24
I
‘The year 1944 will make tough and severe demands of all Germans. The course of the war, in all its enormity, will reach its critical point during this year. We are fully confident that we will successfully surmount it.’ This, and the prospect of new cities rising resplendently after the war from the bombed-out ruins, was all Hitler had to offer readers of his New Year proclamation in 1944. Fewer than ever of them were able to share his confidence. For the embattled soldiers at the front, Hitler’s message was no different. The military crisis of 1943 had been brought about, he told them, by sabotage and treachery by the French in North Africa and the Italians following the overthrow of Mussolini. But the greatest crisis in German history had been triumphantly mastered. However hard the fighting in the east had been, ‘Bolshevism has not achieved its goal.’ He glanced at the western Allies, and at the future: ‘The plutocratic western world can undertake its threatened attempt at a landing where it wants: it will fail!’
Since Germany had been forced on to the defensive, experiencing only setbacks, Hitler had not changed his tune. His stance had become immobilized, fossilized. In his view, the military disasters had been the consequence of betrayal, incompetence, disobedience of orders, and, above all, weakness. He conceded not a single error or misjudgement on his own part. No capitulation; no surrender; no retreat; no repeat of 1918; hold out at all costs, whatever the odds: this was the unchanging message. Alongside this went the belief – unshakeable (apart, perhaps, from his innermost thoughts and bouts of depression during sleepless nights) but an item of blind faith, not resting on reason – that the strength to hold out would eventually lead to a turning of the tide, and to Germany’s final victory. In public, he expressed his unfounded optimism through references to the grace of Providence. As he put it to his soldiers on 1 January 1944, after overcoming the defensive period then returning to the attack to impose devastating blows on the enemy, ‘Providence will bestow victory on the people that has done most to earn it.’ His instinctive belief in reward for the strongest remained intact. ‘If, therefore, Providence grants life as the prize to those who have fought and defended the most courageously, then our people will find mercy from the just arbiter who at all times gave victory to the most meritorious.’
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. He had to believe these ideas – and did, certainly down to the summer of 1944, if not longer. The references, in public and private, to ‘Providence’ and ‘Fate’ increased as his own control over the course of the war declined. The views on the course of the war which he expressed to his generals, to other Nazi leaders, and to his immediate entourage gave no inkling that his own resolve was wavering, or that he had become in any way resigned to the prospect of defeat. If it was an act, then it was one brilliantly sustained, and remained substantially unchanged whatever the context or personnel involved. ‘It is impressive, with what certainty the Führer believes in his mission,’ noted Goebbels in his diary in early June 1944. Others who saw Hitler frequently, in close proximity, and were less impressionable than Goebbels, thought the same. Without the inner conviction, Hitler would have been unable to sway those around him, as he continued so often to do, to find new resolve. Without it, he would not have engaged so fanatically in bitter conflicts with his military leaders. Without it, he would have been incapable, not 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 half of 1944. But the self-deception involved was colossal. Hitler lived increasingly in a world of illusion, clutching as the year wore on ever more desperately at whatever straws he could find. The invasion, when it 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 convinced that the alliance against him was fragile and would soon fall apart, as had occurred in the Seven Years War two centuries earlier following the indomitable defence of one of his heroes, Frederick the Great. Even at the very end of a catastrophic year for Germany, he would not give up hope of this happening. He would still be hoping for miracles.
He had, however, no rational ways out of the inevitable catastrophe to offer those who, in better times, had lavished their adulation upon him. Albert Speer, in a pen-picture drawn immediately after the war, saw Hitler’s earlier ‘genius’ at finding ‘elegant’ ways out of crises eroded by relentless overwork imposed on him by war’s demands, undermining the intuition which had required the more spacious and leisured life-style suited to an artistic temperament. The change in 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 all but the route to disaster.
It was 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-today 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 to a punishing work-schedule in which Hitler brooded incessantly over the 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 strict, spartan diet, and meals often taken alone in his room; no exercise beyond a brief daily walk with his Alsatian bitch, Blondi; the same surrounds, the same entourage; late-night monologues to try to wind down (at the expense of his bored entourage), reminiscing about 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 – only marginally more relaxed when he was at the Berghof – could not but be in the long run harmful to health and was scarcely conducive to calm and considered, rational reflection.
All who saw him pointed out how Hitler had aged during the war. He had once appeared vigorous, full of energy, to those around him. Now, his hair was greying fast, his eyes were bloodshot, he walked with a stoop, he had difficulty controlling a trembling left arm; for a man in his mid-fifties, he looked old. His health had started to suffer notably from 1941 onwards. The increased numbers of pills and injections provided every day by Dr Morell – ninety varieties in all during the war and twenty-eight different pills each day – could not prevent the physical deterioration.
By 1944, Hitler was a sick man – at times during the year extremely unwell. Cardiograms, the first taken in 1941, had revealed a worsening heart condition. And beyond the chronic stomach and intestinal problems that had increasingly come to plague him, Hitler had since 1942 developed symptoms, becoming more pronounced in 1944, which point with some medical certainty to the onset of Parkinson’s Syndrome. Most notably, an uncontrollable trembling of the left arm, jerking in his left leg, and a shuffling gait, were unmistakable to those who saw him at close quarters. But although the strains of the last phase of the war took their toll on him, there is no convincing evidence that Hitler’s mental capacity was impaired. His rages and violent mood-swings were inbuilt features of his character, their frequency in the final phase of the war a reflection of the stress from the rapidly deteriorating military conditions and his own 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.
In looking to the loss of ‘genius’ through pressures of overwork inappropriate to Hitler’s alleged natural talent for improvisation, Speer was offering a naive and misleading explanation of Germany’s fate, ultimately personalizing it in the ‘demonic’ figure of Hitler. The adoption of such a harmfully over-burdensome style of working was no chance development. It was the direct outcome of an extreme form of personalized rule which had already by the time war began seriously eroded the more formal and regular structures of government and military command that are essential in modern states. The reins of power were entirely held in Hitler’s hands. He was still backed by major power bases. None existed – whatever the growing anxieties among the military, some leading industrialists, and a number of senior figures in the state bureaucracy about the road down which he was taking them – that could bypass the Führer. All vital measures, both in military 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 running the war, was now often almost paralysed in his thinking, and often in his actions. And in matters relating to the ‘home front’, while refusing to concede an inch of his authority he was, as Goebbels interminably bemoaned, nevertheless incapable of more than sporadic, unsystematic interventions or prevaricating inaction.
Far more gifted individuals than Hitler would have been overstretched and incapable of coping with the scale and nature of the administrative problems involved in the conduct of a world war. Hitler’s triumphs in foreign policy in the 1930s, then as war leader until 1941, had not arisen from his ‘artistic genius’ (as Speer saw it), but in the main from his unerring skill in exploiting the weaknesses and divisions of his opponents, and through the timing of actions carried out at breakneck speed. Not ‘artistic genius’, but the gambler’s instinct when playing for high stakes with a good hand against weak opponents had served Hitler well in those earlier times. Those aggressive instincts worked as long as the initiative could be retained. But once the gamble had failed, 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 now fatefully merged, in conditions of mounting 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 cholerically expressed itself – all the more pronounced as disasters started to accumulate – in the belief that no one else was competent or trustworthy, and that he alone could ensure victory. His takeover of the operational command of the army 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 – had taken in the years when his ‘genius’ (in Speer’s perception) had been less constrained. Not changes in his work-style, but the direct result of a war he – and much of the military leadership – had wanted meant that Hitler could find no ‘elegant’ solution to the stranglehold increasingly imposed by the mighty coalition which German aggression had called into being. He was left, therefore, with no choice but to face the reality that the war was lost, or to hold fast to illusions.
