probably, increasingly out of mind - except

as an

For the masses, Hitler had become a largely invisible leader. sight

obstacle to the ending of the war.

The

intensified level of repression during the last years of the

war, along

with the negative unity forged by fear of the victory of Bolshevism, went a long way towards ensuring that the threat of internal revolt, as had happened in 1918,

never materialized. But, for

all

the continuing (and in

astonishing) reserves of strength of the Fiihrer cult

supporters, Hitler had

become

for the

among

some ways

outright Nazi

overwhelming majority of Germans

the chief hindrance to the ending of the war. Ordinary people might prefer, as they end'.

17

were reported to be saying, 'an end with horror' to But they had no obvious

way

'a

horror without

of altering their fate. Only those

who

HOPING FOR MIRACLES moved in the corridors of power had any possibility of removing Hitler. Some groups of officers, through conspiratorial links with certain highlyplaced civil servants, were plotting precisely that. After a number of abortive attempts, their strike would come in July 1944. It would prove the last chance the Germans themselves had to put an end to the Nazi regime. The bitter rivalries of the

forum (equivalent

subordinate leaders, the absence of any centralized

to the Fascist

Grand Council

in Italy)

from which an

coup could be launched, the shapelessness of the structures of Nazi

internal

rule yet the indispensability of Hitler's authority to every facet of that rule,

and, not least, the fact that the regime's leaders had burnt their boats with the Dictator in the regime's genocide

and other untold

ruled out any further possibility of overthrow.

only

its

own collective

With

suicide in an inexorably lost

acts of inhumanity,

that, the

war

regime had

to contemplate. But

wounded wild beast at bay, it fought with the ferocity and came from desperation. And its Leader, losing touch ever more with reality, hoping for miracles, kept tilting at windmills - ready in

like a

mortally

ruthlessness that

Wagnerian

style in the event of ultimate apocalyptic catastrophe,

with his undiluted social-Darwinistic flames with

him

if it

beliefs, to

and

take his people

in line

down

in

proved incapable of producing the victory he had

demanded.

II

Readiness for the invasion in the West, certain to come within the next few

months, was the overriding preoccupation of Hitler and in early 1944.

invasion

They were

would decide

the

outcome of the war. 18 Hopes were invested

fortifications swiftly being erected in the

in the

along the Atlantic coast in France, and

new, powerful weapons of destruction that were under preparation

and would help the Wehrmacht to as

his military advisers

sure that the critical phase directly following the

soon as they

set foot

resounding defeat on the invaders

inflict a

on continental

soil.

Forced back, with Britain reeling

under devastating blows from weapons of untold might, against which there

was no defence,

the western Allies

would

realize that

Germany could not

be defeated; the 'unnatural' alliance with the Soviet Union would and, freed of the danger in the west, the energies, perhaps

now

split apart;

German Reich could devote

all its

even with British and American backing following a

separate peace agreement, to the task of repelling and defeating Bolshevism.

So ran the optimistic currents of thought

in Hitler's headquarters.

615

6l6

HITLER 1936-1945 Meanwhile, developments on the eastern front - the key theatre of the war - were more than worrying enough to hold Hitler's attention. A new Soviet offensive in the south of the eastern front had begun

1943,

on 24 December making rapid advances, and dampening an already dismal Christmas

mood

in the Fiihrer

Headquarters. Hitler spent

rooms alone with Bormann.

his

19

He took

New

Year's Eve closeted in

part in no festivities. At least in

company of Martin Bormann, his loyal right hand in all Party matters, he was 'among his own'. In his daily military conferences, it was different. The tensions with his generals were palpable. Some loyalists around Hitler, such as Jodl, shared in some measure his optimism. Others were already more sceptical. According to Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von the

Below, even the believe a

word

initially starry-eyed

Hitler said.

20

What

Chief of Staff Zeitzler by

now

did not

Hitler really felt about the war, whether

he harboured private doubts that conflicted with the optimism he voiced at all

times,

deduce.

was even

company impossible

for those regularly in his close

Whatever

his

innermost thoughts,

his

outward stance was predictable.

Retreat, whatever the tactical necessity or even advantage to be gained it,

it

to

21

was ruled

out.

When the retreat then

was invariably under

had been

initially

less

from

inevitably did eventually take place,

favourable conditions than at the time that

it

proposed. 'Will' to hold out was, as always, the supreme

value for Hitler. In the winter crisis of 1941, his refusal to sanction retreat

had probably prevented headlong

collapse. But since then the relentless

Soviet advance, backed by superiority in

weaponry and manpower, had

was

forced the need for a defensive strategy which

foreign to Hitler's nature,

and which required more than repeated emphasis on In late

out

in

many'),

Moscow by 22

aimed

at

and

fighting spirit.

the Soviet-backed 'Freies Deutschland*

had ordered the establishment of National the spirit of the Nazi

in fact, required

('Free

Ger-

undermining morale among the German troops, was

indeed having such an effect, Hitler, prompted by

instil

'will'

December, prompted by concern that the subversive propaganda put

Socialist Leadership Officers to

movement within

was greater

military skill

Himmler and Bormann,

the

and

Wehrmacht. 23 What was,

tactical flexibility

Commander-in-Chief of the Army himself could muster. stances, Hitler's obstinacy

and interference

greater difficulties for his field

in tactical

than the

In these circum-

matters posed ever

commanders.

Manstein encountered Hitler's

inflexibility

again

when he

flew on 4

January 1944 to Fiihrer Headquarters to report on the rapidly deteriorating situation of

Army Group

South. Soviet forces, centred on the Dnieper bend,

HOPING FOR MIRACLES had made major advances. These survival of the 4th Panzer

The breach

Berichev).

mortal

peril.

now posed an ominous would open up

a massive

gap between

Centre, putting therefore the entire southern front

This demanded, in Manstein's view, the urgent transfer of

forces northwards to counter the threat. This could only be

ing the Dnieper bend, abandoning Nikopol (with

a length

easily be defended. Hitler refused point-blank to

proposal. Losing the Crimea, he argued,

done by evacuat-

manganese

its

and the Crimea, and drastically reducing the front to

more

threat to the

(located in the region between Vinnitsa and

of this position

Army Groups South and in

Army

supplies)

which could

countenance such

would prompt

a

the defection of

Turkey, together with Bulgaria and Romania. Reinforcements for the threat-

Army Group

ened northern wing could not be drawn from

North, since

that could well lead to the defection of Finland, loss of the Baltic,

of availability of vital Swedish ore. Forces could not be

enemy

bound

Manstein recalled Hitler

side,'

to fall apart

To

one day.

drawn from

stating, 'that the coalition

was

gain time

When

was

over, Manstein asked to see Hitler

company only of Zeitzler, the Chief of the Army General when unsure of what was coming), Hitler agreed.

Staff.

Reluctantly (as usual

Once

the

cold,

soon touched freezing-point. His eyes bored

room had emptied, Manstein began.

field-marshal as Manstein stated that

army

responsible for the plight of the to the

way

in

to hold out until

24

the military conference

privately, in the

was

therefore a matter of

paramount importance.' Manstein would simply have reinforcements were available.

the west

many disagreements on

before the invasion had been repelled. 'There were so the

and lack

which we are

led'.

the intimidating atmosphere,

25

Hitler's

enemy

demeanour, already

like gimlets into the

superiority alone

in the east,

was not

but that this was 'also due

Manstein, persevering undaunted despite

renewed the request he had put on two

earlier

occasions, that he himself should be appointed overall Commander-in-Chief for the eastern front with full independence of action within overall strategic objectives, in the

way

that Rundstedt in the west

and Kesselring

in Italy

enjoyed similar authority. This would have meant the effective surrender

by Hitler of

none of to

it.

his

But

powers of command

his

in the eastern theatre.

argument backfired. 'Even

I

He was

having

cannot get the field-marshals

obey me!' he retorted. 'Do you imagine, for example, that they would

obey you any more disobeyed. At

readily?'

Manstein replied that

this, Hitler, his

nation plainly registered, closed the discussion.

word. But he returned to

his orders

were never

anger under control though the insubordi-

his headquarters

26

Manstein had had the

empty-handed.

last

6lJ

6l8

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 Not only had he no prospect

of appointment as Commander-in-Chief in

the eastern theatre; Manstein's outspoken views were by

doubts in Hitler's mind about

his suitability in

command

now prompting of Army Group

South. Meanwhile, Hitler's orders for Manstein's troops were clear: there

was

to be

and

at

no pulling back. Tenacious German defiance

Nikopol did

in fact

in the

Dnieper bend

succeed in holding up the Soviet advance for the

time being. But the loss of this territory, and of the Crimea

itself,

was

a

foregone conclusion, merely temporarily delayed.

Guderian, another of Hitler's one-time favourite commanders, fared no better than

Manstein when he attempted,

Staff. This,

aimed

at

new

audience in January,

and unify military command by appointing

to persuade Hitler to simplify

trusted general to a

at a private

position of Chief of the

a

Wehrmacht General

removing the damaging weakness

at the heart of the

Wehrmacht High Command, would have meant the dismissal of Keitel. Hitler rejected this out of hand. It would also have signified, as Hitler had no

own powers

diminution of his

difficulty in recognizing, a

military

within the

command. Like Manstein, Guderian had met an immovable

obstacle. Like Manstein's, his

recommendations of

tactical retreats fell

on

stony ground. As he later summarized: 'So nothing was altered. Every square

yard of ground continued to be fought

which had become hopeless put

right

for.

Never once was

by a timely withdrawal.'

a situation

27

The level to which relations between Hitler and his senior generals among them those who had been his most loyal and trusted commanders had sunk was revealed by a flashpoint at the lengthy speech Hitler gave to 28

100 or so of his military leaders on 27 January.

After a simple lunch,

during which the atmosphere was noticeably cool, Hitler offered

more

little

(following the usual long-winded resort to the lessons of history, emphasis

on

'struggle' as a natural law,

and description of his own political awakening

and build-up of the Party) than an exhortation to hold indoctrination in the spirit of National Socialism

was

vital.

out. For this,

Of one

thing,

he told them, they could be certain: 'that there could never be even the slightest

thought of capitulation, whatever might happen'. The only point

of substance in the lengthy address

was

the briefest of allusions to

new

weapons which were on the way, especially U-boats, from which he expected a complete reversal of fortunes in the

war

at sea.

29

At the high-point of

peroration, Hitler touched on the central purpose of his address. of his right to

demand

his

He spoke

of his generals not simply loyalty, but fanatical

support. Full of pathos, he declared: 'In the last instance, deserted as supreme Leader,

I

must have

if I

should ever be

as the last defence (Letztes)

around

HOPING FOR MIRACLES me the entire officer-corps who must stand with drawn swords rallied round 30

A minor sensation then occurred: Hitler was interrupted - something which had never happened since the beerhalls of xMunich - as Field-Marshal me.'

von Manstein exclaimed: 'And so visibly icily,

If

come what may. For

strength that

He

stein!'

mein Fuhrer. ,n Hitler was

will be,

taken aback, and lost the thread of what he was saying.

uttered 'That's good.

never,

it

advances

is

necessary.

I

that's the case,

war with

quickly recovered, emphasizing the need, even so, for greater 32

In a literal sense, Manstein's

to be not only harmless, but encouraging.

33

But, as

war, the implied meaning was more

impugned the honour of himself and his

fellow officers by implying that their loyalty might be in question. Hitler, for his part, his generals.

35

saw

in the interruption a

The meeting with Manstein

with him, as did a frank

letter

With

interrupt in future.

own

Manstein's

I

weeks

earlier

still

rankled

which the field-marshal had subsequently

'You yourself would not

letter to

him

a

me

if I

few days

war

earlier

tolerate such behaviour

from

diary.

had presumably been

Needled

at this,

Manstein retorted:

my

motives

is

that

discordant note, the audience came to a close.

were plainly numbered.

At noon three days

to justify

use an English expression in this connection, but

can say to your interpretation of this

Manstein to

subordinates,' he stated, adding, in a gratuitous insult, that

'You must excuse

On

reproach for his mistrust of

three

Keitel in attendance, Hitler forbade

himself to posterity in his

all

34

Within minutes of the interruption, Hitler had summoned Manstein

to his presence.

your

Man-

critical

The interruption, the field-marshal later recalled, arose from a rush

of blood as he sensed that Hitler had

36

the

Man-

note that very gladly, Field-Marshal von

stein himself indicated after the

sent.

stared

never lose this war,

the nation will then go into the

in the 'education' of the officer corps.

words could be seen of Hitler.

we can

He

I

37

am

a gentleman.'

Manstein's days

38

later, the

eleventh anniversary of the takeover of

power, Hitler addressed the German people. As

in the previous year,

he did

not travel to Berlin. In 1943, in the throes of the Stalingrad debacle, Goring

had spoken

in his place.

This time, he spoke himself, but confined himself

to a relatively short radio address

from

his headquarters.

As

his voice

crackled through the ether from the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, the wailing

announced the onset of another massive air-attack on the Symbolically - it might seem in retrospect - the Sportpalast, scene of

sirens in Berlin city.

many Nazi triumphs

in the 'time of struggle' before 1933,

and where so

often since then tens of thousands of the Party faithful had gathered to hear Hitler's big speeches,

was gutted

that night in a hail of incendiaries.

39

619

6ZO

HITLER 1936-1945 what they yearned war would be ovef, when the devastation from the air would be ended. Instead, what they heard was no more than a rant (along Hitler's radio broadcast could offer listeners nothing of

to hear:

when

the

the usual lines, accompanied by the normal savage vocabulary of 'Jewish bacteria')

about the threat of Bolshevism. In the event of victory, he repeated,

Bolshevism would eradicate Germany and overrun the

Europe - the

rest of

aim of international Jewry which could be combated only by the National Socialist state, built

up over the previous eleven

who had

said in consolation to those

the

human

that, in

lost

bypassing practically

had

failed to

all

Not

a

word was

loved ones at the front, or about

the issues that preoccupied ordinary people,

make an

following days - full of references

impact.

41

war could

and

no mention of reactions

to the Fiihrer's speech.

disbelief that the

It

with earlier years. His propaganda slogans were his earlier

were

flatly

SD

Indeed,

reports in the

to war-weariness, anxiety over the eastern

front and the bombing,

cities

40

misery caused by the bomb-raids. Even Goebbels acknowledged

the speech

And

years.

was

a

now

still

be

won - made

remarkable contrast falling

on deaf

promises of retaliation for the laying waste of disbelieved as the

mood plummeted

ears.

German

following the latest

bombing-raid on Berlin. Indirectly, judgement on the speech could be read

'We don't want any tranquillizer pills. Tell us instead where Germany really stands'; or the comment of a Berlin worker, 42 that only 'an idiot can tell me the war will be won'. into reported remarks such as:

Ill Scepticism both about the capabilities of German air-defence to protect against the

menace from the

retaliatory attacks

skies,

cities

and about the potential for launching

on Britain was well

justified.

Goring's earlier popularity

among the mass of the public as his once much-vaunted Luftwaffe had shown itself utterly incapable of preventing the destruction of German towns and cities. Nor did the latest wave of raids, particularly the severe attack on Berlin, do much to improve the Reich had long since evaporated

totally

Marshal's standing at Fuhrer Headquarters. to withering tirades against Goring's particular, Goebbels, bilities for

It

took

little

to

prompt

competence as Luftwaffe

Hitler

chief. In

who both as Gauleiter of Berlin and with new responsi-

coordinating measures for

civil

defence in the air-war possibly

had more first-hand experience than any other Nazi leader of the impact of the Allied

bombing of German

cities, lost

no opportunity whenever he met

HOPING FOR MIRACLES Hitler to vent his spleen

on Goring.

what Goebbels described

43

But however violently he condemned

as 'Goring's total fiasco' in air-defence,

would not consider parting company with one of

When

dins.

Goebbels discussed the

44

Hitler

his longest-serving pala-

failure of the Luftwaffe

with him at the

beginning of March, Hitler even showed sympathy for the Reich Marshal's position. 'The Fiihrer completely understands,'

Goring

is

somewhat nervous

therefore have to help criticism.

You have

him

all

He

the more.

when blame was

him

tell

'that

But he thinks that we

moment

can for the

to tread very carefully to

subsequent occasion,

Goebbels recorded,

in his present situation.

stand no

this or that.'

45

On

a

attached to the Reich Marshal for

the 'catastrophic inferiority' in the air, Goebbels reported that Hitler 'could

do nothing about Goring because the authority of the Reich or the Party

would thereby

suffer the greatest damage.'

46

It

would remain

Hitler's pos-

throughout the year.

ition

A

making

big hope of

production of the previous

May.

jet-fighter, the

Its

Me262, which had been commissioned

speed of up to 800 kilometres per hour meant that

capable of outflying any enemy aircraft. But

when

Professor Willi Messerschmitt had told Hitler of

heavy fuel consumption,

it

had

led by

it

the

was

the aircraft designer

disproportionately

its

September 1943 to

removed. This was restored only a

priority being

on the

a dent in Allied air superiority rested

vital

its

production

quarter of a year

on 7 January 1944, when Speer and Milch were summoned to Hitler's headquarters to be told, on the basis of English press reports, that British later,

was almost complete.

testing of jet-planes

on the Me262

to be stepped

Hitler

now demanded production as many jets as possible

up immediately so that

could be put into service without delay. But valuable time had been

was

plain that the

first

Hitler

was

When

Captain Hanna Reitsch,

as clearly

informed of this as Speer

pilots, visited Hitler at the

Class, she

lost. It

machines would take months to produce. Whether

who had

claimed

later

risen to

is

questionable.

become one of

his star

end of February to receive her Iron Cross,

proposed setting up a Kamikaze-squad along Japanese

Hitler refused, saying he expected great things in the near future

47

First lines.

from the

would be months before this could happen. Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below reinforced the point later that evening. But Hitler was adamant that the Luftwaffe had informed him differently, and that the dates he had laid down

early

deployment of

would be met.

No

his jets. Reitsch

pointed out that

one had openly contradicted

his

it

demands, he

Speer himself, according to Goebbels, was confident that the bring a radical change of fortunes in the air-war.

49

new

stated.

jets

48

would

6zi

622

HITLER I936-I945 towards attack as the best form of

Hitler's instincts, as always, veered

He

defence.

-

-

looked, as did

impatiently and

more and more

disbelievingly

numbers of ordinary Germans,

to the chance to launch devastating

weapons of destruction against Great

Britain, giving the British a taste of

large

their

own

medicine and forcing the Allies to rethink their strategy in the

air-war. Here, too, his illusions about the speed with

weapons' could be made ready for deployment, and British

war

strategy,

which the 'wonder-

their likely

impact on

were shored up by the optimistic prognoses of

his

advisers.

Speer had persuaded Hitler as long ago as October 1942, after witnessing

Peenemiinde

trials at

earlier in the year, of the destructive potential of a

long-range rocket, the

A4

- on England. huge

scale.

Hitler

It

its

had immediately ordered

When Werner von

had explained some months

shown him

known as the V2) able to enter the bombs - and unstoppable devastation

(later better

stratosphere en route to delivering

a colour-film of

it

mass-production on a

their

Braun, the genius behind the construction,

later

what

the rocket

in trials, Hitler's

was capable

was, he told Speer, 'the decisive weapon of the war', which would

burden on Germany when unleashed on the advanced with

autumn 1943

all

it

speed -

if

need be

at the

and

of,

enthusiasm was unbounded.

British.

lift

the

Production was to be

expense of tank production. By

had already become plain that any expectation of early

deployment was wildly optimistic. j0 But indicating to Goebbels that the rocket

end of April. M In the event, launched.^

The

it

in February 1944, Speer was still programme could be ready by the

would be September before

alternative project of the Luftwaffe, the 'Kirschkern'

which produced what came to be known

as the

advanced. This, too, went back to 1942. And, it

were high and expectations of

began

the rockets were

2

in

in early

its

Vi

Programme,

flying-bombs, was more

like the

A4

project,

hopes of

production-rate optimistic. Production

3 January 1944. Tests were highly encouraging.^ Speer told Goebbels

February

it

pictured for Hitler, a

would be ready at the beginning of April. 54 Milch month later, total devastation in London in a wave of

1,500 flying-bombs over ten days, beginning on Hitler's birthday, 20 April,

with the remainder to be dispatched the following month. Within three

weeks of exposure

to such

bombing, he imagined, Britain would be on

its

knees." Given the information he was being fed, Hitler's illusions become rather project

more

explicable. Competition, in this case

between the army's A4

and the 'Kirschkern' Programme of the Luftwaffe, played

And 'working towards

the Fuhrer',

striving -

as the

its

part.

key to retaining power

HOPING FOR MIRACLES and position - to accomplish what

it

was known he would favour,

to

provide the miracle he wanted, and to accommodate his wishes, however unrealistic,

still

applied. Reluctance to convey

him was the opposite inbuilt,

bad or depressing news

to

same coin. Together, the consequence was systemic, over-optimism - shoring up unrealizable hopes, inevitably side of the

leading to sour disillusionment.

IV During February,

him

for

overview provided by his Press Chief Otto Dietrich, had

seen a press notice the

summarized

Hitler, perusing the international press

as usual in the

from Stockholm

army had been designated

stating that a general staff officer of

to shoot him. SS-Standartenfuhrer

Johann

Rattenhuber, responsible for Hitler's personal safety, was instructed to tighten security at the Wolf's Lair. All visitors

not

least, briefcases

were to be carefully screened;

were to be thoroughly searched. Hitler had reservations,

however, about drawing security precautions too tightly/ 6 In any case, within days the matter lost Lair and Berlin

move

its

urgency since he decided to leave the Wolf's

to the Berghof, near Berchtesgaden.

and increasing

allied

The

recent air-raids on

air-supremacy meant that the prospect of a raid

on Fuhrer Headquarters could no longer be ruled therefore, to strengthen the walls

and roofs of the

out.

It

was

essential,

While workers

buildings.

from the Todt Organization were carrying out the extensive work, headquarters

would be transferred

to Berchtesgaden/

7

On

the evening of 22

February, having announced that he would be speaking to the 'Old Guard'

Munich on the 24th at the annual celebration of the announcement of the Party Programme in 1920, he left the Wolf's Lair in his special train and headed south/ 8 He would not return from the Berghof until mid-July. in

He had

been unwell in the middle of the month. His intestinal problems

were accompanied by a severe cold. The trembling noticeable/

9

a fortnight later

by an ophthalmic

specialist as

ing.

in

was

caused by minute blood-vessel

haemorrhaging. 60 His health problems were by 61

in his left leg

He also complained of blurred vision in his right eye, diagnosed now

chronic, and mount-

But he was a good deal better by the time he arrived on 24 February

one of

his old haunts,

Munich's Hofbrauhaus, to deliver

to a large gathering of fervent loyalists, the Party's 'Old

called themselves.

62

In this

company, Hitler was

his big

in his element.

speaking-form returned. The old certitudes sufficed.

speech

Guard' as they

He

His good

believed, the

623

6Z4

HITLER 1936-1945 assembled fanatics heard, more firmly than ever in

in the victory that

holding out would bring; retaliation was on

on London; the

allied invasion,

when

it

way

toughness

massive attacks

in

came, would be swiftly repelled. His

when he

peroration reached culmination-point

its

told his wildly enthusiastic

audience, which interrupted constantly with rapturous applause, that the

road from the promulgation of the Party Programme to the takeover of

power had been far harder and more hopeless than that which the German people had to go down to attain victory. He would go his way without compromise. He linked this to the 'Jewish Question': just as the Jews had been 'smashed down' in Germany, so they would be in the entire world. The Jews of England and America - held as always to blame for the war - could expect what had already happened to the

Jews of Germany.

target as

It

was

a crude attack

ideological

compensation for the lack of any tangible military success. But

was exactly what

this

audience wanted to hear. They loved

enamoured with

them were

less

and damp

air-raid shelter, fearing a

materialize. its

on the prime Nazi

64

alpine splendour

Many

it

of

the evening after the speech, spent in a cold

By then, Hitler had

camouflage netting,

63 it.

heavy raid on Munich which did not

Munich and headed

left

for the Berghof

-

now also affected by the danger from the air, covered by its

great hall dimly

passages to air-raid bunkers.

lit,

connected with newly constructed

65

At the beginning of March, Hitler summoned Goebbels to the Berghof.

The immediate reason was land.

66

proved a

In fact, for the time being this

eventually secede only six 3

the prospect of the

March was,

months

later.

67

imminent defection of Finfalse alarm.

Finland would

But the meeting with Goebbels on

as usual, not confined to a specific issue,

and prompted

another tour d'horizon by Hitler, allowing a glimpse into his thinking at this juncture.

He

told Goebbels that, in the light of the Finnish crisis, he

determined to put an end to the continued 'treachery'

in

government would be deposed and arrested, the head of

was now

Hungary. The state

Admiral

Horthy placed under German

'protection', the troops disarmed,

new regime

Hungarian aristocracy and,

installed.

Then

the

and

a

especially, the

Budapest Jews (who, naturally, were taken to be behind the problem) could be tackled. Weapons, manpower,

Hungary would

all

stand

be dealt with as soon as possible.

On

oil,

Germany

in the east

good

stead.

The whole

issue

would

68

the military situation, Hitler

ened front

and foodstuffs to be confiscated from

in

exuded confidence.

could be held.

He

He

thought a short-

wanted to turn to the offensive

HOPING FOR MIRACLES again in the summer. For this he would need forty divisions that would have

drawn from

to be

the west following the successful repulsion of an invasion.

Before that, the southern flank would have to be cleared up.

concerned at the

difficulties in

where the

the west coast of Italy,

American troops

in

breaking

January but had

Allies

giving

him such

commander

unrestricted

69

had landed some 70,000 mainly

He blamed,

element of surprise

as usual, his military

in the area, Kesselring,

powers of command.

It

the invasion to be expected in

all

and regretted

was, thought Hitler,

another indication that 'he had to do everything himself'.

On

70

probability during the subsequent

months, Hitler was 'absolutely certain' of Germany's chances. the strength of forces to repel

it,

He was

the bridgehead at Anzio, on

failed to exploit the

and found themselves pinned down. leaders, in particular his

down

He

outlined

emphasizing especially the quality of the

SS-divisions that had been sent there.

He

also pointed to the superiority of

Germany's weaponry, especially tanks, where the new 'Panther' and tanks,

if

'Tiger'

not available in adequate numbers as yet, were a great improvement

on the older models. (Despite ever intensifying bombing

raids, the dispersal

managed so far to sustain production.) reckoned Germany would be able to hold its own. It

of industrial plant under Speer had

Even

was

in the air, Hitler

rare for Goebbels to offer any hint of criticism of Hitler in his diary

entries.

But on

this

occasion the optimism seemed unfounded, even to the

Propaganda Minister, who noted: were

right.

'I

wish these prognoses of the Fiihrer

We've been so often disappointed

scepticism rising up within you.'

recently that

you

feel

some

71

Hitler also expected a great deal

from the

'retaliation',

which he envisaged

being launched in massive style in the second half of April, and from the

new

fire-power and radar being built into

German

fighters.

He

thought the

back of the enemy's air-raids would be broken by the following winter, after

which Germany could then 'again be

Hitler needed

little

easier for Stalin, he

harm.'

pour out

invitation to

his bile

benefiting

in

Germany. But

from

its

on England'.

72

his generals. It

was

sort of generals

who

on

commented. He had had shot the

were causing problems

Germany was

active in the attack

as regards the 'Jewish question',

radical policy: 'the

Jews can do us no more

73

Within

just

over two weeks of Hitler's talk with Goebbels, Hungary had

been invaded - the decision to occupy

last

German

invasion of the war.

Hungary reached back,

The

genesis of the

in fact, as far as the defeat at

As we saw, Hitler had been scathing in his criticism of the Hungarian (and Romanian) divisions there. The Hungarians (along with Stalingrad.

625

6z6

HITLER 1936-1945 the Romanians) had, for their part, begun tacitly to put out feelers to the

Learning of these, Hitler had

Allies.

left

Horthy and Antonescu

doubt about the consequences of any treachery.

He had

been

in

satisfied

no

with

Antonescu's declarations of loyalty, but continued to harbour serious doubts

about the Hungarians. Following

Italy's defection in

any case had operational plans - Margarethe

September, he had in

and Margarethe

I

- drawn

II

up for the occupation of Hungary and Romania should the need nip in the bud any looming dangers.

A

letter

arise to

from Horthy on 12 February

1944 demanding the return of nine Hungarian divisions from the eastern front, needed, so he claimed, to defend the

Soviet breakthrough, greater because the thians,

had

The urgency was

Red Army was indeed advancing towards

which Hitler did not want

More

Carpathian border against a

set alarm-bells ringing.

all

the

the Carpa-

to see defended only by the 'unreliable'

German intelligence had learned that the Hungarians had attempted to make diplomatic overtures both to the western Hungarians.

than that:

and to the Soviet Union.

Allies

From

74

Hitler's point of view, in full concurrence with the opinion of his

it was high time to act. The order for Margarethe I was on 11 March. German troops only - drawn in part from the western front - were to be used; the original plan had foreseen the deployment, in

military leaders,

issued

addition, of Slovakian,

from

their disliked

done

little

at his

Romanian, and Croat

neighbours to

to encourage future

install a

units.

73

The

use of troops

puppet government would have

Hungarian loyalty

to

Germany.

meeting with Hitler in Klessheim on 26-8 February

(at

In

any case,

which he had

once again, without the slightest prospect of success, suggested putting out peace-feelers to the west),

76

Antonescu had refused

participation in the occupation of

Hungary

immediate return of the substantial

tracts of territory

been forced to concede to Hungary alienation of

Hungarian support

unable to agree to

this.

77

He

did,

unless

in 1940. In

to allow

Romanian

accompanied by the

which Romania had

wanting to avoid any

after the occupation, Hitler

had been

however, eventually concede, again going

against the original intention, to the suggestion of Field-Marshal von Weichs that the

Hungarian military should not be disarmed

as long as

Horthy was

prepared to go along with the invasion and prevent any resistance. in a further

78

And,

attempt to avoid unnecessarily provoking resistance by the

Hungarians, Horthy was to be given the opportunity to

'invite' the

Germans

into his country, along the tried

and tested methods used in Austria and

Czechoslovakia

79

in

1938 and 1939.

Thinking he was coming to discuss the

issues raised in his

unanswered

HOPING FOR MIRACLES letter to Hitler

of 12 February, in particular, troop withdrawals from the

eastern front, the seventy-five-year-old

Hungarian head of

state arrived at

Klessheim, together with his foreign minister, war minister, and chief of general staff, on the morning of 18 March. Hitler

and Horthy conducted

He had walked

their talks in

into a trap.

German, without

interpreters

present. Paul Schmidt, Hitler's interpreter, was waiting with his colleagues

outside in the hall when, suddenly, the door to the the talks face,

room

in the palace

where

were being held was flung open and Admiral Horthy, red

in the

rushed out, followed hurriedly by a furious Hitler,

managed

to catch

up with

rooms, as protocol demanded, before disappearing discussions with Ribbentrop.

who

eventually

accompany him

his discomfited guest to

to his

urgent

in a rage for

80

The meeting with the Hungarian head of state had, indeed, been tempestuous. Hitler

had

at the outset

accused the Hungarian government, on the

from the German

basis of information

the Allies in an attempt to take ever, to his notion that the

secret service, of negotiating with

Hungary out of

the continued existence of

Jews

in

any country provided,

column subverting and endangering the war aggressive in accusing

the war. Holding fast, as

Jews were behind the war, and that, consequently, in effect, a fifth-

effort, Hitler

Horthy of allowing almost

a million

was

especially

Jews

to exist

without any hindrance, which had to be seen from the German side as a threat to the eastern

and Balkan

ship, continued Hitler,

to that

had

which had happened

military occupation of

fronts.

in Italy.

He

German

leader-

taking place, similar

had, therefore, decided upon the

Hungary, and demanded Horthy's agreement to

in a signed joint declaration.

Horthy refused

the meeting rose. Hitler declared that

would simply take place without

if

to sign.

Horthy did not

this

The temperature sign, the

in

occupation

Any armed resistance would and Romanian as well as German troops.

his approval.

be crushed by Croatian, Slovakian,

Horthy threatened to

Consequently, the

justified fears of a defection

resign. Hitler said that in such

an event he could not

guarantee the safety of the Admiral's family. At this base blackmail, Horthy

sprang to his

no point

feet, protesting: 'If

in staying

of the room.

everything here

is

81

While Horthy was demanding to be taken to Ribbentrop was berating Berlin,

already decided, there's

any longer. I'm leaving immediately,' and stormed out

Dome

Sztojay, the

an air-raid alarm sounded. In

his special train,

and

Hungarian ambassador

fact, the 'air-raid'

was merely

in

a ruse,

complete with smoke-screen covering of the palace at Klessheim, and alleged severance of telephone links with Budapest. This elaborate deceit was used

6zj

628

HITLER I936-1945 Horthy

to persuade

to put aside thoughts of a

compel him to enter into renewed talks with

know,

in

an aside, that

premature departure and

Hitler.

Ribbentrop

let

Schmidt

Horthy did not concur with German demands, he

if

would not be returning with an honorary

escort, but as a prisoner.

browbeating and chicanery, as usual, did the

was

trick.

When Horthy

accompaniment of Security

to his train that evening,

it

chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner

and Ribbentrop's emissary

in the

in

The

returned Police

Hungary, Edmund

Veesenmayer, endowed with plenipotentiary powers to ensure that German interests

were served. And

was only once Horthy had

this

finally

agreed to

puppet regime, with Sztojay as prime minister, ready to do German

install a

bidding.

82

in German hands. Not only manpower immediately be exploited for the

Next day, 19 March 1944, Hungary was could extra raw materials and

German war

effort; but, as Hitler

'Jewish question' could

now

had told Goebbels a fortnight

be tackled in Hungary.

earlier, the

83

With the German takeover in Budapest, Hungary's large and still intact Jewish community - some 750,000 persons - was doomed. The new masters of

Hungary did not

the

German

lose a minute.

Eichmann's men entered Budapest with

troops. Within days, 2,000

Jews had been rounded up. The

deportation - a train with over 3,000 Jewish men,

packed

in indescribable conditions into

Auschwitz a month

later.

84

By

early June, ninety-two trains

month

later, triggering the

deposition, 437,402 Hungarian

On

the day that

took place

from

German

83

would

87

for

halted the

lead to his

own

86 Jews had been sent to the gas-chambers.

troops entered Hungary, a strange

at the Berghof.

left

had carried

When Horthy

events that

first

children

about forty cattle-wagons -

almost 300,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths. deportations a

women, and

The

field-marshals,

who

little

had been

ceremony

summoned

different parts of the front, witnessed the presentation to Hitler by

their senior, Rundstedt, of a declaration of their loyalty,

signed.

The

signatures

had

all

which they had

all

been collected, on a tour of the front, by

Wehrmacht adjutant, General Schmundt. The idea, characteristically, had come from Goebbels (though this was kept quiet, and not made known to Hitler). 88 It had been prompted by the anti-German subversive Hitler's chief

propaganda disseminated from

Moscow

von Seydlitz-Kurzbach and other

officers

by the captured General Walter

who had

fallen into Soviet

hands

HOPING FOR MIRACLES at Stalingrad.

89

propaganda was minimal.

In reality, the effect of the Seydlitz

But these were nervous times for the Nazi leadership. Schmundt's main intention, in any case,

and

to

improve the

was

remove

to

the January meeting interrupted by Manstein.

remarkable

in itself

and

towards

Hitler's distrust

which had been so much

icy relations

It

well,

if

such a titanic conflict the senior military leaders should see signed declaration of loyalty to their supreme

Manstein, the

He

felt

view.

90

last field-marshal to sign the

harmony

moved by

in his dealings

in the fit

to

midst of

produce

commander and head from

the occasion.

91

It

a

of state.

document, certainly thought

the declaration to be quite superfluous Hitler seemed

evidence at

was, nevertheless, both

was not

a clear sign that all

his generals,

in

so.

a soldier's point of

was

a rare

moment

of

with his generals.

Normality was, however, soon to be resumed. Within a week, Manstein

was back

at the Berghof.

Hube, was

in

The

ist

Panzer Army, under General Hans Valentin

imminent danger of encirclement by Soviet troops who had

broken through from Tarnopol to the Dniester. Manstein insisted (against

Hube's recommendation that

his

army seek

safety

by retreating to the south

over the Dniester) on a breakthrough to the west, in order to build a front in Galicia. For this, reinforcements to assist the ist Panzer

new

Army would

be necessary. For these to be provided from some other part of the front,

agreement was necessary. Sharp exchanges took place between

Hitler's

midday

military conference. But Hitler refused

to concede to Manstein's request,

and held the field-marshal personally

Manstein and Hitler

at the

responsible for the unfavourable position of his deliberation

Schmundt

was adjourned

Army Group.

until the evening. Disgusted,

that he wished to resign his

command

if

Further

Manstein told

his orders did

not gain

Hitler's approval.

When

discussion continued at the evening conference, however, Hitler

Who

had, astonishingly, changed his mind.

do

so, or

decision,

or

what had persuaded him

whether he had simply brooded on the matter before altering is

unclear. At any rate, he

to his

now offered Manstein the reinforcements

he wanted, including an SS Panzer Corps to be taken away from the western front.

92

Manstein went away momentarily

having concessions wrung from him front of a sizeable audience. in previous

Hitler's

from

way

satisfied.

particularly after his initial refusal in

And, from

Hitler's point of view,

weeks been both troublesome and treatment of his old political

chief despite the disasters in the air-war) to

Manstein had

ineffectual in

of dealing with major military setbacks

his kid-glove

But Hitler resented

ally,

command.

was invariably

(apart

Goring, as Luftwaffe

blame the commander and to

629

630

HITLER I936-I945 look for a replacement

who would

fire

the fighting morale of the troops and

It was time for a parting of the ways with was with another senior field-marshal, Kleist, who, two days Manstein, had also paid a visit to the Berghof, requesting permission

shore up their will to continue.

Manstein, as after

for

it

Army Group A on

Dniester.

On

from the Bug

to the

30 March, Manstein and Kleist were picked up in Hitler's Condor

aircraft visit,

the Black Sea coast to pull back

93

and taken

to the Berghof. Zeitzler told

Manstein that

after his last

Goring, Himmler, and probably Keitel had agitated against him.

Zeitzler

had himself offered

turned down.

94

to resign,

Schmundt had seen

to

an offer that had been summarily it

that the dismissals of the

They were Model and Ferdinand Schorner, both tough generals and

field-marshals were carried out with decorum, not with rancour.

replaced by Walter

two

9^

favourites of Hitler,

whom

he regarded as ideal for rousing the morale of

the troops and instilling rigorous National Socialist fighting spirit in them.

At the same time, the names of the army groups were altered to Army Group

North Ukraine and Army Group South Ukraine. The Ukraine had,

in fact,

The symbolic renaming was part of the aim of reviving morale by implying that it would soon be retaken. Soon enough, it would become clear yet again that changes in personnel and nomenclature would not suffice. The new commanders were no more already been

lost.

able to stop the relentless Soviet advance than Manstein and Kleist had

been.

On

2 April, Hitler issued an operational order which began: 'The

Russian offensive on the south of the eastern front has passed

The Russians have used up and

split

up

their forces.

bring the Russian advance finally to a halt.'

96

It

was

its

high-point.

The time has come a vain hope.

A

to

crucial

component of the new be held at

lines drawn up was the provision for the Crimea, to was an impossibility. Odessa, the port on the Black to supply-lines for the Crimea, had been abandoned on

all cost. It

Sea which was vital 10 April. By early

May,

agree in the night of 8-9

the entire

May

Crimea was

lost,

with Hitler forced to

to the evacuation of Sevastopol by sea.

vain struggle to hold on to the Crimea had cost over 60,000

The

German and

97

Romanian lives. When the Soviet spring offensive came to a halt, the Germans had been pushed back in some sectors by as much as 600 miles inside a year.

98

was furious about the collapse in the Crimea when Goebbels had - the first for a month - of a private discussion with him in Munich on 17 April, following the funeral of Adolf Wagner, his former Hitler

the opportunity

trusted chieftain in the 'traditional

Gau' of Munich and Upper Bavaria.

HOPING FOR MIRACLES Events on the eastern front had critically

moved much

and developed more

faster

than could have been expected, Hitler remarked. Looking as

always for scapegoats, he directed his fury at the commander General Erwin Jaenecke,

He

only of retreat.

military leadership

whom

in the

Crimea,

he saw as a defeatist, for too long thinking

spoke of a court-martial to establish the

on the Crimea (and ordered one

guilt of the

at Jaenecke's dismissal,

following the evacuation of Sevastopol in early May).

99

Hitler told Goebbels

that he

had brought the eastern front under control, and

retreat

had been stopped. 'That would be marvellous,' was Goebbels's

that, overall, the all

too justified sceptical remark in his diary. Already, Hitler was thinking of a

new

offensive.

eyes,

it

When it would take place could not be known. But in Hitler's

would follow

directly

Turning to the western in building

upon

the repelling of the invasion in the west.

front, Hitler

up the Atlantic defences.

was full of praise for Rommel's work The invasion would certainly come, he

Rommel had

and perhaps even within the next month. But

said,

promise that everything would be ready by

a binding at times

i

May.

given

Hitler's

seemingly absurd, optimism was certainly unrealistic. But

it

him

own,

gained

constant replenishment through the over-eagerness of his generals, as well as his party bosses, to say

what they knew he wanted

as well as deception, ran

through the entire regime. Hitler was certain that

the invasion

would be

crisis in Britain.

repelled in grand style,

Retaliation could then be

let

and that

loose

unleashing a shock of earthquake proportions.

Goebbels was met, just over a

still

films,

it

was 101

people on

plain

on

how

would

lead to a

100

earlier at the Berghof, they

Hitler

this

a demoralized people,

concerned about Hitler's health.

month

some of Eva Braun's home movies from the war.

to hear. Self-deception,

When

they had last

had been entertained by

earlier years.

Viewing the amateur

had aged and physically deteriorated during

Goebbels suggested to him that he might speak to the German i

May. He had not been

well

enough

to speak

on 'Heroes'

Memorial Day' on 12 March, when Grand-Admiral Donitz - one of the few military leaders

- substituted

whom Hitler greatly respected, and evidently a coming man

for him.

strain, particularly

102

Hitler told Goebbels

(who remarked on

his

nervous

about Hungary, over the past weeks) that he was sleeping

only about three hours a night - an exaggeration, but the long-standing

problems of insomnia had certainly worsened. inclination to give a radio address

up to giving a speech

in public.

on

He

1

He

did

show some apparent

May, but claimed his health was not

did not

know whether

he could manage

103

it.

It

was an excuse. When, following

his discussion

with Goebbels, he gave

631

632

HITLER I936-I945 a fiery pep-talk,

unprepared and without notes, to

his Party leaders, there

was no

hint of concern about whether he might break

through

his

speech

(in

claims, that the Soviet advance also all

down part-way

which he declared, among other confidence-boosting had

Guard', he was in trusted company.

A

advantages in bringing

its

nations the seriousness of the threat).

104

home

speech, in the circumstances, to a

mass audience when he was well aware of the slump population was a different matter altogether. Hitler's birthday that year, his fifty-fifth,

mood

in

of the

105

had the usual trappings and

ceremonials. Goebbels had Berlin emblazoned with banners and a

slogan of resounding pathos: 'Our walls broke, but our hearts didn't.' State

Opera house on Unter den Linden was

celebration, attended by dignitaries

to

But when speaking to the 'Old

from

festively

new The

decorated for the usual

and Wehrmacht.

state, party,

Goebbels portrayed Hitler's historic achievements. The Berlin Philharmonia, conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch, played Beethoven's 'Eroica'

Symphony. 106 But the mood among contrived. Goebbels

ganda

the Nazi faithful at such events

offices that the

mood was

popular

that 'the depression in the broad masses'

Away from

'very critical

and

the set-piece propaganda, enthusiasm

108

and

levels.'

107

was sparser and more

Where loved ones had not returned from

especially noticeable.

sceptical',

had reached 'worrying

muted. Bavarian reports from rural areas mentioned that to be seen.

was

was well aware from reports from the regional propa-

little

bunting was

the war, this

For such people, Goebbels's eulogy

was

in the Party's

main newspaper, the Volkiscber Beobacbter, stating that 'the German people had never looked up that

it

to

its

Fiihrer so full of belief as in the days

became aware of the

entire

burden of

and hours

this struggle for

our

life'

sounded particularly hollow. 109

Even

midday

at the Berghof, the

mood was

festive.

military briefing Hitler received the congratulations of

of the household, and inspected

Later there

was

was business

all

to be a display of

motorway, near Klessheim. But it

only superficially

as

Before the

all

members

the presents arrayed in the dining-hall.

new prototype tanks on

the Salzburg

soon as Chief of Staff Zeitzler appeared,

as usual as Hitler disappeared for discussions

on the military

110

Among the guests that day was General Hube, high in Hitler's who in recognition of his success in breaking through the Soviet encirclement with his 1st Panzer Army was promoted to Colonel-General. situation.

esteem,

Hitler even

had him

in

mind

new army Commander-in-Chief. Hube to depart for Berlin. wing broke off, and Hube was killed. It

as a possible

Late that night, Hitler gave his permission for

The plane

hit a tree

on

take-off, a

HOPING FOR MIRACLES was almost a double tragedy for Hitler. Walther Hewel, Ribbentrop's liaison at Fiihrer Headquarters and well-liked at the Berghof, escaped the crash with no more than concussion and severe bruising.

outstanding general as

Hube

at

-

a

blow

a

- Goebbels thought

flying to Berlin

the skies

Hube was

few days

later,

an elaborate state funeral.

In the interim,

on 22

it

making

The

He

to Hitler.

such an

loss of

even took the risk of

madness, given Allied dominance of a rare visit to the capital to

honour

111

April, Hitler

had once more entertained Mussolini

to a lengthy monologue at Klessheim, aimed at stiffening his backbone.

drove

home

the dangers facing

Germany and

know whether

trace of defeatism. 'The Fiihrer did not

would

its allies.

He or

when an

occur,' the record of the meeting ran, 'but the English

invasion

had adopted

measures which could only be maintained for 6-8 weeks and a serious

would break out deploy

new

in

England

technical

if

crisis

He would

then

effective within a radius of

250-

the invasion did not occur.

weapons which were

He

did not betray a

300 kilometres and would transform London into a heap of ruins.' wishful thinking was necessary - and not just to shore up the

112

The

flagging morale

of the Duce.

VI A

familiar face, not seen for

some months, had returned

mid-April. Since being admitted to the

Red Cross

to the

Berghof in

hospital at Hohenlychen,

seventy miles north of Berlin, for a knee operation (accompanied by severe

nervous

him

strain),

briefly in

Albert Speer had been out of circulation. Hitler had seen

March, while Speer was convalescing

Klessheim, but the armaments minister had then Tyrol, to recover in the

An

company

of his family.

left

for a short time at for

Meran,

in

South

113

absent minister was an invitation, in the Third Reich, for others

thirsting for

power

to step into the

vacuum. Karl Otto Saur, the able head

of the technical office in Speer's ministry,

had taken the opportunity

exploit Hitler's favour in his boss's absence.

When

set

up

in

March -

a Fighter Staff

to

had been

linking Speer's ministry with the Luftwaffe to speed up

and coordinate production of air-defence - Hitler placed

it,

against Speer's

express wishes, in the hands of Saur.

114

unhampered bombing of German cities,

Hitler discovered that

And when,

stung by the nearlittle

progress

had been made on the building of huge underground bomb-proof bunkers to protect fighter production against air-raids, Speer's other right-hand

633

634

HITLER 1936-1945 man, Xaver Dorsch, head of the

central office of the massive construction

apparatus, the Organization Todt (OT-), spotted his chance. Goring, pressed

by Hitler on the non-production of the bunkers, and keen to emerge from

opprobrium of the continued

the in

failure of air-defence,

mid- April and told him that the

without delay. Dorsch replied that itself;

Speer had designated the

But he was

alert

enough and

summoned Dorsch

OT

would have to build the bunkers he had no authority within the Reich

OT only for work outside the Reich borders.

sufficiently briefed

on the purpose and potential

of the meeting to produce plans for such a project in France. Goring reported

back to

Hitler.

That evening, Dorsch was commissioned by Hitler with the

immense bunkers within the - thereby overriding Speer - accompanied by full authority to

sole responsibility for the building of the six

Reich

itself

work had top

assure the

priority.

Dorsch had promised Hitler the completion of the bunkers by November. Speer

knew

undermining of his without an

be impossible. ^ But this bothered him 1

this to

own power-base.

and jockeying

for position that

interests in the ruthless

scheming

Hitler. He was not prepared own authority without a fight. On 19 April,

letter to Hitler

complaining

and demanding the restoration of

known

own

went on around

undermining of his

he wrote a long

be

Speer had not reached his high position

ability to take care of his

to accept the

than the

less

own

his

at the decisions

he had taken

authority over Dorsch.

Hitler's initial anger at the letter gave

way

to the

needed Speer's organizational

He passed a message

still

to Speer, via

Erhard Milch, Luftwaffe armaments supremo, that he

in

high esteem.

On

some

talents.

still

held

24 April, Speer appeared at the Berghof. Hitler,

formally attired, gloves in hand, like

let it

more pragmatic consider-

ation that he

him

He

that he wished to resign should Hitler not accede to his wishes.

came out

to

meet him, accompanying him

foreign dignitary into the imposing hall. Speer, his vanity touched,

He told him He was in agreement with whatever Speer thought right in this area. Speer was won over. That evening,

was immediately impressed. that he needed

him

to oversee

Hitler all

went on

to flatter Speer.

building works.

he was back in the Berghof 'family', making small-talk with Eva Braun and the others in the late-night session around the listening to

some music. Records of music by Wagner,

Straus's Die Fledermaus were put on. Speer In Speer's absence,

had

in fact

felt at

Bormann

naturally,

home

again.

and despite the extensive damage from

masterminded

a

remarkable increase

though with a corresponding decline

was with

fire.

in

suggested

and Johann 116

air-raids,

Saur

in fighter-production

-

output of bombers. Delighted as he

better prospects of air-defence, Hitler's instincts lay, as always, in

HOPING FOR MIRACLES The new

aggression and regaining the initiative through bombing.

chief of

the Luftwaffe operations staff, Karl Roller, was, therefore, pushing at an

open door when he presented Hitler with a report,

in early

May, pointing

out the dangerous decline in production of bombers, and what was needed to sustain

German dominance.

targets for

bomber-production were unacceptable. Goring passed the mes-

Hitler promptly told Goring that the

sage to the Fighter Staff that there

- alongside the massive increase

was

to be a trebling of

in fighters to

come

low

bomber production

off the production lines.

Eager to please, as always, Goring had told Hitler of rapid progress

in the

production of the jet, the Mez6z, of which the Dictator had such high hopes.

117

The previous autumn, having as we noted removed top priority from Mez62 because of its heavy fuel-consumption, Hitler had changed his mind. He had been led to believe - possibly it was a

production of the

misunderstanding- by the designer, Professor Willi Messerschmitt, that the jet,

once

Britain

in service,

and to play

could be used not as a fighter, but as a bomber to attack

coming invasion, wreaking

a decisive role in repelling the

havoc on the beaches as Allied troops were disembarking. Goring, as unrealistic as his

Leader

in his expectations,

would be available by May. 118 At

when he demanded

January,

his

promised the jet-bombers

meeting with Speer and Milch

accelerated production of the

Hitler

jet,

stated, to the horror of the Luftwaffe's technical staff, that he

deploy

as a

it

Now, on He

It

the

in a

meeting

He had presumed,

Me262 -

tell

to

119

Berghof with Goring, Saur, and

heard mention of the he stated, that

it

Me262 as a

was being

had been simply ignored. Hitler exploded

despite

all

fighter.

built as a

down

in fury,

ordering

technical objections levelled by the experts present

to be built exclusively as a

brickbats

at the

had

wanted

avail.

in

transpired that his instructions of the previous autumn, unrealis-

as they were,

tic

to

May,

aircraft production, he

interrupted.

bomber.

-

bomber. Arguments to the contrary were of no

23

Milch about

at least

bomber. Goring

lost

no time

in

passing the

the line to the Luftwaffe construction experts. But he

Hitler that the major redesign needed for the plane 120

had

would now delay

would by that time be available for it was another matter. Heavy American air-raids on fuel plants in central and eastern Germany on 12 May, to be followed by even more destructive production for

raids at the

five

months.

Whether

fuel

end of the month, along with Allied attacks, carried out from

bases in Italy, on the fuel production.

Romanian

oil-refineries

near Ploesti, halved

Nimbly taking advantage of Goring's

latest

German

embarrassment,

Speer had no trouble in persuading Hitler to transfer to his ministry control over aircraft production.

121

full

635

636

HITLER 1936-1945 Three days

after the

wrangle about the Mez6z, another,

took place on the Obersalzberg.

A

number

sizeable

senior officers,

who had

and were ready

to return to the front,

been participants

larger, gathering

of generals and other

in ideological training courses

had been summoned

to the Berghof

to hear a speech by Hitler - one of several such speeches he gave between autumn 1943 and summer 1944. 122 They assembled on 26 May in the

Platterhof, the big hotel adjacent to the Berghof

on the

modest Pension Moritz, where Hitler had stayed

site

of the far

more

Two

days

in the 1920s.

they had been addressed by Reichsfiihrer-SS Himmler,

earlier,

who had

sought to strengthen their National Socialist commitment by emphasizing

how the

'Jewish Question', a matter 'decisive for the internal security of the

Reich and Europe', had been 'solved without compromise, according to

command and The

rational understanding (verstandesma/siger Erkenntnis) .'

was being used both

'Final Solution'

to point out to the military

to

123

harden fighting morale - and

commanders about to head for the front that all in the same boat, all complicitous

they and the leaders of the regime were in the killing of the

Jews. Hitler spoke to the officers that afternoon. His

purpose, like Himmler's, was to cement their identity as a group with the ideals of National Socialism that he

would

refer in

embodied.

124

And

like

Himmler, he

unmistakable terms to what was happening to the Jews.

After a lengthy preamble outlining, as usual, political convictions

the virtues of intolerance, based

emphasizing that

how

and leadership of party and

whole of life

'the

upon is

he came to his

own

expounded

state, Hitler

his social-Darwinistic principles,

a perpetual intolerance', that there

was

'no tolerance in nature' which 'destroys (vernichtet) everything incapable of 125

life'.

Nordic

He went on

to stress the leadership qualities to be

race, the forging of a

new classless

found only

in the

society under National Socialism,

and the glorious future that would follow

final victory.

A central passage in

the speech touched on the 'Final Solution'. Hitler spoke of the Jews as a 'foreign body' in the

why

German people which, though not

he had to proceed 'so brutally and ruthlessly',

expel.

it

all

had understood

had been

essential to

126

He came to the key point.

'In

removing the Jews,' he went on,

'I

eliminated

Germany the possibility of creating some sort of revolutionary core or nucleus. You could naturally say: Yes, but could you not have done it more simply - or not more simply, since everything else would have been more complicated - but more humanely? Gentlemen,' he continued, 'we are in a in

life-or-death struggle.

If

our opponents are victorious

German people would be

eradicated

(ausgerottet)

.

in this struggle, the

Bolshevism would

HOPING FOR MIRACLES slaughter millions and millions and millions of our intellectuals.

The

not dying through a shot in the neck would be deported.

would be taken away and eliminated. This

the upper classes

He spoke

has been organized by the Jews.'

of 40,000

'Don't expect anything else from

me

entire bestiality

women and

being burnt to death through the incendiaries dropped on

Anyone

children of

children

Hamburg, adding:

except the ruthless upholding of the

way which, in my view, German nation.' At this the

have the greatest

national interest in the

will

and benefit for the

officers burst into

effect

loud and

lasting applause.

He

continued: 'Here just as generally, humanity would

hatred,

I

own

towards one's

greatest cruelty

at least don't

want

people.

If I

amount

to miss the advantages of such hatred.' Shouts

of 'quite right' were heard from his audience. 'The advantage,' he 'is

that

Look

to the

already incur the Jews'

went on,

we possess a cleanly organized entity with which no one can interfere.

in contrast at

We

other states.

have gained insight into a state which

took the opposite route: Hungary. The entire state undermined and corroded, Jews everywhere, even in the highest places Jews and more Jews,

and the entire spies

who

premature

state covered,

I

have to say, by a seamless web of agents and

have desisted from striking only because they feared that a strike

would draw us

have intervened here too, and cited

the

once again

German

in,

this

though they waited for

problem

will

now

his 'prophecy' of 1939, that in the event of

nation but Jewry

itself

would be

this strike.

also be solved.'

I

He

another war not

'eradicated' (ausgerottet)

The audience vigorously applauded. 127 Continuing, he underlined 'one

.

sole

What served this principle, he said, 128 He concluded, again to storms of applause, by speaking of the 'mission' of the German people in Europe. As always, he posed stark alternatives: defeat in the war would mean 'the principle, the

was

right;

maintenance of our

what detracted from

end of our people', victory

'the

race'.

it,

wrong.

beginning of our domination over Europe'.

129

VII Whatever nervousness was

felt at

the Berghof in the early days of June about

an invasion which was as good as certain to take place within the near future, there

were few,

adjutant, Nicolaus

if

any, signs of it on the surface.

von Below,

it

seemed almost

like

To Hitler's Luftwaffe pre-war times on the

Obersalzberg. Hitler would take Below's wife on one side invited to lunch

and

talk

when

she

was

about the children or her parents' farm. In the

637

638

HITLER 1936-1945 afternoon, Hitler

would gather up

his hat, his walking-stick,

and

his cape,

and lead the statutory walk to the Tea House for coffee and cakes. In the evenings, around the tial

fire

chat of his guests or

he would find some relaxation in the inconsequen-

would hold

forth, as ever,

on usual themes - great

personalities of history, the future shape of Europe, carrying out the

work

of Providence in combating Jews and Bolsheviks, the influence of the

churches, and, of course, architectural plans, along with the usual remi130

Even the news, on 3-4 June, that the Allies had taken Rome, with the German troops pulling back to the Apennines, was niscences of earlier years.

received calmly. For Hitler,

little

more than

for the

main

event.

a sideshow.

He would

have

when Goebbels accompanied him

recent months,

afternoon of

little

5

to the

Italy

was, for

longer to wait

his condition in

Tea House on

the

June. Earlier, he had told the Propaganda Minister that the

now

plans for retaliation were

unleash 300-400 of the 132

131

seemed calm, and looked well compared with

Hitler

days.

obvious strategic importance,

all its

(He had,

new

so advanced that he

in fact, given the

would be ready

to

flying-bombs on London within a few

pilotless

order for a major air-attack on London,

new weapons, on 16 May.) 133 He repeated how confident he was that the invasion, when it came, would be repulsed. Rommel, he said, was equally confident. 134 The field-marshal indeed appeared to have overcome much of his initial scepticism of the previous autumn, when Hitler had made him responsible for the Atlantic defences including use of these

(though Goebbels thought the report by one of his underlings, following a

Rommel,

visit to left

for a

'to

some extent

few days' leave with

officers in the

alarming').

135

On 4 June Rommel had even

his family near

Ulm. Other commanding

west were equally unaware of the imminence of the invasion,

though reconnaissance had provided telegraph warnings that very day of things stirring to

on the other

side of the channel.

Nothing of this was reported

OKW at Berchtesgaden or, even more astonishingly, to General Friedrich

Dollmann's 7th

Army

directly

on the invasion

On their walk to the Tea House, or mental tiredness in Hitler.

front.

136

Goebbels spotted no signs of depression

He was

still

unfolding plans for a future after

the war.

He ruled out any arrangement with Britain. He thought the country

finished,

and was determined, given half an opportunity, to impart the

The Germany

English plutocracy had planned, he went on, for

death-blow. against

since 1936. Britain

and

Italy

pay for the war. Goebbels returned from the walk with of the

war should

war

would eventually be made

Hitler's health not hold up.

to

fears for the course

The Propaganda Minister

HOPING FOR MIRACLES entrusted one wish to his diary, following discussion of a nel issues (not least, his long-standing criticisms of

'may become harder

that the Fuhrer

137

than he actually Hitler

is'.

number of person-

Goring and Ribbentrop):

in his material

and personnel decisions

Among such decisions, Goebbels was still

would provide him with

full

powers

hoping that

to introduce genuine 'total war'

measures - far more radical than those adopted so far - within Germany. For

the

this,

Propaganda Minister would

That evening, Goebbels was back and

entourage viewed the

his

films

and the

productions.

theatre.

'We

sit

still

have to wait some weeks.

at the Berghof. After the

Eva Braun joined

in

The

meal Hitler

moved to with pointed criticism of some

latest newsreel.

discussion

then around the hearth until two o'clock at night,'

in the many fine we have had together. The Fuhrer inquires about this and the mood is like the good old times.' A thunderstorm broke

wrote Goebbels, 'exchange reminiscences, take pleasure days and weeks that. All in all,

as

Goebbels

the Berghof.

left

to trickle in that the invasion

It

was four hours

would begin

disinclined to believe the tapping into

down

first

Hitler

started

had been

enemy communications. But coming news was all

went

When

to

bed not long

war had begun.' 138

after

Goebbels had

probably around

left,

Speer arrived next morning, seven hours

later, Hitler

not been wakened with the news of the invasion. In fact, initial

news

the Obersalzberg to his quarters in Berchtesgaden, the

too plain; 'the decisive day of the

3a.m.

since the

that night. Goebbels

scepticism at the

Supreme

indeed was the invasion had

Command

reports,

Hitler

had spoken

would begin with

a

a

139

good deal

Influenced by in previous

it

still

seems that the

Wehrmacht

been finally dispelled only a

probably between 8.15 and 9.30a.m. 140

of the

had

little

that this

while earlier,

German

intelligence

weeks that the invasion

decoy attack to drag German troops away from the

actual landing-place. (In fact, Allied deception through the dropping of

dummy

parachutists and other diversionary tactics did contribute to initial

German confusion about the location of the landing. 141 His adjutants now hesitated to waken him with mistaken information. According to Speer, Hitler - who had earlier correctly envisaged that the landing would be on the Normandy coast - was still suspicious at the lunchtime military confer)

ence that

it

was

a diversionary tactic put across by

enemy

Only

- Jodl had earlier been opposed - to the already demand of the Commander-in-Chief in the West, Field-Marshal von

then did he agree belated

intelligence.

142

Rundstedt (who had expressed uncertainty

in telegrams earlier that

morning

about whether the landing was merely a decoy), to deploy two panzer divisions held in reserve in the Paris area against the

beachhead that was

639

640

HITLER 1936-1945 143

The delay was crucial. moved by night, the panzer divisions might have made a difference. Had they Their movements by day were hampered by heavy Allied air-attacks, and 144 they suffered severe losses of men and material. rapidly being established over 100 miles away.

At the

first

news of the invasion,

Hitler

had seemed relieved -

thought Goebbels, a great burden had fallen from

had been expecting

for

months was now

reality. It

his shoulders.

had taken

as

if,

What he

place, he said,

14i

The poor weather, he added, was on 146 Germany's side. He exuded confidence, declaring that it was now possible to smash the enemy. He was 'absolutely certain' that the Allied troops, for whose quality he had no high regard, would be repulsed. 'If we repel the invasion,' Goebbels noted, 'then the scene in the war will be completely transformed. The Fiihrer reckons for certain with this. He has few worries exactly where he

had predicted

that this couldn't succeed.'

Klessheim to receive the

No

it.

one among the Nazi leaders congregated

new Hungarian premier Dome

in

Sztojay dreamt of

contradicting Hitler. Goring thought the battle as good as won. Ribbentrop

was, as always, 'entirely on the Fiihrer's

side.

He

is

also

more than

without, like the Fiihrer, being able to give reasons in detail for

it,'

sure,

wryly

commented Goebbels - like Jodl, one of the quiet sceptics. 147 There were good grounds for scepticism. In fact, the delay in reaction on the German side had helped to ensure that by then the battle of the beaches was already as good as lost. The vanguard of the huge Allied armada of almost 3,000 vessels approaching the Normandy coast had disgorged the first of its American troops on to Utah Beach, on the Cotentin peninsula, at 6.30a.m., meeting no notable resistance.

Landings following shortly afterwards

at the British

and Can-

adian sites - Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches - also went better than expected. Only the second American landing at Omaha Beach, encountering a good German infantry division which happened to be in a state of readiness

and behind difficulties.

a particularly firm stretch of fortifications, ran into serious

Troops landing on the exposed beach were simply

The casualty

rate

was massive. The advantage, other than

lay plainly with the defenders.

Omaha

mown down.

in sheer

numbers,

gave a horrifying taste of what the

German defence been properly Omaha, after several torrid hours of

landings could have faced elsewhere had the

prepared and waiting. But even at terrible blood-letting,

almost 35,000 American troops were

push forward and gain a foothold on French

soil.

finally able to

By the end of the day,

around 156,000 Allied troops had landed, had forged contact with the 13,000 American parachutists dropped behind the flanks of the enemy lines several

HOPING FOR MIRACLES hours before the landings, and been able successfully to establish beachheads

- including one

What

sizeable stretch

some

thirty kilometres long

and ten deep. 148

appears at times in retrospect to have been almost an inexorable

triumph of 'Operation Overlord' could have turned out quite Hitler's initial

optimism had not,

had presumed the Atlantic coast

in fact,

differently.

been altogether unfounded.

better fortified than

was

the case.

He

Even

so,

the advantage ought in the decisive early stages to have lain with the

The

divisions

tactics

between

Rommel (who favoured close proxim-

costly in the extreme.

lack of agreement ity

on

-

Omaha. But the dilatory action was among the German commanders and

defenders of the coast

as

it

did at

of panzer divisions to the coast

in the

hope of immediately crushing an

invading force) and General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg,

commander

Panzer Group West (wanting to hold the armour back until

where

it

was

of

plain

should be concentrated), had been a significant weakness in the

German planning

for the invasion.

149

Allied strategic decoys, as

noted, also played a part in the early confusion of the

on the invasion night

itself.

compared with over 10,000

manage

it

to put in the air

Not

least,

we have

German commanders

massive Allied air-superiority -

on D-Day, the Luftwaffe could 150 - gave only eighty fighters based in Normandy Allied sorties

the invading forces a huge advantage in the cover provided during the

Once the Allied troops were ashore and had established key question was whether they could be reinforced better and faster than the Germans. Here, the fire-power from the air came into its own. The Allied planes could at one and the same time seriously hamper the German supply-lines, and help to ensure that reinforcements decisive early stages.

their beachheads, the

kept pouring in across the

Normandy

beaches.

151

By 12 June, the

five Allied

beachheads had been consolidated into a single front, and the German defenders,

if

slowly, were being pushed back. Meanwhile, American troops

152 The road to the were already striking out across the Cotentin peninsula.

key port of Cherbourg was opening up.