Ever fewer Germans shared Hitler’s undiminished fatalism about the outcome of the war. The Dictator’s rhetoric, so powerful in ‘sunnier’ periods, had lost its ability to sway the masses. Either they believed what he said; or they believed their own eyes and ears – gazing out over devastated cities, 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, he did not even want to speak to the German people any longer. The bonds between the Führer and the people had been a vital basis of the regime in earlier times. But now, the gulf between ruler and ruled had widened to a 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 field headquarters in East Prussia or in his mountain idyll in Bavaria – and scarcely now visible, even in newsreels, for ordinary Germans.
On not a single occasion during 1944 did he appear in public to deliver a speech. When, on 24 February, the anniversary of the proclamation of the Party Programme of 1920, he spoke in the Hofbräuhaus in Munich to the closed circle of the party’s ‘Old Guard’, he expressly refused Goebbels’s exhortations to have the speech broadcast and no mention was made of the speech in the newspapers. 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. For the masses, Hitler had become a largely invisible leader. He was out of sight and for most, probably, increasingly out of mind – except as an 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 some ways astonishing) reserves of strength of the Führer cult among outright Nazi supporters, Hitler had become for the overwhelming majority of Germans the chief hindrance to the ending of the war. Ordinary people might prefer, as they were reported to be saying, ‘an end with horror’ to ‘a horror without end’. But they had no obvious way of altering their fate. Only those who moved in the corridors of power had any possibility of removing Hitler. Some groups of officers, through conspiratorial links with certain highly-placed 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 subordinate leaders, the absence of any centralized forum (equivalent to the Fascist Grand Council in Italy) from which an internal coup could be launched, the shapelessness of the structures of Nazi 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 acts of inhumanity, ruled out any further possibility of overthrow. With that, the regime had only its own collective suicide in an inexorably lost war to contemplate. But like a mortally wounded wild beast at bay, it fought with the ferocity and ruthlessness that came from desperation. And its Leader, losing touch ever more with reality, hoping for miracles, kept tilting at windmills – ready in Wagnerian style in the event of ultimate apocalyptic catastrophe, and in line with his undiluted social-Darwinistic beliefs, to take his people down in flames with him if it 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 his military advisers in early 1944. They were sure that the critical phase directly following the invasion would decide the outcome of the war. Hopes were invested in the fortifications swiftly being erected along the Atlantic coast in France, and in the new, powerful weapons of destruction that were under preparation and would help the Wehrmacht to inflict a resounding defeat on the invaders as soon as they set foot 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 split apart; and, freed of the danger in the west, the German Reich could devote all its energies, perhaps now 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.
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 on 24 December 1943, making rapid advances, and dampening an already dismal Christmas mood in the Führer Headquarters. Hitler spent New Year’s Eve closeted in his rooms alone with Bormann. He took part in no festivities. At least in the 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 Below, even the initially starry-eyed Chief of the Army General Staff Kurt Zeitzler by now did not believe a word Hitler said. What Hitler really felt about the war, whether he harboured private doubts that conflicted with the optimism he voiced at all times, was even for those regularly in his close company impossible to deduce.
Whatever his innermost thoughts, his outward stance was predictable. Retreat, whatever the tactical necessity or even advantage to be gained from it, was ruled out. When the retreat then inevitably did eventually take place, it was invariably under less favourable conditions than at the time that it had been initially proposed. ‘Will’ to hold out was, as always, the supreme value for Hitler. What was, in fact, required was greater military skill and tactical flexibility than the Commander-in-Chief of the Army himself could muster. In these circumstances, Hitler’s obstinacy and interference in tactical matters posed ever greater difficulties for his field commanders.
Manstein encountered Hitler’s inflexibility again when he flew on 4 January 1944 to Führer Headquarters to report on the rapidly deteriorating situation of Army Group South. Soviet forces, centred on the Dnieper bend, had made major advances. These now posed an ominous threat to the survival of the 4th Panzer Army (located in the region between Vinnitsa and Berichev). The breach of this position would open up a massive gap between Army Groups South and Centre, putting therefore the entire southern front in mortal peril. It demanded, in Manstein’s view, the urgent transfer of forces northwards to counter the threat. This could only be done by evacuating the Dnieper bend, abandoning Nikopol (with its manganese supplies) and the Crimea, and drastically reducing the front to a length which could more easily be defended. Hitler refused point-blank to countenance such a proposal. Losing the Crimea, he argued, would prompt Turkey’s abandonment of neutrality and the defection of Bulgaria and Romania. Reinforcements for the threatened northern wing could not be drawn from Army Group North, since that could well lead to the defection of Finland, loss of the Baltic, and lack of availability of vital Swedish ore. Forces could not be drawn from the west before the invasion had been repelled. ‘There were so many disagreements on the enemy side,’ Manstein recalled Hitler stating, ‘that the coalition was bound to fall apart one day. To gain time was therefore a matter of paramount importance.’ Manstein would simply have to hold out until reinforcements were available.
When the military conference was over, Manstein asked to see Hitler privately, in the company only of Zeitzler. Reluctantly (as usual when unsure of what was coming), Hitler agreed. Once the room had emptied, Manstein began. Hitler’s demeanour, already cold, soon touched freezing-point. His eyes bored like gimlets into the field-marshal as Manstein stated that enemy superiority alone was not responsible for the plight of the army in the east, but that this was ‘also due to the way in which we are led’. Manstein, persevering undaunted despite the intimidating atmosphere, 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 his powers of command in the eastern theatre. He was having none of it. But his argument backfired. ‘Even I cannot get the field-marshals to obey me!’ he retorted. ‘Do you imagine, for example, that they would obey you any more readily?’ Manstein replied that his orders were never disobeyed. At this, Hitler, his anger under control though the insubordination plainly registered, closed the discussion. Manstein had had the last word. But he returned to his headquarters empty-handed.
Not only had he no prospect of appointment as Commander-in-Chief in the eastern theatre; Manstein’s outspoken views were by now prompting doubts in Hitler’s mind about his suitability in command of Army Group South. Meanwhile, Hitler’s orders for Manstein’s troops were clear: there was to be no pulling back. Tenacious German defiance in the Dnieper bend and at Nikopol did in fact 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, at a private audience in January, to persuade Hitler to simplify and unify military command by appointing a trusted general to a new position of Chief of the Wehrmacht General Staff. This, aimed at 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 difficulty in recognizing, a diminution of his own powers within the military command. Like Manstein, Guderian had met an immovable obstacle. Like Manstein’s, his recommendations of tactical retreats fell on stony ground.