Nazi leaders, for

whom

early

optimism about repelling the invasion had

within days evaporated, retained one big hope: the long-awaited 'miracle

weapons'. Not only Hitler thought these would bring a change in warfortunes.^

3

More than

fifty sites

had been

set

up on the coast

in the

Pas de

Vi flying-bombs - early cruise missiles powered by and difficult to shoot down - could be fired off in the direction

Calais from which the jet

engines

of London. Hitler had reckoned with the devastating effect of a mass attack on the British capital by hundreds of the

simultaneously.

new weapons

being fired

The weapon had then been delayed by a series of production

641

642

HITLER 1936-1945 problems.

Now Hitler pressed for action. But the launch-sites were not ready.

Eventually, on 12 June, ten flying-bombs were catapulted off their ramps.

Four crashed on take-off; only 4

age.^ In fury, Hitler

wanted

five

reached London, causing minimal dam-

to cancel production. But three days later, the

sensational effect of the successful launch of 244

Vis on London persuaded

him to change his mind. 1JJ He thought the new destructive force would quickly 136 lead to the evacuation of London and disruption of the Allied war effort.

The

triumphalist tones of the

Wehrmacht

report on the launch of the Vi,

and of a number of newspaper articles, were equally fanciful, filling Goebbels - still anxious to shore up a mood of hold-out-at-all-costs instead of dangerlj The impression had been created, noted the ous optimism - with dismay.

Propaganda Minister with consternation, that the war would be over within days.

He was

anxious to stop such

turn into blaming the government.

illusions.

The euphoria could

quickly

He ordered the reports to be toned down,

and exaggerated expectations to be dampened - persuading Hitler that

own

instructions to the press, guaranteed to foster the euphoric

follow the

new

guidelines.

liS

The continued advance

what seemed the new

of the Allies, but also

prospects offered by the Vi, prompted Hitler to

from Berchtesgaden together with

Keitel

fly in

the evening of 16 June

and Jodl and the

rest of his staff

to the western front to discuss the situation with his regional

Rundstedt and Rommel.

his

mood,

He wanted

to boost their

commanders,

wavering morale by

underlining the strengths of the Vi, while at the same time stressing the

imperative need to defend the port of Cherbourg.

Wulf Condors had landed early hours of the next

of Soissons,

in

where the old

installed, at great expense,

ively reinforced.

railway-tunnel.

The

Metz, Hitler and

morning

in

lj9

his

After their four Focke-

entourage drove in the

an armour-plated car to Margival, north

Fiihrer Headquarters built in 1940

talks that

had been

new communications equipment and mass-

with

morning took place

in a

nearby bomb-proof

160

Hitler, looking pale

and

tired, sitting

hunched on

a stool, fiddled nervously

with his glasses and played with coloured pencils while addressing his

who had to remain standing. 161 Rundstedt reported on the developments of the previous ten days, concluding that it was now impossible to

generals,

expel the Allies from France. 162 Hitler bitterly laid the blame at the door of the local

commanders. Rommel countered by pointing

to the hopelessness

of the struggle against such massive superior force of the Allies. Hitler

turned to the Vi - a weapon, he said, to decide the war and

make

English anxious for peace. Impressed by

the field-

what they had heard,

the

HOPING FOR MIRACLES marshals asked for the Vi to be used against Allied beachheads, only to be told by General Erich

Heinemann, the commander responsible

for the

launch of the flying-bomb, that the weapon was not precise enough in targeting to allow this. Hitler promised them, however, that they

soon have

its

would As he

jet-fighters at their disposal to gain control of the skies.

himself knew, however, these had, in fact, only just gone into production.

163

After lunch (taken in a bunker because of the danger of air-attacks), Hitler spoke alone with

Rommel. The

discussion

was heated

field-marshal painted a bleak picture of the prospects.

could not be held for

much

was

The western

front

longer, he stated, beseeching Hitler to seek a

political solution. 'Pay attention to

ation of the war,'

The

at times.

your invasion front, not to the continu-

the blunt reply he received.

164

no longer,

Hitler waited

and flew back to Salzburg that afternoon. At the Berghof that evening, dissatisfied at the day's proceedings, Hitler

Rommel had

lost his

remarked

to his entourage that

nerve and become a pessimist. 'Only optimists can pull

anything off today,' he added.

The following day,

165

18 June, the Americans reached the western coast of

the Cotentin peninsula, effectively cutting off the peninsula

Cherbourg from reinforcements specifically that they

for the

and the port of

Wehrmacht. 'They're

stating quite

have got through. Are they through or not?' asked

was

Hitler at the evening military conference. 'Yes indeed, they're through,'

JodPs answer.

166

Eight days later, the this

German

garrison in Cherbourg surrendered.

port in their possession (even

if it

With

took nearly a month to repair German

destruction and

make

skies, the Allies

had few further worries about

use of the harbour), and almost total control of the their

own

reinforcements.

Advance against tenacious defence was painfully slow. But the invasion had been a success.

Any

prospect of forcing the Allied troops, arriving in ever

greater numbers, back into the sea

had long since dissolved.

furious that the Allies had gained the initiative.

more than

When

the

hope that the Alliance would

He was

split.

left

167

was

Hitler

now

with

little

168

Goebbels saw him for a three-hour private discussion on 21 June,

he remained resistant, however, to suggestions that the time had come to take drastic steps, finally, to introduce the 'total war' that the Propaganda

Minister had advocated for so long. Goebbels had used one of his best contacts at Fiihrer Headquarters, to engineer his visit at the Berghof,

Wehrmacht

adjutant General Schmundt,

and prepare the ground for

his proposals.

169

On

arrival

Goebbels heard a report by Schmundt and Julius Schaub,

the general factotum, of Hitler's visit to the western front,

and of

his

643

644

HITLER 1936-1945 decision, in the light of the situation there, to

from the yet

east.

While they talked, news came

remove two panzer

in of the heaviest

divisions

daytime raids

on Berlin - destroying many of the main representative and government

buildings in the centre of the city. Goring's popularity had, unsurprisingly,

sunk to an all-time low on the Obersalzberg, with Hitler raging about the Reich Marshal's incompetence. Goebbels also had a chance to speak to

who

Speer, raids

told

on the

him of

the precarious situation following the

By August,

fuel plants.

fuel for tanks

American

and planes would be

in

short supply. Drastic measures were needed to contain consumption in the civilian sector.

done

Having seen Salzburg, on

his arrival there,

in peacetime, Goebbels's instincts to press for

looking as

new powers

it

had

to take

control over the revitalization of the 'total war' effort and the mobilization

of remaining forces on the

home

front were sharpened

still

further.

After lunch, sitting together in the great hall of the Berghof, with

window opening out fully

expounded

his

argument.

optimism, 'not to say

mere slogan. The

A

to a breathtaking

illusions',

crisis

had

He

panorama of

170

its

huge

the Alps, Goebbels

expressed his doubts about groundless

about the war. 'Total war' had remained a

to be recognized before

it

could be overcome.

thorough reform of the Wehrmacht was urgently necessary. Goring, he

had observed

(here

came

the usual attacks

a complete fantasy world.

on the Reich Marshal),

lived in

The Propaganda Minister extended his attack to The Fuhrer needed a Scharn-

the remainder of the top military leadership.

horst and a Gneisenau

army

that repelled

-

who had created the Fromm (commander of

the Prussian military heroes

Napoleon - not

a Keitel

and a

the Reserve Army), he declared. Goebbels promised that he could raise a million soldiers through a rigorous reorganization of the

Wehrmacht and

draconian measures in the civilian sphere. The people expected and wanted

tough measures. Germany was close to being plunged into a

crisis

which

could remove any possibility of taking such measures with any prospect of success.

It

was necessary

defeatism, and to act now.

to act with realism, wholly detached

Characteristically, Hitler

of the

began

Wehrmacht. He accepted

his

wordy

that there

reply with a potted history

were some weaknesses

organization of the Wehrmacht, and that few of Socialists.

from any

171

its

in the

leaders were National

But to dispense with them during the war would be a nonsense

(Unding), since there were no replacements.

The overblown organization

of the

He defended Keitel and Fromm.

Wehrmacht had been

necessary for the

occupation of the huge areas of the east that had been conquered. Though these

had now

largely been lost, a reorganization could not take place

HOPING FOR MIRACLES overnight. Hitler

was

bitter at the 'absolute failure' of the Luftwaffe,

he laid at Goring's door. His

Reform

technical experts.

been started. the

whole

He

time.

own

Luftwaffe was needed, and had already

in the

who had 'swindled' him single genius among them.

could not rely upon his generals,

The war had not produced

a

Despite his criticisms, his answer could offer Goebbels

ment. All in

all,

which

wishes had been ignored by Luftwaffe

Hitler concluded, the time

was not

little

encourage-

ripe for the extraordinary

measures the Propaganda Minister wanted. Despite Goebbels's pleas, he

wanted

to proceed for the time being with the tried

thought that they would come through the present If

more

crises

Allied side, the collapse of Finland, inability (which he

the west

serious

acknowledged

as a

hold the eastern front, or failure to break the bridgeheads

- then he would be ready

Goebbels

with such methods.

- among them, entry of Turkey on the

serious crises took place

possibility) to

He

and tested methods.

summed

to take 'completely

in

abnormal measures'.

up: 'The Fuhrer does not regard the crisis as sufficiently

and compelling that

it

could persuade him to pull out

all

the stops.'

172

Hitler told Goebbels that the instant he felt the need to resort to 'final

measures', he would bestow the appropriate powers on the Propaganda Minister. But 'for the time being he ary, not revolutionary, way'.

what he regarded

wanted

to proceed along the evolution-

Goebbels went away empty-handed, leaving

one of the most serious meetings he had had with Hitler

as

sorely disappointed.

173

Goebbels was evidently dubious about Hitler's continued positive gloss

on military prospects. He doubted, to be possible to hold

Cherbourg

correctly, the reassurances that

until the

two new

divisions

it

ought

from the

east

could arrive; and Hitler's view that a massive panzer attack could then destroy the Allied bridgehead.

On

the 'wonder-weapons', however, the

Fuhrer's expectations seemed realistic enough to the Propaganda Minister.

Propaganda Minister, over-estimate the impact V ergeltungswaffe-i - 'Retaliation Weapon i'), as

Hitler did not, thought the

of the

Vi

(short for

Goebbels had rocket (later to

its

now dubbed

the flying-bomb. But he

hoped

A4

to have the

renamed the V2) ready for launching by August, and looked

destructive

power

to help decide the war. Hitler ruled out once again

-

so

some point of coming

to

any prospect of an 'arrangement' with Britain, but was Goebbels inferred

-

to dismiss the possibility at

less inclined

terms with the Soviet Union. This could not be entertained given the present military situation, though a significant shift in fortunes in the Far East might alter the position.

As Goebbels

realm of vague musings.

174

realized,

however,

this

was entering

the

645

646

HITLER 1936-1945 If

Hitler

had been unnerved

commanders earlier,

in the

he had

shown not the

with Goebbels. generals

west during

And when,

at all

by what he had heard from

his short

and turbulent

slightest trace of

it

visit a

his

few days

during his private discussion

the next afternoon, he again addressed his

- adumbrating once more

his belief in the survival of the fittest,

emphasizing that no internal revolution was possible since the Jews were 'gone'

and that he would mercilessly wipe out the

slightest hint of internal

meant 'destruction

subversion, stressing that to give in always

... in the

long run complete destruction', that the current struggle was for Germany's very existence, and, underlining his unshaken belief that he had been called

by Providence, that the dangers would be surmounted, that will never capitulate'

- he again performed

with no hint of weakness or doubt. at least

momentarily.

173

He

Operation Barbarossa, the Red

had predicted that

of launching his offensive Soviet offensive

- the

new

state

could

still

enthuse his audience -

176

That same day, 22 June 1944, exactly three years east. Hitler

'this

to perfection the role of Fiihrer,

Army

Stalin

launched

its

would not be

since the beginning of

new

big offensive in the

able to resist the appeal

on that day. 177 The main thrust of the massive

biggest undertaken, deploying almost 2/4 million

men

and over 5,000 tanks, backed by 5,300 planes, and given by Stalin the code-name 'Bagration' after a military hero in the destruction of Napoleon's

Grand Army in 1812-was aimed at the Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre. 178 Based on fatally flawed intelligence relayed to Chief of Staff Zeitzler by the head of the eastern military intelligence

service,

Reinhard Gehlen, German

preparations had, in fact, anticipated an offensive on the southern part of the front, where

all

the reserves and the bulk of the panzer divisions

had been concentrated. Army Group Centre had been thirty-eight divisions,

comprizing only half as many

left

with a meagre

men and

a fifth of the

number of tanks as the Red Army had, in a section of the front stretching over some 800 miles. 9 Only belatedly, it appears, did the realization dawn, 1

against the continued advice of Chief of the General Staff Zeitzler, that the offensive

was

likely to

come

against

Army Group

Field-Marshal Ernst Busch, Commander-in-Chief of

recommended shortening

the front to

more

Centre.

180

But when

Army Group

Centre,

defensible limits, Hitler con-

temptuously asked whether he too was one of those generals 'who always looked to the

The

rear'.

181

relatively mild beginnings of the offensive then misled Hitler's mili-

tary advisers into thinking initially that initial

opening was

sufficient to

breach the

it

was

a decoy.

182

However, the

German defences around Vitebsk.

HOPING FOR MIRACLES first big wave of tanks swept through the gap. Others rapidly Bombing and heavy artillery attacks accompanied the assault. Busch appealed to Hitler to abandon the 'fortified places' (Feste Flatze) in

Suddenly, the

followed.

Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev, and Bobruisk, which had been been established in the

spring in a vain attempt to create a set of key defensive strongholds

fortresses to be held

generals.

come what may under

the

command

-

of selected tough

183

Hitler's

answer could have been taken as read. The

'fortified places'

was

to be held at all costs; every square metre of land

were

to be defended.

184

among the generals, accepted the He sought to carry it out unquestioningly as a demonloyalty. The consequences were predictable. The Red Army

Busch, one of Hitler's fervent admirers order without demur. stration of his

swept around the strongholds, and the German not Soviet divisions were

down, then

tied

the

wake

and

encircled

finally

of the advance troops.

185

destroyed by the forces following in

The Wehrmacht

such a disastrous tactical error would have been parts of the front.

Within two days of the

the 9th

defending other

186

Vitebsk had been cut

ment of

divisions lost through

vital in

Army

off,

start of the offensive, the 3rd

Panzer

Army

in

followed a further two days later by the encircle-

near Bobruisk. By the

first

faced the same fate near Minsk. Reinforcements part of the front could not prevent

its

days of July, the 4th

drawn from

destruction.

Army

the southern

By the time the offensive

through the centre slowed by mid-July, the Soviet breakthrough had

advanced well over 200 miles, driven

a

gap 100 miles wide through the front,

and was within striking range of Warsaw. Army Group Centre had by then lost

twenty-eight divisions with 350,000

men

in a catastrophe

than that at Stalingrad. By this time, devastating offensives in the

south were gathering

even greater

in the Baltic

momentum. 187 The next months would

and

bring

even worse calamities and, together with the unstoppable advance of the Allies in the west,

would usher

in the final

phase of the war.

VIII Hitler's response to the military disasters of the early istic:

capabilities as a military strategist

Germany possible. Once while

summer was character-

he blamed others, and sacked his commanders. Whatever Hitler's

had been, they had paid dividends only

held the whip-hand and lightning offensives had been irrevocably after the failure of 'Citadel' in

summer 1943 -

647

648

HITLER 1936-1945 a defensive strategy as

had become the only one

supreme German warlord were

fully

available, Hitler's inadequacies

exposed. As the records of the

military conferences with his advisers indicate,

it

was not that he was wholly

Nor was was sometimes adumbrated in post-war apologetics of German

devoid of tactical knowledge, despite his lack of formal training. it

the case, as

who knew

generals, that professionals

better

were invariably forced into

compliance with the lunatic orders of an amateur military bungler. As the verbatim notes of the conferences show, Hitler's tactics were frequently neither inherently absurd, nor did they usually stand in crass contradiction to the military advice he

Even

of

so: at points

And by

was

crisis,

receiving.

the tensions

almighty, life-or-death crisis for the regime

was by

and

conflicts invariably surfaced.

1944, the individual military crises were accumulating into one

this

He

time long gone.

itself.

Hitler's political adroitness

dismissed out of hand

contemplation of

all

a possible attempt to reach a political solution. Bridges

had been burnt

way

he had indicated on several occasions); there was no

(as

back. And, since

he refused any notion of negotiating from a position other than one of strength,

case

from which

no opportunity

had stood Hitler effectiveness in

all his earlier

in

down

such good stead

what had become

the situation became, the

more

all

to 1941

that 'will' alone

adversity, even grossly disparate levels of

As we have

seen, he

adversity he

had often faced

in the throes of a

was wont, on occasion, in his rise to

world war. In

more, the worse the will' as the

crisis

had long

disastrously self-destructive

-

became -

way out was indeed

any

to

since lost

its

But the worse

became

Hitler's

would triumph

manpower and weaponry. compare - absurdly - the

power with

a sense, his

in

The gambling instinct which

a backs-to-the-wall struggle.

other overriding and irrational instinct

over

had derived, there was

successes

to seek a peace settlement.

own

the current adversity

invariable resort

-

all

the

to a simple belief in 'triumph of the

a replication of his attitude at critical

junctures during the 'time of struggle' (such as the Party Leadership crisis of July 1921 or the crisis surrounding Gregor Strasser in

The

December

1932).

innate self-destructive tendency which had been implicit in his all-or-

nothing stance at such times

now conveyed

itself,

catastrophically, to mili-

tary leadership. It

was

inevitable that seasoned military strategists

generals, schooled in

more

subtle forms of tactical

with him - often stridently -

was

when

and battle-hardened

command, would

clash

their reading of the options available

so diametrically at variance with those of their supreme

and where the orders he emitted seemed to them so plainly

commander,

militarily suicidal.

HOPING FOR MIRACLES They were

however, schooled

also,

and Hitler was head of

state,

in

obedience to orders of a superior;

head of the armed

disastrously - commander-in-chief

forces,

and since 1941 -

(responsible for tactical decisions) of the

army. Refusal to obey was not only an act of military insubordination;

was

it

a treasonable act of political resistance.

Few were prepared

to

go

down

of belief in the Fuhrer's mission

near-impossible logic,

where

that route. But loyalty even to the extent

was no safeguard against dismissal

demands were not met.

'will'

In accordance with his

if

warped

had not triumphed, however fraught the circumstances,

blamed the weakness or inadequacy of the commander. Another

Hitler

commander with result - however

a superior attitude, he

presumed, would bring a different

objectively unfavourable the actual position.

mander of Army Group Centre, Field-Marshal Busch, correspondingly paid the price for the the onset of the Soviet offensive.

and replaced by one of

'failure'

He was

his favourite

of Army

The com-

a Hitler loyalist,

Group Centre during

dismissed by Hitler on 28 June,

commanders, the tough and energetic

newly-promoted Field-Marshal Walter Model (who retained his

at the same time command of Army Group North Ukraine) dubbed by some,

given the frequency with which he 'Hitler's fireman'.

was charged with tackling

Within days, there was a change of command, too, to the

Supreme

a crisis,

188

Reports

in the west.

Command of the Wehrmacht submitted by the Commander-

in-Chief, Field-Marshal

von Rundstedt, and the Commander of Panzer

Group West, General Geyr von Schweppenburg, had drawn a pessimistic picture of the prospects of holding the lines against enemy inroads in France. Jodl played to Hitler's sentiments by noting that this meant the first step towards the evacuation of France. The report had followed similarly realistic assessments of the situation on the western front delivered by Rundstedt

and Rommel

at the

Berghof two days

earlier,

Rundstedt received a handwritten notice of cially,

he had been replaced on grounds of health.

and Field-Marshal Hugo in the

his

on 29 June. 189 On 3 dismissal from Hitler.

Sperrle,

who had

190

The sacking

July, Offi-

of Geyr

been responsible for air-defences

West, also followed. Rundstedt's replacement, Kluge, at that time

high in Hitler's esteem, arrived in France, as Guderian later put

it, 'still

with the optimism that prevailed at Supreme Headquarters'.

191

filled

He soon

learnt differently.

who fell irredeemably from grace at this time was Staff Kurt Zeitzler. When appointed as replacement to

Another military leader Chief of the General

Haider

in

September 1942, Zeitzler had impressed Hitler with

his drive,

649

650

HITLER 1936-1945 energy, and fighting spirit

had palled

relationship

-

The

the type of military leader he wanted.

visibly since the spring of 1944,

when

Hitler

had

pinned a major part of the blame for the loss of the Crimea on Zeitzler. By

May,

Zeitzler

was indicating

wish to resign. The Chief of Staff's strong

his

backing at the end of June for withdrawing the threatened

North

in the Baltic to a

situation

more

defensible line,

on the western front amounted

and

his

Army Group

pessimism about the

to the last straw. Zeitzler could

no

longer see the rationale of Hitler's tactics; Hitler was contemptuous of what

he saw as the defeatism of Zeitzler and the General tether following furious

the Berghof

on

1

Staff.

At the end of

Hitler, Zeitzler simply disappeared

his

from

He had suffered a nervous breakdown. Hitler never He would have Zeitzler dismissed from the Wehrmacht

July.

spoke to him again. in

rows with

January 1945, refusing him the right to wear uniform. Until

his replace-

ment, Guderian, was appointed on 21 July, the army was effectively without a Chief of the General Staff.

The

Soviet advance

front, poised not far

had

192

left

the

from Vilna

Prussia were in their sights.

Red Army,

in Lithuania.

On

in the

northern sector of the

Already, the borders of East

9 July, Hitler flew with Keitel, Donitz,

Himmler, and Luftwaffe Chief of Staff General Giinther Korten back

to his

Model and General Johannes Frie^ner, recently appointed as commander of Army Group North in place of General Georg Lindemann, joined them from the eastern front. The discussions ranged mainly over plans for the urgent creation of a number of new divisions to shore up the eastern front and protect any inroads into East Prussia. Model and FrieEner sounded optimistic. old headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia. Field-Marshal

Hitler, too, thought his Luftwaffe adjutant,

about developments on the eastern afternoon. east,

193

He had

back to the Berghof that

already hinted that, in the light of the situation in the

he would have to

though the

Below, also remained positive

front. Hitler flew

move

fortifications of his

his

headquarters back to East Prussia, even

accommodation

there were

still

incomplete.

Reading between the lines of one or two comments, Below gained the impression, he later wrote, that during

Berghof, before he

left

what were

on 14 July

to prove Hitler's last days at the

for the Wolf's Lair, never to return, he

was

no longer under any illusions about the outcome of the war. Even so, any hints

more than countered by repeated stress on continuing the war, the impact of the new weapons, and ultimate victory. Once more, 194 it was plain to Below that Hitler would never capitulate. There would be

of pessimism were

no repeat of 1918.

Hitler's political 'mission'

on that premise. The

entire Reich

had been based from the outset

would go down

in flames first.

HOPING FOR MIRACLES had

Hitler

lived

amid the

Obersalzberg for

relative tranquillity of the

almost four months. The regular entourage at the Berghof had dwindled

somewhat

in that time.

And

in the

days before departure there had been

few guests to enliven proceedings. Hitler himself had seemingly become

more

reserved.

On

hall.

Then he had

kissed the

in front of the pictures

them

farewell.

1Sb

and scarcely recognizable from arrived in the late morning.

than

earlier.

its

appearance when

his

now

first set

He was more

continued strength of

what was

in 1941.

He

stooping in his

196

massive

For others,

this

- was precisely what war and dragging Germany to inevitable They were determined to act before it was too late - to save

strength of will

obstinate refusal to face reality

was preventing an end catastrophe.

up

will, despite the

setbacks, continued to impress the admiring Below.

- or

July, he

heavily reinforced

At one o'clock he was running the military

he had never been away.

if

But

see the

in the great

Next morning, 14

flew back to East Prussia, returning to a Wolf's Lair

gait

hanging

hand of Below's wife and Frau Brandt, the wife

of one of his doctors, bidding

conference there as

would not

the last evening, perhaps sensing he

Berghof again, he had paused

left

to the

of the Reich, lay the foundations of a future without Hitler,

and show the outside world that there was 'another Germany' beyond the forces of

Nazism.

Among

the conferences held during the last days at the Berghof were

n July, related to the mobilization of the 'home army' They were attended by a young officer with a patch over one shortened right arm, and two fingers missing from his left hand - all

two, on 6 and (Heimatheer). eye, a

the consequence of serious injuries suffered during the African campaign.

The 1

officer,

Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, chief of staff since

July of Colonel-General Friedrich

reserve army,

was

Fromm, Commander-in-Chief

of the

present, a day after Hitler's arrival at the Wolf's Lair, at

a further conference

The question of more on

197

about strengthening the home army.

creating

new

divisions

198

from the home army was once

the agenda for the military conference

on 20 July. Again, Stauffen-

berg was ordered to be present.

This time, he planted a time-bomb, carried in his briefcase, under the

oaken table

in the centre of the

wooden barracks where

Hitler

was holding

the conference. Hitler began the briefing, half an hour earlier than usual, at

12.30p.m. Fifteen minutes later the

bomb

exploded.

199

6$I

i4 LUCK OF THE DEVIL

'It's

not a matter any more of the practical aim, but of

showing the world and history that the German resistance

movement

at risk of life

Everything else

is

has dared the decisive stroke.

a matter of indifference alongside that.'

Major-General Henning von Tresckow, June 1944

'It

is

who

now

time that something was done. But the

has the courage to do something must do

knowledge that he traitor. If

his

own

down

go

will

he does not do

it,

in

German

however, he

it

man

in the

history as a

will be a traitor to

conscience.'

Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, July 1944

'A tiny clique of ambitious, unconscionable, and at the

same time criminal, stupid eliminate

me and

at the

staff practically of the

officers has forged a plot to

same time

to eradicate with

German armed

me

the

forces' leadership.' Hitler, 21 July

1944

Stauffenberg's attempt to

The complex

kill

1

on 20 July 1944 had a lengthy prehistory. prehistory contained in no small measure

Hitler

strands of this

profound manifestations and admixtures of high

ethical values

and

a tran-

scendental sense of moral duty, codes of honour, political idealism, religious convictions, personal courage, remarkable selflessness, deep humanity, and a love of

country that was light-years removed from Nazi chauvinism. The

pre-history

was

circumstances?

also replete

- how could

it

have been otherwise in the

- with disagreements, doubts, mistakes,

moral dilemmas, short-sightedness, hesitancy, ideological clashes, bungling organization, distrust

The

origins of a

coup

earlier chapters, to the

- and

miscalculations, splits,

d'etat to eliminate Hitler dated back, as

Sudeten

crisis

a

number of highly-placed

we saw

in

of 1938. Hitler's determination to risk

war with the western powers and court disaster for Germany had prompted

personal

sheer bad luck.

figures in the

at that

time

Army High Command,

diplomatic service, and the Abwehr, together with a circle of their close contacts, to plot to

remove him should he attack Czechoslovakia. Though

fraught with difficulties, the conspiracy had, in fact, taken shape by the time that Chamberlain's readiness to

come to terms with Hitler at Bad Godesberg,

then at Munich, removed the opportunity and took the wind out of the

sails

of the plotters. Their planned action might, in any case, have failed to materialize.

the

The following summer,

as the threat of

same band of individuals had attempted

war loomed ever

larger,

to revive the conspiracy that

Munich Agreement. But the fainter flickerings of opposition a year after Munich had come to nothing - floundering on internal divisions, Hitler's continued popularity among the masses, and, not least, the loyalty (if at times appearing to waver - reluctant, but ultimately

had

faltered with the

656

HITLER 1936-1945 intact) of the army chiefs whose support for any coup was same ingredients would hamper the conspiracy against Hitler in The

and decisively vital.

immensely more

The Swabian

difficult

joiner

conditions during the

Georg

war

itself.

working alone, shared none of the

Elser had,

hesitancy of those operating from within the power-echelons of the regime.

He had

we saw earlier, in the Biirgerbraukeller on the night of 8 November 1939, and come within a whisker of sending Hitler into oblivion. Good fortune alone had saved Hitler on that occasion. But acted incisively, as

outside the actions of a lone assassin, with the left-wing underground resistance groups,

though never eliminated, weak,

lay with those in the

regime

On

isolated,

and devoid of

hope of toppling Hitler

access to the corridors of power, the only

thereafter

who themselves occupied positions of some power or influence itself.

the fringes of the conspiracy, the participation in Nazi rule in itself

naturally created ambivalence. Breaking oaths of loyalty

was no light matter,

even for some whose dislike of Hitler was evident. Prussian values were here a double-edged sword: a deep sense of obedience to authority and service to the state clashed with equally

profound

feelings of duty to

God

and to country. 2 Whichever triumphed within an individual: whether heavyhearted acceptance of service to a head of state regarded as legitimately constituted,

of

however detested; or

what was taken

rejection of such allegiance in the interest

to be the greater good, should the

the country to ruin; this

was

head of state be leading

a matter for conscience

and judgement. 3

It

could, and did, go either way.

Though there were numerous exceptions to a broad generalization, genersome part. The tendency was greater in a younger

ational differences played

generation of officers, for example, than in those

who had

already attained

the highest ranks of general or field-marshal, to entertain thoughts of active

was implied months before his attempt on

participation in an attempt to overthrow the head of state. This in a

remark by Stauffenberg himself, several

Hitler's

life:

colonels have

'Since the generals have

now

to step

in.'

4

On

assassinating the head of state titanic

-

up to now managed nothing, the

the other hand, views in the

on the morality of

midst of an external struggle of

proportions against an enemy whose victory threatened the very

existence of a

German

generational, grounds.

state

-

differed fundamentally

on moral, not simply

Any attack on the head of state contituted,

of course,

high treason. But in a war, distinguishing this from treachery against one's

own

country, from betrayal to the enemy,

was

chiefly a matter of individual

persuasion and the relative weighting of moral values.

And

only a very few

LUCK OF THE DEVIL were

in a position to

inhumanity

at the

accumulate detailed and first-hand experiences of gross

same time

as possessing the

removal. Even fewer were prepared to

Beyond

ethical considerations, there

means

to bring

about Hitler's

act.

was

the existential fear of the awe-

some consequences - for the families as well as for the individuals themselves - of discovery of any complicity in a plot to remove the head of state and instigate a

coup

This was certainly enough to deter

d'etat.

many who were

sympathetic to the aims of the plotters but unwilling to become involved.

Nor was

just the constant

it

acted as a deterrent. There into,

even to

dangers of discovery and physical risks that

was

also the isolation of resistance.

with, the conspiracy against Hitler

flirt

To

enter

meant acknowledging

an inner distance from friends, colleagues, comrades, entry into a twilight

world of immense

and of

peril,

social, ideological,

even moral isolation.

Quite apart from the evident necessity, in a terroristic police

minimizing risks through selves well

aware of

maximum

their lack of

secrecy, the conspirators 3

popular support. Even

state, of

were them-

at this juncture, as

mounted and ultimate catastrophe beckoned, the Hitler had by no means evaporated and continued, if

the military disasters fanatical backing for

as a minority taste, to

bound up with themselves to Fiihrer,

were

show remarkable

the dying regime, those

it,

had burnt

resilience

and strength. Those

still

who had invested in it, had committed

their boats with

it,

were

still

true believers in the

mounted,

likely to stop at nothing, as adversity

in their

unbridled retribution for any sign of opposition. But beyond the fanatics, there were

many

others

who -

naively, or after deep reflection

- thought

not merely wrong, but despicable and treacherous, to undermine one's

it

own

summed up the conspirators' dilemma a few bomb in the Wolf's Lair: 'It is now time that something was done. But the man who has the courage to do something must do it in the knowledge that he will go down in German history as a traitor. If he does not do it, however, he will be a traitor to his own country in war. Stauffenberg days before he laid the

conscience.'

As

6

this implies, the

need to avoid a stab-in-the-back legend such as that

which had followed the end of the legacy for the ill-fated for those

First

World War and

Weimar Republic was

a constant

left

such a baleful

burden and anxiety

who had decided - sometimes with a heavy heart - that Germany's

future rested

on

their capacity to

scene, constitute a

remove

new government, and

Hitler, violently or not,

from the

seek peace terms. This

was one

important reason why, from 1938 onwards, the leading

figures in the resist-

ance fatefully awaited the 'right moment' - which never came. Fearful of

657

658

HITLER 1936-1945 cutting

down

umphs

(which, in

a national hero

vated by) they

some

felt

who had

when

capti-

was chalking up one war, then in the wave of Blitzkrieg

moment

contingencies

after a

major disaster, the hesitancy

had become no more than

final victory

than controlling the external

tri-

worried about the consequences of removing Hitler and

seeming to stab the war effort in the back continued

scarcely imaginable

had cheered, and were

incapacitated as long as Hitler

apparent success after another before the victories. But, also

won

just

cases, they themselves

that,

a chimera.

for a strike, the conspirators let in

it

Rather rest

on

nature of things, they could not

the

orchestrate.

When

the strike eventually came, with the invasion consolidated in the

west and the Red

Army

east, the conspirators

themselves recognized that they had missed the chance

to influence the possible their

pressing towards the borders of the Reich in the

outcome of the war through

their action.

As one of

key driving-forces, Major-General Henning von Tresckow, from

1943 chief of staff of the 2nd front, put

it: 'It's

Army

in the

late

southern section of the eastern

not a matter any more of the practical aim, but of showing

the world and history that the

German resistance movement at risk of life has

dared the decisive stroke {Wurf}. Everything

else

is

a matter of indifference

alongside that.'