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 100 or so of his military leaders on 27 January. After a simple lunch, during which the atmosphere was noticeably cool, Hitler offered little more (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 out. For this, indoctrination in the spirit of National Socialism was vital. Of one thing, he told them, they could be certain: ‘that there could never be even the slightest thought of capitulation, whatever might happen’. Hitler spoke of his right to demand of his generals not simply loyalty, but fanatical support. Full of pathos, he declared: ‘In the last instance, if I should ever be deserted as supreme Leader, I must have as the last defence around me the entire officer corps who must stand with drawn swords rallied round me.’ A minor sensation then occurred: Hitler was interrupted – something which had never happened since the beerhalls of Munich – as Field-Marshal von Manstein exclaimed: ‘And so it will be, my Führer.’ Hitler was visibly taken aback, and lost the thread of what he was saying. He stared icily, uttered ‘That’s good. If that’s the case, we can never lose this war, never, come what may. For the nation will then go into the war with the strength that is necessary. I note that very gladly, Field-Marshal von Manstein!’ He quickly recovered, emphasizing the need, even so, for greater advances in the ‘education’ of the officer corps. In a literal sense, Manstein’s words could be seen to be not only harmless, but encouraging. But, as Manstein himself indicated after the war, the implied meaning was more critical of Hitler. The interruption, the field-marshal later recalled, arose from a rush of blood as he sensed that Hitler had impugned the honour of himself and his fellow officers by implying that their loyalty might be in question.
Hitler, for his part, saw in the interruption a reproach for his mistrust of his generals. The meeting with Manstein three weeks earlier still rankled with him, as did a frank letter which the field-marshal had subsequently sent. Within minutes of the interruption, Hitler had summoned Manstein to his presence. With Keitel in attendance, Hitler forbade Manstein to interrupt in future. ‘You yourself would not tolerate such behaviour from your own subordinates,’ he stated, adding, in a gratuitous insult, that Manstein’s letter to him a few days earlier had presumably been to justify himself to posterity in his war diary. Needled at this, Manstein retorted: ‘You must excuse me if I use an English expression in this connection, but all I can say to your interpretation of my motives is that I am a gentleman.’ On this discordant note, the audience came to a close. Manstein’s days were plainly numbered.
At noon three days later, the eleventh anniversary of the takeover of power, Hitler addressed the German people, confining 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 sirens in Berlin announced the onset of another massive air-attack on the city. Symbolically – it might seem in retrospect – the Sportpalast, scene of 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.
Hitler’s radio broadcast could offer listeners nothing of what they yearned to hear: when the war would be over, when the devastation from the air would be ended. Instead, what they heard was no more than a rant (along the usual lines, accompanied by the normal savage vocabulary of ‘Jewish bacteria’) about the threat of Bolshevism. Not a word was said in consolation to those who had lost loved ones at the front, or about the human misery caused by the bomb-raids. Even Goebbels acknowledged that, in bypassing practically all the issues that preoccupied ordinary people, the speech had failed to make an impact. It was a remarkable contrast with earlier years. His propaganda slogans were now falling on deaf ears. Indirectly, judgement on the speech could be read into reported remarks such as the comment of a Berlin worker, that only ‘an idiot can tell me the war will be won’.
III
Scepticism both about the capabilities of German air-defence to protect cities against the menace from the skies, and about the potential for launching retaliatory attacks on Britain, was well justified. Göring’s earlier popularity had long since evaporated totally 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 Marshal’s standing at Führer Headquarters. It took little to prompt Hitler to withering tirades against Göring’s competence as Luftwaffe chief. In particular, Goebbels, who both as Gauleiter of Berlin and with new responsibilities for 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 Hitler to vent his spleen on Goöring. But however violently he condemned what Goebbels described as ‘Göring’s total fiasco’ in air-defence, Hitler would not consider parting company with one of his longest-serving paladins. Hitler ‘could do nothing about Göring because the authority of the Reich or the party would thereby suffer the greatest damage’. It would remain Hitler’s position throughout the year.
A big hope of making a dent in Allied air superiority rested on the production of the jet-fighter, the Me262, which had been commissioned the previous May. Its speed of up to 800 kilometres per hour meant that it was capable of outflying any enemy aircraft. But when the aircraft designer Professor Willy Messerschmitt had told Hitler of its disproportionately heavy fuel consumption, it had led by September 1943 to its production priority being removed. This was restored only a vital quarter of a year later, 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 testing of jet-planes was almost complete. Hitler now demanded production on the Me262 to be stepped up immediately. But valuable time had been lost. It was plain that the first machines would take months to produce. Whether Hitler was as clearly informed of this as Speer later claimed is questionable.
Hitler’s instincts, as always, veered towards attack as the best form of defence. He looked to the chance to launch devastating weapons of destruction against Great Britain, giving the British a taste of their own medicine and forcing the Allies to rethink their strategy in the air-war. Here, too, his illusions about the speed with which the ‘wonder-weapons’ could be made ready for deployment, and their likely impact on British war strategy, were shored up by the optimistic prognoses of his advisers.
Speer had persuaded Hitler as long ago as October 1942, after witnessing trials at Peenemünde earlier in the year, of the destructive potential of a long-range rocket, the A4 (later better known as the V2), able to enter the stratosphere en route to delivering its unstoppable devastation on England. Hitler had immediately ordered their mass-production on a huge scale. It was, he told Speer, ‘the decisive weapon of the war’, which would lift the burden on Germany when unleashed on the British. Production was to be advanced with all speed – if need be at the expense of tank production. In February 1944, Speer was still indicating to Goebbels that the rocket programme could be ready by the end of April. In the event, it would be September before the rockets were launched.
The alternative project of the Luftwaffe, the ‘Kirschkern’ programme, which produced what came to be known as the V1 flying-bombs, was more advanced. This, too, went back to 1942. And, like the A4 project, hopes of it were high and expectations of its production-rate optimistic. Production began in January 1944. Tests were highly encouraging. Speer told Goebbels in early February it would be ready at the beginning of April. Milch pictured for Hitler, a 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 more explicable. Competition, in this case between the army’s A4 project and the ‘Kirschkern’ programme of the Luftwaffe, played its part. And ‘working towards the Führer’, striving – as the key to retaining power 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 bad or depressing news to him was the opposite side of the same coin. Together, the consequence was inbuilt, systemic over-optimism – shoring up unrealizable hopes, inevitably leading to sour disillusionment.
IV
During February, Hitler, perusing the international press summarized for him as usual in the overview provided by his Press Chief Otto Dietrich, had seen a press notice from Stockholm stating that a general staff officer of the army had been designated to shoot him. SS-Standartenführer Johann Rattenhuber, responsible for Hitler’s personal safety, was instructed to tighten security at the Wolf ’s Lair. All visitors were to be carefully screened; not least, briefcases were to be thoroughly searched. Hitler had reservations, however, about drawing security precautions too tightly. In any case, within days the matter lost its urgency since he decided to leave the Wolf ’s Lair and move to the Berghof. The recent air-raids on Berlin and increasing Allied air-supremacy meant that the prospect of a raid on Führer Headquarters could no longer be ruled out. It was essential, therefore, to strengthen the walls and roofs of the buildings. While workers from the Organisation Todt were carrying out the extensive work, headquarters would be transferred to Berchtesgaden. On the evening of 22 February, having announced that he would be speaking to the ‘Old Guard’ in 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. He would not return from the Berghof until mid-July.