I

All prospects of opposition to Hitler

had been dimmed following the aston-

autumn 1939 and spring 1941. Then, following the promulgation of the notorious Commissar Law, ishing chain of military successes between

ordering the liquidation of captured

been Colonel

von Bock's

(as

first staff officer at

tal in revitalizing

Red Army

political

commissars,

it

had

he was at the time) Henning von Tresckow, Field-Marshal

Army Group Centre, who had been instrumenamong a number of front officers -

thoughts of resistance

some of them purposely selected on account of their anti-regime stance. Born in 1901, tall, balding, with a serious demeanour, a professional soldier, fervent upholder of Prussian values, cool

and reserved but

at the

same

time a striking and forceful personality, disarmingly modest, but with iron determination, Tresckow had been an early admirer of Hitler though had

soon turned into an unbending of the regime.

8

Those

Centre included close

whom allies

critic

of the lawless and

Tresckow was able in the

inhumane

to bring to

policies

Army Group

emerging conspiracy against Hitler,

LUCK OF THE DEVIL notably Fabian von Schlabrendorff - six years younger than Tresckow

who would

himself, trained in law,

serve as a liaison between

Army Group

Centre and other focal points of the conspiracy - and Rudolph-Christoph Freiherr

von Gersdorff, born

arch-critic of Hitler,

section of

in 1905, a professional soldier, already

and now located

Army Group

Centre.

9

in a

key position

an

in the intelligence

But attempts to persuade Bock, together

with the other two group commanders on the eastern front, Rundstedt and Leeb, to confront Hitler and refuse orders failed.

10

Any

realistic

prospect of

opposition from the front disappeared again until late 1942. By then, in the

wake

of the unfolding Stalingrad crisis and seeing Hitler as responsible for

the certain ruin of

Germany, Tresckow was ready

to assassinate him.

11

number of focal points of practically dormant opposition within Germany itself- army and civilian - had begun to flicker back to life. The savagery of the warfare on the eastern front and, in the During the course of 1942,

light of the

winter

crisis

a

of 1941-2, the magnitude of the calamity towards

which Hitler was steering Germany, had

revitalized the notions,

still

less

than concrete, that something must be done. Beck, Goerdeler, Popitz, and Hassell in

- all connected with

March

the pre-war conspiracy

- met up again

in Berlin

1942, but decided there were as yet few prospects. Even so,

it

was

agreed that former Chief of Staff Beck would serve as a central point for the after with Colonel Hans Oster head of the central office dealing with foreign intelligence in the Abwehr, the driving-force behind the 1938 conspiracy, who had leaked Germany's invasion plans to Holland in 1940 - and Hans von Dohnanyi, a

embryonic opposition. Meetings were held soon

jurist

who had also played a

significant part in the 1938 plot, and, like Oster,

Abwehr to develop good 12 with oppositional tendencies. Around the same time, close link to a new and important recruit to the oppo-

used his position in the foreign section of the contacts to officers

Oster engineered a sitional groups, in Berlin

born

in

General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General

and Fromm's deputy

as

commander

of the

Army Office

home army.

Olbricht,

1888 and a career soldier, was not one to seek the limelight.

He

epitomized the desk-general, the organizer, the military administrator. But he was unusual in his pro-Weimar attitude before 1933, and, thereafter driven largely by Christian and patriotic feelings - in his consistent antiHitler stance, even

amid the

jubilation of the foreign-policy triumphs of the

1930s and the victories of the as the planner of the

coup

assassination of Hitler.

first

phase of the war. His role would emerge

d'etat that

was

to follow

upon

the successful

13

Already as the Stalingrad

crisis

deepened towards the end of 1942,

659

660

HITLER 1936-1945 Tresckow -

later described

driving-forces

and the

by the Gestapo as 'without doubt one of the

and allegedly

"evil spirit" of~the putschist circles',

- was He had become

referred to by Stauffenberg as his 'guiding master' (Lebrmeister)

pressing for the assassination of Hitler without delay.

14

convinced that nothing could be expected of the top military leadership initiating a coup. it

'They would only follow an order,' was

upon himself to provide

his view.

lj

in

He took

the 'ignition (InitialzundungY , as the conspirators

labelled the assassination of Hitler that

Nazi leadership and takeover of the

would lead

state.

16

to their

removal of the

Tresckow had already

summer of 1942 commissioned Gersdorff with the explosives. The latter acquired and tested various

in the

task of obtaining suitable devices, including British

explosives intended for sabotage and for the French Resistance that had

been captured following an

and Dieppe

ill-fated

in 1942. Eventually,

commando

expedition to St Nazaire

he and Tresckow settled on a small British

magnetic device, a 'clam' (or type of adhesive mine) about the a book, ideal for sabotage

and easy

to conceal.

17

size of

Olbricht, meanwhile,

coordinated the links with the other conspirators in Berlin and laid the

groundwork

for a

coup to take place

in

important civilian and military positions

March. The plans

in Berlin

occupy

to

and other major

cities

were, in essence, along the lines that were to be followed in July 1944.

One obvious problem was how

to get close

enough

to Hitler to carry out

an assassination. Hitler's movements were unpredictable. As cause to note, he frequently at the last minute.

- not

18

just for security reasons

we have had

- altered

Such an undependable schedule had

his plans

mid-February

in

1943 vitiated the intention of two officers, General Hubert Lanz and Major-

General Hans Speidel, of arresting Hitler on an expected

Group B headquarters

at Poltawa.

The

visit

visit to

did not materialize.

Army When

on 17 February, it had been to Zaporozhye not Poltawa (which Army Group B had in any case by then

Hitler suddenly decided to visit the front,

19

left).

ably.

20

Hitler's personal security had,

meanwhile, been tightened consider-

He was invariably surrounded by SS bodyguards, pistols at the ready, his own chauffeur, Erich Kempka, in one of his

and was always driven by

own

limousines which were stationed at different points in the Reich and in

the occupied territories. 21 told

And Schmundt,

Tresckow and Gersdorff

that Hitler

Hitler's

wore

Wehrmacht

adjutant,

had

and

hat.

a bullet-proof vest

This helped persuade them that the possibilities of a selected assassin having time to pull out his pistol, aim accurately, and ensure that his shot would kill

Hitler were not great.

the Iron Cross with

Oak

Nor was

the chosen sharp-shooter, bearer of

Leaves Lieutenant-Colonel Georg Freiherr von

LUCK OF THE DEVIL was mentally equipped to shoot down a person cold blood. It was an entirely different proposition, he felt,

Boeselager, sure that he

even Hitler -

from

in

firing at

an anonymous enemy

Nevertheless, Boeselager

made

in

war.

22

preparations for a group of officers,

had declared themselves ready to do

so, to

was hoped, he would soon pay

Army Group

Smolensk. The

him

in the

visit

eventually took place

shoot Hitler on a

was

since there

which,

visit

it

Centre headquarters at

on 13 March. The plan

mess of Field-Marshal von Kluge, commander of

was abandoned

Centre,

to

who

to shoot

Army Group

a distinct possibility of

Kluge and

other senior officers being killed alongside Hitler. Given Kluge's wavering

and two-faced attitude towards the conspiracy against might have thought the

plotters

risk well

Hitler,

worthwhile. As

it

more

cynical

was, they took

and other leading personnel from Army

the view that the loss of Kluge

Group Centre would seriously weaken still further the shaky eastern front. The idea shifted to shooting Hitler as he walked the short distance back to his car

from headquarters. But having

him and

set

up position to open

fire,

infiltrated the security

cordon around

the assassination squad failed to carry

out their plan. Whether this was because Hitler took a different route

back to killing

his car, or

whether - the more

Kluge and other

unclear.

at

explanation - the danger of

from the Group was seen

as too great,

is

23

Tresckow reverted meal

officers

likely

to the original plan to

blow up

During the

Hitler.

which, had the original plans been carried out, Hitler would have

been shot, Tresckow asked one of the Fiihrer's entourage, LieutenantColonel Heinz Brandt, travelling for

him

itself

to Colonel

in Hitler's plane, to take

Stieff in

back a package

Army High Command.

This was in

nothing unusual. Packages were often sent to and from the front by

personal delivery it

Hellmuth

was part of

cognac.

It

when

transport happened to be available.

a bet with Stieff.

was, in

fact,

two

Tresckow

said

The package looked like two bottles of clam-bomb that Tresckow

parts of the British

had put together. Schlabrendorff carried the package to the aerodrome and gave just as

it

he was climbing into Hitler's Condor ready for take-off.

to Brandt

Moments

before, Schlabrendorff had pressed the fuse capsule to activate the detonator, set for thirty

minutes.

It

could be expected that Hitler would be blown from

the skies shortly before the plane reached Minsk. Schlabrendorff returned as quickly as possible to headquarters

and informed the Berlin opposition

Abwehr that the 'ignition' for the coup had been undertaken. But no news came of an explosion. The tension among Tresckow's group was in the

66l

66l

HITLER 1936-1945 palpable.

Hours

later,

they heard that Hitler had landed safely at Rasten-

burg. Schlabrendorff gave the code-word through to Berlin that the attempt

had

failed.

Why

intense cold

there

had been no explosion was

a mystery. Probably the

had prevented the detonation. For the nervous conspirators,

ruminations about the likely cause of failure

now took

second place to the

need to recover the incriminating package. Tresckow rang up Brandt

vital

to say a mistake

had occurred, and he should hold on

morning, Schlabrendorff flew to

Army High Command

bottles of cognac, retrieved the

bomb,

with two genuine

retreated to privacy, cautiously

opened the packet with a razor-blade, and with great relief defused the disappointment

with

relief,

was

intense.

among

Next

to the package.

it.

Mixed

the opposition at such a lost chance

24

Immediately, however, another opportunity beckoned. Gersdorff had the

Memorial Day',

possibility of attending the 'Heroes'

March 1943 life in

in Berlin.

to take place

on 21

Gersdorff declared himself ready to sacrifice his

own

order to blow up Hitler during the ceremony. Tresckow, for his part,

assured Gersdorff that the coup to follow Hitler's assassination would lead to an

agreement with the western powers for capitulation while continuing

the defence of the Reich in the east and introducing a democratic form of

government. With some

would be

close

enough

difficulty,

problems of ensuring that Gersdorff

to Hitler to bring off the assassination,

of establishing precisely

what time

the ceremonials

security precautions, betrayal of this fact

was

and problems

would begin - given

in itself

dubbed

sufficient to

warrant the death penalty - were overcome. The timing of the attempt was a third problem.

minutes.

The

best fuse that Gersdorff could

The ceremony

itself,

in

the

come up with

glass-covered

lasted ten

courtyard of the

Zeughaus, the old arsenal, on Unter den Linden, the beautiful tree-lined boulevard running through the centre of Berlin, presented no possibility of detonating an explosion in his close proximity.

And once Hitler was outside,

war memorial on Unter den Linden, laying the wreath, speaking to selected wounded soldiers, or conversing with guests of honour, Gersdorff would have no cause to be near him. His chance would have gone. The attempt had to be made, therefore, while Hitler was visiting the inspecting the guard of

honour

at the

exhibition of captured Soviet war-booty, laid the

ceremony

in the

on

to

fill

in the

Zeughaus and the wreath-laying

time between

at the

cenotaph.

Gersdorff positioned himself at the entry to the exhibition, in the rooms of the Zeughaus. by.

He

raised his right

At the same moment, with

arm

his left

to greet Hitler as the dictator

came

hand, he pressed the detonator charge

LUCK OF THE DEVIL on the bomb. He expected Hitler to be

more than enough time

bomb

for the

in the exhibition for half

to go off. But this year, Hitler raced

through the exhibition, scarcely glancing

at the material

assembled for him,

and was outside within two minutes. Gersdorff could follow further.

Once

He

sought out the nearest

toilet

and

deftly defused the

had accompanied

again, astonishing luck

Hitler.

had been anticipated; whether

no

Hitler

bomb. 25

Whether

concern about the possibility of an allied air-raid, which, as earlier chapter,

an hour,

it

we saw

was

in

Hitler's security advisers

an

had

given a hint of concern for his safety at a public appearance, given the

uneasy atmosphere after Stalingrad, when, following the 'White Rose'

Munich

protests of the

rumours of an attempt

Hans and Sophie

students

to

Scholl and their friends,

overthrow the regime were circulating; or whether

Hitler himself, ill-attuned to having to give a public performance in sensitive

circumstances while the country was reeling from such a military disaster,

had scant feeling for the ceremonials and simply wanted to get them over with: whatever the reason, yet another attempt, conscientiously planned despite the difficulties,

and undertaken

opportunity would not rapidly present

at notable risk,

had

failed.

A new

itself.

The depressed and shocked mood following Stalingrad had probably offered the best possible psychological

moment

for a

coup against

successful undertaking at that time might, despite the recently

also

Hitler.

A

announced

'Unconditional Surrender' strategy of the Allies, have stood a chance of splitting in the

them. The removal of the Nazi leadership and offer of capitulation

west that Tresckow intended would at any rate have placed the

western Allies in a quandary about whether to respond to peace-feelers.

Overtures by opposition groups to the western Allies had been systematically rebuffed

with

long before

this time.

German churchmen belonging

For example, for

to the resistance

his pains in liaising

who wanted

out the British government about their attitude towards a Hitler,

to

sound

Germany without

Bishop George Bell of Chichester was described by Anthony Eden,

the British Foreign Secretary, in

by King Henry

II

words redolent of those once

to usher in the

1170, as a 'pestilent priest'. figures in the conspiracy

26

allegedly used

murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket

in

Despite long-standing contacts with leading

- including Carl Goerdeler,

Adam von

Trott, and

(who had spent south London) - the

the radically-minded evangelical pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer

some time

in ministry at the

German church

in

was regarded by the British war-leadership (and the Americans little more than a hindrance. A successful coup from within could, it was felt, endanger the alliance with the Soviet Union resistance

shared the view) as

663

664

HITLER 1936-1945 exactly the strategy which the conspirators were hoping to achieve

would cause

difficulties in establishing- the

key criterion was Hitler

how

far action

would contribute

internal

memorandum

in

war

little

effort.

A

- and

Germany. The

by those within Germany

to the Allied

written

post-war order

who opposed

British

government

over a month before Stauffenberg's

bomb went off in Hitler's headquarters gave a clear answer: 'There is no we can take vis-a-vis "dissident" German groups or individuals,

initiative

military or civilian,

which holds out the smallest prospect of affording

practical assistance to our present military operations in the West.'

27

Though prepared to distinguish between the Nazi leadership and the German people, Allied thinking was less ready to separate Hitler and his henchmen from his military leaders and from the Prussian traditions which, it was thought, had been a major cause of two world wars. Now, with the war turning remorselessly in their favour, the Allies were less than ever

much truck to an internal had claimed much but achieved nothing, inclined to give

expectations of holding on to

made.

some of

opposition which,

it

appeared,

and, furthermore, entertained

the territorial gains that Hitler

had

28

This was indeed the case, certainly with some of the older members of the national-conservative group aligned to former Reich Price

Carl Goerdeler whose break with Hitler had, as

we have

Commissar

seen, already taken

him - notably former Chief of Staff Ludwig Beck, one-time German Ambassador in Rome

place in the mid-1950s. Goerdeler and those loosely aligned to

Ulrich von Hassell, Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz, and ex-Nazi enthusiast and Berlin professor of politics and economics (Staat-

schaftsswissenscbaften) Jens Jessen

regime.

29

- despised

und Wirt-

the barbarism of the Nazi

But they were keen to re-establish Germany's status as a major

power, and continued to see the Reich dominating central and eastern Europe. Goerdeler, presumed to be the

new Reich Chancellor

Hitlerian government, had envisaged in early 1942

of states under

German

'a

in a post-

European federation

leadership within 10 or 20 years'

be ended and a 'sensible political system' put in place.

30

if

In

the war could summer 1943,

despite the drastic deterioration of Germany's military situation, Goerdeler's incorrigible

optimism

still

led

him

to put forward as his foreign-political

aims: the restoration of the eastern borders of 1914 (meaning, of course,

keeping the

Polish

Corridor,

reacquired

by

Germany through such

immeasurable barbarism); retention of Austria and the Sudetenland, along with Eupen-Malmedy and the South Tyrol (which even Hitler had not annexed); negotations with France over Alsace-Lorraine; undiminished Ger-

LUCK OF THE DEVIL man

sovereignty; no reparations; and economic union in Europe (outside

Russia).

31

As regards the nature of a post-Nazi regime, the notions of the national conservatives, disdaining the plebiscitary

what they saw

as populist

mass

politics,

and demagogic

were

of emphasis) oligarchic and authoritarian. the

monarchy and

resting

characteristics of

essentially (despite differences

They favoured

a restoration of

limited electoral rights in self-governing communities,

on Christian family values - the embodiment of the true 'national

community' which the Nazis had corrupted. 32

Among

the

conviction,

most

when

striking features of Goerdeler's lack of realism

it

was put

him

to

that Hitler

would have

was

his

to be forcefully

removed from the scene, that he could be persuaded by reasoned argument to step

down. 33 His expectation of an unbloody coup even

idea of suggesting that he could eliminate Hitler through military could provide

and the people.

34

him with

was

It

led

to the

open debate

the opportunity to address the

composed

as well that the letter,

him

if

the

Wehrmacht

in

May

1944,

containing such a remarkable suggestion was sent back by Stieff and never

passed to Chief of Staff Zeitzler.

The notions

3^

of Goerdeler and his close associates,

whose

age, mentality,

and upbringing inclined them to look back to the pre-1914 Reich for

much

of their inspiration, found

which gained and

its

his regime.

descent,

came

common

known

its

meetings.

The

British traditions, a

a

army

'new order'

first

a

group of a younger

leaders were mainly of aristocratic

as 'the Kreisau Circle', a in Silesia

estate belonged to

James Graf von Moltke, born the Prussian

among

decade of the twentieth century)

through outright opposition to Hitler

identity

Gestapo and drawn from the estate of

first

The group, whose

to be

favour

little

generation (mainly born during the

term coined by the

where the group held

one of

its

central figures,

in 1907, trained in law, a great

a

number

Helmuth

admirer of

descendant of the famous Chief of the General Staff of

in

after Hitler

36

The ideas of the 'Kreisau Circle' for dated back in embryo to 1940, when they were

Bismarck's era.

elaborated by Moltke and his close friend and relative Peter Graf Yorck

von Wartenburg, three years older, also trained in the

in law, a

formative figure

group, and with good contacts to the military opposition. Both had

rejected

Nazism and

its

gross inhumanity

they were drawing to meetings at

from an

Kreisau and

early stage. in Berlin a

By 1942-3

number

of

like-minded friends and associates, ranging across social classes and denominational divisions, including the former policy

spokesman of the group

Oxford Rhodes Scholar and foreign-

Adam von Trott zu Solz, the Social Democrat

665

666

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 Carlo Mierendorff, the socialist pedagogical expert Adolf Reichwein, the

and the Protestant pastor Eugen Ger-

Jesuit priest Pater Alfred Delp,

stenmaier.

Unlike the Goerdeler group, the Kreisau Circle drew heavily for inspiration on the idealism of the German youth movement,

its

and

socialist

Christian philosophies, and experiences of the post-war misery and rise of

National Socialism. Moltke, Yorck, and their associates - unlike the Goerdeler group

- had no

desire to hold

on to expectations of German hegemony

on the continent. They looked instead

to a future in

which national sover-

eignty (and the nationalist ideologies

which underpinned

to a federal Europe, modelled in part

on the United

were well aware that major

territorial concessions

it)

would

give

way

States of America.

They

would have

made

to be

by Germany, along with some form of reparation for the peoples of Europe

who had

suffered so grievously under Nazi rule.

tribunal to deal with

people from

its

war

They saw an

international

criminals as a basis for weaning the

attachment to National Socialism.

And

German

they looked to a

strong international organization to preserve equal rights for

all

countries

of the world. Their concept of a

new form

German Christian and social

looking to democratization from below,

ideals,

of state rested heavily

through self-governing communities working on the basis of social guaranteed by a central state that was

little

upon

justice,

more than an umbrella organiz-

ation for localized and particularized interests within a federal structure.

37

Such notions were inevitably Utopian. The 'Kreisau Circle' had no arms to

back

it,

and no access to

action. Moltke,

pressed on a

who opposed

number

much

military support for a

German

the

and Yorck, quite

military leadership

of the Nazi barbarism led

new

Such an illusory hope Hitler,

was dependent upon

assassination,

oppositional

were to be parachuted into German

remove

It

army

for

especially,

of occasions for a coup to unseat Hitler. By 1943,

Moltke's distrust of the complicity in so

Hitler.

still left

to advocate

German government.

cities to

back a coup.

out of the equation the

and who should do

future social and political order,

preoccupy Tresckow and

him

it.

on account of

its

American

Allied troops

38

initial step:

how

to

This, rather than Utopian visions of a

was

the primary issue that continued to

his fellow officers

who had committed

themselves

The problem became, if anything, more rather than less difficult during the summer and autumn of 1943. Any expectation that Manstein might commit himself to the opposition was wholly dashed in the summer. 'Prussian field-marshals do not mutiny,' was his lapidary response 39 to Gersdorff 's probings. Manstein was at least honest and straightforward. to the opposition.

LUCK OF THE DEVIL Kluge, by contrast, blew hot and cold - offering backing to Tresckow and Gersdorff, then retreating from

though those

that quarter,

delusion that Kluge

40

There was nothing to be gained from

it.

opposition continued to persist

in the

was ultimately on

There were other setbacks. Beck was meanwhile quite seriously Fritz-Dietlof

in the

their side.

Graf von der Schulenburg - a lawyer by training,

ill.

who

And after

sympathizing with National Socialism and holding a number of

initially

come to serve as a liaison - was interrogated on suspicion

high administrative positions in the regime, had

between the military and

was involved

that he

civilian opposition

coup, though later released.

in plans for a

41

Others,

including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were also arrested, as the tentacles of the

Gestapo threatened to entangle the leading

figures in the resistance.

Hans von Dohnanyi and Hans Oster from

worse:

the

Abwehr were

arrested

currency irregularities, though this drew

in April, initially for alleged foreign

The head managed for

suspicion on their involvement in political opposition.

Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, to

throw sand

resistance, the

a professional obfuscater,

Gestapo agents. But

in the eyes of the

Even

Abwehr had become

of the a time

as a centre of the

untenable. By February 1944,

its

foreign

department, which Oster had controlled, was incorporated into the Reich Security

Head

Office,

and Canaris, dubious

opposition, himself placed under house arrest.

Tresckow, partly while on leave drive

on the plans

at the

was

tireless in

for action against Hitler. But in October, he

head of a regiment

position in

in Berlin,

figure that he

Army Group

Kluge was injured

at the front,

was

for the

42

away from

attempting to

was stationed

his previously influential

Centre headquarters. At the same time, in any case,

in a car accident

and replaced by Field-Marshal Ernst

Busch, an outright Hitler-loyalist, so that an assassination attempt from

Army Group Centre could now be ruled out. 43 At this point,

Olbricht revived

notions, previously entertained but never sustained, of carrying out both the strike against Hitler

and the subsequent coup, not through the front

army, but from the headquarters of the reserve army assassin with access to Hitler

had been

a

in Berlin.

44

Finding an

major problem. Now, one was

close at hand.

Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg came from a Swabian aristocratic family.

Born

in 1907, the

influence of Catholicism

the youth

youngest of three brothers, he grew up under the

- though

movement. He became

his family

were non-practising - and of

particularly attracted to the ideas of the

poet Stefan George, then held in extraordinary esteem by an impressionable circle of

young admirers, strangely captivated by his vague, neo-conservative

667

668

HITLER 1936-1945 which looked away from the

cultural mysticism

of bourgeois

sterilities

new elite of aristocratic aestheticism, godliness, and many young officers, Stauffenberg was initially attracted

existence towards a

manliness.

45

Like

by aspects of National Socialism - not value of strong armed forces and rejected

its

early 1938,

its

serving in Poland he

victory.

46

Blomberg-Fritsch

and

increasingly critical of Hitler

was contemptuous of was

the colonization of the country, and

He was

still

more

- but

anti-Versailles foreign policy

racial antisemitism and, after the

was

renewed emphasis on the

least its

his drive to war.

crisis

of

Even

so,

the Polish people, approved of

German

enthusiastic about the

jubilant after the stunning successes in the

47 western campaign, and hinted that he had changed his views on Hitler.

The mounting barbarity of the regime nevertheless appalled him. And when he turned irredeemably against Hitler in the late spring of 1942, it was under the influence of incontrovertible eye-witness reports of massacres of Ukrainian Jews by SS men. Hearing the reports, Stauffenberg concluded that Hitler

must be removed. 48 As some of

compared with

others,

somewhat

suaded to join the oppositional conspiracy. the 10th Panzer Division, he

was

his critics pointed out,

(as

we

49

after his discharge

Olbricht about a

new

from hospital

was,

it

finally per-

Serving in North Africa with

noted) badly

1943, losing his right eye, his right hand, and

Soon

day that he was

late in the

two

fingers

wounded from

in April

hand.

his left

August, speaking to Friedrich

in

War

post as chief of staff in the General

Office

{Allgemeines Heeresamt) in Berlin, he was tentatively asked about joining the resistance. There

already kill

come

him.

By

was

little

doubt what

to the conclusion that the only

his

answer would

way

be.

He had

to deal with Hitler

was

to

50

early September, Stauffenberg

figures in the opposition.

So far as

it

had been introduced can be deduced,

once he had come to join the resistance, had

little

to the leading

his political stance,

or nothing in

common

with that of the national-conservatives - Goerdeler's views he treated almost 51 with disdain - and was closer to that of the Kreisau Circle. But,

Tresckow, Stauffenberg was a theoretician.

way

He

man

deliberated with

to assassinate Hitler

the coup to follow.

of action, an organizer

Tresckow

in

autumn 1943 about

and the related but separate

As a means of taking over the

the idea of recasting an operational plan,

Germany

in the

state, they

code-named

event of serious internal unrest.

a

the best

issue of organizing

came up with

'Valkyrie', already

devised by Olbricht and approved by Hitler, for mobilizing the reserve

within

like

more than

army

The recouched plan

began by denouncing not anti-Nazi 'subversives', but putschists within the

LUCK OF THE DEVIL Nazi Party

itself

which 'has

-

'an unscrupulous clique of

non-combat Party

and to

front in the back,

the regime;

it

power for selfish purposes', demanding the The aim of 'Valkyrie' had been to protect

seize

proclamation of martial law.

leaders'

committed

tried to exploit the situation to stab the deeply

32

was now transformed

into a strategy for

removing

53 it.

Unleashing 'Valkyrie' posed two problems. The first was that the command had to be issued by the head of the reserve army. This was General Friedrich Fromm, born in 1888 into a Protestant family with strong military traditions, a

army

in the

huge man, somewhat reserved

as the guarantor of

was no outright Hitler committal

Germany's

came out on

keep

with strong

beliefs

Fromm who remained non-

status as a world-power.

but a fence-sitter

loyalist,

in his cautious desire to

in character,

open and back whichever

his options

top, the regime or the putschists

-

which would

a policy

upon him. 34 The other problem was the old one of access Tresckow had concluded that only an assassination attempt in

eventually backfire to Hitler.

Fuhrer Headquarters could get round the unpredictability of Hitler's schedule

and the

to find

tight security precautions

someone prepared

Hitler's close

proximity

Stauffenberg,

surrounding him. The

to carry out the attempt

in

who had

difficulty

was

reason to be in

Fuhrer Headquarters.

who had brought new dynamism to the sagging momentum

of the opposition,

wanted

who would

it

carry

a strike against Hitler

out? Colonel

by mid-November. But

approached by Stauffenberg

Stieff,

in

October 1943, declined. The attempt had to be postponed. Colonel Joachim staff {W eh rmachtfuk rungs -

MeichEner from the Wehrmacht operational stab)

was subsequently asked,

in spring 1944, if

too, declined." In the interim, Stauffenberg

Axel Freiherr von

dem

Iron Cross, First Class, ing of thousands of

he might undertake

had been introduced

Bussche, whose courage in action had

among

Jews

in the

and

his regime.

sacrifice his

the Fuhrer

own

was

life

He,

won him

the

other decorations. Witnessing a mass shoot-

Ukraine

in

October 1942 had been a searing

experience for Bussche, and opened him to any prospect of doing Hitler

it.

to Captain

away with

Approached by Stauffenberg, he was prepared

to

by springing on Hitler with a detonated grenade while

visiting a display of

Bad luck continued

to

dog the

new

uniforms.

One such uniform display, in when the train carrying the new

plans.

December 1943, had to be cancelled uniforms was hit in an air-raid and the uniforms destroyed. Before Bussche could be brought back for another attempt, he was badly wounded on the eastern front in January 1944, losing a leg and dropping out of consideration for Stauffenberg's plans.

56

669

67O

HITLER 1936-1945 Lieutenant Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, son of the Prussian landowner and

longstanding

critic

of Hitler

willing to take over.

57

Ewald vorrKleist-Schmenzin, expressed himself

Everything was

set for Hitler's visit to a

display in mid-February. But the display

was once again

cancelled.

uniform 58

Yet another chance arose when Rittmeister Eberhard von Breitenbuch, orderly to Field-Marshal Busch (Kluge's successor as Commander-in-Chief

Army Group

of

Centre) and already initiated in plans to eliminate Hitler,

had the opportunity to accompany Busch to a military on

11

March

briefing at the Berghof

1944. Breitenbuch was uncertain about an attempt with a

bomb, but had declared himself ready to shoot Hitler in the head. His pistol was in his trouser pocket, and ready to fire as soon as he came close to Hitler. But on this occasion, orderlies were not permitted in

Browning

the briefing.

Luck was

still

Even Stauffenberg began

on

Hitler's side.

39

- especially once the western Allies soil of France. The Gestapo by now

to lose heart

had established a firm footing on the

had the scent of the opposition; a number of pointed to the intensifying danger. the inevitable defeat?

60

Would even

Would

it

arrests of leading figures

not

now

be better to await

a successful strike against Hitler be

anything more than a largely empty gesture? Tresckow gave the answer:

was

vital that the

was

there

members'

A

last

a

coup took

German

lives to

It

world should see that

movement prepared

topple such an unholy regime.

opportunity presented

colonel, Stauffenberg

deputy.

place, that the outside

resistance

On

itself.

1

at the cost of its

61

July 1944,

was appointed Fromm's

it

now promoted

chief of staff

-

to

in effect, his

provided him with what had been hitherto lacking: access to

home army. He no longer needed look for someone to carry out the assassination. He could do it himself. That this was the only solution became more evident than ever when Stieff Hitler at military briefings related to the

declined a second request from Stauffenberg to try to

kill

Hitler at the

display of uniforms finally taking place at Klessheim on 7 July.

62

The difficulty with Stauffenberg taking over the role of assassin was that he would be needed at the same time in Berlin to organize the coup from the headquarters of the reserve army.

63

chances of failure were thereby enhanced.

had

The double role meant that the It was far from ideal. But the risk

to be taken.

On

was present, for the first time in his capacity as Fromm, at two hour-long briefings at the Berghof. He had

6 July, Stauffenberg

chief of staff to

explosives with him. But,

present

itself.

it

seems, an appropriate opportunity did not

Whatever the reason,

at

any

rate,

he

made no attempt on

this

LUCK OF THE DEVIL occasion. Impatient to act, Stauffenberg resolved to try at his next visit to the Berghof, five days later.

But the absence of Himmler,

whom

Again,

at Fiihrer

Head-

conspirators wanted to eliminate along with Hitler, deterred him.

nothing happened.

On

15 July,

(now moved back

quarters

was determined

when he was once more

to the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia), Stauffenberg

Once more, nothing happened. Most probably,

to act.

seems, he had been unable to set the charge in time for the

first

through with the attempt

in the

absence of Himmler.

briefing, he

was himself directly involved

him of

possibility of

bomb and

priming the

as a practice alarm-drill.

66

The

would have

was dead. After that he

which deprived

carrying out the attack. It

had

63

to be passed off

Next

time, the

go out ahead of the assassination

to wait for Stauffenberg's confirmation that Hitler

the bungling of the opportunity

had taken such

what he

any case go

during the third

error could not be repeated.

issue of the 'Valkyrie' order could not It

And

in

in the presentation,

This time, Olbricht even issued the 'Valkyrie' order.

attempt.

it

of the three

While the second short briefing was taking place,

briefings that afternoon.

he was telephoning Berlin to clarify whether he should

all

the

64

a high risk to

no

avail,

on the

15th, the third time

Stauffenberg prepared for

told his fellow conspirators, gathered at his

home

in Berlin's

Wannsee district on the evening of 16 July, would be a last attempt. 67 This would take place during his next visit to the Wolf's Lair, in the briefing scheduled for 20 July.

II

After a two-hour flight from Berlin, Stauffenberg and his adjutant, Lieutenant

Werner von Haeften, landed

at

Rastenburg

at 10.15a.m.

on 20

July.

Stauffenberg was immediately driven the four miles to the Wolf's Lair.

Haeften accompanied Major-General plane, to quarters.

Army High Command,

Stieff,

By 11.30a.m. Stauffenberg was

that lasted three-quarters of an hour. briefing,

half an

owing to the

hour

As soon

earlier

who had

flown in the same

before returning later to Fiihrer Headin a pre-briefing, directed

Time was

by

Keitel,

pressing since Hitler's

arrival of Mussolini that afternoon,

was

to take place

than usual, at 12.30p.m.

was over, Stauffenberg asked where he shirt. It was a hot day, and an unremarkable

as the meeting with Keitel

could freshen up and change his

request; but he needed to hurry. Haeften, carrying the briefcase containing

the

bomb, met him on

the corridor.