He had been unwell in the middle of the month. His intestinal problems were accompanied by a severe cold. The trembling in his left leg was noticeable. He also complained of blurred vision in his right eye, diagnosed a fortnight later by an ophthalmic specialist as caused by minute blood-vessel haemhorraging. His health problems were by now chronic, and mounting. But he was a good deal better by the time he arrived on 24 February in one of his old haunts, Munich’s Hofbräuhaus, to deliver his big speech to a large gathering of fervent loyalists. In this company, Hitler was in his element. His good speaking-form returned. The old certitudes sufficed. He believed, the assembled fanatics heard, more firmly than ever in the victory that toughness in holding out would bring; retaliation was on its way in massive attacks on London; the Allied invasion, when it came, would be swiftly repelled. 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. It was a crude attack on the prime Nazi ideological target as compensation for the lack of any tangible military success. But it was exactly what this audience wanted to hear. They loved it.
At the beginning of March, Hitler summoned Goebbels to the Berghof. The immediate reason was the prospect of the imminent defection of Finland. In fact, for the time being this proved a false alarm. Finland would eventually secede only six months later. But the meeting with Goebbels on 3 March was, 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 was now determined to put an end to the continued ‘treachery’ in Hungary. It would be dealt with as soon as possible. On the military situation, Hitler exuded confidence. He thought a shortened front in the east could be held. He wanted to turn to the offensive again in the summer. On the invasion to be expected in all probability during the subsequent months, Hitler was ‘absolutely certain’ of Germany’s chances. He outlined the strength of forces to repel it, emphasizing especially the quality of the SS-divisions that had been sent there. Even in the air, Hitler reckoned Germany would be able to hold its own. It was 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: ‘I wish these prognoses of the Führer were right. We’ve been so often disappointed recently that you feel some scepticism rising up within you.’
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 active in the attack on England’. Hitler needed little invitation to pour out his bile on his generals. It was easier for Stalin, he commented. He had had shot the sort of generals who were causing problems in Germany. But as regards the ‘Jewish question’, Germany was benefiting from its radical policy: ‘the Jews can do us no more harm.’
Within just over two weeks of Hitler’s talk with Goebbels, Hungary had been invaded – the last German invasion of the war. German intelligence had learned that the Hungarians had attempted to make diplomatic overtures both to the western Allies and to the Soviet Union.
From Hitler’s point of view, in full concurrence with the opinion of his military leaders, it was high time to act. Thinking he was coming to discuss, in particular, troop withdrawals from the eastern front, the seventy-five-year-old Hungarian head of state, Admiral Horthy, arrived at Klessheim, together with his foreign minister, war minister, and chief of general staff, on the morning of 18 March. He had walked into a trap.
Hitler at the outset accused the Hungarian government of negotiating with the Allies in an attempt to take Hungary out of the war. Holding fast, as ever, to his notion that the Jews were behind the war, and that, consequently, the continued existence of Jews in any country provided, in effect, a fifth-column subverting and endangering the war-effort, Hitler was especially aggressive in accusing Horthy of allowing almost a million Jews to exist without any hindrance, which had to be seen from the German side as a threat to the eastern and Balkan fronts. Consequently, the German leadership, continued Hitler, had justifiable fears of a defection taking place, similar to that which had happened in Italy. He had, therefore, decided upon the military occupation of Hungary, and demanded Horthy’s agreement to this in a signed joint declaration. Horthy refused to sign. The temperature in the meeting rose. Hitler declared that if Horthy did not sign, the occupation would simply take place without his approval. Any armed resistance would be crushed by Croatian, Slovakian, and Romanian as well as German troops. Horthy threatened to 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 feet, protesting: ‘If everything here is already decided, there’s no point in staying any longer. I’m leaving immediately,’ and stormed out of the room.
While Horthy was demanding to be taken to his special train, and Ribbentrop was berating Döme Sztojay, the Hungarian Ambassador in Berlin, an air-raid alarm sounded. In fact, the ‘air-raid’ was merely 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 to persuade Horthy to put aside thoughts of a premature departure and compel him to enter into renewed talks with Hitler. The browbeating and chicanery, as usual, did the trick. When Horthy returned to his train that evening, it was in the accompaniment of Security Police chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop’s emissary in Hungary, Edmund Veesenmeyer, endowed with plenipotentiary powers to ensure that German interests were served. And this was only once Horthy had finally agreed to install a puppet regime, with Sztojay as prime minister, ready to do German bidding.
Next day, 19 March 1944, Hungary was in German hands. Not only could extra raw materials and manpower immediately be exploited for the German war effort; but, as Hitler had told Goebbels a fortnight earlier, the ‘Jewish question’ could now be tackled in Hungary.
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 lose a minute. Eichmann’s men entered Budapest with the German troops. Within days, 2,000 Jews had been rounded up. The first deportation – a train with over 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children packed in indescribable conditions into about forty cattle-wagons – left for Auschwitz a month later. By early June, ninety-two trains had carried almost 300,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths. When Horthy halted the deportations a month later, triggering the events that would lead to his own deposition, 437,402 Hungarian Jews had been sent to the gas-chambers.
V
On the day that German troops entered Hungary, a strange little ceremony took place at the Berghof. The field-marshals, who had been summoned from different parts of the front, witnessed the presentation to Hitler by their senior, Rundstedt, of a declaration of their loyalty, which they had all signed. The signatures had all been collected, on a tour of the front, by Hitler’s chief Wehrmacht adjutant, General Schmundt. The idea, characteristically, had come from Goebbels (though this was kept quiet, and not made known to Hitler). It had been prompted by the anti-German subversive propaganda disseminated from Moscow by the captured General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach and other officers who had fallen into Soviet hands at Stalingrad. In reality, the effect of the Seydlitz propaganda was minimal. But these were nervous times for the Nazi leadership. Schmundt’s main intention, in any case, was to remove Hitler’s distrust towards his generals, and to improve the icy relations which had been so much in evidence at the January meeting interrupted by Manstein. It was, nevertheless, both remarkable in itself and a clear sign that all was not well if, in the midst of such a titanic conflict, the senior military leaders should see fit to produce a signed declaration of loyalty to their supreme commander and head of state. Manstein, the last field-marshal to sign the document, certainly thought so. He felt the declaration to be quite superfluous from a soldier’s point of view. Hitler seemed moved by the occasion. It was a rare moment of harmony in his dealings with his generals.
Normality was, however, soon to be resumed. Within a week, Manstein was back at the Berghof. The 1st Panzer Army, under General Hans Valentin Hube, was in 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 new front in Galicia. For this, reinforcements to assist the 1st Panzer Army would be necessary. And for these to be provided from some other part of the front, Hitler’s agreement was necessary. Sharp exchanges took place between Manstein and Hitler at the midday military conference. But Hitler refused to concede to Manstein’s request, and held the field-marshal personally responsible for the unfavourable position of his Army Group. Further deliberation was adjourned until the evening. Disgusted, Manstein told Schmundt that he wished to resign his command if his orders did not gain Hitler’s approval.