As soon

as they

were

in the toilet, they

671

672-

HITLER 1936-1945 began hastily to prepare to

set the time-fuses in the

two explosive

devices

they had brought with them, and to place the devices, each weighing around a kilogram, in Stauffenberg's briefcase. Stauffenberg set the

The bomb could go stuffy conditions,

Keitel

was

off

any time

after quarter of

first

charge.

an hour, given the hot and

and would explode within half an hour

at most. Outside,

came from General Wehrmacht High Command

getting impatient. Just then, a telephone call

Erich Fellgiebel, head of communications at

and commissioned,

in the plot against Hitler,

with the

vital task of

blocking

communications to and from the Fiihrer Headquarters following an sination attempt. Keitel's adjutant, call. Fellgiebel

wanted

assas-

Major Ernst John von Freyend, took

to speak to Stauffenberg

and requested him

the

to call

back. There

was no time

Vogel to

Stauffenberg of FellgiebePs message, and to hurry him along.

tell

for that. Freyend sent Sergeant-Major

Vogel found Stauffenberg and Haeften busy with some object. told to hurry, Stauffenberg brusquely replied that he

then shouted that he should

come along

at once.

Werner

On

being

was on his way. Freyend

Vogel waited by the open

door. Stauffenberg hastily closed his briefcase. There was no chance of setting the time-fuse for the second device he

them. Haeften stuffed a decisive set,

this,

along with sundry papers,

moment. Had the second

been placed

and Haeften had brought with

in Stauffenberg's

in his

own

bag along with the

first, it

been detonated by the explosion, more than doubling the certainly, in such

The

bag.

It

was

device, even without the charge being

would have

effect.

Almost

68 an event, no one would have survived.

briefing, taking place as usual in the

wooden barrack-hut

inside the

high fence of the closely guarded inner perimeter of the Wolf's Lair, had already begun

when

Stauffenberg was ushered

in.

Hitler, seated in the

middle of the long side of the table nearest to the door, facing the windows,

was

listening to

Major-General Adolf Heusinger, chief of operations

at

General Staff headquarters, describe the rapidly worsening position on the eastern front. Hitler absent-mindedly shook hands with Stauffenberg, Keitel introduced him,

had requested

and

a place as close as possible to the Fiihrer. His hearing

disability, together

with the need to have his papers close to hand when he

reported on the creation of a to help block the Soviet

him

a

good excuse.

end of the

table-leg.

it

number

of new divisions from the reserve

army

breakthrough into Poland and East Prussia, gave

Room was found

table. Freyend,

room, placed

when

returned to Heusinger's report. Stauffenberg

under the

who had

for

him on

Hitler's right,

towards the

carried Stauffenberg's briefcase into the

table, against the outside of the solid right-hand

LUCK OF THE DEVIL

No

sooner had he arrived

to leave

room, than Stauffenberg made an excuse

in the

This attracted no special attention. There was

it.

much

to-ing and

fro-ing during the daily conferences. Attending to important telephone

or temporarily being

berg

left his

summoned away was

calls

a regular occurrence. Stauffen-

cap and belt behind to suggest that he would be returning. Once

outside the room, he asked Freyend to arrange the connection for the call

which he

still

had

to

make

to General Fellgiebel. But as

soon as Freyend

returned to the briefing, Stauffenberg hung up and hurried back to the

Wehrmacht

adjutants' building,

where he met Haeften and

Fellgiebel. Lieu-

tenant Ludolf Gerhard Sander, a communications officer in Fellgiebel's

department, was also there. Stauffenberg's absence in the briefing had

meanwhile been noted; he had been needed

to provide a point of information

during Heusinger's presentation. But there was no sinister thought in anyone's

mind

at this point.

At the adjutancy, Stauffenberg and Haeften were

anxiously making arrangements for the car that had been organized to rush

them

to the airfield.

At that moment, they heard a deafening explosion from

the direction of the barracks. Fellgiebel gave Stauffenberg a startled look.

Stauffenberg shrugged his shoulders. Sander seemed unsurprised. Mines

around the complex were constantly being detonated by wild animals, he remarked.

It

was around quarter

Stauffenberg and Haeften

left

to one.

69

for the airfield in their chauffeured car as

The alarm had

expeditiously as could be done without causing suspicion. still

not been raised

when Stauffenberg

the gate of the inner zone.

perimeter.

He had

knew him and was prepared

past the guards on

to telephone an

of cavalry) Leonhard von Mollendorf, to authorize his passage.

speed along the bending road to the a

way

The alarm had by then been sounded. He had

officer, Rittmeister (captain

away

bluffed his

greater difficulty leaving the outer

airfield.

On

Once

out,

it

who

was

full

the way, Haeften hurled

package containing the second explosive. The car dropped them ioo

yards from the waiting plane, and immediately turned back. By 1.15p.m. they were on their

way back

to Berlin.

They were

firmly convinced that

one could have survived the explosion; that Hitler was dead. been able to plant the

bomb

in a concrete

bunker, instead of

70

Had

in the

no

they

wooden

hut where the early-afternoon conferences were regularly held, they would

have been Hitler

right.

had been bent over the heavy oaken

elbow, chin in his hand, studying

when

the

bomb went

off

ear-splitting explosion.

- with

air

table,

propped up on

his

reconnaissance positions on a map,

a flash of blue

and yellow flame and an

Windows and doors blew

out.

Clouds of thick

673

674

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 smoke billowed

paper and other debris flew aflame. For a time there

in all directions. Parts of the

was pandemonium. Twenty-four persons had been time of the explosion.

in the briefing-hut at the

blown across the room. Others had

floor or

There were

cries of help.

Human

in the

seeking to get out of the ruins of the hut.

who had

and died

taken the

2

of the

full blast

later that afternoon.

(and, as

smoke and debris, desperately The less fortunate lay in the

suffered the worst injuries were rushed to the

hospital, just over two miles away.

Berger,

man

who had

to the

71

wreckage, some very seriously injured. Eleven of those

Some were hurled

hair or clothes in flames.

shapes stumbled around - concussed,

-

part-blinded, ear-drums shattered

field

wood, and showers of wrecked hut were

up. Flying glass splinters, pieces of

The stenographer, Dr Heinrich bomb, had both legs blown off

Colonel Heinz Brandt, Heusinger's right-hand

transpired, connected with the conspiracy), lost a leg and

it

died the next day, as did General Giinther Korten, chief of the Luftwaffe's general

staff,

Major-General Rudolf Schmundt,

in the barrack-hut,

an eye and a

lost

succumbing

facial burns, eventually

in hospital

some weeks

later.

Of

those

73

Hitler had, remarkably, survived with initial

adjutant,

and suffered serious

leg,

only Keitel and Hitler avoided concussion; and Keitel

alone escaped burst ear-drums.

After the

Wehrmacht

stabbed by a spear of wood. Hitler's

shock of the

blast,

no more than

superficial injuries.

he established that he was

all in

one piece

and could move. Then he made for the door through the wreckage, beating flames from his trousers and putting out the singed hair on the back of his

head as he went. crying out: his

'My

He bumped

Fiihrer,

you are

uniform jacket torn,

underwear difficulty.

moned barely

7

^

in shreds,

He

hands and

alive,

who embraced

you are

his black trousers

74

alive.'

him, weeping and

Keitel helped Hitler,

and beneath them long white

out of the building. But he was able to walk without

immediately returned to his bunker. Dr Morell was sum-

urgently. Hitler lift,

into Keitel,

had

a swollen

swellings and abrasions

(which were also

legs

and painful

on

his left

full

right arm,

which he could

arm, burns and

blisters

on

his

of wood-splinters), and cuts to his

forehead. But those, alongside the burst ear-drums, were the worst injuries

he had suffered.

76

When

was composed, and with tried to kill me.'

Linge, his valet, panic-stricken, rushed a

grim smile on

his face said: 'Linge,

in,

Hitler

someone has

77

Below, Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant, relatively explosion, had been

composed enough,

lightly

injured in the

despite the shock and the lacerations

to his face through glass shards, to rush to the signals hut,

where he

LUCK OF THE DEVIL demanded

on

a block

communications apart from those from

all

Hitler,

Keitel,

and Jodl. At the same time, Below had Himmler and Goring sum-

moned

to Hitler's bunker.

Then he made on

sitting in his study, relief written

tinge of pride,

it

seemed -

way

his face,

who had

there himself.

8

79

His attention had already

carried out the assassination attempt.

According to Below, he rejected suggestions (which he appears have believed) that the

bomb had

was - with a

Hitler

ready to show off

shredded clothing.

his

turned to the question of

his

been planted by

OT

initially to

workers

who were

temporarily at Fiihrer Headquarters to complete the reinforcement of the

compound

against air-raids.

80

By

The

to the missing Stauffenberg.

whom

the minute.

search for Stauffenberg and investigation

had been the

the regime. Hitler's rage at the

mounted by

had turned indubitably

began around 2p.m., though

into the assassination attempt

that point realized that this

this time, suspicion

He was

army

it

was not

at

signal for a general uprising against

leaders he

had always distrusted

ready to wreak terrible vengeance on those

he saw as stabbing the Reich

in the

back

in its

hour of

crisis.

81

Ill

By

this time,

tors there

Stauffenberg was well on his

to him, hesitating to act,

Valkyrie.'

way back to

Berlin.

The

conspira-

were anxiously awaiting his return, or news of what had happened 82

The message

still

unsure whether to proceed with 'Operation

that Fellgiebel

had managed

to get through, even

before Stauffenberg had taken off from Rastenburg, to Major-General Fritz Thiele,

communications chief

he thought. still

alive.

It

was

less clear

than

was

That was

all.

at

There were no

bomb had gone off, whether earlier)

Army High Command, was

that something terrible had happened; the Fiihrer details. It

was unclear whether

Stauffenberg had been prevented

from carrying out the

arrested, whether, in fact, he

attack, or

was even

had

survived.

83

few days

whether Stauffenberg had been

still alive.

Further messages seeping

through indicated that something had certainly happened Lair, but that Hitler

(as a

the

Should 'Valkyrie'

still

in the

Wolf's

go ahead?

No

made for carrying out a coup if Hitler were still And without confirmed news of Hitler's death, Fromm, in his position commander of the reserve army, would certainly not give his approval

contingency plans had been alive.

as

for the coup.

Olbncht concluded that

definitive

news would

was

One

lost.

to take

be to court disaster for

of the plotters,

Hans Bernd

any action before hearing all

concerned. Vital time

Gisevius, connected with the

675

676

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 opposition since 1938 and by

who had

just returned to

now

an Abwehr agent based

Germany, -was

later scathing

incompetence. 'Leaderless and mindless' was in the

how

in

Switzerland

about Olbricht's

he described the group

Bendlerblock awaiting Stauffenberg's return. 84 Meanwhile,

it

had

proved only temporarily possible to block communications from the Wolf's Lair.

Soon

after

4p.m. that afternoon, before any coup had been started, the

lines

were

fully

open again. Si

Stauffenberg arrived back in Berlin between 2.45 and 3.15p.m. There was

no car to meet him. His chauffeur was waiting

at

But Stauffenberg's plane had flown to Tempelhof

(or possible

aerodrome - this

detail

for a car to take

him and Haeften

At such

is

Rangsdorf aerodrome. another Berlin

not fully clear) and he had impatiently to telephone ,

to BendlerstraEe.

It

was

a further delay.

a crucial juncture, Stauffenberg did not reach the headquarters of

where tension was

the conspiracy,

at fever-pitch, until 4.30p.m.

Haeften

in the meantime telephoned from the aerodrome to BendlerstraEe. He announced - the first time the conspirators heard the message - that Hitler

had

was dead. 86 Stauffenberg repeated this when he and Haeften arrived in BendlerstraEe. He had stood with General Fellgiebel outside the barrack-hut, he said, and seen with his

own

emergency vehicles

No one could have survived such an explosion,

was

arriving.

his conclusion.

87

believe his message, a

eyes first-aid

men running

to help

and

However convincing he was for those anxious to key figure, General Fromm, knew otherwise. He had

spoken to Keitel around 4p.m. and been told that the Fiihrer had suffered only minor injuries. That apart, Keitel had asked where, in the meantime,

Colonel Stauffenberg might be. 88

Fromm

refused outright Olbricht's request that he should sign the orders

for 'Valkyrie'. But by the time Olbricht

Fromm's

had returned to his room to announce

refusal, his impatient chief of staff

a friend of Stauffenberg,

and long

Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim,

closely involved in the plot,

had already

begun the action with a cabled message to regional military commanders, beginning with the words: 'The Fiihrer, Adolf Hitler,

Fromm

tried to

the contrary,

By now,

it

was

he,

Fromm, who was under

several of the leading conspirators in the Bendlerstraffe.

had taken over command

in the state;

arrest.

When

that,

on

90

there, already

announcing

and that Field-Marshal Erwin

in France,

was now commander-in-chief of

Hoepner, Fromm's designated successor

89

had been contacted and had

Beck was

von Witzleben, former commander-in-chief the conspiracy,

dead.'

have Mertz arrested, Stauffenberg informed him

begun assembling that he

is

in the

and long involved the

army.

91

in

General

coup, dismissed by Hitler in

LUCK OF THE DEVIL disgrace in early 1942. and forbidden to

around 4.30p.m.

wear

uniform again, arrived

a

in civilian clothes, carrying a suitcase. It

uniform which he donned once more that evening.

contained his

92

Scenes in the BendlerstraEe were increasingly chaotic. Conspiring to

arrange a coup d'etat in a police state in the existential

tion

much smacked of dilettante dangling. Too little atten-

circumstances prevailing,

Too many

organization.

scarcely a simple matter. But even

is

had been paid

loose ends had been

left

to small but important details in timing, coordination,

and, not least, communications. Nothing had been done about blowing up the

communications centre

permanently out of action. of radio stations in Berlin

killing Hitler.

succeeded

was

in

It

left at

arrested.

Among

bay.

had simply been taken

the conspirators, too

for granted that

if

Stauffenberg

exploding his bomb, Hitler would be dead. Once that premiss

haphazard

called into question, then disproved, the

What was

the coup d'etat rapidly unravelled.

lines of a

crucial, in the

confirmed news of Hitler's demise, was that there were too loyalists,

it

No steps were taken to gain immediate control and other cities. No broadcast was made by the

and SS leaders were not

Goebbels himself, was

uncertainty;

Fuhrer Headquarters or otherwise putting

The master-propagandist, many were issuing and carrying out commands. There was too much and too much hesitation. Everything had been predicated upon

putchists. Party

involved in

at

93

and too many waverers, with too much to

lose

plan for

absence of

many

regime-

by committing

themselves to the side of the conspirators.

Despite Stauffenberg's intense avowals of Hitler's death, the depressing

news

for the conspirators of his survival gathered strength.

that,

whatever the truth of the matter,

further actions plot, that

was

would be determined by

scarcely enough.

me

'for

this.

94

By mid-evening,

to the insurrectionists that their

coup had

this

man

is

Beck declared dead', and his

But for the success of the it

was

faltered

increasingly obvious

beyond

repair. 'A fine

mess, this (Schone Schweinerei, das),' Field-Marshal Witzleben had muttered to Stauffenberg, It

rapidly

on

his arrival

became plain

in

around 8p.m.

in BendlerstraEe.

95

Fuhrer Headquarters that the assassination

attempt was the signal for a military and political insurrection against the

command

regime. By mid-afternoon, Hitler had given to

Himmler. And

Fiihrer's life

Keitel

had informed army

had been made, but that he

districts that

still

orders from the conspirators to be obeyed.

96

lived,

army

an attempt on the

and on no account were

Loyalists could be found even

in the BendlerstraEe, the seat of the uprising.

there, also in receipt of Keitel's order,

of the reserve

The communications

was by the evening,

officer

as the conspirators

677

678

HITLER 1936-1945 were becoming more and more desperate, passing on the message that the

was having to transmit on -their behalf were invalid. 97 Fromm's adjutants were meanwhile able to spread the word in the building that Hitler was still alive, and to collect together a number of officers prepared to challenge the conspirators, whose already limited and hesitant support, orders he

inside

and outside BendlerstraEe, was by now rapidly draining away. Early

instances

where army

coup dwindled once news

units initially supported the

of Hitler's survival hardened.

98

This was the case, too, in Paris. The military commander there, General Karl Heinrich von Stiilpnagel, and his subordinate officers had firmly backed the insurrectionists. But the supreme

von Kluge,

commander in

vacillated as ever. In a vain call

persuade him to commit himself to the as he put

down

the receiver. 'There

the west, Field-Marshal

from

Berlin,

rising. 'Kluge,'

Beck

failed to

Beck said to Gisevius

you have him!' 99 Once he

learnt that the

assassination attempt had failed, Kluge countered Stiilpnagel's orders to

have the entire SS, SD, and Gestapo

in Paris arrested, dismissed the general,

denounced

later congratulated Hitler

his actions to Keitel,

a treacherous attack

By

on

his

and

had reached

this time, the events in Berlin

the late morning, Goebbels

had been hosting

armaments position, attended by trialists,

on surviving

100

life.

their

a speech

denouement. In

about Germany's

ministers, leading civil servants,

and indus-

given by Speer in the Propaganda Ministry. After the Propaganda

Minister had closed the meeting, he had taken Walther Funk and Albert

Speer back with him into his study to talk about mobilizing remaining resources within

Germany. While they were

to take an urgent telephone call

swift block

Otto Dietrich,

who

attack on Hitler's

alive.

101

still

his

own

remained open. The

broke the news to

life.

talking, he

was suddenly

called

Fiihrer Headquarters. Despite the

on communications, he had

evidently, at this point

place.

from

hot-line to

FHQ

which,

was from Press Chief Goebbels that there had been an call

This was within minutes of the explosion taking

There were few

details at this stage, other

Goebbels, told that

OT

than that Hitler was

workers had probably been responsible,

angrily reproached Speer about the evidently over-casual security pre-

cautions that had been taken.

102

The Propaganda Minister was unusually quiet and pensive over lunch. Somewhat remarkably, in the circumstances, he then retired for his usual afternoon siesta. He was awakened between 2 and 3p.m. by the head of his press office, Wilfried

von Oven, who had

just

taken a phone-call from an

agitated Heinz Lorenz, Dietrich's deputy. Lorenz

had dictated

a brief text

-

LUCK OF THE DEVIL -

drafted, he said, by Hitler himself

Goebbels was

little

in transmitting the

for

immediate radio transmission.

taken with the terse wording, and remarked that urgency

news was

less

important than making sure

couched for public consumption.

He

it

was

suitably

gave instructions to prepare an

adequately massaged commentary. At this stage, the Propaganda Minister clearly

had no idea of the gravity of the

situation, that

army

officers

had

been involved, and that an uprising had been unleashed. Believing some

OT

breach of security had allowed unreliable attack, he

had been told that Hitler was

know. Even

so, his

own

during the afternoon,

workers to perpetrate some

More than

alive.

behaviour after

when he attended

first

that he did not

hearing the news, and then

to regular business

and showed

unusual dilatoriness in putting out the broadcast urgently demanded from

Fuhrer Headquarters, was odd. Possibly he had decided that any immediate

had passed, and that he would await further information before

crisis

communique. More probably, he was unsure of

putting out any press

developments and wanted to hedge

his bets.

Eventually, after this lengthy interval, further

ended

his inaction.

He

news from

the Wolf's Lair

rang Speer and told him to drop everything and rush

over to his residence, close to the Brandenburg Gate. There he told Speer

he had heard from Fuhrer Headquarters that a full-scale military putsch in

was under way. Speer immediately

the entire Reich

offered Goebbels his

support in any attempt to defeat and crush the uprising. Within minutes, Speer noticed armed troops on the streets outside, ringing the building. By this time,

it

was

early evening,

and disappeared into all

his

103 around 6.30p.m. Goebbels took one glance

bedroom, putting

104 The eventualities' — in his pocket.

Himmler made him worried. Perhaps the hands of the putschists? Perhaps he

were

103

rife.

The

a

little

fact that he

box of cyanide

pills

had been unable

the Reichsfiihrer-SS

had

-

'for

to locate

fallen into

was even behind the coup? Suspicions

elimination of such an important figure as Goebbels ought

to have been a priority for the conspirators.

Amazingly, no one had even

thought to cut off his telephone. This, and the fact that the leaders of the uprising

had put out no proclamation over the radio, persuaded the

Propaganda Minister that

all

was not

lost,

even though he heard disquieting

106

moving on Berlin. The guard-battalion surrounding Goebbels's house was under the command of Major Otto-Ernst Remer, thirty-two years old at the time, a

reports of troops

who initially believed the fiction constructed by the down a rising by disaffected groups in the the Fuhrer. When ordered by his superior, the Berlin

fanatical Hitler-loyalist,

plotters that they were putting

SS and Party against

679

680

HITLER 1936-1945 Commandant, Major-General Paul von Hase, to take part in sealing 107 off the government quarter, Remer -obeyed without demur. He soon became suspicious, however, that what he had first heard was untrue; that City

he was,

in fact,

helping suppress not a putsch of Party and SS leaders against

Hitler, but a military

had

it,

coup against the regime by rebellious

Hans Hagen,

Lieutenant

As luck

officers.

a National Socialist Leadership Officer

(N S-Fuhrungsoffizier) charged with inspiring Nazi principles among the had that afternoon lectured Remer's battalion on behalf of the

troops,

Propaganda Ministry. 108 Hagen now used

Remer

his fortuitous contact to

undermine the conspiracy against

to help

Hitler.

Hagen, through the

mediation of Deputy Gauleiter of Berlin Gerhard Schach, persuaded Goeb-

Remer,

bels to speak directly to ing,

and

to

win him

over.

him of what was

to convince

Hagen

really

happen-

then, through an intermediary, sought out

Remer, played on the seeds of doubt

in his

mind about

which

the action in

he was engaged, and talked him into disregarding the orders of his superior,

von Hase, and going

to see Goebbels.

At

this point,

Remer was

whether Goebbels was part of an internal party coup against

made

a mistake,

it

still

unsure

Hitler. If he

could cost him his head. However, after some hesitation,

he agreed to meet the Propaganda Minister.

Goebbels reminded him of loyalty to Hitler

his

oath to the Fiihrer.

Remer expressed

and the Party, but remarked that the

his

was dead.

Fiihrer

Consequently, he had to carry out the orders of his commander, Major-

General von Hase. 'The Fiihrer

him only

a

is

alive!'

Goebbels retorted.

few minutes ago.' The uncertain Remer was

Goebbels offered to

let

Remer speak

7p.m. Within minutes, the

call to the

'I

spoke with

visibly wavering.

himself with Hitler.

It

was around

Wolf's Lair was made. Hitler asked

Remer whether he recognized his voice. Standing rigidly to attention, Remer said he did. 'Do you hear me? So I'm alive! The attempt has failed,' he registered Hitler saying. 'A tiny clique of ambitious officers

away with me. But now we have short shrift of this plague.

You

wanted

the saboteurs of the front. We'll

are commissioned by

me

You

are under

my

personal

command

Reichsfuhrer-SS arrives in the Reich capital!' persuasion. All Speer, in the Fiihrer

.

.

.

room

if

necessary

for this purpose until the

Remer needed no

further

time could hear, was, 'Jawohl,

Remer was put von Hase. He was to follow all

Jawohl, as you order,

security in Berlin to replace

at the

my

109

Fiihrer.'

do

make

with the task of

immediately restoring calm and security in the Reich capital,

by force.

to

in

my

charge of

instructions

from Goebbels. 110

Remer arranged

for

Goebbels to speak to

his

men. Goebbels addressed

LUCK OF THE DEVIL the guard battalion in the garden of his residence

won them

rapidly

communique

over.

111

Almost two hours

telling listeners of the attack

around 8.30p.m., and

earlier,

on

he had put out a radio

Hitler, but

how

the Fiihrer

had suffered only minor abrasions, had received Mussolini that afternoon, and was already back

was

Hitler's survival

work.

at his

112

For those

a vital piece of information.

cordon around the government quarter was

was by now needed

still

wavering, the news of

Between

lifted.

113

8

and 9p.m. the

The guard-battalion

for other duties: rooting out the conspirators in their

headquarters in Bendlerstraf^e.

The high-point of the conspiracy had

passed.

For the plotters, the writing was on the wall.

IV Some were already seeking to extricate themselves even before Goebbels's communique broadcast the news of Hitler's survival. 114 By mid-evening, the group of conspirators in the Bendlerblock, the Wehrmacht High Command building in the BendlerstraEe, were as good as all that was left of the uprising. Remer's guard-battalion was surrounding the building. Panzer units loyal to the regime were closing in on Berlin's city centre. Troop commanders were no longer prepared to listen to the plotters' orders. Even in the

Bendlerblock

itself,

senior officers were refusing to take orders

the conspirators, reminding since the radio

A

group of

them of the oath they had taken

had broadcast news of

his survival,

staff officers, dissatisfied

was

from

to Hitler which,

still

valid.

113

with Olbricht's increasingly lame

explanation of what was happening, and, whatever their feelings towards Hitler, not unnaturally anxious in the light of their

own

became

skins,

rebellious.

Soon

an evidently

after 9p.m.,

lost

cause to save

arming themselves,

they returned to Olbricht's room. While their spokesman, Lieutenant-

Colonel Franz Herber, was talking to Olbricht, shots were corridor, one of flurry,

which

his

men

and the injured Stauffenberg also

reserve army, Mertz, Beck, Haeften,

his

to speak to

Fromm and was

told he

was

still

in

apartment (where he had been kept under guard since the afternoon).

One

of the rebel officers immediately

and told by

It was a brief Fromm's office, where choice as commander of the

pressed into

Colonel-General Hoepner, the conspirators'

demanded

on the

Stauffenberg in the shoulder.

hit

no more. Herber and

gathered. Herber

fired

now

Fromm

made

his

way

there,

was admitted,

what had happened. The guard outside Fromm's door had

vanished. Liberated,

Fromm

returned to his office to confront the

68l

682

HITLER 19 3 6-1945 putschists.

was around 10p.m. when

It

doorway of

He

his office.

massive frame appeared in the

his

scornfully cast his eye over the utterly dispirited

leaders of the insurrection. 'So, gentlemen,' he declared,

do

to

you what you did

As Gisevius

later

to

me

this afternoon.'

pointed out, what the conspirators had done to

room and

had been to lock him

in his

Fromm was

He had

less naive.

his

weapons. Beck asked to retain use of

earlier days.

it

and demanded they surrender

Fromm

his 'for private use'.

moment

urged him to get on with

it.

all

ordered him to

he was thinking of

Beck put the gun to

head, but only succeeded in grazing himself on the temple. the others a few

Fromm

him sandwiches and wine. 11 save - or so he thought. He told

immediately. Beck said at that

Fromm

to

give

neck to

the putchists they were under arrest

make

'now I'm going

116

Fromm

his

offered

moments should they wish to write any last words. Hoepner

availed himself of the opportunity, sitting at Olbricht's desk; so did Olbricht himself. Beck, meanwhile, reeling

from the glancing blow

to his head,

refused attempts to take the pistol from him, and insisted on being allowed

another shot. Even then, he only managed a severe head-wound. With Beck writhing on the floor, battalion

Fromm left the room

to learn that a unit of the guards

had entered the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. He knew,

too, that

Himmler, the newly appointed commander of the reserve army, was on

He

his

room name of the Fiihrer. Mertz, Olbricht, Haeften, and 'this colonel whose name I will no longer mention' had been sentenced to death. 'Take a few men and execute this way. There was no time to

lose.

and announced that he had held

returned to his

after five

minutes

a court-martial in the

sentence downstairs in the yard at once,' he ordered an officer standing by.

own shoulders, stating that the others had been merely carrying out his orders. Fromm said nothing, as the four men were taken to their execution, and Hoepner - initially also Stauffenberg tried to take

all

responsibility

on

his

earmarked for execution, but spared for the time being following

a private

Fromm - was led out into captivity. With a glance at the Fromm commanded one of the officers to finish him off. The

discussion with

dying Beck,

former Chief of the General Staff was unceremoniously dragged into the

room and shot dead. 118 The condemned men were rapidly escorted downstairs into the courtyard, where a firing-squad often men drawn from the guard-battalion was already adjacent

waiting.

To add

the courtyard

to the

macabre

scene, the drivers of the vehicles parked in

had been ordered to turn

their headlights

on the

little pile

of

sand near the doorway from which Stauffenberg and his fellow-conspirators

emerged. Without ceremony, Olbricht was put on the sand-heap and

LUCK OF THE DEVIL promptly shot. Next to be brought forward was Stauffenberg. Just as the execution-squad opened

and died

first. It

was

fire,

no

to

Haeften threw himself in front of Stauffenberg,

avail.

Stauffenberg was immediately placed again

on the sand-heap. As the shots rang out, he was heard to

cry:

'Long

live

holy Germany.' Seconds later, the execution of the last of the four, Mertz

von Quirnheim, followed.

Fromm

promptly had a telegram dispatched,

announcing the bloody suppression of the attempted coup and the execution of the ringleaders. in the

Then he gave an impassioned address to those assembled wondrous salvation to the work of

courtyard, attributing Hitler's

He ended

providence.

with a three-fold 'Sieg HeiP to the Fuhrer.

While the bodies of the executed men, along with Beck's corpse which had been dragged downstairs into the yard, were taken off

in a lorry to be

buried - next day Himmler had them exhumed and cremated - the remaining

(among them Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulen-

conspirators in the Bendlerblock

burg, Stauffenberg's brother Berthold, and arrested.

It

was around

Yorck von Wartenburg) were

half an hour after midnight.

119

Apart from the lingering remnants of the coup

in Paris,

Prague, and

Vienna, and apart from the terrible and inevitable reprisals to follow, the

attempt to topple Hitler and his regime from within was over.

last

Hours

earlier

on

this eventful

20 July 1944, shortly after arriving back

in his

bunker following the explosion, Hitler had refused to contemplate cancelling the planned visit of the Duce, scheduled for 2.30p.m. that afternoon, but

delayed half an hour because of the late arrival of Mussolini's train.

was

to prove the last of the seventeen meetings of the

was

certainly the strangest.

that Hitler

with his

He

had

left

just

escaped an attempt on his

hand, since he had

told the shocked

wooden hut where the devastation,

two

Outwardly composed, there was life.

He

the explosion

had taken

accompanied only by the

led

place. In a

It

to detect

him

arm.

122

to the ruined

macabre scene, amid

interpreter, Paul Schmidt, Hitler

map, when the bomb went

the singed hair at the back of his head. Hitler sat still

It 121

greeted Mussolini

described to his fellow-dictator where he had stood, right

Schmidt found a

little

difficulty in raising his injured right

Duce what had happened, then

the table as he studied the

dictators.

120

off.

arm leaning on He showed him

down on an upturned

box.

usable stool amid the debris for Mussolini. For a few

moments, neither dictator

said a

word. Then Hitler,

in a quiet voice, said:

683

'

684

HITLER 1936-194 5 'When I go through

again ...

it all

while others present in the is

room

I

conclude from

my wondrous

received serious injuries

.

.

.

salvation,

that nothing

He was ever more convinced, he added, 123 their common cause to a victorious end.

going to happen to me.'

that

it

to him to lead The same theme, that Providence had saved him, ran through Hitler's address which was transmitted by all radio stations soon after midnight. He

was given

had already inquired

in

mid-afternoon

how

quickly arrangements for a

broadcast could be made, and been told that the earliest was 6p.m. That

was

unrealistic.

The speech

taken up with Mussolini's to be

networked on

all

still

visit.

had

to be written,

and the afternoon was

made for the speech The equipment for the

Preparations had to be

radio stations, and recorded.

broadcast had to be brought by road from Konigsberg. But the technical

crew were not immediately available; they had gone off swimming Baltic.

124

Possibly, too, Hitler lost

some

diversions of the day. At any rate,

it

in the

interest in the idea during the

seems once more to have taken

Goebbels's prompting to persuade him of the necessity of a brief address to the

German

people.

125

It

was

after

midnight before the broadcast eventually

took place, followed by addresses by Goring and Donitz. Hitler said he

them hear

was speaking

his voice,

them about

to the

German people

for

126

two

and know that he was uninjured and

a crime without parallel in

German

reasons: to

well;

and to

let tell

history. 'A tiny clique of

ambitious, unconscionable, and at the same time criminal, stupid officers

has forged a plot to eliminate rotten) with

He

me and

at the

same time

to eradicate {auszu-

me the staff practically of the German armed forces' leadership.

likened

it

to the stab-in-the-back of 1918. But this time, the 'tiny

gang of criminal elements' would be 'mercilessly eradicated (unbarmherzig ausgerottety

.

On

three separate occasions he referred to his survival as 'a

sign of Providence that

I

must continue

my work, and therefore will continue

127 it'.

In fact, as so often in his

life, it

him, but luck: the luck of the

had not been Providence that had saved

devil.

15 NO WAY OUT

'Rather sacrifice everything, absolutely everything, for victory, than for

school for all

if

wanted

Bolshevism

.

.

.

What would

I'm going to end up in Siberia?

to think in this

A

teenage

.

still

.

But

go to if

we

way, there would be no hope

So, head high. Trust in our will

left.

I

.

girl's

and our

leadership!!!'

diary entry, September 1944

always claimed that the Fuhrer has been sent to us

'It's

from God.

I

don't doubt

God, though not

in

it.

The Fuhrer was

sent to us

order to save Germany, but to ruin

Providence has determined the destruction of the people, and Hitler

from

is

it.

German

the executor of this will.'

Reported opinion

in the Stuttgart region,

November 1944

'If it

the

doesn't succeed,

war

I

see

no other

possibility of bringing

to a favourable conclusion.' Hitler, to Speer, speaking in

autumn 1944 of the

forthcoming Ardennes offensive

'We'll not capitulate. Never.

take a world with

We

can go down. But we'll

us.'