When discussion continued at the evening conference, however, Hitler had, astonishingly, changed his mind. Who or what had persuaded him to do so, or whether he had simply brooded on the matter before altering his decision, is unclear. At any rate, he now offered Manstein the reinforcements he wanted, including an SS Panzer Corps to be taken away from the western front. Manstein went away momentarily satisfied. But Hitler resented having concessions wrung from him – particularly after his initial refusal in front of a sizeable audience. And, from Hitler’s point of view, Manstein had in previous weeks been both troublesome and ineffectual in command. Hitler’s way of dealing with major military setbacks was invariably (apart from his kid-glove treatment of his old political ally, Göring, as Luftwaffe chief despite the disasters in the air-war) to blame the commander and to look for a replacement who would fire the fighting morale of the troops and shore up their will to continue. It was time for a parting of the ways with Manstein, as it was with another senior field-marshal, Kleist, who, two days after Manstein, had also paid a visit to the Berghof, requesting permission for Army Group A on the Black Sea coast to pull back from the Bug to the Dniester.
On 30 March, Manstein and Kleist were picked up in Hitler’s Condor aircraft and taken to the Berghof. Zeitzler told Manstein that after his last visit, Göring, Himmler, and probably Keitel had agitated against him. Zeitzler had himself offered to resign, an offer that had been summarily turned down. Schmundt had seen to it that the dismissals of the two field-marshals were carried out with decorum, not with rancour. They were replaced by Walter Model and Ferdinand Schörner, both tough generals and 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, already been lost. The symbolic renaming was part of the aim of reviving morale by implying that it would soon be retaken.
It would rapidly become clear yet again, however, that changes in personnel and nomenclature would not suffice. The new commanders were no more 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 its high-point. The Russians have used up and split up their forces. The time has come to bring the Russian advance finally to a halt.’ It was a vain hope. A crucial component of the new lines drawn up was the provision for the Crimea, to be held at all cost. It was an impossibility. Odessa, the port on the Black Sea which was vital to supply-lines for the Crimea, had been abandoned on 10 April. By early May, the entire Crimea was lost, with Hitler forced to agree in the night of 8–9 May to the evacuation of Sevastopol by sea. The vain struggle to hold on to the Crimea had cost over 60,000 German and 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.
Goebbels had suggested to Hitler that he might speak to the German people on 1 May. He had not been well enough to speak on ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’ on 12 March, when Grand-Admiral Dönitz – one of the few military leaders whom Hitler greatly respected, and evidently a coming man – substituted for him. Hitler told Goebbels (who remarked on his nervous strain, particularly 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. He did show some apparent inclination to give a radio address on 1 May, but claimed his health was not up to giving a speech in public. He did not know whether he could manage it.
It was an excuse. When, following his discussion with Goebbels, he gave a fiery pep-talk, unprepared and without notes, to his party leaders, there was no hint of concern about whether he might break down part-way through his speech (in which he declared, among other confidence-boosting claims, that the Soviet advance also had its advantages in bringing home to all nations the seriousness of the threat). But when speaking to the ‘Old Guard’, he was in trusted company. A speech, in the circumstances, to a mass audience when he was well aware of the slump in mood of the population was a different matter altogether.
Hitler’s birthday that year, his fifty-fifth, had the usual trappings and ceremonials. Goebbels had Berlin emblazoned with banners and a new slogan of resounding pathos: ‘Our walls broke, but our hearts didn’t.’ The State Opera house on Unter den Linden was festively decorated for the usual celebration, attended by dignitaries from state, party, and Wehrmacht. Goebbels portrayed Hitler’s historic achievements. The Berlin Philharmonia, conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch, played Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony. But the mood among the Nazi faithful at such events was contrived. Goebbels was well aware from reports from the regional Propaganda Offices that the popular mood was ‘very critical and sceptical’, and that ‘the depression in the broad masses’ had reached ‘worrying levels’.
VI
A familiar face, not seen for some months, had returned to the Berghof in mid-April. Since being admitted to the Red Cross hospital at Hohenlychen, sixty miles north of Berlin, for a knee operation (accompanied by severe nervous strain), Albert Speer had been out of circulation. Hitler had seen him briefly in March, while Speer was convalescing for a short time at Klessheim, but the armaments minister had then left for Meran, in South Tyrol, to recover in the company of his family.
An 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 to exploit Hitler’s favour in his boss’s absence. When a Fighter Staff had been set up in March – 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. And when, stung by the near-unhampered bombing of German cities, Hitler discovered that little 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 man, Xaver Dorsch, head of the central office of the massive construction apparatus, the Organisation Todt, spotted his chance. Dorsch was commissioned by Hitler with the sole responsibility for the building of the six immense bunkers within the Reich – thereby overriding Speer – accompanied by full authority to assure the work had top priority.
Speer had not reached his high position, however, without an ability to take care of his own interests in the ruthless scheming and jockeying for position that went on around Hitler. He was not prepared to accept the undermining of his own authority without a fight. On 19 April, he wrote a long letter to Hitler complaining at the decisions he had taken and demanding the restoration of his own authority over Dorsch. He let it be known that he wished to resign should Hitler not accede to his wishes. Hitler’s initial anger at the letter gave way to the more pragmatic consideration that he still needed Speer’s organizational talents. He passed a message to Speer, via Erhard Milch, Luftwaffe armaments supremo, that he still held him in high esteem. On 24 April, Speer appeared at the Berghof. Hitler, formally attired, gloves in hand, came out to meet him, accompanying him like some foreign dignitary into the imposing hall. Speer, his vanity touched, was immediately impressed. Hitler went on to flatter Speer. He told him that he needed him to oversee all building works. He was in agreement with whatever Speer thought right in this area. Speer was won over. That evening, he was back in the Berghof ‘family’, making small-talk with Eva Braun and the others in the late-night session around the fire. Bormann suggested listening to some music. Records of music by Wagner, naturally, and Johann Strauß’s Fledermaus were put on. Speer felt at home again.
In Speer’s absence, and despite the extensive damage from air-raids, Saur had in fact masterminded a remarkable increase in fighter-production – though with a corresponding decline in output of bombers. Delighted as he was with better prospects of air-defence, Hitler’s instincts lay, as always, in aggression and regaining the initiative through bombing. The new chief of the Luftwaffe operations staff, Karl Koller, 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. Hitler promptly told Göring that the low targets for bomber-production were unacceptable. Göring passed the message to the Fighter Staff that there was to be a trebling of bomber-production – alongside the massive increase in fighters to come off the production lines. Eager to please, as always, Göring had told Hitler of rapid progress in the production of the jet, the Me262, of which the Dictator had such high hopes.
The previous autumn, having removed top priority from production of the Me262 because of its heavy fuel-consumption, Hitler had changed his mind. He had been led to believe – possibly it was a misunderstanding – by the designer, Professor Willi Messerschmitt, that the jet, once in service, could be used not as a fighter, but as a bomber to attack Britain and to play a decisive role in repelling the coming invasion, wreaking havoc on the beaches as Allied troops were disembarking. Göring, at least as unrealistic as his Leader in his expectations, promised the jet-bombers would be available by May. At his meeting with Speer and Milch in January, when he demanded accelerated production of the jet, Hitler had stated, to the horror of the Luftwaffe’s technical staff, that he wanted to deploy it as a bomber. Arguments to the contrary were of no avail.