Hitler, to his Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus in the last

von Below,

days of December 1944

'Now

finally

I

who have been sabotaging my work for years,' the plot against him started to emerge. 'Now I

have the swine

raged Hitler as details of

have proof: the entire General Staff

1

is

contaminated.' His long-standing,

deep-seated distrust of his army leaders his

- an

inevitable consequence of

ready acceptance of Keitel's fawning description of him following the

triumph

in

warlord of

France in 1940 as an unparalleled military genius, the 'greatest all

time', together with the inability of the generals, in his eyes,

to achieve final victory and, since the

endless array of defeats

blindingly obvious to setbacks: they

years,'

won

'It

long ago. Here

that Hitler

are not front,'

2

Russian winter, to stave off the

its

confirmation.

his military plans

It

now seemed

had encountered such

had been sabotaged throughout by the treachery of

he ranted.

heroes).

him why

'Now I know why

officers.

first

- had found

was is

all

my

my

his

army

had

to fail in recent

treason! But for those traitors,

we would have

all

great plans in Russia

justification before history' (an indication, too,

was consciously looking to

pantheon of Teutonic

his place in the

Goebbels, as so often, echoed Hitler's sentiments. 'The generals

opposed to the Fiihrer because we are experiencing he entered in his diary. 'Rather,

front because the generals are

opposed

of an 'inner blood-poisoning'.

we

crises at the

are experiencing crises at the 3

was convinced

to the Ftihrer.' Hitler

With leading positions occupied by

traitors

bent on destroying the Reich, he railed, with key figures such as General

Eduard Wagner (responsible and General Erich Fellgiebel

as Quartermaster-General for

quarters) connected to the conspiracy, military tactics

had been known

'permanent treachery'

all

army

supplies)

(chief of signals operations at Fiihrer

along.

in

It

it

was no wonder

that

advance by the Red Army.

It

Head-

German had been

was symptomatic of an underlying

'crisis

688

HITLER 1936-1945 in morale'.

Action ought to have been taken sooner.

after all, for

one and a half years that there were

now, an end had of history have

made. 'These most base creatures

to be

worn

the soldier's uniform, this rabble

from bygone times, must be got

itself

rid of

recovery would follow recovery from the

'Germany's

It

had been known,

traitors in the

who

in the

whole

which has preserved

and driven

crisis in

army. But

out.' Military

morale.

4

It

would be

salvation.'^

I

Vengeance was uppermost

Augean

the task of cleansing the taken.

He would

mind. There would be no mercy in

in Hitler's

stables. Swift

and ruthless action would be

'wipe out and eradicate (ausmerzen und ausrottenY the lot

of them, he raged.

6

soldier's execution

'These criminals' would not be granted an honourable

by firing-squad. They would be expelled from the Wehr-

macht, brought as civilians before the court, and executed within two hours of sentence. 'They must hang immediately, without any mercy,' he declared.

He

7

up a military 'Court of Honour', in which senior generals (including among others Keitel, Rundstedt - who presided - and gave orders to

set

Guderian) would expel in disgrace those found to have been involved in the plot.

8

Those subsequently sentenced

to death by the People's Court, he

ordered, were to be hanged in prison clothing as criminals.

favourably of Stalin's purges of his

officers.

10

'The Fiihrer

is

9

He spoke

extraordinarily

furious at the generals, especially those of the General Staff,' noted Goebbels after seeing Hitler

on 22

'He

July.

is

absolutely determined to set a bloody

example and to eradicate a freemasons' lodge which has been opposed to us

all

the

the time and has only awaited the

most

critical

hour.

moment

to stab us in the

back

in

The punishment which must now be meted out must

have historic dimensions.' 11 Hitler in

had been outraged

at

Colonel-General Fromm's peremptory action

having Stauffenberg and the other leaders of the attempted coup immedi-

ately executed

by firing-squad.

He gave

orders forthwith that other plotters

captured should appear before the People's Court. 12 The President of the People's Court, thies

Roland

Freisler, a fanatical

Nazi who, despite early sympa-

with the radical Left, had been ideologically committed to the volkiscb

- a classical instance of 'working towards the Fiihrer' pronouncing judgement as the 'Fiihrer would judge the case himself. The People's Court was, for him, expressly a 'political cause since the early 1920s, saw himself

NO WAY OUT court'.

the

Under

Court had

that he

his presidency, the

risen

from 102

number

1941 to 2,097 in 1944.

in

had already gained notoriety

Recapitulating

comments

Hitler's

of death sentences delivered by

remarked that those implicated

It

was

little

wonder

as a 'hanging judge (Blutrichter)\

at

meeting,

recent

their

in the plot

li

Goebbels

were to be brought before the

People's Court 'and sentenced to death'. Freisler, he added, 'would find the right tone to deal with them'.

14

Hitler himself

was keen above

remembering the leniency of the Munich court

him

to turn his trial

in

all

- perhaps

1924 which had allowed

following the failed putsch into a personal propaganda

triumph - that the conspirators should be permitted 'no time for long speeches' during their defence. 'But Freisler will see to that,' he added.

That's our Vyschinsky'

-

show-trials of the 1930s. It

took

Fromm,

little

encouragement from Goebbels to persuade Hitler that

Stauffenberg's direct superior officer, had acted so swiftly in an

attempt to cover up his

named by Bormann as

a reference to Stalin's notorious prosecutor in the

15

own

complicity.

Fromm

had, in

in a circular to the Gauleiter in

fact,

already been

mid-evening of 20 July

one of those to be arrested as part of the 'reactionary gang of criminals'

behind the conspiracy.

16

Following the suppression of the coup

in the

Bendlerblock and the swift execution of Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Haeften,

and Mertz von Quirnheim,

Fromm had made

his

way

to the

Propaganda

Ministry, wanting to speak on the telephone with Hitler. Instead of connecting him, Goebbels had had

Fromm

seated in another

himself telephoned Fiihrer Headquarters.

He soon had

room while he the decision he

wanted. Goebbels immediately had the former commander-in-chief of the Reserve

Army

placed under armed guard.

17

After months of imprisonment,

a mockery of a trial before the People's Court, and a trumped-up conviction on grounds of alleged cowardice - despite the less-than-heroic motive of

self-preservation that

had dictated

his role

block on 20 July, he was no coward

hands of

a firing-squad in

March

if

in the Bendler-

eventually die at the

18

1945.

In the confusion in the Bendlerblock late

looked for a time as

on centre-stage

- Fromm would

on the night of 20

July,

it

had

other executions would follow those of the coup's

leaders (together with the assisted suicide of Beck). But the arrival soon after midnight of an SS unit under the command of Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny - the rescuer of Mussolini from captivity the previous summer -

who had been dispatched to the scene of the uprising by Walter Schellenberg, head of SD foreign intelligence, along with the appearance at the scene of SD chief Ernst

Kaltenbrunner and Major Otto Ernst Remer, newly appointed

689

690

HITLER 1936-1945 commander of the Berlin guards battalion and largely responsible for putting down the coup, blocked further summary executions and ended the 19 upheaval. Meanwhile, Himmler himself had flown to Berlin and, in his new temporary capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, had given orders that no further independent action officers held in suspicion.

Shortly before 4 a.m.,

was

to be taken against

20

Bormann was

able to inform the Party's provincial

was

chieftains, the Gauleiter, that the putsch

arrested in the Bendlerstrafte

- including

at

an end.

21

By then, those

Stauffenberg's brother, Berthold,

former civil-servant and deputy Police President of Berlin Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, leading

member

of the 'Kreisau Circle' Peter Graf Yorck

von Wartenburg, Protestant pastor Eugen Gerstenmaier, and landholder and

officer in the

- had been

Abwehr

Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld

led off to await their fate.

Hoepner, arrested by

Fromm

von Witzleben, who had

left

22

Former Colonel-General Erich

but not executed, and Field-Marshal Erwin the Bendlerstrafte before the collapse of the

coup, were also promptly taken into custody, along with a number of others

who had

been implicated.

23

Prussian Finance Minister Popitz, former

Economics Minister Schacht, former Chief of Staff Colonel-General Haider, Major-General

Stieff,

and, from the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris and Major-

General Oster were also swiftly arrested. Major Hans Ulrich von Oertzen, liaison officer for the Berlin

out the

first

Defence District (Wehrkreis

III),

who had given

'Valkyrie' orders, blew himself up with a hand-grenade.

von Tresckow, the

Henning

early driving-force behind the attempts to assassinate

Hitler, killed himself in similar fashion at the front near

Ostrow

in Poland.

General Wagner shot himself. General Fellgiebel refused to do

so.

'You

stand your ground, you don't do that,' he told his orderly. Well aware that his arrest

was imminent, he spent much of

the Wolf's Lair, even congratulated Hitler inevitable fate.

Those who

the afternoon, remarkably, at

on

his survival,

and awaited

his

24

fell

fearsome torture.

into the clutches of the

It

was endured

for the

Gestapo had to reckon with

most part with the idealism, even

heroism, which had sustained them throughout their perilous opposition. In the early stages of their investigations, the

2^

Gestapo managed to squeeze

out remarkably limited information, beyond what they already knew, from those they so grievously maltreated. Even so, as the 'Special Commission,

20 July',

set

up on the day

after

the

attempted

coup

under

SS-

Obersturmbannfuhrer Georg KieEel and soon growing to include 400 officers,

expanded

its

investigations, the

numbers arrested rapidly

swelled.

NO WAY OUT Kieffel

was soon

able to report 600 persons taken into custody.

26

Almost

all

the leading figures in the various branches of the conspiracy were rapidly

captured, though Goerdeler held out under cover until 12 August. Reports

reached Hitler daily of that

it

new names

had been no more than

He was

tentacles stretching further

particularly incensed that even Graf

Helldorf, Berlin Police President, 'Old Fighter' of the Nazi a

SA

former

His early belief

which had opposed

a 'tiny clique' of officers

him had proved mistaken. The conspiracy had than he could have imagined.

27

of those implicated.

Movement, and 28 As the list

leader, turned out to have been deeply implicated.

lengthened, and the extent of the conspiracy became clear

following the remarkably

full

(all

in the eyes of history the significance of the efforts of the

remove Hitler and the conservatives

his regime), Hitler's fury

-

and

bitter

especially the landed aristocracy

accepted him mounted.

29

the

more

so

confession of Goerdeler, anxious to emphasize

'We wiped out

opposition to

resentment against

- who had never

the class struggle

on the

fully

Left, but

unfortunately forgot to finish off (zur Strecke zu bringen) the class struggle

on the Right,' he was heard to remark. 30 But

now was

the worst possible

time to encourage divisiveness within the people; the general

with the aristocracy would have to wait

Even

till

war was

the

over.

showdown

31

Himmler needed no prompting to take revenge against the many of them from aristocratic backgrounds. He

so,

families of the plotters,

told the Gauleiter assembled in Posen a fortnight after the attempt Hitler's life that he

(Blutrache)

9

would

on

act in accordance with the 'blood-vengeance

traditions of old

Germanic law

in eradicating 'treasonable

blood' throughout the entire clan of the traitors. 'The family of Graf Stauffenberg,' he promised, 'will be

wiped out down to

The Gauleiter applauded. Claus von children, cousins, uncles, aunts,

of others involved in the

war

were

its last

member.'

Stauffenberg's wife, brothers, their all

taken into custody. The families

the plot were similarly imprisoned. Only the end of

vitiated the fulfilment of

32

Himmler's intention.

A

full-scale police

operation ('Gewitteraktiorf - 'Storm Action') in late August to round up

opponents of the regime - indirectly rather than the plot of 20 July

- brought

the arrest, in

all,

explicitly a

consequence of

of over 5,000 persons.

ferocity of the onslaught against all conceivable

following the failed bomb-plot was certainly a

33

The

glimmers of opposition

show

of the regime's con-

tinued untrammelled capacity for ruthless repression. But the utter ruthlessness

now

a regime

On

contained more than a mere hint of the desperation that indicated

whose days were numbered.

7 August, the intended show-trials began at the People's Court

in

691

692.

HITLER 1936-1945 The first eight - including Witzleben, Hoepner, Stieff, and Yorck of what became a regular procession of the accused were each marched by two Gestapo men into a courtroom bedecked with swastikas, holding Berlin.

around 300 selected spectators (including the journalists hand-picked by Goebbels) There they had to endure the ferocious wrath, scathing contempt, .

and ruthless humiliation heaped on them by the red-robed president of the court,

Judge Roland

reflected in

its

Freisler.

Seated beneath a bust of Hitler, Freisler's face

contortions extremes of hatred and derision.

He

over no more than a base mockery of any semblance of a legal the death-sentence a certainty visible signs of their

torment

from the

in prison.

outset.

To

in the

with

trial,

The accused men bore

degrade them even

appearance, they were shabbily dressed, without collars and

handcuffed until seated

presided

in physical

ties,

and were

courtroom. Witzleben was even deprived of

The

braces or a belt, so that he had to hold up his trousers with one hand.

accused were not allowed to express themselves properly or explain their

motivation before Freisler cut them short, bawling insults, calling them knaves, traitors, cowardly murderers.

Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld

many murders he had

been wracked by the

would stand none of scoundrel. Are

When,

it.

for instance, later in August,

tried to point out that his conscience

had

witnessed in Poland, Freisler

'Murders?' he screamed. 'You really are a low

you breaking down under

this rottenness?'

34

The order had

been given - probably by Goebbels, though undoubtedly with Hitler's authorization - for the court proceedings to be filmed with a view to showing extracts in the newsreels as well as in a 'documentary' entitled 'Traitors

before the People's Court' ('Verrdter vor

dem V olksgerichf) So .

cameramen had

to inform

him

loudly did

was ruining 35 their sound recordings. Nevertheless, the accused managed some moments of courageous defiance. For instance, after the death sentence had preFreisler shout that the

that he

dictably been pronounced, General Fellgiebel uttered: 'Then hurry with the

hanging,

Mr

President; otherwise

you

will

hang

earlier

And

than we.'

Field-Marshal von Witzleben called out: 'You can hand us over to the

hangman.

In three

to account,

and

a black farce

months the enraged and tormented people

will

drag you alive through the

were the

trials that

Thierack, himself a fanatical Nazi

time surrendered practically the

muck

will call

of the street.'

36

you

Such

even Reich Justice Minister Otto Georg

who

in his ideological

last vestiges

ardour had by

this

of a completely perverted legal

system to the arbitrary police lawlessness of the SS, subsequently complained

about

Freisler's conduct.

Once

the verdicts

37

had been pronounced, the condemned men were taken

NO WAY OUT off,

many

them

of

On

to Plotzensee Prison in Berlin.

Hitler's instructions

they were denied any last rites or pastoral care (though this callous order

was

at least partially

bypassed

in practice)/

for civilian capital offences in the

8

The normal mode

of execution

Third Reich was beheading. 39 But Hitler

had reportedly ordered that he wanted those behind the conspiracy of 20 July 1944 'hanged,

hung up

like meat-carcasses'.

40

In the small, single-storey

execution room, with white-washed walls, divided by a black curtain, hooks,

indeed like meat-hooks, had been placed on a Usually, the only light in the a frequently

used guillotine.

rail just

below the

ceiling.

room came from two windows, dimly

revealing

Now, however,

groups of

conspirators being led to their

doom,

certainly for the

first

the executions were to be filmed and

photographed, as with the filming of the court proceedings presumably line

in

with Hitler's instructions or those of Goebbels, and the macabre scene

was illuminated with bright corner of the

room stood

On

a small table in the

bottle of

cognac - for the

lights, like a film studio.

a table with

a

executioners, not to steady the nerves of the victims.

were led

in,

The condemned men

handcuffed and wearing prison trousers. There were no

last

words, no comfort from a priest or pastor; nothing but the black humour of the

hangman. Eye-witness accounts speak of the steadfastness and dignity

of those executed.

The hanging was

of the prisoner entering the room.

Sometimes

it

came

quickly; in other cases, the

more than twenty minutes.

condemned men had they died. grisly film pile of

And

all

carried out within twenty seconds

Death was not, however, immediate.

In an

their trousers pulled

down by their executioners

the time the camera whirred.

41

later reported seeing a

such photographs lying on Hitler's map-table

a viewing of the executions in the

members

film of the executions

Most

is

of the

before

The photographs and

were taken to Fuhrer Headquarters. Speer

not joined by any

lasting

added gratuitous obscenity, some of the

Wolf's Lair on 18 August. SS-men and some

civilians,

when he

visited the

he added, went into

cinema that evening, though they were

Wehrmacht. 42 Whether

uncertain; the testimony

is

Hitler

contradictory.

saw the

4^

of the executions connected with the attempted coup of 20 July

1944 followed within the next weeks.

By

agony was slow -

Some took

place only

months

later.

the time the blood-letting subsided, the death-toll of those directly

numbered around 200. ^ But it was Hitler's last triumph. His initial euphoria at what he took to be his survival ordained

implicated

by-

Providence, and at the explanation the 'treachery' of the plotters offered for the causes of

Germany's military

ill-fortune,

soon evaporated. The

reality

of daily setbacks, crises, disasters was too strong even for Hitler to suppress

693

694

HITLER I936-I945 completely. There

was

little respite.

He

rapidly had to turn his attention

again to military affairs.

However, the Stauffenberg plot he had suffered in the ficial.

As

bomb

surmounting pain, he made 45

to his entourage.

Blood was

still

and

as

mark on him. The injuries we noted, relatively super-

indestructibility

light of his injuries

But they were

less trivial

and

his

his

46

He

manliness in

and even joked about them

than Hitler himself implied.

wounds almost

seeping through the bandages from the skin

a fortnight after the bomb-attack. right ear,

had been,

own

to emphasize his

if

left its lasting

blast

suffered sharp pain in especially the

hearing was impaired.

47

He was

treated by

Dr Erwin

Giesing, an ear, nose and throat specialist in a nearby hospital, then by

Professor Karl von Eicken,

was now flown

from

in

who had removed

But the ruptured ear-drums, the worst injury,

Berlin.

continued bleeding for days, and took several weeks to heal. for his

some time that his right ear would never balance from the inner-ear injuries made

gave him a tendency to lean rightwards frequent dizziness and malaise.

looked aged,

ill,

and

and

a throat polyp in 1935

strained.^

2

50

recover.

49

48

He

thought

The disturbance

to

his eyes turn to the right

and

when he walked. There was

also

His blood pressure was too high. M

Eleven days after the attack on his

told those present at the daily military briefing that he

was

unfit to

He

life,

speak

he in

public for the time being; he could not stand up for long, feared a sudden attack of dizziness, and

few weeks

later, Hitler

the bomb-attack

was

also worried about not walking straight.

trembling in Hitler's 55

admitted to his doctor, Morell, that the weeks since

no German could dream

and hands

left leg

Morell attributed

it

36

and injections could do nothing

in Hitler's health.

At

least as serious

His sense of distrust and betrayal

By to

of.

,M

Strangely, the

practically disappeared following

to the nervous shock.

however, the tremor had returned. pills

A

had been 'the worst of his life' - adding that he had mastered

the difficulties 'with a heroism

the blast.

53

this time, the

By mid-September,

heavy daily doses of

head off the long-term deterioration

were the pyschological

now

reached paranoid

effects.

levels.

Outward

precautions were swiftly taken. Security was at once massively tightened at

Fuhrer Headquarters. i7 At military briefings,

on thoroughly searched

for

weapons and

medicines were tested for poison. olates or caviar (which he

the

outward

some of

whom

his

Any

was fond

security measures could

own

generals

all

personnel were from

explosives.

58

Hitler's

now

food and

presents of foodstuffs, such as choc-

of),

were immediately destroyed.

do nothing

59

But

to alter the deep shock that

had turned against him. According

to Guderian,

he appointed as successor to Zeitzler as Chief of the General Staff

NO WAY OUT bomb

within hours of Stauffenberg's

more.

It

had already been

grew

a torture that all

self-control

circle

he

difficult

steadily

and

worse from month

He

month.

ro

it

now became

frequently lost

language grew increasingly violent. In his intimate

his

now found no

restraining influence

Although Hitler stressed that vindicated,

exploding, 'he believed no one any

enough dealing with him;

.' .

60

.

his distrust of his military leaders

and though he had found the scapegoats he needed

to himself the setbacks

on

all

had been

to explain

had never contemplated

fronts, he

a plot to

overthrow him being hatched by those close to the heart of the regime, especially by officers

were doing

victory,

who,

all

from straining every sinew for Germany's

far

war effort from within. momentous weeks of defeat

they could to undermine the

In 191 8, according to his distorted vision of the

and revolution, enemies from within had stabbed His entire

at the front.

and

disaster,

new

variant

life in politics

had been aimed

any possible repetition

in eliminating

back those fighting

in the

of such treachery had emerged -

in a

at reversing that

new war. Now,

not by Marxist

led, this time,

home threatening the military effort, but by officers of Wehrmacht who had come close to undermining the war-effort on subversives at

home-front.

61

most

now

the

transformed the underlying suspicion

visceral belief in treachery

army, aimed once more at stabbing struggle for

the

Suspicion had always been deeply embedded in Hitler's

nature. But the events of 20 July into the

a

its

and betrayal

in the

all

around him

back a nation engaged

in the

in a titanic

very survival.

Alongside the thirsting for brutal revenge, the failed bomb-plot gave a further

mighty boost to Hitler's sense of walking with destiny. With

'Providence' on his side, as he imagined, his survival tee that

he would

fulfil his

historic mission.

pure messianism. 'These criminals

annihilate

'They don't

Germany

know

so that

it

to the

was

to

him

the guaran-

intensified the descent into

who wanted

no idea what would have happened secretaries.

It

to

do away with me have

German

people,' Hitler told his

the plans of our enemies,

can never arise again.

If

who want

to

they think that the

Germany to hold Bolshevism in war This must be won by us. Otherwise

western powers are strong enough without check, they are deceiving themselves.

Europe hold

will be lost to Bolshevism.

me back

or eliminate me.

I

And

am

and the only one who can prevent

I

will see to

the only one 62 it.'

it

that

no one

who knows

else

Such sentiments were redolent,

through a distorting mirror, of the Wagnerian redeemer-figure, a hero alone could save the holders of the Grail, indeed the world disaster

-

a latter-day Parsifal.

can

the danger,

itself,

who from

695

696

HITLER I936-I945 But, once

why

reasons

more looking

to his

own

had

the path of destiny

place in history, and looking to the

led to

mounting tragedy

instead of glorious victory, he found a further reason,

of his generals: the weakness of the people.

gave at

him, might have proved weak, have failed be condemned to destruction.

63

It

beyond the treachery

Speer can be believed, Hitler

German people might

time an intimation that the

this

If

Germany,

for

its test

was one of

not deserve

before history, and thus

the few hints, whether in

amid the continued outpourings of optimism about the

public or in private,

outcome of the war,

that Hitler indeed contemplated, even momentarily,

the possibility of total defeat.

Whatever the

news of the

positive gloss he instinctively

and

was not devoid of understanding

perfection, he

successful landing of the western Allies in

of the eastern front which

left

borders of the Reich

the

itself,

insistently placed

upon

he continued to play the role of Fiihrer to

latest setbacks as

for the significance of the

Normandy,

the dramatic collapse

Red Army in striking distance of the ceaseless bombing that the Luftwaffe was the

powerless to prevent, the overwhelming Allied superiority in weaponry and

raw

not win.

The hope

and gloomy reports of

materials,

Kluge and 64

Rommel had both

a

mounting,

But he continued to dismiss out of hand

was

situation

critical fuel shortage.

urged Hitler to end the war which he could all

talk of suing for peace.

'not yet ripe for a political solution', he declared. 'To

for a favourable political

severe military defeats

is

moment

to

do something during

a time of

went on, during

naturally childish and naive,' he

on 31 August 1944. 'Such moments can present themselves when you have successes.' But where were

the military briefing session with his generals

was

the successes likely to materialize? All he could point to certainty that at

the weight of

some point

inner tensions.

its

a feeling of

would break down under matter of waiting for that moment,

the Allied coalition It

was

a

however tough the situation was.

'My

task has been,' he continued, 'especially since 1941 under

my

stances to lose since he

knew

nerve.'

that

it

spreading this iron

He

lived,

could only be will,

he said,

won

out this struggle

just to carry

through a

no circum-

will of iron. Instead of

the General Staff officers

had undermined

disseminating nothing but pessimism. But the fight would continue, necessary even on the Rhine. of history.

'We

will

under

all

He

once more evoked one of

any longer, and

German

until

we

damned opponents

get a peace

nation for the next

fifty

is

if

his great heroes

circumstances carry on the struggle

Frederick the Great said, one of our

it,

until, as

tired of fighting

which secures the existence of the

or a hundred years and'

- he was back

at

NO WAY OUT - 'which, above

a central obsession

time, as

happened

and

plot,

to his

survival. 'Fate could

some pathos:

continued, adding with

have been for

me

sleepless nights,

that I'm

still

personally,

I

all

alive,

that

defile

our honour a second

'If

have taken a different

my

had been ended,

life

and have

strain. In a

rest

mere fraction of

it

would second

a

and your eternal peace. For the

They were somewhat rambling thoughts. But they were

fact

6i

nevertheless have to thank Providence.

I

bomb

turn,' he

might say, only a liberation from worries,

and severe nervous

you're freed from

does not

This thought brought him directly to the

in 1918.'

own

all,

plain

enough

in

meaning: a negotiated peace could not be considered except from a position

was

of strength (which

in realistic

terms unimaginable); the only hope was

and the crass

to hold out until the Allied coalition collapsed (but time,

imbalance of material resources, were scarcely on Germany's

saw

historic role, as he

on the

capitulation

Germany and

it,

was

to eradicate any possibility of a second

lines of that of

November

calamity; but suicide

German

the consequences for the

side); his

1918; he alone stood between

would bring

release for

him (whatever

people) within a split second. In Hitler's

extraordinary perspective, his historic task was to continue the fight to the point of utter destruction

- and even

self-destruction

another 'November 1918' and to erase the nation.

It

was

a task of infinitely greater

memory

-

in

order to prevent

of that 'disgrace' for the

honour than negotiating

a peace

from weakness - something which would bring new shame on himself and the

German

people.

It

amounted

to scarcely less than a realization that the

time for a last stand was approaching, and that no holds would be barred in a struggle likely to

vision

was

should go

in oblivion,

the quest for historical

down

This meant to

end

in flames in the process.

in turn that there

was no way out. The failure of the conspiracy

remove Hitler took away the

German

war. For the

where the only remaining monumental greatness - even if Reich and people

people,

it

last

opportunity of a negotiated end to the

ensured the near total destruction of their

country. Whatever the varied reactions to the events of 20 July and their

aftermath, ordinary

Germans were exposed over

months

the next eight

the laying waste of their cities in relentless bombing-raids against

there

was

as

good

an obviously

as

futile

no defence,

war

to the painful losses of loved ones fighting

against vastly superior

privations in the material conditions of their daily fear

and repression

at the

to

which

enemy lives,

forces, to acute

and

to intensified

hands of a regime that would stop

at nothing.

war which Germany had inflicted on the rest of Europe were rebounding if, even now, in far milder form - on to the Reich itself. The horrors of

a

697

698

HITLER 1936-1945 With

and a leadership unable

internal resistance crushed,

to bring victory,

incapable of staving off defeat, and unwilling to attempt to find peace, only total military destruction could bring a release.

For Hitler's countless victims throughout Europe, the advances, impress-

though they had been, of the Red Army

ive

American forces

west and the south, were not yet nearly at the point

in the

where they could force an end

to the war,

suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime.

not reached

its

peak.

and the Anglo-

in the east

would

It

rise in

and with

it

the immeasurable

The human misery had,

crescendo in the months

in fact,

still

still

to come.

II

Those who had risked

their lives in the plot to assassinate Hitler

were

fully

66 aware that they were acting without the masses behind them. In the event

of a successful coup, the conspirators

war would win over had

at

had

to

hope that

a rapid

the vast majority of the population

one time been admirers of Hitler

'stab-in-the-back-legend' (such as

- and

end to the

- most of

whom

that the emergence of a

had poisoned German

new

politics after the

World War) could be avoided. 67 If they were to fail, the plotters knew they would not have a shred of popular support, that their act would be

First

seen as one of base treachery, and that they could expect to be regarded

with nothing but outright ignominy by the mass of the population.

The Nazi

leadership was, however, leaving nothing to chance.

One

Gauleiter, Siegfried Uiberreither, the Nazi leader in Styria, inquired within

hours of Stauffenberg's for Hitler

and to

bomb exploding whether public displays of support He was told that 'loyalty rallies' were welcomed,

were envisaged.

that, in the light of his request, instructions

all

mass

would soon be transmitted

Gauleiter. These were sent the next day, encouraging huge open-air rallies 'in

which the joy and

satisfaction of the people at the wonderful

would be expressed. 68 Such rallies took place over towns and cities throughout Germany. Hundreds of

salvation of the Fiihrer' the following days in

thousands of ordinary citizens and Wehrmacht representatives 'spontaneously' gave voice to their shock and outrage at the 'foul attempt on the

Fuhrer's

life

{das ruchlose Attentat gegen

happiness that he had survived

The sentiments were opinion taken by the

den FiihrerY and

their relief

and

69 it.

identical to those recorded in early soundings of

SD and

passed on by the Chief of the Security Police

Ernst Kaltenbrunner to Martin

Bormann

after the

news of the assassination

NO WAY OUT attempt had spread like wildfire.

A

report, compiled

first

on 21

July,

announced uniform reactions throughout the German people of 'strongest consternation, shock, deep outrage, and fury'. Even,

was claimed,

it

in

among sections of the population known to be critical of Nazism, sentiments could be registered; not a single comment hinted at sym-

districts or

such

pathy for the planned assassination. In some

have burst into tears

in

cities,

when

shops or on the streets

women were

said to

they heard what had

A remark commonly heard was: 'Thank God the Fiihrer is alive.' Many were prepared to accept Hitler's own version in seeing his survival as happened.

a sign of

Providence and an indication that, despite

would end

in victory.

setbacks, the

all

'mystical, religious notions with the person of the Fiihrer'.

People

initially

jumped

hatred against the British.

70

enemy agents were behind new upsurge of speech held so late at night that

to the conclusion that

- an assumption

the assassination attempt

71

After Hitler's

that triggered a

most people were already in bed, but repeated July - the fury turned against those seen as outrage that the attempt on the Fiihrer's of the

war

Very many people, the report added, connected

(as Hitler

treachery behind Germany's military disasters.

There was

72

himself saw

it)

officers

as the

Full expectations of a

were placed

ruthless 'cleansing' of the officer corps

afternoon of 21

traitors within.

had been carried out by

life

Wehrmacht, something viewed

in the early

in the 'strong

man'

Heinrich Himmler. Approving comments of Stalin's purges could be heard.

And a speech by Robert Ley violently denouncing the aristocracy gave rise to widespread castigation of the 'high-ups', 'big noises', and 'monocle-chaps'.

There was resentment that the burdens of evenly; that too

many people had been

needed to be forced into this

line,

'total

war' had not been spread

able to avoid them. Such people

however tough the measures were

war

about. Whatever sacrifices were needed to bring the

to bring

to a speedy

3 and victorious end would then be willingly borne."

The

failure of the

bomb-plot revived strong support for Hitler not only

within Germany, but also

among

captured by the western Allies in censor in

who had examined

There was, for

soldiers at the front.

instance, a rise in expressions of faith in Hitler

Normandy

among

in late July.

74

prisoners-of-war

And

the military

45,000 letters of ordinary soldiers from the front

August 1944 commented on 'the high number of joyful expressions about There was no compulsion in letters back home

the salvation of the Fuhrer'.

7:>

even to refer to the attempt on Hitler's

life.

The

pro-Hitler sentiment

was

doubtless genuine.

Four days

after Stauffenberg's

bomb had

exploded, the

SD

reports

still

700

HITLER 1936-1945 unanimous condemnation of the assassination attempt

stressed the almost

and the joy

at the Fiihrer's survival. -There

was now, however,

other voices. 'Only in absolutely isolated cases,'

not sharply condemned.' regret at the

was

still

But - so the

tried to kill the Fiihrer, as

It

fully anticipated

comments. 76

mirrored in the SD's reports, had, as

by the plotters themselves

to bolster the regime at a critical time,

despite the increasingly self-evident catastrophic course of the war. Fiihrer cult

was

far

two

years.

we have

He had

seen,

had unquestionably waned over

personally been

drawn

blame for the miseries of a war almost certain to end imagine, therefore, that the unanimity

SD

recorded by the the

The

from extinguished.

But Hitler's popularity, as the previous

we

in the event of

highlighted the extensive reservoir of Hitler's popularity that

and could be tapped

existed

Vienna had

of support for Hitler and ferocity of condemnation of those

have noted, been their failure.

in

was bound to happen because the war SD claimed - even 'politically indifferent'

like that

sectors of the population reacted heatedly against such

The backlash

a hint of

'was the attack

outcome of the bomb-attack. Another woman

lasting so long.

who had

said,

A woman in Halle had been arrested for expressing

remarked that something

was

it

German people

increasingly into the

in defeat. It

is

hard to

of feelings of joy at his survival

could have been an accurate reflection of the views of as a whole.

The SD was unquestionably

registering

widely expressed opinion, indeed indicating a real upsurge in pro-Hitler feeling.

But the opinions the SD's informants were able to hear would

doubtless have been those emanating in the main from regime-loyalists,

Nazi

fanatics,

and those anxious

to demonstrate their support or dispel any

suspicions that they might be critical of Hitler. People with less positive

views were well advised to keep them to themselves - at such a juncture quite especially. incautious remarks had late July

77

risks.

A

for

become more draconian. Expressing out loud in

1944 regret that Hitler was

people did take

critical

As war-fortunes had worsened, punishment

still

alive

was

as

good

as suicidal.