Now, on 23 May, in a meeting at the Berghof with Göring, Saur, and Milch about aircraft production, he heard mention of the Me262 as a fighter. He interrupted. He had presumed, he stated, that it was being built as a bomber. It transpired that his instructions of the previous autumn, unrealistic as they were, had been simply ignored. Hitler exploded in fury, ordering the Me262 – despite all technical objections levelled by the experts present – to be built exclusively as a bomber. Göring lost no time in passing the brickbats down the line to the Luftwaffe construction experts. But he had to tell Hitler that the major redesign needed for the plane would now delay production for five months. Whether fuel 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 raids at the end of the month, along with Allied attacks, carried out from bases in Italy, on the Romanian oil-refineries near Ploesti, halved German fuel production. Nimbly taking advantage of Göring’s latest embarrassment, Speer had no trouble in persuading Hitler to transfer to his ministry full control over aircraft production.
Three days after the wrangle about the Me262, another, larger, gathering took place on the Obersalzberg. A sizeable number of generals and other senior officers, who had been participants in ideological training-courses and were ready to return to the front, 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. They assembled on 26 May in the Platterhof, the big hotel adjacent to the Berghof on the site of the far more modest Pension Moritz, where Hitler had stayed in the 1920s. A central passage in the speech touched on the ‘Final Solution’. Hitler spoke of the Jews as a ‘foreign body’ in the German people which, though not all had understood why he had to proceed ‘so brutally and ruthlessly’, it had been essential to expel.
He came to the key point. ‘In removing the Jews,’ he went on, ‘I eliminated in 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 life-or-death struggle. If our opponents are victorious in this struggle, the German people would be eradicated. Bolshevism would slaughter millions and millions and millions of our intellectuals. Anyone not dying through a shot in the neck would be deported. The children of the upper classes would be taken away and eliminated. This entire bestiality has been organized by the Jews.’ He spoke of 40,000 women and children being burnt to death through the incendiaries dropped on Hamburg, adding: ‘Don’t expect anything else from me except the ruthless upholding of the national interest in the way which, in my view, will have the greatest effect and benefit for the German nation.’ At this the officers burst into loud and lasting applause.
He continued: ‘Here just as generally, humanity would amount to the greatest cruelty towards one’s own people. If I already incur the Jews’ hatred, I at least don’t want to miss the advantages of such hatred.’ Shouts of ‘quite right’ were heard from his audience. ‘The advantage,’ he went on, ‘is that we possess a cleanly organized entity with which no one can interfere. Look in contrast at other states. We 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 state covered, I have to say, by a seamless web of agents and spies who have desisted from striking only because they feared that a premature strike would draw us in, though they waited for this strike. I have intervened here too, and this problem will now also be solved.’ He cited once again his ‘prophecy’ of 1939, that in the event of another war not the German nation but Jewry itself would be ‘eradicated’. The audience vigorously applauded. Continuing, he underlined ‘one sole principle, the maintenance of our race’. What served this principle, he said, was right; what detracted from it, wrong. 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 end of our people’, victory ‘the beginning of our domination over Europe’.
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, if any, signs of it on the surface. To Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, it seemed almost like pre-war times on the Obersalzberg. Hitler would take Below’s wife on one side when she was invited to lunch and talk about the children or her parents’ farm. In the afternoon, he 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 fire he would find some relaxation in the inconsequential chat of his guests or 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 reminiscences of earlier years. Even the news, on 3–4 June, that the Allies had taken Rome, with the German troops pulling back to the Apennines, was received calmly. For all its obvious strategic importance, Italy was, for Hitler, little more than a sideshow. He would have little longer to wait for the main event.
Hitler seemed calm, and looked well compared with his condition in recent months, when Goebbels accompanied him to the Tea House on the afternoon of 5 June. Earlier, he had told the Propaganda Minister that the plans for retaliation were now so advanced that he would be ready to unleash 300–400 of the new pilotless flying-bombs on London within a few days. (He had, in fact, given the order for a major air-attack on London, including use of these new weapons, on 16 May.) He repeated how confident he was that the invasion, when it came, would be repulsed. Rommel, he said, was equally confident. On 4 June Rommel, whom Hitler had the previous autumn made responsible for the Atlantic defences, had even left for a few days’ leave with his family near Ulm. Other commanding officers in the west were equally unaware of the imminence of the invasion, though reconnaissance had provided telegraph warnings that very day of things stirring on the other side of the Channel. Nothing of this was reported to OKW at Berchtesgaden or, even more astonishingly, to General Friedrich Dollmann’s 7th Army directly on the invasion front.
That evening, Hitler and his entourage viewed the latest newsreel. The discussion moved to films and the theatre. Eva Braun joined in with pointed criticism of some productions. ‘We sit then around the hearth until two o’clock at night,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘exchange reminiscences, take pleasure in the many fine days and weeks we have had together. The Führer inquires about this and that. All in all, the mood is like the good old times.’ The heavens opened and a thunderstorm broke as Goebbels left the Berghof. It was four hours since the first news had started to trickle in that the invasion would begin that night. Goebbels had been disinclined to believe the tapping into enemy communications. But coming down the Obersalzberg to his quarters in Berchtesgaden, the news was all too plain; ‘the decisive day of the war had begun.’
Hitler went to bed not long after Goebbels had left, probably around 3 a.m. When Speer arrived next morning, seven hours later, Hitler had still not been wakened with the news of the invasion. In fact, it seems that the initial scepticism at the High Command of the Wehrmacht that this indeed was the invasion had been finally dispelled only a little while earlier, probably between 8.15 and 9.30 a.m. Influenced by German intelligence reports, Hitler had spoken a good deal in previous weeks that the invasion would begin with a 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.) 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 conference that it was a diversionary tactic put across by enemy intelligence. Only then did he agree to the already belated demand of the Commander-in-Chief in the West, Field-Marshal von 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 rapidly being established some 120 miles away. The delay was crucial. Had they moved by night, the panzer divisions might have made a difference. Their movements by day were hampered by heavy Allied air-attacks, and they suffered severe losses of men and matériel.
At the first news of the invasion, Hitler had seemed relieved – as if, thought Goebbels, a great burden had fallen from his shoulders. What he had been expecting for months was now reality. It had taken place, he said, exactly where he had predicted it. The poor weather, he added, was on 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. Göring thought the battle as good as won. Ribbentrop was, as always, ‘entirely on the Führer’s side. He is also more than sure, without, like the Führer, being able to give reasons in detail for it’, wryly commented Goebbels – like Jodl, one of the quiet sceptics. 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 6.30 a.m., meeting no notable resistance. Landings following shortly afterwards at the British and Canadian 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 a particularly firm stretch of fortifications, ran into serious difficulties. Troops landing on the exposed beach were simply mown down. The casualty rate was massive. Omaha gave a horrifying taste of what the landings could have faced elsewhere had the German defence been properly prepared and waiting. But even at Omaha, after several torrid hours of terrible bloodletting, almost 35,000 American troops were finally able to push forward and gain a foothold on French soil. By the end of the day, around 156,000 Allied troops had landed, had forged contact with the 13,000 American and British parachutists dropped behind the flanks of the enemy lines several hours before the landings, and been able successfully to establish beachheads – including one sizeable stretch some thirty kilometres long and ten deep.