Some

Berlin tram conductor ventured a brief but pointed

commentary on Goebbels's radio address on 26 July, in which the Propaganda Minister had castigated the plotters. 'It makes you want to throw up,' the

tram conductor remarked. 78

He

seems to have got away with

Critical sentiments could be expressed safely,

or

among

trusted family or friends.

One

however, only

it.

in privacy,

boy, for instance, just sixteen at

on 21 July 1944 in the remarkable diary that he kept house near Hamburg: 'Assassination attempt on Hitler!

the time, confided in the attic of a

Yesterday, an attack on Hitler with explosives was carried out in his study.

NO WAY OUT Unfortunately, as

by a miracle the swine was unharmed

if

ia.m. Hitler gave a speech on the radio.

repeated six times that

measures give the

army

to

wipe out "a tiny cabal".'

even showing

it

.

.

.

Last night at

very noticeable that Hitler

only a matter of "a tiny clique". But his extensive

it's

to these claims.

lie

It's

79

You

don't need to put in an entire

The boy kept

the diary to himself, not

to his parents.

Another diary entry, from

one-time Hitler-loyalist whose former

a

enthusiasm had turned cold, confined

itself to

comment: 'Assassination attempt on the

we can

him, and therefore

One

also best 'coded' for safety.

"Providence" has saved

Fiihrer.

believe in victory.'

80

ambiguous

the cynically

Letters to loved ones

were

well-educated German, for years a strong

of Nazism, writing on 21 July from Paris to his Canadian wife in

critic

Germany, remarked about the events of the previous day: 'For some people it

can hardly have been a good night, but

ended

as

did.

it

For

this

war, as

I

we must

be thankful that the affair

have always pointed out, can only be

81 brought to the desired conclusion by Adolf Hitler!'

Signs that there were voices

beyond the unanimous condemnation summa-

by the SD, and that the silence of a large majority of the population

rized

was evocative, could even be found localities.

One

of the population

would have welcomed

attempt because in the

end to the war from by a

from provincial

in official reports

such report from Upper Bavaria frankly admitted that 'part

first 82

it'.

woman, hidden

instance they

the success of the assassination

would have hoped

for an earlier

Another report relayed the perilous remark uttered

in the

gloom

in the

corner of a dark air-raid shelter:

'If

83

only they'd have got him.'

At the front, too, opinion about the bomb-plot was more divided than appearances suggested. Implying any regret that Hitler had survived was to court disaster. Letters

home had

and might be intercepted.

was even

that there

1944,

One

telling that

was

soldier

attention of the censor.

we heard

Fiihrer. Yes,

to pass through the control of the censor

was

safest to

keep quiet. So

a slight increase in criticism of the

and even more

the sender.

It

It

of

ran: it

some

letters risked

lucky. His letter

'You write

in

this mess.'

in

August

4 August escaped the

letter

of the attack on the

even on the same day. Unfortunately, the gents

had bad luck. Otherwise there'd already be a 84

remarkable

extreme retribution for

home on your

it is

regime

truce,

and we'd be saved from

up similar bold comments. was then an almost certain

In other instances, the censor picked

The death-sentence consequence.

for the writer of the letter

85

As the reactions

to the

bomb-plot revealed, the bonds of the German

701

702

HITLER I936-I945 people to Hitler,

if

for Hitler

were

greatly loosened,

failure of Stauffenberg's attempt

far

from broken

which unquestionably strengthened the regime

feeling that to attempt to kill the

nation was fighting for

from confined to Nazi

and

state,

at a

The

for a time.

time

when

the

very existence, was a heinous crime was far

its

The Catholic sector of the population, for lukewarm backing for a regime which since its

its

inception had conducted

its

attritional

also prominently represented in the 86

head of

fanatics.

instance, recognized for

in late July.

mid-1944. The

in

had -prompted an outpouring of support

campaign against the Church, was

huge demonstrations of loyalty to Hitler

Both major denominations - important formative influences

on opinion - condemned the attempt

to kill Hitler even after the war.

87

And

as late as the early 1950s, a third of those questioned in opinion surveys criticized the attack

on

Hitler's life

SD

voices captured by the

on 20 July 1944. 88 But above

in the first

They had spoken loudly

for the last time.

What

in the

proportion of the

population (or even of a Nazi Party with a nominal membership by time of over

8 million

the

days after the assassination attempt

were those of the dwindling masses of continued loyal believers Fiihrer.

still

all,

this

Germans) 89 they represented can only be guessed

but they constituted by

at;

now almost certainly a minority - if still a controlling

minority with massive repressive capacity.

Even some of the SD's own provincial weeks of the explosion

in the

in Hitler's popularity.

A

Wolf's Lair, blunt indicators of the collapse

SD

devastating report on 8 August from the

office in Stuttgart, for instance,

began by stating that for the overwhelming

majority of the population in that area

Germany would win

were providing, within

stations

it

was not

the war, but only whether they

a question of whether

would be ruled by

Anglo-Americans or Russians. Beyond a small number of Party a tiny section of the population,

activists

no one thought there would be

the

and

a miracle.

People read into Hitler's speech on the night after Stauffenberg's bombattack the exact opposite of that Goring, Goebbels,

them

was

in

rising,

and the day of

was now

in the

a return to the offensive

close at hand.

They had now heard

work had been sabotaged

saying: 'The Fiihrer side,

It

plain, they said,

regime had

lied to

claiming that time was on Germany's side, armaments production

weapons was that his

what was intended.

and other leading men

is

backed by new, decisive

in the Ftihrer's

own words

for years. In other words, people

were

admitting that time has previously not been on our

but running against us.

If

such a

man

as the Fiihrer has been so

thoroughly deceived,' the summary of prevailing opinion continued, 'then he

is

either not the genius that he has been depicted as, or,

knowing

that

NO WAY OUT saboteurs were at work, he intentionally lied to the

would be

just as bad, for,

never have been raised, and of such thoughts

thing

is

was made

we

could never gain victory.'

believed unshakeably, have lost

6

November, the

could in variants,

it

sent to us

him

in the

Stuttgart

SD

from most people's

office

from God.

from God, though not

in

I

daily still

recorded opinion which 'It's

always claimed that

don't doubt

it.

The Fuhrer was

order to save Germany, but to ruin

Providence has determined the destruction of the the executor of this will.'

to

90

same region hardened

suggested, be frequently heard:

the Fuhrer has been sent to us

the Fuhrer.'

all faith in

to the centre of people's attention, again faded

On

who up

Hitler, after his brief return for a final time

consciousness, attitudes against

it.

German people, and Hitler

91

Sometimes, irrational belief was in

The consequence

'The most worrying aspect of the whole

explicit:

As the autumn wore on and

is

people, which

probably that most comrades of the people, even those

now have

further.

German

with such enemies within, war-production could

all

that

was

left.

A

teenage

girl,

writing

her diary at the end of August and in early September 1944, saw blow

following blow in Germany's war effort: the attack on the Fiihrer's

advances of the western the incessant

Allies,

constant

life,

German retreat on the eastern front,

bombing, and the collapse of the Reich's alliance-partners. 'On

one side there

is

victory,

which

is

becoming ever more doubtful, and on

the other Bolshevism,' she wrote. 'But then: rather sacrifice everything,

absolutely everything, for victory, than for Bolshevism.

What would I going to end up in Siberia? What for? What questions line up like this. But if we all wanted then you shouldn't think further.

would be no hope left. As the

still

that should come,

A

for?

I'm

way, there

and our leadership!!!'

Bolshevism was by

92

now among

most central cohesive elements sustaining support for the German war

effort

and militating against any collapse of morale

at

home. Even

so, as the

news of defeats, destruction, and desertion of allies mounted without and

if

whole number of

to think in this

So, head high. Trust in our will

this diary-entry suggests, the fear of

If

go to school for

as losses of property

relief,

and possessions, homes and loved ones piled

signs of disintegration were visible. The German was increasingly replaced by 'Good morning', 'Good day', or, in south Germany, 'GruE Gott'. The evacuation of the Aachen area - the old seat of Charlemagne's empire, where the Allies had broken through - in early September was accompanied by 'a more or less panic-type

misery on misery, the

first

greeting, 'Heil Hitler',

of flight by the

German

civilian population',

according to a report to

Himmler. 93 Wehrmacht reports from the western front spoke

later in the

703

704

HITLER 1936-1945 month of mounting

among sharp

lack of discipline and indications of disintegration

the troops, with increasing

rise in

Some

numbers of

desertions, reflected in a

draconian punishment meted out by military courts. 94

made

way to Cologne. This great city on the Rhine had by now been largely bombed into dereliction - though, amazingly, its magnificent Gothic cathedral was still standing - with much of its population evacuated. Amid the rubble and the ruins, in the cellars of of the deserters in the west

their

burnt-out buildings, forms of opposition to the Nazi regime approaching partisan activity emerged. Here, heterogeneous groups of deserted soldiers, foreign workers

- now forming around 20 per cent of the Reich's work-force

and presenting the Nazi authorities with increasing worries about insurrection - members of dissident bands of disaffected youth (known picturesquely as 'EdelweiE Pirates'),

trated

and the Communist underground organization

and smashed many times but always managing

(infil-

to replenish itself)

autumn of 1944 into short-lived but, for the regime, troublesome resistance. The Gestapo recorded some two dozen small resistblended together

in the

ance groups of up to twenty individuals, and one large body of around 120 persons.

They

stole food,

broke into Wehrmacht camps and depots to get

weapons, and organized minor forms of sabotage.

It

came on occasion

to

camp guards and police. Their actions were politically they killed, among others, several Gestapo men, including the head

shoot-outs with directed:

of the Cologne Gestapo, an

SA man, and

a

Nazi Party functionary. In

all,

twenty-nine killings were attributed to them by the Gestapo. Attacks on the Hitler

Youth and other Nazi formations by

the 'Edelweift Pirates' were

commonplace. With the explosives they acquired,

blow up the Gestapo headquarters and the leading attorney and several

had the Allied advance

in the

members

of combating

was

their intention

it

to

law-courts, and to shoot a

of the Party organization.

9

^

Possibly,

west not slowed, the quasi-partisan activity

Cologne might have spread to other

The problems

city's

cities in the

Rhine and Ruhr

would then have magnified. As

it

in

region.

was, the

Gestapo, aided by Wehrmacht units, was able to strike back with devastating

autumn. The resistance groups did not give up without a fight. One group waged an armed battle for twelve hours before the ruined cellar

effect in the

which served

as

its

'fortress'

was blown up. Another group defended

with hand grenades and a machine-gun,

finally

breaking through a police

cordon and escaping. 96 By the time the Gestapo were

some 200 members of

the resistance groups

had been

finished,

however,

arrested, the groups

themselves totally destroyed, their leaders executed, and

members imprisoned. 97

itself

many

other

NO WAY OUT Had

the Stauffenberg bomb-plot succeeded,

it is

possible that the types

Cologne could have swelled western Germany. But many -

of grass-roots political activism experienced in into a revolutionary ferment

from

a base in

and quite conflicting- scenarios could be imagined had Hitler been assassinated on 20 July.

The

actual

outcome was

that resistance

from below - from

Communists, Socialists, youth-rebels, foreign workers, deserted soldiers and

- was, whatever

others

the continued courage of those involved, robbed of

any prospect of success. The regime had been challenged internally. But the

blow

to

its

heart had not proved lethal.

at its disposal.

At

least for the

It

now

time being,

reconsolidate, delaying the end for several

agony of millions caught up destruction. Hitler

way

reacted with

was

it

the ferocity

more months, prolonging

in the intensifying

the

maelstrom of death and

and the Nazi leadership had survived. But there was no

leading from the self-destructive path on which they were embarked.

For the ordinary German, too, there was no way out. granted that the regime was finished.

as yet another

the

same

further in

war winter loomed, were apathy,

to me.

my

I

It

The only hope was

and Americans would hold off the Bolsheviks. The most

all

all

able to regroup and

that the British

resignation, fatalism.

and accept what comes' -

this

for

common reactions,

can't judge the situation any longer.

job, wait,

was taken

I'll

just

'It's

work

approach, reported

by the regional agencies of the Propaganda Ministry in autumn 1944, was said to be prevalent not just with 'the

man on

members and even functionaries, some 98 wanting to wear their Party insignia. It was a

the street', but also

of

Party

whom

among

were no longer

clear sign that the

end was

on the way.

Ill

The institutional pillars of the regime - the Wehrmacht, the Party, ministries of state, and the SS-controlled security apparatus - remained intact in the second half of 1944. together,

now

was

still,

And

Hitler, the keystone

bonding the regime's structure

paradoxically, indispensable to

its

even in the eyes of some close to the leadership

driving

Germany inexorably towards

perdition.

The

survival while

-

at the

- by

same time

predictable rallying

round Hitler following the July assassination attempt could not, therefore, for long conceal the fact that the regime's edifice was beginning to crumble as the

Nazi empire throughout Europe shrivelled and the increasing certainty

of a lost

war made even some

of those

who had

gained most from Nazism

705

yo6

HITLER 1936— 1945 start

looking for possible exit-routes. The aftermath of the bomb-plot saw

the regime enter

most radical phase.-But

its

it

was

a radicalism that mirrored

an increasingly desperate regime's reaction to internal as well as external crisis.

Hitler's

bomb had

own

obvious reaction

been to turn to

in the

wake

of the shock of Stauffenberg's

his firm loyalist base, the Party leadership,

most long-standing and trusted band of paladins.

his

atmosphere of the

last

and

to

In the backs-to-the-wall

months, the Party was to play a more dominant role

than at any time since the 'seizure of power', invoking the overcoming of adversity in the 'time of struggle',

99

attempting to

the 'fighting spirit

instil

of National Socialism' throughout the entire people in the increasingly vain

attempt to combat overwhelming Allied arms and material superiority by little

more than

fanatical willpower.

As had invariably been the case

had

in a crisis, Hitler

no time

lost

following the attempted coup on 20 July in ensuring the continued loyalty of the Gauleiter, the Party's provincial chieftains.

who had

been

among

his

Among them were some

most dependable lieutenants for close on two

decades. Collectively, the Gauleiter constituted now, as before, a vital prop of his rule. His provincial viceroys were

now,

their Party positions

through their extensive powers as Reich Defence Commissars,

enhanced

his insurance

against any prospect of army-led unrest or possible insurrection in the regions.

Bormann had

on 20

sent out a string of circulars to the Gauleiter

July and immediately thereafter, ensuring that they were well informed of the gravity of uprising.

100

what had taken place and

Within days, he was arranging a conference of the Reichsleiter

and Gauleiter to take place the

war

among

the steps taken to crush the

effort'.

101

Speer,

in

Posen on 3-4 August, as he put

it

'to intensify

Himmler, Goebbels, and Bormann himself were

those to address the Party leaders. Speer

was

able to impress

them

with figures on armaments production - far greater than they had imagined

and helping calm

their nerves.

Himmler

fired

them with

a lengthy prehistory

of the 'treachery' of 20 July, and with his plans for a thorough reorganization, 'according to National Socialist principles', of the Reserve

whose command the state and the to

Hitler

had placed

army had caused

Army,

Goebbels told them that

the Fiihrer only problems. 'That

end now,' he declared. 'The party

Next day,

in his hands.

will take over.'

is

going

102

the Party leaders travelled to the Wolf's Lair. Hitler limply

held out his uninjured

They then trooped

left

hand

as he greeted each of

into the film-projection

them

individually.

room where he addressed them

about the consequences of the assassination attempt.

He

said nothing that

NO WAY OUT he had not said to his closest circle immediately after the event.

them he was necessary

He

told

which 'needs a man who does not

for the nation,

capitulate under any circumstances but unswervingly holds high the flag of faith

and confidence'.

But the basis of

this,

He would

in the

end

settle

with his enemies, he

said.

he added, appealing, as always, to the support of his

most trusted comrades, was to know that he had behind him 'absolute certainty, faithful trust, sufficient to

and loyal cooperation'. Once more,

his

impress his audience and to bolster their morale.

words were 103

This was

crucial. Increasingly over the next months, as the threads of state adminis-

tration started to fray

who

especially those

were decisive rule.

in

and ultimately

fell

apart, the Party chieftains

acted as Reich Defence Commissars in their regions

holding together in the provinces what was

left

-

-

of Nazi

104

Extended scope for propaganda, mobilization, and tightened control over the population

-

the overriding tasks of the Party as most people looked

beyond the end of the regime and looming military defeat into an uncertain future - fell to the Reich Defence Commissars in the last desperate drive to

maximize resources for sent to the front,

'total war'.

The

and workers for the armaments

alarmingly throughout the

first

manpower

territories,

employed

industries,

men

to be

had mounted

half of 1944. Hitler's authorization in Janu-

ary to Fritz Sauckel, Plenipotentiary for the

shortages of available

Labour Deployment,

to

make up

shortages through forced labour extracted from the occupied

while at the same time according Speer protection for the labour in his

the difficulty

armaments plants

in

France had done nothing to resolve

105 and merely sharpened the conflict between Sauckel and Speer.

Apart from Speer, the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Party had also proved

Bormann had even number of 'reserved occupations',

adept at preventing any inroads into their personnel. presided over a 51 per cent increase in the

exempt from June I944-

call-up, in the Party administration

between

May

1943 and

106

Meanwhile, the labour shortage had been greatly magnified through the June of the Allied landing

double military disaster

in

Red Army's devastating

offensive

on the eastern

in

front.

Normandy and

the

This had prompted

Goebbels and Speer to link

their efforts to

persuade Hitler to agree to a

drastic radicalization of the

'home

comb

power

for the

war

effort.

107

front' to

out

all

remaining man-

Both had sent him lengthy memoranda

new

mid-July, promising huge labour savings to tide over the situation until

weaponry became

available

before the Stauffenberg

and the anti-German coalition broke up.

bomb,

Hitler had, as

we have

noted,

108

shown

in

But

little

707

708

HITLER 1936— 1945 readiness to

comply with

demands. Whatever the accom-

their radical

own propamany of the

panying rhetoric, and the undoubted feeling (which Goebbels's

ganda had helped better-off their in

were

feed)

still

among

the under-privileged that

able to escape the burdens of war, and were not pulling

weight in the national cause, such demands were bound to be unpopular

many

circles,

antagonize powerful vested interests, and also convey an

impression of desperation. And, as the state administration rushed to point

might well be

out, the gains

in the civil service

less

who had

more than two-thirds were over had told

Hitler

was not

than impressive; only one in twelve of those

not been called up was under forty-three, and

Propaganda Minister

his

ripe for 'a big appeal to total

that the crises

years old.

fifty-five

would be surmounted

war 'in

109

June that the time

as recently as

in the true

meaning of the word',

the usual way', but that he

would

be ready to introduce 'wholly abnormal measures' should 'more serious crises take place'.

110

Hitler's

change of mind, directly following the

assassination attempt, in deciding to grant Goebbels the

had coveted,

as Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total

vollmachtigter

fiir

den totalen Kriegseinsatz), was a

regime was faced with a more fundamental Goebbels's decisive action to put

crisis

War tacit

new

failed

authority he

Effort (Reichsbe-

admission that the

than ever before.

down the uprising on 20 July unqueswhen Hitler looked for the man to home front. And where before he had

tionably weighed heavily in his favour supervise the radicalization of the

was now pushing at an open door in his demands The decision had in effect already been taken when, at a meeting of ministerial representatives along with some other leading figures in the regime two days after Stauffenberg's assassination attempt, head of the Reich Chancellery Lammers proposed the bestowing of wide-

faced a hesitant Hitler, he for draconian measures.

ranging powers on the Propaganda Minister to bring about the reform of

Himmler was given extensive complementary powers at the same time to reorganize the Wehrmacht and comb out all remaining manpower. 111 The following day, 23 July, the regime's leaders, the state

now

and public

life.

joined by Goring, assembled at the Wolf's Lair, where Hitler himself,

heavily leaning

firmed the

new

on Goebbels's memorandum of the previous week, conrole of the

thing fundamental'

if

the

available, he claimed, but

Propaganda Minister. Hitler demanded 'some-

war were

still

to be

won. Massive reserves were

had not been deployed. This would now have

be done without respect to person, position, or

office.

He

to

pointed to the

Party in the early days, which had achieved 'the greatest historic success'

with only a simple administrative apparatus. Goebbels noted with interest

NO WAY OUT month or

the change in Hitler's views since their previous meeting a

The

earlier.

produced the

staff,

under

assassination attempt and the events

clarity in his decisions,

Goebbels noted

in his diary.

Propaganda Minister laconically remarked that

his arse to

make

so

on the eastern front had 112

To

takes a

'it

own bomb

his

113

Hitler see reason'.

Goebbels to

Hitler's decree of 25 July, appointing

new

his

position,

indicated that the proposal for the establishment of a 'Reich Plenipotentiary

War

for the Total

Effort'

had come from Goring,

in his long-standing (but

wholly ineffectual) capacity as Chairman of the Ministerial Council for the

Defence of the Reich.

114

In fact, the formulation

had been suggested by

Goebbels himself, then carefully drafted by Lammers, to save face for Goring,

who had

own

objected to the further diminution of his

authority

and, as usual, been able to rely on Hitler's unwillingness to dent his prestige.

Even

so, the

Reich Marshal retreated

in

high dudgeon to his East Prussian

hunting estate at Rominten and could not be persuaded for weeks to return to the to

Wolf's Lair. m Goebbels relished

have

'home

finally

front'

moment of triumph. He appeared

his

achieved what he had desired for so long: control over the

with 'the most extensive plenipotentiary powers

up to now been granted

that have National Socialist Reich', with rights -

in the

the decisive factor in his view

-

116

itself

To his

limited Goebbels's

powers

it

seemed

in

some

directives to the 'highest Reich authorities'.

consequential decrees and ordinances.

Lammers, Bormann, and Himmler becoming

Any

staff,

powers' within the Reich.

However, nothing was ever quite what decree

(in

And

and the

he spoke of having

117

in the

Third Reich. The

respects.

He

could issue

But only they could issue any

had

to be agreed with

had adopted when

these

Interior Minister, as Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration).

Bormann,

(and, behind

had

to have

to correspond with Hitler's

Bormann's support

own

own

final decision.

Goebbels

know

Beyond

the

Any Lammers for

wishes).

unresolved objections to Goebbels's directives had to pass to

let

.

the capacity he

directives related to the Party itself

Hitler's

.

to issue directives to ministers

highest-ranking governmental authorities. 'practically full dictatorial

.

wording of the decree

itself,

that those authorities directly responsible to

Hitler

him -

those involved in the rebuilding plans for Berlin, Munich, and Linz, his

motor- vehicle

staff,

and the personnel of the Reich Chancellery, Presidential

Chancellery, and Party Chancellery tives.

118

- were

The Wehrmacht, under Himmler's

also excluded

authority,

from the

direc-

had been exempt from

the outset.

Such restrictions on

his

powers

left

Goebbels's enthusiasm for his

new

709

7IO

HITLER 1936-1945 task the

undimmed.

In a radio address

on 26 July, the day

Propaganda Minister conveyed the impression

manpower

appointment,

from having

reserves exhausted by five years of war, total mobilization

beginning and would

just

after his

that, far

'set free, all

over the country, so

both the front and the munition factories that

was

many hands

will not be too

it

its

for

hard for us

bound to arise in the The belief that 'will' would overcome all problems

to master in sovereign fashion the difficulties that are

war from time to

time'.

119

was immediately put into action

as Goebbels, with his usual forceful energy,

unleashed a veritable frenzy of activity in his

new

role.

The

staff of fifty that

he rapidly assembled from a number of ministries, most prominently from his

own Propaganda

Ministry, prided themselves on their unbureaucratic

methods, swift decision-making, and improvisation. As

main agents

his

in

ensuring that directives were implemented in the regions, leaving no stone

unturned

in the quest to

comb out all

reserves of untapped labour, Goebbels

looked to the Party's Gauleiter, bolstering their already extensive powers as

Reich Defence Commissars. They could be relied upon, reinvoke the

of the 'time of struggle', to ensure that bureaucracy did

way

of action. (In practice, the cooperation of the Gauleiter

not get in the

was assured

own

in his view, to

spirit

as long as

Party offices.

no inroads were made

Bormann ensured

that they

into the personnel of their

were well protected.) 120

Behind the actionism of the Party, Goebbels also needed Hitler's backing.

He ensured that this was forthcoming through a constant stream of bulletins on progress {Fubrer-Informationen) printed out on ,

a 'Fuhrer-Machine'

-

a

typewriter with greatly enlarged characters which Hitler's failing eyesight

could cope with

121

- recording

successes and couching general

tions (such as simplifying unnecessary bureaucratic

way

that, given Hitler's

recommenda-

paperwork)

in

automatic, thereby opening up yet further avenues for intervention. Nevertheless, Hitler did not give blanket approval to gested by Goebbels.

He

any proposals which

could rely upon

his

own

still

Bormann

among soldiers

sharp antennae would

at the front.

Plenipotentiary's proposals to save delivery of small parcels

changes would, for in

little

all

He

122

measures sug-

to bring to his attention

have an unnecessarily harmful impact on morale, both especially

such a

frame of mind, approval would be as good as

at

tell

him might

home and

rejected, therefore, the Total

manpower

in postal services

quite

War

by ending

and private telegrams on the grounds that such

return, be highly unpopular

among families divided

war. Similarly, he blocked suggestions of ending supplies of newspapers

and periodicals to the front because reading them.

123

soldiers looked

forward so much to

NO WAY OUT Elsewhere, Goebbels encountered successful resistance to his proposals

when Lammers and Goring combined

head off the suggestion

to

to abolish

the office of Minister President of Prussia along with the Prussian Finance

Ministry (which had been deflected by

made

Lammers

the previous year, but

now

enticing through the involvement of the Minister, Popitz, in the

conspiracy against Hitler). Measured against the bureaucratic effort to transfer the business elsewhere, even the closure of the Prussian Finance

Ministry proved counter-productive as a manpower-saving exercise.

The

complex problems of administrative reorganization which Lammers raised were the Minister Presidency to be abolished were eventually Hitler to decide

on

its

retention.

sufficient for

124

An obvious problem was how the labour savings were to be redeployed. As Armaments Minister, Speer wanted to make use of the newly available labour in the factories under his control. Goebbels, on the other hand, saw his main task in freeing up new reserves for service at the front. The short-lived alliance between the two rapidly, therefore, came to grief. Speer saw his own powers now undermined by Goebbels, and by the Gauleiter who, spurred on by the Total War Plenipotentiary and seizing the new opportunities that the revitalization of the Party provided, intervened frequently

and

arbitrarily in

domain of armaments production. Matters came to a head over Goebbels's demand to conscript 100,000 men from the armaments industry. On 21 his

September, Speer presented Hitler with a lengthy

demands

for restriction of Party intervention in

Given both his

his personal standing

success.

On

without comment, rang for

this occasion, Hitler

his adjutant,

and had

was asked, along with Goebbels who was time, for his views.

It

was

weary to involve himself

A few

hours

later,

in

as

if,

such a

out his

with Hitler and the priority nature of

work, such a personal appeal by Speer would

good chance of

letter setting

armaments questions. in the past

took the it

passed to

in the Fiihrer

Speer wrote much difficult conflict.

letter

have had a

from Speer

Bormann who

Headquarters

later, Hitler

at the

was too

12j

Speer was asked to Bormann's office nearby, where he

met the head of the Party Chancellery,

in shirt-sleeves

and braces over

his

and the more formally dressed diminutive Goebbels. Speer was no match for the new alliance, resting on mutual self-interest, controlling the Party, in charge of propaganda, calling on the principles of National large stomach,

Socialism, appealing to the Gauleiter

was heated. But

Hitler's ear.

The discussion

Speer's references to his 'historic responsibility'

to resign did not impress.

somewhat

- and with

'I

think

we have

let this

too big,' Goebbels coolly noted in his diary.

and threats

young man become

Bormann

told Speer

711

712

HITLER 1936-1945 he had to accept Goebbels's decisions, and forbade any further recourse to

Goebbels informed Speer that he intended to make

Hitler.

the

powers bestowed on him by

would put

declaring that he to

the

- wholly

rhetorical

full

use of

ended with Goebbels

Hitler. Discussion

- question

to Hitler, as

whether he was prepared to dispense with the 100,000 men. 126

Two

days

armaments

later, Hitler

signed a proclamation by Speer to directors of

factories which, in the eyes of the

most of the demands he had made in to grant

was no

both sides

in a dispute

victory over

Armaments Minister, granted was typically appearing

his letter. Hitler

what they wanted. But Speer recognized this Hitler was unwilling - Speer

Bormann and Goebbels.

thought unable - to hold his Party leaders

in check.

127

At any

rate,

he could

do nothing to bring the conflict between two of his most important 'feudal' - and feuding - barons to a halt. The dispute rumbled on for weeks. 128 If

was no outright winner,

there

enough that Speer's once

the signs were plain

unique influence on Hitler was on the wane. With a reversion to Party activism,

on the other hand, the position of Goebbels

Bormann had been in the

Third Reich

Backed by

strengthened. still

War

as before,

power

Goebbels certainly produced a new, extreme

Germany

weeks

in the first

Plenipoteniary. In the cultural sphere,

were closed, orchestras run down, the

in his

many

new

theatres

office as

and

Chamber

Total

art schools

film industry drastically

three-quarters of the Reich Cultural

staff,

positions of

all

hinged on Hitler's favour.

this favour,

austerity drive within

And now,

as well as that of

pruned of

axed. Big restrictions

were imposed on printing, with many newspapers being shut down. Firms producing goods unnecessary for the war items,

effort,

such as toys or fashion

were shut. Employment of domestic servants - most of them non-

German - was work (with an

tightly restricted, freeing

up as many

increase of registration age

from

as 400,000

women

for

forty-five to fifty-five years

of age). Postal and railway services were cut back. Local government offices

were forced to simplify administration and weed out

their staff.

From

mid-August, leave was banned. Business and administration were working a

minimum

sixty-hour week.

available for the

The

figures

war

By October, 451,800 men had been made

129

were deceptive.

the administration

was

effort.

A

large proportion of the

and economy were too old for military

forced, therefore, to turn to

thought essential for the war

fit

men

in reserved

effort, including skilled

men

sifted

service.

out of

Goebbels

occupations - work

employment

in

arma-

ments factories or food production. Their replacement, where possible, by older, less

fit,

less

experienced, less qualified workers

was both administrat-

NO WAY OUT ively

complicated and

numbered only

little

The

inefficient.

net addition of

over quarter of a million.

women,

mobilized overall replaced older

were only 271,000 more

women

in

Many

women

workers

of the half a million

or were tied to the home. There

employment

in

September 1944 than

May

1939. And, despite the draconian measures deployed, German men employed in industry had dropped by no more than 848,500 there

had been

in

over the same period (more than compensated, numerically, by foreign

workers), while even the much-purged administrative sector had only lost 17 per cent of

together at

its

all

employees. The

German economy was,

accounting for 20.8 per cent of the work-force agriculture).

in fact,

only holding

because of the employment of foreign conscript labour -

And

(a far

higher percentage in

although, partly through Goebbels's measures,

around

men

now

it

proved

to the front between August

and December 1944, German losses in the first three of those months numbered 130 Whatever the trumpeting by Goebbels of 1,189,000 dead and wounded. possible to send

his

a million

achievements as Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total

War

Effort, the

was scraping the bottom of the barrel. And among the most bizarre aspects of the 'total war' drive in the second half of 1944 was the fact that at precisely the time he was combing out the last reserves of manpower, Goebbels - according to film director Veit Harlan reality

was

that he

- was allowing him, soldiers,

command,

at Hitler's express

withdrawn from

to

commandeer 187,000

active service, as extras for the epic colour film of

national heroism, Kolberg, depicting the defence of the small Baltic against

Napoleon

as a

model

to Harlan, Hitler as well as

more

for the achievements of total war.

The evocation of

come

131

Even

in the terminal crisis of the

first.

heroic defence of the fatherland by the masses against

the invading Napoleonic to direct use in the

According

Goebbels was 'convinced that such a film was

useful than a military victory'.

regime, propaganda had to

town

most

army -

the

myth enunciated

in

Kolberg - was put

vivid expression of the last-ditch drive to 'total

war': the launching by Heinrich

Himmler

of the Volkssturm, or people's

on 18 October 1944, the 131st anniversary of the legendary defeat of Napoleon in the 'Battle of the Peoples' near Leipzig, when a coalition of forces under Blucher's leadership liberated German territory from the troops militia,

of the French

Emperor once and

embodiment of the

Party's belief in

132

The Volkssturm was the military 133 It was the Party's 'triumph of the will'.

for

all.

attempt to militarize the homeland, symbolizing unity through the people's participation in national defence, overcoming the deficiencies in

and resources through sheer willpower.

weapons

713

714

HITLER I936-I945 Suggestions of creating 'border protection' units in the east were put

forward as early as mid-July by the Propaganda Ministry following the Red

Army's advance into Lithuania. 134 But

on

Hitler's

life,

in the

the initiative in this area

weeks following the attempt

was

Martin

seized primarily by

more to combat possible internal unrest than external invasion, Bormann sought in August the assistance of Himmler, as Commander of the Reserve Army, in arming Party functionaries. The Party had

Bormann.

In readiness

also taken over responsibility

The

service.

from the Luftwaffe

Party, in digging fortifications, involving

women

and

for anti-aircraft

from the borders produced new

threats

as well as

men

flak

by the

duties, again run

hard

in the

manual labour. 135

Though Goebbels continued to harbour the belief that he would incorporcommission the organization of the 'Volkswehr'

ate in his 'total war'

was initially to be called, leaving the military aspects SA, Bormann and Himmler had come to an agreement to divide

(People's Defence), as to the

between them. Drafts for a decree by Hitler were put forward

responsibility in early it

September.

was dated

it

He eventually signed the decree on 26 September, though

to the previous day.

alliance as 'the eradication of the

136

It

spoke of the

'final

MenschenY This enemy must now be repulsed .

Germany's future could be guaranteed. To went on,

known

enemies'. In

comprising

and

sixty.

Himmler

'we

in typical parlance,

against the

all all

total

until a

peace securing

attain this end, Hitler's decree

set the total

deployment of

all

Germans

annihilatory will of our Jewish-international

Party Gaue, the 'German Volkssturm'

men

enemy

aim' of the

German person (Ausrottung des deutschen

was

to be established,

capable of bearing weapons between the ages of sixteen

Training, military organization, and provision of weaponry

Commander

as

of the Reserve

Army.

Political

and organizational 137

matters were the province of Bormann, acting on Hitler's behalf.

Party

functionaries were given the task of forming companies and battalions. total

number

loyal

of

6

million

man had

Volkssturm

139

future of

'rather die than

my

The men

people'.

called

and drinking

A

Each

Hitler',

abandon the freedom and thereby the

social

140

up had to provide

utensils,

their

own

clothing, as well as eating

cooking equipment, a rucksack, and blanket.

since munitions for the front

of the Volkssturm

that the Volkssturm

138

would be 'unconditionally

and obedient to the Fuhrer of the Great German Reich Adolf

and would

men

Volkssturm men was envisaged.

to swear an oath that he

to

fell

was

were

in short supply, the

was predictably

miserable.

largely unpopular,

142

It

weaponry

was

and widely seen

little

141

And

for the

wonder

as pointless

on

NO WAY OUT the grounds that the

war was already

comment, the Volkssturm had been to

lost.

called

According to one reported

up because

'there

is

nothing more

oppose the assault of our enemies with than people and blood'. Another

pointed out that the poster bearing the Fuhrer's decree setting up the

Volkssturm looked

like notice of

an execution - and indeed did announce

an execution, 'the execution of the entire

The

fears, especially

on the eastern

German were

front,

people'.

143

justified.

Gauleiter Erich

Koch reported severe losses among Volkssturm units in East Prussia already 144 The losses were militarily pointless. They did not hold up the in October. Red Army's advance by

who were mainly the Volkssturm.

was

a single day. In

all,

too old, too young, or too

14:>

The

futility

of the losses

approaching 175,000

weak was

citizens

to fight lost their lives in

a clear sign that

Germany

close to military bankruptcy.

As the autumn of 1944 headed towards what would prove the last winter was still holding together. But the

of the war, the fabric of the regime

indications were that the threads were visibly starting to fray.

of the ranks

The

closing

which had followed Stauffenberg's assassination attempt had

temporarily seen a revitalization of the elan of the Party. Hitler had, almost as a reflex, turned

the

army

inwards to those he trusted. His distance, not

leaders he detested, but also

from the organs of

just

from

state adminis-

extend immeasurably with his increased reliance on

tration, started to

number of his longstanding paladins. Bormann's position, dependent upon the combination of his role as head of the Party organization a diminishing

and, especially, his proximity to Hitler as the Fuhrer's secretary and mouthpiece,

guarding the portals and restricting access, was particularly strength-

ened.

He was one

146

of the winners from the changed circumstances after 20

July.

Another was Goebbels who,

nity to

enhance

over practically

his all

own

like

Bormann, had

walks of

life

had been the essence of Party

activity since the beginning.

regime tottered, the Party returned to

its

he began to

his special

Now,

as the

elements.

Speer was one of the losers in the aftermath of the

no longer depend upon

seized the opportu-

power as the Party increased its hold within Germany. Mobilization and control

position of

bomb

plot.

He

could

favour with Hitler. Without a Party base,

feel the cold. So, too, as the

Party reasserted

itself,

did Lammers,

work of the various Reich with Bormann had never been ministries and Hitler. Though his relations free of tension, they had functioned after a fashion - and had sometimes the only point of coordination between the

formed the In

autumn

basis of a pragmatic alliance against other forces in the regime.

14

1944, the balance in their positions had started to tip as Bormann's

715

716

HITLER I936-I945 two waned. More important Lammers lost his access to Hitler^The chief orchestrator of government business was no longer in a position to discuss that business with the head of state. In a letter to Bormann on 1 January 1945, Lammers, pointing to

position strengthened. Contact between the still:

the early Hitler

good cooperation, lamented the

had been three months

earlier, that

fact that his last audience

with

he had had to give up at the end

of October his quarters close to Hitler's field headquarters, and that Reich

Ministers would inevitably have to seek other channels of approach to the Fiihrer

if

he could not provide them.

He had

been, he bemoaned, often in

had had

the embarrassing situation that he

to carry responsibility for

decisions of the Fiihrer which had simply been transmitted to him, without

any possibility of his affecting them and bringing about a different outcome. His lament ended with a pathetic request to Bormann to arrange a brief

many

audience with the Fiihrer so that he could address the

had accumulated Hitler had,

in the

meantime.

seemed obvious,

it

148

little

With the end of

which

issues

the regime in sight,

time for or interest in the normal

business of government. Meanwhile, the

work

of the major offices of state

could only fragment further.

Yet another development, from a most unlikely source, provides

-

spect

at the

the regime

time

was

was

it

still

well concealed

starting to teeter.

Among

-

in retro-

the clearest indication that

the biggest beneficiaries of the

149 coup of 20 July 1944 had been Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Hitler had given 'loyal Heinrich', his trusted head of the labyrinthine security

failed

organization, overall responsibility for uncovering the background to the

conspiracy and for rounding up the plotters.

powers, Himmler had as

Commander

reorganization.

now

his other extensive

also gained direct entree into the military sphere

of the Reserve

He was

And beyond

Army, with

soon, as

we have

a remit to undertake a full-scale

seen, also to have control over the

people's militia, the Volkssturm. Yet at this very time, Himmler, conceivably

now

the

most powerful individual

in

Germany

after Hitler,

was playing

a

double game, combining every manifestation of utmost loyalty with secret

West power in

overtures to the position of

in the forlorn

hope of saving not

the event of the British

just his skin

but his

and Americans eventually

seeing sense and turning, with the help of his SS, to fend off the threat of

Communism.

In October,

Italian industrialist

twenty-five against

Himmler used an SS intermediary

with good connections

German

Communism

in

England

to put to an

a proposal to

make

divisions in Italy available to the Allies as a defence in

return for a guarantee of the preservation of the

Reich's territory and population. Both the British and the Americans rejected

NO WAY OUT 1

the overtures out of hand.

dispensable. But

was pure

it

'

would have been Himmler was too centrally impli-

In this scenario, Hitler

self-delusion.

cated in the most appalling facets of the Nazi regime to be taken seriously

by the Allies as a prospective leader of a post-Hitlerian Germany. For

Himmler, too, there was no way

would evaporate late

out.

Without

Hitler's backing, his

morning

like a breath in the chill

air.

power

This was as true

in

1944 as at any other time during the Third Reich.

Hitler's authority

remained

But

intact.

if

they could have found an escape

him or discarding him, there were now those among paladins who would have followed it.

route by removing closest

his

IV Meanwhile, the

vice

around

and September the W'ehrmacht killed,

captured, or missing.

armaments were

lost

The

had

at sea

fronts well over a million

cities

Allied convoys could

men

and other

left

with impunity by day as well as by night. The war

Germany. The U-boat

also by this time been definitively lost by

had never recovered from

fleet

all

m The

wholly one-sided. Fuel shortages

German towns and

on

losses of tanks, guns, planes,

war in the air was by now almost many German fighters unable to take and American bomber armadas wreaked havoc on

incalculable.

to the air as the British

Reich was tightening. Between June

Hitler's

now

its

losses in the

second half of 1945, while

cross the Atlantic almost unmolested. In the

second half of 1944, only twelve ships, with a tonnage of 55,290 tons, were

sunk

in the

northern Atlantic iwith no losses at

sixty-five ships

seas

-

fell

-

victim to

U-boats were

all in

a tiny fraction of the overall Allied

lost

German submarines

over the same period.

October). Another

shipping crossing the

off the shores of Britain. In 1 "

2

In the

meantime, the

all,

138

territories

of the Nazi empire were shrinking markedly by the end of the

summer

following the advances of the Allies on both western and eastern fronts since June.

On

the western front,

Germany's military commanders had by then long

viewed the continuation of the war as pointless. early June, the

Hitler that the

On

replacing Rundstedt in

weak and impressionable Kluge was easily persuaded by western commanders, especially Rommel, had been far too

pessimistic in their judgement of the situation. After a two-day visit to the front,

however, Kluge had been forced to admit that

his letter to Hitler of 15 July,

Rommel had

Rommel was

right. In

explicitly stated that, heroically

717

718

HITLER I936-I945 though the troops were end'.

He

felt,

righting, 'the

consequences from

without delay'.

this position

conspiracy against Hitler

demands

unequal struggle

is

heading for

draw

therefore, compelled to ask Hitler, he wrote, 'to

know that he would

for an end to the

war were

153

He

let

its

the

the leaders of the

be prepared to join them

if

the

dismissed. Germany's most

renowned was never put to the test. Three days before Stauffenberg's bomb exploded, Rommel was seriously injured when his car skidded from field-marshal

the road after being strafed by an

enemy

aircraft.

154

Five days after the assassination attempt on Hitler, 'Operation Cobra', the Allied attack southwards towards Avranches, began with a ferocious

'carpet-bombing' assault by over 2,000 aircraft, dropping 47,000 tons of

bombs on an

square miles.

six or so

German panzer

already weakened It

division in an area of only

ended on 30 July with the taking of Avranches and

the opening not only of the route to the Brittany coastal ports, but also to

the exposed

German

flank towards the east,

and

to the heart of France.

155

The significance of the loss of Avranches was still not fully appreciated when Hitler provided Jodl with his overview of the entire military situation on the evening of 31

July. Hitler

He was well aware and how impossible

of it

how was

was

far

from

unrealistic in his assessment.

threatening the position in the current

was on

all

fronts,

circumstances to combat the

men and materials, above all in airWeapon technology, more planes, 156 Alliance would open up new opportunities.

overwhelming Allied superiority

in

power. His main hope was to buy time.

and an eventual

He had

to get

split in the

some breathing-space

adjutant, Nicolaus

von Below, shortly

in the west,

he told his Luftwaffe

after his briefing

with Jodl. Then,

with new panzer divisions and fighter formations, he could launch a major offensive

thought

on the western

it

front. In

more important

to concentrate

in the east. Hitler replied that

But

this

Below the

common with many all

observers,

Below had

forces against the

Red Army

he could attack the Russians at a later point.

could not be done with the Americans already in the Reich. (He led

to believe at the

USA more

same time that he feared the power of the Jews

than the power of the Bolsheviks.

therefore, to gain time, inflict a a split in the Alliance,

157 )

in

His strategy was,

major blow on the western

Allies,

hope for

and turn on the Russians from a new position of

strength.

Hitler thought, so he told Jodl, that the eastern front could be stabilized, as long as additional forces could be mobilized.

enemy land

in the east,

itself

whether

in

But a breakthrough by the

East Prussia or Silesia, imperilling the home-

and bearing serious psychological consequences, would pose a

NO WAY OUT critical

danger.

1

^8

Any

destabilization

on the eastern front would, he went - Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and

on, affect the stance of the Balkan states

Hungary. Preventive measures had to be taken.

Hungary, both for for

communications

to securing a hold

raw materials such

vital

lines

secure

vital to

and manganese and

with south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria was essential

scarcely in a position to

lead to catastrophic consequences'.

On

was

on the Balkans and obtaining ore from Greece. li9 He on the Dalmatian

feared a British landing in the Balkans or

Germany was

It

as bauxite

the Italian front, Hitler

ward

off

also

which

islands,

and which 'could naturally

160

saw the

greatest advantage in the tying

down

of significant Allied forces which could otherwise be deployed elsewhere.

The withdrawal of German forces into the Apennines would remove tactical mobility, would still not prevent an Allied advance, and would leave only retreat to alpine defence positions as a possibility - thereby freeing up Allied was prepared

troops for the western front. But as a last resort, he Italy

German

(and the entire Balkans), pull back

withdraw

his

main forces

for the vital struggle

to give

up

troops to the Alps, and

on the western

front.

161

This was for him the decisive theatre of war. The troops would not

when valuable western parts of the Reich were threatened, and behind them the Ruhr - Germany's industrial 162 Preparations would have to be made to move Fiihrer Headheartland. understand him remaining

quarters to the west.

supreme commander

163

Command would

in the west,

So paranoid was Hitler by told Jodl

it

in East Prussia

could not be

now about

would be necessary

have to be centralized. left

164

Kluge,

with the responsibility.

treachery within the army, that he

such an event to avoid communicating

in

west - pointing to Stiilpnagel's

such a plan to army

command

involvement

against him - since it would probably be immediately

in the plot

betrayed to the enemy. Hitler pointed to

in the

16 ^

what he saw

as a decisive issue in the west.

France as a war area {Kriegsgebiet),

we

lose the basis of the

(Though, as we have noted, the U-boats were ineffective

'If

we

lose

U-boat war.'

in the

166

second half

of 1944, Hitler was persuaded by Donitz that new, improved submarines would soon be ready, and would be a vital weapon in the war against the

western powers.

167 )

In addition, essential

wolfram, important for

would be

lost. If

it

steel

raw materials - he

production and electro-technical products -

were not so important to the war

France, he said, he would

vacate the coastal areas

bases at Brest and St Nazaire defensible line. But he

singled out

- and

pull

saw no prospect

-

effort to hold still

vital for

on

to

U-boat

back mobile forces to a more

at present of

holding such a

line

719

720

HITLER I936-I945 with the forces available, wherever the be

line

might be drawn. 'We've got to

he stated, 'that a change could come about in France only

clear,'

if

we

succeed - even for a certain time - in gaining air-supremacy.' But he drew the conclusion that, 'however bitter

had

done

to be

to hold

back

might be

it

'for the

at the

most extreme

whatever Luftwaffe divisions could be assembled could take weeks -

shift in fortunes.

it

For

area.'

Wurfel

letzten

buy time.

to

this,

might be possible

fallen)' to

it

was

enemy

essential to deprive the

enemy of

coast, preventing the landing of troops,

in Allied hands.) Hitler

was prepared,

make

all

I

access to ports

armaments, and

much-damaged harbour,

as he bluntly stated, 'simply to

circumstances, with complete disregard for the people there, to

enemy

impossible for the

it

the last

The ports were to be held, he emphasized,

sacrifice certain troops' to this end.

'under

'at

bring about a decisive

to operate in the depths of the

provisions. (At this point only Cherbourg, with a

was

Reich - though that

can't operate myself,' he said, 'but

'I

colossally difficult for the

on the French

it

in the

168

was desperate

Hitler

can make

wherever

to be deployed

throw of the dice {wo die

moment', everything

case' as a 'last reserve'

to supply unlimited

numbers of men'.

not happen, a breakthrough could come quickly. Along with

Should

this

this, in

an early glimpse of what would become a 'scorched-earth' policy

targeted finally at the Reich

and locomotives, were were

itself, all

railway installations, including track

to be destroyed, as

in the last resort to

be destroyed

were bridges. The ports, too,

they could not be held.

if

If

the ports

could be held for between six and ten weeks in the autumn, precious time

would have been gained. 169

Time was, however, not on

Hitler's side. Learning of the gravity of the

Allied capture of Avranches, he ordered

- picking up on an operational

plan that had been put forward by Kluge - an immediate counter-strike

westwards from Mortain, at retaking

initially

Avranches and

General George

S.

Patton.

170

7 August, proved disastrous.

The It

with the calamity.

On

15

German

advancing American forces under

counter-offensive, eventually launched on

lasted only a day, could not prevent

Patton's troops from sweeping

however, saw the garrison

intended to take place on z August, aimed

splitting the

down

at Brest

some of

into Brittany (where stiff defence,

hold out until 19 September), and ended

forces in disarray but narrowly avoiding even worse

171

August Hitler refused Kluge's request to pull back around 100,000

troops threatened with imminent disaster through encirclement near Falaise.

When

he was unable to reach Kluge that day - the field-marshal had entered

NO WAY OUT and his radio had been put out of action by enemy fire Hitler, well aware of Kluge's flirtation with the conspiracy against him and of his pessimism about the western the battle-zone itself in the heart of the 'Falaise pocket'

front,

jumped

was negotiating

to the conclusion that he

the western Allies.

172

a surrender with 173

was, said Hitler, 'the worst day of his

It

promptly recalled Field-Marshal Model, one of

his

life'.

He

most trusted generals,

from the eastern front, appointed him to take over from Kluge and

dis-

patched him to western front headquarters. Until Model arrived, Kluge had not even been informed by Hitler that he was about to be dismissed. Hitler's

peremptory handwritten note, handed over by Model and ordering Kluge back to Germany, ended with the threateningly ambiguous comment that

which direction he wished

the field-marshal should contemplate in

Model's arrival was unable to under

alter the plight of the

command - assisted by

his

German

to go.

troops, but

tactical errors of the Allied ground-forces

commander, General Montgomery -

proved possible to squeeze out

it

at

some 50,000 men from the ever-closing 'Falaise pocket' to again another day, closer to home. As many again, however, were

the last minute fight

taken prisoner and a further 10,000 killed.

174

Kluge must have reckoned with the near certainty that he would be

promptly arrested, expelled from the Wehrmacht, and put before the People's Court for his connections with the plotters against Hitler.

Germany on

the

way back

his

chauffeur to stop the car for a

to

he swallowed a cyanide

The day (as Hitler

before, he

17

^

On

19 August, in the vicinity of Metz, he asked rest.

Depressed,

worn

out,

and

in despair,

pill.

had written

a letter to Hitler.

The

field-marshal,

who

knew) had had prior knowledge of the bomb-plot, and who had

even the year before Stauffenberg's attempt shown sympathy for Tresckow

and the oppositional group praise Hitler's leadership. ness,'

in

Army Group

'My

Fiihrer,

I

Centre, used his dying words to

have always admired your great-

he wrote. 'You have led an honest, an entirely great struggle,' he

war in the east. 'History will testify to that.' now to show the necessary greatness to bring to

continued, with reference to the

He

then appealed to Hitler

an end a struggle with no prospect of success in order to release the suffering of his people. This dying plea

from the

dictator's

war

as far as he

leadership.

depart from you,

my

perhaps imagined,

in the

very limits.'

was

Fiihrer, to

He ended

whom

I

would go with a

to distance himself

final

was inwardly

vow

of loyalty:

closer than

consciousness of having carried out

my duty

'I

you

to the

176

Hitler's direct reaction to the letter

is

not known.

177

But Kluge's suicide

721

722

HITLER I936— I945 merely convinced him not only of the field-marshal's implication in the

bomb-plot, but also that he had been trying to surrender his forces in the west to the enemy. Hitler found

it

He had promoted Kluge

reflected.

made him

difficult to

comprehend,

twice, given

him

He was

RM250,ooo

tax-free

field-marshal's salary).

178

anxious to prevent any news seeping out about Kluge's alleged

attempt to capitulate.

It

could seriously affect morale;

bring further contempt on the army.

would

it

He let the generals know

certainly

about Kluge's

But for public consumption the field-marshal's death - from a

suicide.

heart-attack,

the church

it

on

was

his

said

- was announced only

Brandenburg

quiet affair. Hitler

On

the highest honours,

sizeable donations (including a cheque for

on his sixtieth birthday, and a big supplement to his

as he bitterly

had banned

after his

body had

lain in

estate for a fortnight. Kluge's funeral all

ceremonials.

was

a

179

the day that Kluge had temporarily been out of contact, 15 August,

the Allies undertook 'Operation Dragoon', the landing of troops

French Mediterranean coast.

180

on the

Quickly capturing Marseilles and Toulon,

they pushed northwards, forcing Hitler reluctantly to agree to the with-

drawal to the north of almost

all his

forces in southern France in the attempt

to build a cohesive front along the upper

Marne and Saone

stretching to the

181

The end of the German occupation of France was now in Though it would take several more weeks to complete, the symbolic moment arrived when, prompted by strikes, a popular uprising, and attacks by the French Resistance against the German occupiers, and by the eventual readiness of the German Commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz to

Swiss border. sight.

surrender (despite orders from Hitler to reduce Paris to rubble

be held),

182

the Allied

if it

could not

Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower,

gave a French division the honour of liberating the French capital on 24 August.

The

liberation

was celebrated by enormous crowds two days later march down the Champs-Elysees of General

as they cheered the triumphal

Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French. the country against those French citizens

183

Bitter recriminations within

who had

collaborated with the

occupiers were only momentarily held back in the joyous scenes.

By now, the western

Allies

184 had over 2 million men on the Continent.

Advancing into Belgium, they liberated Brussels on

3

September and next

day captured the important port of Antwerp before the harbour installations could be destroyed. Only Cherbourg, of the major channel ports, had up to this

point been in Allied hands, and supplies through that route were

seriously assault

hampered by the

on Germany. But

it

level of destruction.

was

as late as 27

Antwerp was

November

vital to the

before the Scheldt

-

\-

t »l

65. Hitler viewing the

Wehrmacht parade

after laying a

wreath

at the

cenotaph

on Unter den Linden on 'Heroes' Memorial Day', 21 March 1943. Behind Hitler {left to right) are Goring, Keitel, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Karl Donitz, and Himmler. Shortly beforehand, a planned attempt to kill Hitler by opponents from within

Army Group

Centre had had to be aborted

timetable on the day

was

when

the dictator's usual

altered without notice.

66. Hitler

is

saluted by the Party's 'Old Guard' in the Lowenbraukeller in

November 1943, right. It

Munich on

tne twentieth anniversary of the Beerhall Putsch. Goring

was

to be the last time that Hitler

symbolic

ritual, a

would appear

in

person at

8

to Hitler's

is

this

high point in the Nazi calendar.

67. Martin

Bormann, head of the Party

Chancellery (following the

Rudolf HeE to Scotland

in

flight

May

of

194 1).

From the beginning of the war onwards he was invariably at Hitler's side, and in April

1943 was

officially

appointed

Secretary to the Fuhrer. This proximity,

together with his control of the Party,

gave him great power.

68. Hitler and Goebbels, still capable of raising a smile despite military disasters and mounting domestic problems, photographed during a walk on the Obersalzberg above

Berchtesgaden in June 1943.

69.

{left)

The Eastern Front

in spring in

70. (above right)

and autumn.

A German vehicle

bogged down

heavy mud.

The Eastern Front in winter. Tanks and armoured vehicles, unusable had to be dug in at strategic points to secure them against

in the conditions,

Soviet attacks.

71.

The Eastern Front

in

summer. Limitless space. seemingly unending

A

Waffen-SS unit treks across

fields.

72. (top)

73.

'Final Solution'. French Jews being deported in 1942. Frightened from behind the barbed-wire covering the slats of the railway-wagon.

The

faces peer out

The

'Final Solution'. Polish

Jews forced to dig

their

own

grave, 1942.

74-

The 'Final Solution'. Incinerators at Majdanek with skeletons of camp-prisoners murdered on the approach of the Red Army and liberation of the camp on 27 July 1944.

75- Hitler

and Himmler take

a wintry

walk on the Obersalzberg

in

March 1944.

76.

The 'White Rose'

resistance

with Sophie and Hans Scholl

group of Munich students. Christoph Probst

in July

1942.

On

22 February the following

were sentenced to death and beheaded on the same day

Munich

University, in the

wake

(left)

year, they

for distributing leaflets in

of the disaster at Stalingrad,

condemning the

inhumanity of the Nazi regime.

77. (above

left)

The

brilliant

tank commander Heinz Guderian. Though he clearly

recognized that Hitler was leading

Germany

attempt to assassinate him on 20 July 1944.

A

to catastrophe, he

day

later,

condemned

the

Guderian was appointed Chief

of the General Staff, retaining the position until his dismissal on 28

March 1945.

Ludwig Beck, who, following his resignation - because of Hitler's insistence on risking war over Czechoslovakia - as Chief of the General Staff in 1938, became a central figure in the conservative resistance, committing suicide on 78. (above right) General

20 July 1944

after the failure of the

bomb-plot.

79- (right

)

Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von

Stauffenberg, the driving-force behind the

conspiracy to

who

kill

Hitler

on 20 July 1944,

took upon himself the

responsibility both for carrying out the

assassination in the Wolf's Lair directing the intended

On

its

coup

and

for

d'etat in Berlin.

he was arrested and shot by

failure,

a firing-squad late that night.

80. (below) Major-General

Henning von

Tresckow, one of the most courageous figures in the resistance, the inspiration of

several plans, hatched within

Centre, to

kill

Army Group

Hitler in 1943. Stauffenberg

regarded Tresckow as his mentor. This

one of the in

1944.

last

is

photographs of him, taken

He committed

suicide

on 21 July

on the Eastern Front on learning of the failure of the

bomb-plot.

^MW

^^B

f^^^^^^^

-

HfeL*t~,wr

j40k,

?

fS^H

1

^3 «m

m

WjPz*.

™l

8i.

(left) Hitler,

looking shaken, just after the assassination attempt on 20 July 1944.

82. (right) Hitler's trousers, shredded by the bomb-blast.

83. (facing page, above) Hitler greets Mussolini at Fiihrer Headquarters - the last time

they would meet -

some

three hours after Stauffenberg's

1944. Hitler had to shake hands with his

left

bomb had exploded on 20 July

hand because

slightly injured in the blast.

his right

arm had been

84.

Grand-Admiral Donitz professes the loyalty of the navy

in a

broadcast shortly

midnight on 21 July 1944, just after Hitler and Goring had spoken to the German people. Listening to Donitz are Bormann {left, next to Hitler) and Jodl {on Hitler's

after

right,

with bandaged head).

85.

An

ageing Hitler, pictured at the Berghof in 1944.

86.

87.

Wonder- Weapons: a Vi flying-bomb

(left)

88. (right)

taken to

Wonder- Weapons: a V2 rocket, ready

Wonder- Weapons: An American

the advance into

is

Germany

in April

its

launch-pad.

for launch at

Cuxhaven.

soldier stands alongside a

Me

262 on

1945. Hitler had for a long time insisted on having

the jet-fighter designed as a bomber.

When

late to

finally

deployed as a

be effective.

fighter,

it

was

far

too

JLFT%r sind in

Not und fressen da wie der

Teufel Fliegen.'

Rosenberg-Tagebuch, 89-90 (22 August 1939). 137. See DBS, vi. 985-6.

136. Seraphim,

138.

DBS, vi.988.

139.

Hoffmann, Hitler Was

140.

TBJG,

141. Watt,

I/7,

My Friend,

103.

73 (23 August 1939).

How War Came,

466.

Werner Maser, Der Wortbruch.

142. Cit.

Hitler, Stalin

und der Zweite Weltkrieg,

(1994), 4th edn,

Munich, 1997, 59—60. 143. Watt,

How War Came, 467-70.

145.

Meehan, 233-4. Halifax stressed only Watt, How War Came, 463.

146.

The order

144.

to attend the meeting

August (Baumgart,

the importance of the effect

was delivered

to General

on morale.

Liebmann on

the

morning of 21

141).

147. Below, 181.

148.

Baumgart, 144 n.97, 148.

149.

Baumgart, 144 n.97. Some present

later

contemporary accounts, however, mention

claimed that they were there

civilian clothes.

150.

Baumgart, 142.

151.

Baumgart, 143 and n.93-6, 148.

152.

Baumgart, 143 and n.96.

153.

Baumgart, 148

154.

Baumgart, 120.

155.

Baumgart, 122-8. For the significance of the document,

n.m. The

in

uniform. The most

Below, 180, confirms

this.

notes were handwritten headings, according to Below, 181.

its

authenticity,

and the authorship of

the best version (that of Canaris), see Baumgart's article, and his reply, 'Zur Ansprache Hitlers vor

den Fuhrern der Wehrmacht

Bohm, 'Zur Ansprache

am 22. August

Hitlers vor

1939 (Erwiderung)', VfZ, 19 (1971), 301-4, to

den Fuhrern der Wehrmacht

am 22. August 1939',

Hermann

VfZ, 19 (1971),

294-300. 156.

IMG, xxvi,

338-44, Doc. 798-PS;

DGFP, D, VII, 200-204

(quotations 204), No. 192; Baumgart,

149 and n.113 for the timing and lunchtime break, 135-6, n.67. Also Below, 181. 157. For the time,

Baumgart, 126, 149 n.113. Below recalled that he spoke for about two hours.

(Below, 180). Baumgart, 132-3 n.53, 55 for operational talks, and reference to Haider and Warli-

mont; Below, 181. 158.

On

the different interpretations of

what

Hitler

meant by

this phrase, see

Baumgart, 133 and

n.57.

159.

IMG,

160.

Baumgart, 146.

161.

Baumgart, 146.

xxvi, 523-4, D0C.1014-PS;

DGFP,

162. Below, 181, thought the Soviet pact 163.

D, VII, 205-6, No. 205-6 (quotations, 205).

had silenced some

Vormann Memoirs,

Fols.42-3.

164. Hassell, 71. 165. Below, 181-2. 166.

sceptics.

Baumgart, 148. For Hitler's insistence that the West would not intervene, see IfZ, F34/1,

Baumgart, 143 n.96, 146; Schmidt, 449-50; Bloch, 246.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 167. Schmidt, 455.

Hoffmann's account of the

inaccurate and self-important.

The

visit to

Moscow

5:

GOING FOR BROKE

{Hitler

Was

My Friend,

signs are that Stalin was, in fact, less than

happy

at

103-14)

is

Hoffmann's

photographic interference and did not welcome the publicity {Ribbentrop Memoirs, 114). 168.

Based on Ribbentrop Memoirs, 110-13, and Schmidt, 450-52. Both are variedly inaccurate on

and

the time of arrival years,

it

was

the

first

first talks;

see Bloch, 247.

Though Schulenburg had been

in

Moscow

for

time that he had spoken to Stalin.

169.

Below, 182.

170.

Below, 183. Speer, 177, gives a distorted version of the incident, which

is

also graphically

Herrmann Doring, BBC-Archive, 'The Nazis: A Warning from History', Transcript, Roll 244, Fols. 30-37. Speer recalled after the war that no one hearing Hitler was shocked by his remarks about the shedding of much blood, and that Germany would have to plunge into the abyss with him if the war was not won. Speer himself was taken, so he recalled, by 'the grandeur of the historical hour' (Albert Speer, Spandau. The Secret Diaries, Fontana edn, London, 1977, 40-41 (entry for 21 December 1946)). described by the 'manager' {Verwalter) at the Berghof,

Memoirs,

171. Schmidt, 452-3; Below, 183; Ribbentrop

113.

A telegram containing just those words

followed within two hours (DGFP, D, VII, 220, 223, Nos. 205, 210). 172. 11,

Ribbentrop Memoirs, 113; Schmidt, 454. Hoffmann's account, Hitler

Was My

Friend, 109-

cannot be trusted.

173. Bloch, 249 (contradicting Ribbentrop's

own

claim, Ribbentrop

Memoirs,

113, that they

were

signed before midnight). 174.

TBJG,

I/7,

75 (24 August 1939).

175. Below, 183.

How War

176. Watt,

told

Came,

463, 465.

on 22 August by Joseph

Sumner Welles, Acting Secretary of State in the USA, was former US Ambassador in Moscow, that news of the

E. Davies,

non-aggression pact was 'not unexpected' (Davies, 453-4). 177.

The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan,

200.

178. Nicolson, 154.

179. Chips, 208-9. 180.

N.

J.

Crowsen

181. 182.

(ed.), Fleet Street,

Camden Soc,

Press Barons,

and

Politics: the

Journals of Collin Brooks,

London, 1998, 252. Roberts, 174; Allan Merson, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany, London, 1985, 212-13. Heinz Kiihnrich, 'Der deutsch-sowjetische Nichtangriffsvertrag vom 23. August 1939 aus der

1932-1940,

zeitgenossischen Sicht der

5th Ser., vol.11,

KPD',

Eichholtz and Patzold, 517-5!* nere

in

5 X9

(quotation), 529.

183. Below, 184. I/7, 74-7 (24 August 1939, 25 August 1939) for the uncertainty of Goebbels who, on the Berghof, was probably echoing Hitler's own sentiments. Documents concerning German-Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between

184. See

TBJG,

at this time

185.

Great Britain and Germany on September VII,

170-71 (here

186.

Documents,

171), 99,

N0.207;

DGFP,

No. 57; DBFP, 3rd

3,

1939, London, 1939, 96-8, No. 56;

DBFP,

3rd Ser.,

D, VII, 215-16, N0.200; Henderson, 256. Ser., VII,

161-3 (here

162),

N0.200; see Henderson, 247-

8,256-7, 301-5. 187.

Documents, 99-100, No. 57; DBFP, 3rd

Ser., VII,

N0.200;

DGFP,

D, VII,

(here 202), N0.248;

DGFP,

D, VII,

161-3 (here

163),

210-16, No. 200; Domarus, 1244-7. 3rd Ser.VII, 201-2 (quotation 201), N0.248. Documents, 100-101, N0.58; DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 201-2 210-16, No. 200; Henderson, 257; Domarus, 1249-50. 188.

DBFP,

189.

190.

Domarus, 1247-8; DBFP, 3rd

Ser., VII,

177-9

(here, 178),

N0.211.

191. Weizsacker, Erinnerungen, 252. Hitler's 192. TBJG, I/7, 76 (25 August 1939); Below, 187; Watt, How War Came, 464-5. And see remarks to Reich Press Chief Otto Dietrich: 'No democratic government can survive such a defeat

901