What appears at times in retrospect to have been almost an inexorable triumph of ‘Operation Overlord’ could have turned out quite differently. Hitler’s initial optimism had not, in fact, been altogether unfounded. He had presumed the Atlantic coast better fortified than was the case. Even so, the advantage ought in the decisive early stages to have lain with the defenders of the coast – as it did at Omaha. But the dilatory action was costly in the extreme. The divisions among the German commanders and lack of agreement on tactics between Rommel (who favoured close proximity of panzer divisions to the coast in the hope of immediately crushing an invading force) and General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, commander of Panzer Group West (wanting to hold the armour back until it was plain where it should be concentrated), had been a significant weakness in the German planning for the invasion. Allied strategic decoys, as we noted, also played a part in the early confusion of the German commanders on the invasion night itself. Not least, massive Allied air-superiority – compared with over 10,000 Allied sorties on D-Day, the Luftwaffe could manage to put in the air only eighty fighters based in Normandy – gave the invading forces a huge advantage in the cover provided during the decisive early stages. Once the Allied troops were ashore and had established their beachheads, the 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 kept pouring in across the Normandy beaches. 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 were already striking out across the Cotentin peninsula. The road to the 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 war-fortunes. More than fifty sites had been set up on the coast in the Pas de Calais from which the V1 flying-bombs – early cruise missiles powered by jet engines and difficult to shoot down – could be fired off in the direction of London. Hitler had reckoned with the devastating effect of a mass attack on the British capital by hundreds of the new weapons being fired simultaneously. The weapon had then been delayed by a series of production 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 five reached London, causing minimal damage. In fury, Hitler wanted to cancel production. But three days later, the sensational effect of the successful launch of 244 V1s on London persuaded him to change his mind. He thought the new destructive force would quickly 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 V1, 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 dangerous optimism – with dismay. The impression had been created, noted the Propaganda Minister with consternation, that the war would be over within days. He was anxious to stop such illusions. The euphoria could quickly turn into blaming the government. He ordered the reports to be toned down, and exaggerated expectations to be dampened – persuading Hitler that his own instructions to the press, guaranteed to foster the euphoric mood, should follow the new guidelines.
The continued advance of the Allies, but what seemed the new prospects offered by the V1, prompted Hitler to fly in the evening of 16 June from Berchtesgaden together with Keitel and Jodl and the rest of his staff to the western front to discuss the situation with his regional commanders, Rundstedt and Rommel. He wanted to boost their wavering morale by underlining the strengths of the V1, while at the same time stressing the imperative need to defend the port of Cherbourg. After their four Focke-Wulf Condors had landed in Metz, Hitler and his entourage drove in the early hours of the next morning in an armour-plated car to Margival, north of Soissons, where the old Führer Headquarters built in 1940 had been installed, at great expense, with new communications equipment and massively reinforced. The talks that morning took place in a nearby bomb-proof railway-tunnel.
Hitler, looking pale and tired, sitting hunched on a stool, fiddled nervously with his glasses and played with coloured pencils while addressing his generals, who had to remain standing. Rundstedt reported on the developments of the previous ten days, concluding that it was now impossible to expel the Allies from France. 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 V1 – a weapon, he said, to decide the war and make the English anxious for peace. Impressed by what they had heard, the field-marshals asked for the V1 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 its targeting to allow this. Hitler promised them, however, that they would soon have jet-fighters at their disposal to gain control of the skies. As he himself knew, however, these had, in fact, only just gone into production.
After lunch (taken in a bunker because of the danger of air-attacks), Hitler spoke alone with Rommel. The discussion was heated at times. The field-marshal painted a bleak picture of the prospects. The western front could not be held for much longer, he stated, beseeching Hitler to seek a political solution. ‘Pay attention to your invasion front, not to the continuation of the war,’ was the blunt reply he received. Hitler waited no longer, and flew back to Salzburg that afternoon. At the Berghof that evening, dissatisfied at the day’s proceedings, Hitler remarked to his entourage that Rommel had lost his nerve and become a pessimist. ‘Only optimists can pull anything off today,’ he added.
The following day, 18 June, the Americans reached the western coast of the Cotentin peninsula, effectively cutting off the peninsula and the port of Cherbourg from reinforcements for the Wehrmacht. Eight days later, the German garrison in Cherbourg surrendered. With this port in their possession (even if it took nearly a month to repair German destruction and make use of the harbour), and almost total control of the skies, the Allies had few further worries about 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. Hitler was furious that the Allies had gained the initiative. He was left now with little more than the hope that the Alliance would split.
When 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. After lunch, sitting together in the great hall of the Berghof, with its huge window opening out to a breathtaking panorama of the Alps, Goebbels expounded his argument. He expressed his doubts about groundless optimism, ‘not to say illusions’, about the war. ‘Total war’ had remained a mere slogan. The crisis had to be recognized before it could be overcome. A thorough reform of the Wehrmacht was urgently necessary. Göring, he had observed (here came the usual attacks on the Reich Marshal), lived in a complete fantasy world. The Propaganda Minister extended his attack to the remainder of the top military leadership. The Führer needed a Scharnhorst and a Gneisenau – the Prussian military heroes who had created the army that repelled Napoleon – not a Keitel and a Fromm (commander of 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 to act with realism, wholly detached from any defeatism, and to act now.
Hitler accepted that there were some weaknesses in the organization of the Wehrmacht, and that few of its leaders were National Socialists. But to dispense with them during the war would be a nonsense, since there were no replacements. All in all, Hitler concluded, the time was not ripe for the extraordinary measures the Propaganda Minister wanted. He 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 wanted to proceed along the evolutionary, not revolutionary, way’. Goebbels went away empty-handed, leaving what he regarded as one of the most serious meetings he had had with Hitler sorely disappointed.
Goebbels was evidently dubious about Hitler’s continued positive gloss on military prospects. He doubted, correctly, the reassurances that it ought to be possible to hold Cherbourg until the two new divisions 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 Führer’s expectations seemed realistic enough to the Propaganda Minister. Hitler did not, he thought, over-estimate the impact of the V1 (short for Vergeltungswaffe-1 – ‘Retaliation Weapon 1’), as Goebbels had now dubbed the flying-bomb. But he hoped to have the A4 rocket (later renamed the V2) ready for launching by August, and looked to its destructive power to help decide the war. Hitler ruled out once again any prospect of an ‘arrangement’ with Britain, but was less inclined – so Goebbels inferred – to dismiss the possibility at some point of coming to 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 realized, however, this was entering the realm of vague musings.
The following day, 22 June 1944, exactly three years since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army launched its new big offensive in the east. Hitler had predicted that Stalin would not be able to resist the appeal of launching his assault on that day. The main thrust of the massive offensive – the biggest undertaken, deploying almost 2½ 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. Based on fatally flawed intelligence relayed to Chief of the General 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 left with a meagre thirty-eight divisions, comprising only half as many 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. Only belatedly, it appears, did the realization dawn, against Zeitzler’s continued advice, that the offensive was likely to come against Army Group Centre. But when Field-Marshal Ernst Busch, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, recommended shortening the front to more defensible limits, Hitler contemptuously asked whether he too was one of those generals ‘who always looked to the rear’.
The relatively mild beginnings of the offensive then misled Hitler’s military advisers into thinking at first that it was a decoy. However, the initial opening was sufficient to breach the German defences around Vitebsk. Suddenly, the first big wave of tanks swept through the gap. Others rapidly followed. Bombing and heavy artillery attacks accompanied the assault. Busch appealed to Hitler to abandon the ‘fortified places’ (Feste Plätze) in Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev, and Bobruisk, which had been established in the spring in a vain attempt to create a set of key defensive strongholds – fortresses to be held come what may under the command of selected tough generals.
Hitler’s answer could have been taken as read. The ‘fortified places’ were to be held at all costs; every square metre of land was to be defended. Busch, one of Hitler’s fervent admirers among the generals, accepted the order without demur. He sought to carry it out unquestioningly as a demonstration of his loyalty. The consequences were predictable. The Red Army swept around the strongholds, and the German not Soviet divisions were tied down, then encircled and finally destroyed by the forces following in the wake of the advance troops. The Wehrmacht divisions lost through such a disastrous tactical error would have been vital in defending other parts of the front.
Within two days of the start of the offensive, the 3rd Panzer Army in Vitebsk had been cut off, followed a further two days later by the encirclement of the 9th Army near Bobruisk. By the first days of July, the 4th Army faced the same fate near Minsk. Reinforcements drawn from the southern part of the front could not prevent its destruction. 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 that time lost twenty-eight divisions with 350,000 men in a catastrophe even greater than that at Stalingrad. By this time, devastating offensives in the Baltic and in the south were gathering momentum. The next months would 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
Whatever Hitler’s capabilities as a military strategist had been, they had paid dividends only while Germany held the whip-hand and lightning offensives had been possible. Once a defensive strategy had become the only one available, Hitler’s inadequacies as supreme German warlord were fully exposed. It was not that he was wholly devoid of tactical knowledge, despite his lack of formal training. Nor was it the case that professionals who knew better were invariably forced into compliance with the lunatic orders of an amateur military bungler. Hitler’s tactics were frequently neither inherently absurd, nor did they usually stand in crass contradiction to the military advice he was receiving.
Even so: at points of crisis, the tensions and conflicts invariably surfaced. And by 1944 the individual military crises were accumulating into one almighty, life-or-death crisis for the regime itself. Hitler’s political adroitness was by this time long gone. He dismissed out of hand all contemplation of a possible attempt to reach a political solution. Bridges had been burnt (as he had indicated on several occasions); there was no way back. And, since he refused any notion of negotiating from a position other than one of strength, from which all his earlier successes had derived, there was in any case no opportunity to seek a peace settlement. The gambling instinct which had stood Hitler in such good stead down to 1941 had long since lost its effectiveness in what had become a backs-to-the-wall struggle. But the worse the situation became, the more disastrously self-destructive became Hitler’s other overriding and irrational instinct – that ‘will’ alone would triumph over all adversity, even grossly disparate levels of manpower and weaponry. The innate self-destructive tendency which had always been implicit in his characteristic all-or-nothing stance as a politician now conveyed itself, catastrophically, to military leadership.
It was inevitable that seasoned military strategists and battle-hardened generals, schooled in more subtle forms of tactical command, would clash with him – often stridently – when their reading of the options available was so diametrically at variance with those of their supreme commander, and where the orders he emitted seemed to them so plainly militarily suicidal. They were also, however, schooled in obedience to orders of a superior; and Hitler was head of state, head of the armed forces, and since 1941 – disastrously – commander-in-chief (responsible for tactical decisions) of the army. Refusal to obey was not only an act of military insubordination; it was a treasonable act of political resistance.
Few were prepared to go down that route. But loyalty even to the extent of belief in the Führer’s mission was no safeguard against dismissal if near-impossible demands were not met. In accordance with his warped logic, where ‘will’ had not triumphed, however fraught the circumstances, Hitler blamed the weakness or inadequacy of the commander. Another commander with a superior attitude, he presumed, would bring a different result – however objectively unfavourable the actual position. The commander of Army Group Centre, Field-Marshal Busch, a Hitler loyalist, correspondingly paid the price for the ‘failure’ of Army Group Centre during the onset of the Soviet offensive. He was dismissed by Hitler on 28 June, and replaced by one of his favourite commanders, the tough and energetic newly-promoted Field-Marshal Walter Model (who at the same time retained his command of Army Group North Ukraine) – dubbed by some, given the frequency with which he was charged with tackling a crisis, ‘Hitler’s fireman’.
Within days, there was a change of command, too, in the west. Reports to the High 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, on 29 June. On 3 July, Rundstedt received a handwritten notice of his dismissal from Hitler. Officially, he had been replaced on grounds of health. The sacking of Geyr and Field-Marshal Hugo Sperrle, who had been responsible for air-defences in the west, also followed. Rundstedt’s replacement, Kluge, at that time high in Hitler’s esteem, arrived in France, as Guderian later put it, ‘still filled with the optimism that prevailed at Supreme Headquarters’. He soon learnt differently.
Another military leader who fell irredeemably from grace at this time was Chief of the Army General Staff Kurt Zeitzler. When appointed as replacement to Halder in September 1942, Zeitzler had impressed Hitler with his drive, energy, and fighting spirit – the type of military leader he wanted. The relationship had palled 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 his wish to resign. The Chief of Staff’s strong backing at the end of June for withdrawing the threatened Army Group North in the Baltic to a more defensible line, and his pessimism about the situation on the western front, amounted 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 Staff. At the end of his tether following furious rows with Hitler, Zeitzler simply disappeared from the Berghof on 1 July. He had suffered a nervous breakdown. Hitler never spoke to him again. He would have Zeitzler dismissed from the Wehrmacht in January 1945, refusing him the right to wear uniform. Until his replacement, Guderian, was appointed on 21 July, the army was effectively without a Chief of the General Staff.
The Soviet advance had left the Red Army, in the northern sector of the front, poised not far from Vilna in Lithuania. Already, the borders of East Prussia were in their sights. On 9 July, Hitler flew with Keitel, Dönitz, Himmler, and Luftwaffe Chief of Staff General Günther Korten back to his old headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia. Field-Marshal Model and General Johannes Frießner, 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 Frießner sounded optimistic. Hitler, too, thought his Luftwaffe adjutant, Below, also remained positive about developments on the eastern front. Hitler flew back to the Berghof that afternoon. He had already hinted that, in the light of the situation in the east, he would have to move his headquarters back to East Prussia, even though the fortifications of his accommodation there were still incomplete. Reading between the lines of one or two comments, Below gained the impression, he later wrote, that during what were to prove Hitler’s last days at the Berghof, before he left on 14 July 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 of pessimism were more than countered by repeated stress on continuing the war, the impact of the new weapons, and ultimate victory. Once more, it was plain to Below that Hitler would never capitulate. There would be no repeat of 1918. Hitler’s political ‘mission’ had been based from the outset on that premiss. The entire Reich would go down in flames first.
Hitler had lived amid the relative tranquillity of the Obersalzberg for 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 the last evening, perhaps sensing he would not see the Berghof again, he had paused in front of the pictures hanging in the great hall. Then he had kissed the hand of Below’s wife and Frau Brandt, the wife of one of his doctors, bidding them farewell. Next morning, 14 July, he flew back to East Prussia, arriving at the Wolf ’s Lair, now heavily reinforced and scarcely recognizable from its appearance when first set up in 1941. He arrived in the late morning. At one o’clock he was running the military conference there as if he had never been away. He was more stooping in his gait than earlier. But his continued strength of will, despite the massive setbacks, continued to impress the admiring Below.
For others, this strength of will – or obstinate refusal to face reality – was precisely what was preventing an end to the war and dragging Germany to inevitable catastrophe. They were determined to act before it was too late – to save what was left 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.